JOHN LENNON - WALLS AND BRIDGES @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee at 50 years old is John Lennon's fifth solo studio album, Walls and Bridges, which was released on September 26th, 1974. While the album came along at the tail end of Lennon's notorious "lost weekend" era, its a remarkably coherent release, containing one of his most successful solo singles, Whatever Gets You Through the Night.

Back in June of 1973, Yoko Ono had suggested a separation between her and John, as an attempt to try to create some space between them and allow for a reassessment of their marriage. Lennon, with Yoko's encouragement, left NYC to set up camp in LA, taking along personal assistant and paramour, May Pang. Once in LA, Lennon briefly became involved in the now legendary LA party club, The Hollywood Vampires, an outfit that started as a softball team, but quickly mutated into a cadre of professional boozers haunting the LA strip, which included as its core members: ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz, Alice Cooper and Harry Nilsson. Lennon also got the chance to reconnect with firstborn son, Julian while in LA.

The initial plan was to record an album of classic vintage rock 'n' roll covers, with Phil Spectre producing. While the booze flowed and the tapes rolled, material was recorded, but the album went into limbo after Lennon and Pang returned to NYC and Spectre disappeared for a time with the recordings. The "Rock 'N' Roll" album would eventually get released in 1975, but in the meantime, Lennon returned to the east coast with a batch of new songs and a desire to get back into the studio to record something fresh.

Lennon began rehearsing his new material with studio musicians at Record Plant East in New York City in June 1974, which included Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. Once sessions began, a number of notable guests popped in, including Elton John, who helped out on Whatever Gets You Through the Night. Harry Nilsson contributed to Old Dirt Road, and son Julian played drums on the album closer, Ya Ya. Despite Lennon's debauchery in LA, the NYC sessions were noted as being surprisingly professional, with Lennon being organized and prepared throughout, though the core musicians were mostly responsible for working out their own arrangements as the recordings progressed.

The album proved to be exceptionally popular with fans, though critics were divided at the time, albeit the majority of reviews were some of the most positive for Lennon since the release of Imagine in 1971. Thought it might have seemed like Lennon was revitalizing his career, Walls and Bridges would turn out to be his penultimate collection of original music. The Rock 'N' Roll covers album would get finished and released in 1975, and then Lennon would take a five year career hiatus as he reconnected with Yoko Ono with the birth of their only child, Sean. Lennon's desire to be a present father for Sean trumped any career aspirations at that time. Sadly, as Lennon and Ono were on the path to reasserting their creative presence with the split Double Fantasy album, Lennon's career and life would come to a tragic end that fateful day in NYC outside his Manhattan apartment building.

THE RESIDENTS - ESKIMO @45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the sixth studio LP from those mysterious masked music makers, The Residents, with their epic masterpiece, Eskimo, being released on September 26th, 1979. It's an album that would indelibly define the iconography of the group, while demonstrating their conceptual depth to a degree never previously achieved, and rarely match afterwards.

The background of Eskimo's genesis is shrouded by a combination of deliberate misinformation, myth and hearsay, with only fragments of the story seeming to have any firm basis in actual historical fact. Even the concept itself, while superficially intended to function as anthropological documentation, is in reality only conjecture based on cultural ignorance and stereotyping. This is a deliberate commentary on how British & European cultural imperialism has chosen to misrepresent indigenous peoples over the centuries. The album's themes and stories are all built on either popular misconceptions of Inuit culture and life, or outright fabrications, informed by consumerist archetypes and slogans. In that sense, the project is a deft commentary on how aboriginal culture has been distorted and appropriated by colonialist interlopers.

According to the group's internal mythologizing, the initial idea for the album came into consideration sometime in 1976, shortly after completing Third Reich 'N Roll, when the group's mysterious mentor, the enigmatic N. Senada. He had reappeared after going missing for a year, vanishing in the middle of the ill-fated Vileness Fats film project. He had apparently gone to the far north, returning with recordings of Arctic wind and a jar of air, and an inspiration for capturing the culture of the native peoples in song and stories. Given the group's penchant for fictionalizing their existence and history, trying to decipher the true instigation of the idea might be a little difficult. I can't be sure N. Senada even existed as a real person. Yet it is at least reasonable to accept that the idea for the album does, in fact, date to the period suggested.

