Posts Tagged ‘The Beatles’
Monday, December 21st, 2009
The label tells it like it is – “Beat Beat Beat was a German music programme that ran during the sixties. Not to be confused with the other well known German pop programme Beat Club. Beat Beat Beat was broadcast out of Frankfurt commencing in 1966.” Well you wouldn’t want to confuse the two programmes as far as getting the DVDs of material from them is concerned, coz while the Beat Beat Beat (ABC Entertainment) disks give you classic mod, British Invasion, freakbeat, pop and even soul performances, on the The Best of Beat Club vol 1 & 2 (Eagle Vision) you apparently get Deep Purple, The James Gang, Johnny Winter, Santana, Procol Harum, Nazareth, Free, Humble Pie, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, The Kiki Dee Band, Johnny Rivers, The Hollies, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Doobie Brothers, Ten Years After, Canned Heat and Three Dog Night. So while a mixed bag, the The Best of Beat Club vol 1 & 2 will appeal more to headbangers and others of that ilk; whereas Beat Beat Beat is a groovers kinda thang! That said, there were earlier year by year compilations of Beat Club and those for 1965, 1966 and 1967 look a lot better than the more recent ‘total overview’ disks… But I’ve only seen them listed online, I’ve not actually viewed them.
There are Beat Beat Beat DVDS running to about 10 minutes each devoted to The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Eric Burdon and the New Animals, The Spencer Davis Group and The Hollies. Performances by these acts are not particularly rare and I’ve certainly seen enough footage of them to know the Small Faces totally rock onstage, whereas the Kinks or The Yardbirds (both of whom made records I love) tend to look too static and overall not that great. With more tunes and some groovy but less well known acts, The Best of Beat Beat Beat compilation disks are a better option, despite a really odd selections of talent.
At 41 minutes The Best of Beat Beat Beat volume 1 offers the longest running time. There’s Barry Ryan (Eloise), Cat Stevens (Granny and Matthew & Son) and Chris Farlowe (Out Of Time and Ride On Baby) lip-synching really badly to pre-recorded tracks. Farlowe in particular looks completely uninterested in what he’s doing, but remains compelling in a train wreck kinda way, especially as he is one sad and ugly motherfucker who had an obsessional interest in Nazi memorabilia (fortunately it was illegal for him to wear his fascist uniforms on German TV). There’s straightforward sixties pop from Herman’s Hermints (No Milk Today and My Reservation’s Been Confirmed) that while adequate need not detain us. By way of contrast, Casey Jones and The Govenors (Come On And Dance and Don’t Ha Ha) are a bit of an oddity.
In the UK Casey Jones AKA Brian Casser is known to music fans (but not the general public) as the bloke who booked The Beatles as his support act and briefly had Eric Clapton as his guitarist, but not really for his music. In Germany he had a huge hit with Don’t Ha Ha, hence his inclusion here. And if you like primitive beat sounds then you’ll dig the two Casey Jones and The Governors tunes on the The Best of Beat Beat Beat volume 1. It is probably unnecessary to add Don’t Ha Ha was a Huey ‘Piano’ Smith song. Volume 1 also gives us two tunes from The Trinity featuring Julie Driscoll (Save Me and Road to Cairo), with keyboardist Brian Auger’s theatrics totally upstaging his singer Julie Driscoll (who sounds great, albeit not as good as Aretha Franklin when covering her, but doesn’t have much stage presence). The best is saved for last, The Easybeats doing Loving Machine (incorporating the Batman Theme) and that old stomper Friday On My Mind. As prot0-punkers The Easybeats completely outflank Casey Jonees and The Governors.
Volume 2 is shorter but better. The Minderbenders do a Wilson Pickett medley in the form of Land Of A Thousand Dances/In The Midnight Hour and their big hit Groovy Kind Of Love; and also Don’t Cry No More and a medley of C. C. Rider/Jenny Jenny Jenny. P. J. Proby’s What’s Wrong With My World provides another spectacular train wreck; his lip-synching is terrible and the old rocker looks both off his box and down on his luck – he has to be seen to be believed! The disk winds up with two total class acts, P. P. Arnold and The Creation. A former Ikette (an Ike and Tina Turner backing singer) and session vocalist for the likes of The Small Faces, Arnold is diminutive but her voice is 100% pure soul and her two tracks here (Speak To Me and The First Cut Is The Deepest) are just fabulous.