What also seems to be believable, albeit with the specifics still being in question, is that the project became a beast for the group to tackle. It has been said that one critical reason for it taking 3 years to manifest is the fact that the technology for creating the album simply didn't exist at the time it was conceived, necessitating the group inventing instruments and techniques in order to achieve the desired results. Synthesizers were just beginning to become affordable for the average artist, and sampling was still a few years away from practical implementation. The conceptual complexity of the work, and its need to be a fully integrated and coherent expression, inevitably resulted in strained relationships within the collective, as various contributors held on to convictions that didn't always align with others. The brutal intricacy of it all put everyone involved into a state of high stress and exasperation as the project dragged on.

It's no wonder then that the group would have to let off some steam by indulging in some creativity unburdened by excessive conceptual constraints. Concurrent with the production of Eskimo, The Residents would release the Fingerprince LP (1977), and two EPs, which would quickly become combined into a single album known as Duck Stab / Buster and Glen (1978). Additionally, the Satisfaction single would see a reissue, spurred on by the success of DEVO's cover of the same song, and the Not Available album, recorded in 1974 immediately after Meet the Residents and intended to be an expression of the "theory of obscurity" by never being actually released, would be reluctantly issued as a stopgap while Eskimo's release kept getting delayed. According to the band's biographers, these latter releases caused conflicts between the band and their "management", the Cryptic Corporation, but given that those entities were, in reality, the same people, I can only assume what that means is that not everyone was in agreement with these titles coming to press when they did, further straining relationships within the group. There are even rumours of the "band" disappearing with the Eskimo master tapes in protest, requiring negotiations within the organization. Perhaps some faction did indeed take a powder with the masters, but all of this may simply be apocryphal fiction manufactured for the benefit of press and amusement of fans.

Despite all the struggles, the album did, finally, come together, as a single LP with six tracks, each accompanied by a narrative text relating the details of the tale being told by the music. Listeners were encouraged to read along with the music, a similar concept to what Michael Nesmith had done in 1974 with his concept album, The Prison, which was also a selection of songs that were accompanied by a book, with each chapter being integrated with a corresponding song.

Musically, what was presented was the most technically complex the group had ever constructed, with mostly electronic sounds emulating the cold, harsh environment of the Arctic while often unintelligible voices brought the stories to life, sometimes incorporating corporate giggle parodies, like the Coke-a-Cola song, into the tribal chanting. Taken as a whole, listening to the album was an entirely immersive experience.

For the cover graphics, the group debuted their brand new costumes, featuring the members in tuxedos with giant eyeball heads peaked by jaunty top hats. The effectiveness of the image was so utterly iconic and instantly recognizable that, virtually overnight, if became the default image for the group, a representation that would remain indelibly etched in the public mind for the rest of the band's career. Though they would subsequently evolve a wide variety of costumes, with entirely distinctive themes, they'd never be able to shake the association with those outfits.

Eskimo was my gateway into the world of The Residents. I'd seen the Ralph Records ads in various music magazines for a few years, but it was the striking look of that album, along with the crystal clear focus of its concept, that drew me to them, and I soon backtracked through their early catalogue thereafter, and followed the group closely through the Mole Trilogy. In my mind, Eskimo is something of a high watermark for the group, though they hit many highs before and after its release. Still, it remains the most emblematic of their albums. It certainly helped establish them as the masters of weirdness, securing them a dedicated fan-base among the alternative music fans of the post-punk era. They've done many concept albums throughout their career, but Eskimo will always stand in my mind as the most succinctly perfect of them all.

DAVID BOWIE - TONIGHT @ 40

 

Released on September 24th, 1984, David Bowie's sixteenth studio album, Tonight, turns 40 years old today. Coming on the heels of his career peak LP, Let's Dance, expectations were high for a repeat of that success, a situation which would ultimately be a constraint on Bowie's creativity, as the pressure to keep delivering chart toppers bared down on his sense of artistic integrity. It's a situation that, for an artist of constantly evolving influences and passions, can become something of a prison, which is exactly the kind of situation Bowie found himself in during the latter half of this decade. He'd been successful before, but hitting these heights with Let's Dance put him in the sights of a lot of expectations that were impossible to dismiss or ignore.

Production on the album commenced soon after the conclusion of the massively successful Serious Moonlight tour. Bowie and band set up camp at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, in Canada. The catapult into the stratosphere of superstardom, however, had come at a price in the form of Bowie feeling creatively bereft of ideas. It's not an uncommon situation for an artist, after a significant achievement, to find themselves at something of an impasse in terms of trying to come up with fresh inspirations. As a result, when it came to song writing, Bowie was simply not able to put up the goods when the time came, instead relying on close friend Iggy Pop to help bolster his efforts. Bowie wasn't even up for recording another album, initially proposing a live album following the tour, but his label were eager to keep the ball rolling from the momentum of the previous release. Leaning on Iggy made sense because Pop was struggling financially and the success of China Girl had given him a shot in the arm, so the duo were eager to work together more closely on the new album, solidifying their relationship while on a brief vacation together after the tour.

Production on the album would not, however, involve the return of Nile Rogers, who was the producer for Let's Dance. Instead, Bowie self-produced the album along with Derek Bramble. Bowie invited Bramble to Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, to record demos of his new material with a group of local Swiss musicians. The intent with the new album was to push further into the R&B, funk and reggae styles that had been explored on Let's Dance. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, musicians present at the Tonight sessions said the demos were "tremendous", describing them as "funky, raw, and full of promise". Once Bowie arrived at the studio in Canada, he came prepared with 8 of the album's 9 songs basically all worked out, something collaborator Carlos Alomar noted as surprising, given that he was used to Bowie coming to the studio with virtually nothing, in all the times he'd previously worked with him. It was an unusual case of being ahead of the game.

In terms of the writing, only two songs are credited to Bowie alone, with four tracks being Bowie/Pop compositions and the rest being covers of songs like Brian Wilson's God Only Knows, and one of Iggy's. Don't Look Down, from his New Values album. In a lot of ways, the album is like a return to the relationship Iggy and Bowie had while working on Pop's solo album come-backs in 1977, The Idiot and Lust for Life. Yet while the vibe may have echoed back to that classic Berlin era creative watershed, the results for Tonight were not nearly as satisfying.

Though the album was a commercial success, reaching number one in many key markets, critically it was met with a great deal of disdain, and remains considered one of Bowie's weakest albums. It was ultimately an album that Bowie was pushed into creating when he was not at all in a position to summon his full creative forces. He was depleted by the work on the previous album and a gruelling massive tour across the globe. It's entirely understandable that he'd need time to recharge, and regrettable that the industry would demand he keep producing new works when he was clearly in need of a respite. It's an album that would mark the turning point for Bowie as his career success hit its highest ebb. Not that he was out of the game after this, but he would certainly end up reevaluating his position after seeing his fortunes wane through the remainder of the decade.

THE STRANGLERS - THE RAVEN @ 45

 

Released on September 21st, 1979, the fourth studio album by The Stranglers, The Raven, turns 45 years old today. It's an album that saw the group continuing to evolve beyond the rabble of "pub-punk" aggression, developing their songwriting and musicianship to create music of increasing diversity and nuance.

The album, conceptually, leans into a lot of Norse mythology, especially with the cover graphics depicting a raven on the front, and the band photographed on the prow of a Viking Longship on the back. These concepts are echoed in the album's first two songs, Longships and the title track. The remainder delves into a variety of charged political, social and philosophical topics, like Japanese ritual suicide ("Ice"), heroin use ("Don't Bring Harry"), the Iranian Revolution ("Shah Shah a Go Go") and genetic engineering ("Genetix"). "Dead Loss Angeles" features guitarist Hugh Cornwell playing bass guitar in conjunction with bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel, who wrote the song's heavy bass line. No lead or rhythm guitars feature on the track, whose lyrics were written by Cornwell about his experiences in the United States. Things even take a turn into fringe conspiracy theories with the album's most experimental composition, the munchkin voiced, dirge-looped "Meninblack", a song that would be the springboard for their next album, with its theme of mysterious aliens breeding humans for food. Taken as a whole, it's all rather intellectual for a so-called "punk" band, but these men in black were never that simple, nor simple minded.

The album was originally released with a limited-edition 3D cover. Another limited edition had to be created when the band was forced to remove an image of Joh Bjelke-Petersen from the inner sleeve artwork. Bjelke-Petersen was the subject of the album's sixth track, "Nuclear Device (The Wizard of Aus)".

For some fans of their early albums, the evolution displayed on The Raven may have been a disappointment. I'm sure some critics of the time may have seen this as an opportunity to let loose a backlash against perceived pretensions. However, in my books, this is the beginning of the period when their music became its most interesting and innovative, a trajectory that would continue through the first half of the 1980s, with subsequent albums like The Gospel According to the Meninblack (1981), La Folie (1981), Feline (1983) and Aural Sculpture (1984). It's the era of their career when they matured beyond the adolescent misogyny that characterized their "punk" roots, and transformed them into intellectual commentators on the sociopolitical circumstances of the modern world.

FUNKADELIC - UNCLE JAM WANTS YOU @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is Funkadelic's "war on disco" concept album, Uncle Jam Wants You, which was released on September 21st, 1979. Band leader George Clinton is pictured on the front cover, African warlord style, in a rattan chair flanked by a giant "Flashlight" and "Bop Gun" (nods to the P-Funk songs of the respective same names). Flashing the "on the one" hand sign, combined with the album's subtitle, "Rescue Dance Music from the Blahs", it is a clear declaration of intent. "On the One" is more than just a credo of how to play funk music (accent on the first beat), it's a call to unite and harness the power of togetherness, and a fundamental acknowledgement of the spiritual "oneness" of the universe. It is the first Funkadelic album since America Eats Its Young in 1972 not to sport a cover illustrated by Funkadelic artist Pedro Bell, though Bell did provide artwork for the album’s back cover and interior.

The album's centrepiece, Not Just (Knee Deep), is a 15 minute monolithic groove that is so insistent and insidious, it feels like your brain is being surreptitiously rewired by some sort of "funkateer" subliminal manipulation, reprogramming your responses to get your groove on. The longer it goes on, the more helpless the listener feels in its grasp. That's worth the price of admission all on its own, but there are other treats as well, albeit perhaps not quite as inescapable. Freak of the Week offers up more solid P-funk groove, as does Uncle Jam, but the remainder of the album falls out into mostly filler. It's forgivable though, considering the other two thirds of the album is all winner.

Uncle Jam Wants You (a reference to the "Uncle Sam wants you!" US Army recruitment posters) may be a more militant sequel to the band's previous album, One Nation Under a Groove. As previously stated, it's all about countering the banality of mass marketed disco music, which had slathered the latter half of the decade in mirror-ball mediocrity and dreary dance dreck. On that front, it does what it says on the tin.

Uncle Jam Wants You was the second Funkadelic album to be certified gold.

APHEX TWIN - SYRO @ 10

 

Celebrating its 10th anniversary today is the last released full length album from Aphex Twin, Syro, which was issued on September 19th, 2014. Though there have been a smattering of EPs and singles from Richard D. James since its release, it remains a distant tent-pole in a sparse release schedule that has been the norm for James for the past two decades. It's an odd tactic given the artist's reputation for being such a prolific producer. Indeed, prior to its release, James commented that it was but one of several albums he had tucked away in his archive, though only a smattering of tunes have since seen the light of day. One may wonder whether to take him at his word, but his history, with examples like the massive Soundcloud dump of unreleased tracks in 2015, has certainly confirmed his contentions regarding the amount of music he'd managed to produce over the years.

Prior to the release of Syro, the last official Aphex Twin album to see the light of day was Drukqs, released in 2001. The seeming inactivity is slightly deceptive, however, given that the interim saw the release of the 11 volume Analord EP series throughout 2005, and a couple of releases in 2007 under the pseudonym, The Tuss. Still, there is certainly an appreciable expanse of silence in the period leading up to Syro's 2014 appearance. The unknown reasons for the lack of product have spurred a lot of speculation. Some rumours indicate James' divorce was a factor in keeping potential revenue out of the mix of a settlement, or perhaps the proliferation of file sharing has discouraged releasing material, like it has for many artists who have resorted to touring to pay the bills, because selling records no longer generates significant revenue. Whatever the case, scarcity does ultimately mean that when new releases do hit the shelves, they get a lot more publicity.

The material included on the album was supposedly recorded at various times, using a variety of studios and gear configurations, over a period of approximately six years prior to its release. Rumours of a new album from James had started circulating as early as 2009, with Warp founder Steve Beckett mentioning it in the press. The following year James was quoted as stating that he had as many as six albums in the can and ready for release.

It wasn't until 2014 when a a test pressing of James's unreleased album, Caustic Window, was listed on Discogs for US $13,500 (£8,050) that the ball really started rolling. Members of the internet forum, We Are the Music Makers - who negotiated a deal between the seller, the forum's administrator, James and Rephlex Records - launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to purchase the album. The campaign raised over $67,000 (£41,000) from 4,124 contributions, with proceeds split between James, Rephlex and the charity, Doctors Without Borders. James said the campaign was "really touching, and really sweet" and, upon realizing the continued interest in his music, he was inspired to release Syro.

The album was recorded in six different studios, including James's home studio in Scotland, which he spent three years building and which was completed in 2006. One audio engineer spent three months with James, helping him wire together patch panels before the engineer "realized he was doing it all wrong and had to start again". Describing the overall process as "brutal", James referred to the in-studio technical issues as the catalyst for writing new music that would be featured on Syro. James used various audio setups when composing Syro's material. Rearranging equipment allowed him to explore more writing possibilities; he said "that will achieve some sort of purpose, so the way I've wired it together becomes the track in itself." James also explained that when composing the "logical thing to do is not change anything and just do another one using the same set of sounds", but during Syro's recording sessions he would often "get bored and swap things out".

On the album's overall sound, James said it is his "pop album, or as poppy as it's going to get". Syro incorporates styles including break-beat, drum and bass, techno, acid and disco. While the album doesn't particularly seem to break a lot of new ground, it also manages to avoid sounding nostalgic, offering a veneer of freshness while still fitting into the pocket of approaches and styles that were not at all alien to James's prior works. Vice summarized the sound as "unlike anything else this year - but quite a lot like everything from the past thirty years".

The title, Syro, is a neologism coined by one of James' children. It is a shortened version of "Syrobonkus", a nonsense word his son blurted out while listening to the album. The majority of the album's track titles are named after the working titles stored on James' hard drives and reference individual pieces of equipment James used in their recording, as well as respective BPM values. A comprehensive list of all equipment featured on Syro is included as part of the album's packaging. Syro's cover artwork was designed by the Designers Republic, a graphic design studio that provided designs for previous Aphex Twin releases, including the 1999 single "Windowlicker" and the compilation album 26 Mixes for Cash. The cover art resembles a receipt, with the official Aphex Twin logo and album title printed on it. According to Creative Review, the receipt on the album cover details the production and promotional costs of the album, "from courier charges to photo-shoot expenses, expressed per disc and tailored for both vinyl and CD versions." Perhaps this conception is meant to remind listeners that producing these products is an expensive proposition, something that doesn't get compensated for by pirating digital copies of the album.

The promotional campaign for Syro began when a chartreuse-coloured blimp featuring the Aphex Twin logo and the number "2014" appeared over London, England on 16 August, 2014. On the same day Aphex Twin graffiti was reported outside Radio City Music Hall and various other locations in NYC. Two days later Aphex Twin's official Twitter account posted a link to a hidden service, accessible using the Dark Web software Tor, detailing the album's title and track listing. The service accumulated over 133,000 views in less than a day, according to The Guardian. In the following week several purported leaks of Syro appeared on YouTube and SoundCloud, but James subsequently denied that any of them were legitimate. I remember being briefly fooled by one of them, though not for long.

Once it was finally and officially available, the album quickly garnered critical raves and chalked up some notable chart success, cracking the upper reaches in several markets, including the UK and US. It also managed to score a Grammy award for Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015, an accolade that pushed sales of the album in the US to increase 101 percent following James' win. It also secured spots on numerous "best of the year" lists in most of the major music publications.

With all that, it's still not an album that's made a huge impression in my personal collection, though I should likely give it another spin to refresh my memory. It's certainly a pleasant enough listening experience, though it's not likely to leave a legacy as one of James' most important releases, but given the lack of titles appearing in the last 20 years, it will inevitably stand out in retrospect.

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER @ 50

 

Debuting in its weekly series format on September 13th, 1974, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, is marking its golden jubilee today at 50 years old. While the series only lasted a single season, it has since gained cult status, being cited by the likes of X-Files creator, Chris Carter, as a principal inspiration for his own iconic cult franchise.

Originating as a pair of wildly successful made for TV movies, The Night Stalker (1972), and The Night Strangler (1973), the series' first incarnation was actually in the form of an unpublished novel written by Jeff Rice called, The Kolchak Papers. Initially, the main protagonist was a Las Vegas newspaper reporter named Carl Kolchak, who tracks down and defeats a serial killer who turns out to be the vampire Janos Skorzeny. The novel gave Kolchak's birth name is "Karel", although he uses the anglicized version "Carl".

ABC approached Rice with an offer to option The Kolchak Papers, which was adapted by Richard Matheson into the television movie. The Night Stalker, first aired on January 11, 1972. It garnered the highest ratings of any television movie at that time (33.2 rating — 54 share). Matheson received a 1973 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay.

Following the success of the TV movie and its sequel, the novel was published in 1973 by Pocket Books as a mass-market paperback original, titled The Night Stalker, with a photo of star Darren McGavin on the cover in order to tie it to the film. With the success of the movies, ABC negotiated with Matheson and McGavin to create a series, with the later given unofficial executive producer status. However, neither ABC nor Universal had obtained novel author Jeff Rice's permission for the series, and he sued the studio. The suit was resolved shortly before the series aired, and Rice received an on-screen credit as series creator.

Also of note in the production of the series was David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, who worked on the series as a story editor, his first regular staff position in Hollywood. Though Chase is credited on eight episodes as story editor, he also helped rewrite the remaining 12. McGavin and others attribute much of the show's quirky humour to his creative input.

As the series evolved, it became a unique supernatural crime drama, with Kolchak's rumpled, gruff persona constantly at odds with his stressed-out publisher and disparaging co-workers. As he dealt with a wide variety of unusual phenomenon and creatures each week, it seemed like nothing he ever wrote got published due to the fantastical nature of his stories. It's a wonder he was able to retain any employment at all, given his incredible and unbelievable subject matter.

His personal life also seemed to be a total disaster, with hardly anything resembling a friend or romantic relationship ever taking any prominence in the series. Yet his isolation from the rest of humanity seemed to be perfectly appropriate for his idiosyncratic obsession with the bizarre and the unnatural. It's not at all surprising he'd be something of a loner, especially given the fact he only seemed to possess a single suite of clothes. He did have a pretty nice little Mustang for a car though. Still, he's the kinda guy who'd probably have fallen in with QAnon weirdos if he were around today.

As a kid, the series had an instant appeal for me. I remember being on the edge of my seat on numerous occasions as Kolchak narrowly escaped one bizarre predicament after another. The series was usually quite good at conjuring up dramatic tension when it came to putting him in tight squeezes. It's no wonder those who grew up with the show never forgot it.

During its initial run, the series was undermined by poor time slots, frequent changes in scheduling and irregular schedules, with hiatuses between clumps of episodes, and some episodes never even airing until the show was in syndication years later. Daren McGavin also had issues with his role within the series, becoming embittered by his lack of credit as executive producer, as well as a lack of financial compensation for his contributions in that role as well. With the lacklustre ratings for the series thrown on top of this, he declined to continue with the series and ABC pulled the show after one season.

Yet the show's impact would see it return in various incarnations and repackaging attempts, gaining a strong cult following when it was aired in late night. It has subsequently only grown in stature as its impact has become more pronounced in popular culture. As previously mentioned, The X-Files owes a huge debt to the series in terms of inspiration, with Chris Carter frequently integrating sly references into his series. He even planned to have McGavin reprise his Kolchak character for an episode, though McGavin refused to return for the role, albeit he did eventually agree to play the character of an FBI agent who had been an early investigator of the so-called "X-Files" department. Carter also incorporated a character in the X-Files revival in 2016 who wore Kolchak's trademark rumpled white suit and straw hat.

An attempt to reboot the series was made in 2005 by ABC, who still had rights to the Character, but low ratings saw the series vanish quickly. I've never seen any of those episodes, and didn't even know that it existed until I started research for this retrospective piece. In May 2012, Disney announced a film adaptation was in the works with Johnny Depp starring and producing, and Edgar Wright directing, but there doesn't seem to be much momentum on that lately, so who knows if its still in the works. It's the kind of property that could certainly be successful in a re-imagined version, if it had the right people behind it, with the proper backing, but for now, the original series is still floating around out there, currently streaming on AppleTV+, for those looking to discover its charms.