You’d think there’d be nothing in the Beat Beat Beat vaults that could credibly follow Arnold, but The Creation are up for it! Aside from being a truly awesome song writer and musician, their guitarist Eddie Phillips also had the greatest haircut of 1966, just look at the shape of it around his ear in the footage of The Creation doing their cover version of I’m A Man! The Creation look fabulous in their dark trousers and button-down shirts with contrasting white details (buttons and belts). The shame here is that on the same edition of Beat Beat Beat (their first TV appearance) they also did That’s How Strong My Love Is and Makin’ Time, but they ain’t included on the DVD. Still you do get to see Eddie using his innovative technique of playing his guitar with a violin bow, something much imitated by lesser talents like Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. What you also see here is The Creation doing Painter Man a year later, with their hair a little more grown out; the band still look really stylish but a little freakier. When I was a teenager back in the 197os I was on the lookout for some Creation vinyl for a long time, and when Raw Records stuck out Makin’ Time and Painter Man on either side of a 45 in the latter part of that decade, I grabbed a copy as soon as it came out. I really love this band, Makin’ Time in particular. And, of course, we should never forget the famous Eddie Phillips quote: “Our music is red with purple flashes.” Incidentally, after The Creation broke up, Phillips joined P. P. Arnold’s backing band.
Volume 3 of The Best of Beat Beat Beat features solid sixties pop from The Searchers (Love Potion No. 9, Sweets For My Sweet and C. C. Rider) and The Tremeloes (Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, Silence Is Golden and Here Comes My Baby). Then there are the more psychedelic sounds of The Move (Walk Upon The Water and I Can Here The Grass Grow). However, the real highlight is The Smoke doing My Friend Jack, a song banned by the BBC in the sixties because it is about LSD! My Friend Jack is a psyche classic and everything else on this particular disk looks second-rate in comparison… so surely we could have had more than one track from The Smoke!
I’ve also spotted but haven’t acquired a two band Beat Beat Beat DVD compilation featuring The Troggs alongside Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. I love The Troggs but I figure the DVD ain’t worth getting coz there won’t be enough of ‘em. Likewise, any disk you see in the Beat Beat Beat series will probably feature gawky looking teenagers dancing badly to groovy sounds… You can also see most of this stuff and much more for free on YouTube, although it comes and goes and the image is obviously heavily compressed- whereas on these disks both the audio and visual quality is really top-notch. Weird how you can see and hear so much shirt now that just wasn’t available to those of us based in London back in the old days, but I ain’t complaining! It’s like time travel for ravers…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1960s, 60s, ABC Entertainment, Alice Cooper, Aretha Franklin, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Barry Ryan, Batman Theme, BBC, Beat Club, Brian Auger, Brian Casser, C. C. Rider, Canned Heat, Casey Jones and The Govenors, Cat Stevens, Chris Farlowe, Come On And Dance, Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich, Deep Purple, Don't Cry No More, Don't Ha Ha, Eagle Vision, Eddie Phillips, Eloise, Eric Burdon and the New Animals, Eric Clapton, Free, Friday On My Mind, Granny, Groovy Kind Of Love, Here Comes My Baby, Herman's Hermints, Humble Pie, I Can Here The Grass Grow, I'm A Man, Ike and Tina Turner, In The Midnight Hour, Jenny Jenny Jenny, Jethro Tull, Jimmy Page, Johnny Rivers, Johnny Winter, Julie Driscoll, Land Of A Thousand Dances, Led Zeppelin, Living Machine, Love Potion No. 9, Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, LSD, Makin' Time, Matthew & Son, My Friend Jack, My Reservation's Been Confirmed, Nazareth, No Milk Today, Out Of Time, P. J. Proby, P.P. Arnold, Painter Man, Procol Harum, Raw Records, Ride On Baby, Road to Cairo, Santana, Save Me, Silence Is Golden, sixties, Small Face, Speak To Me, Sweets For My Sweet, Ten Years After, That's How Strong My Love Is, The Beatles, The Best of Beat Beat Beat, The Best of Beat Club, The Creation, The Doobie Brothers, The Easybeats, The First Cut Is The Deepest, The Hollies, The James Gang, The Kiki Dee Band, The Kinks, The Mindbenders, The Move, The Searchers, The Small Faces, The Smoke, The Spencer Davis Group, The Tremeloes, The Trinity, The Troggs, The Yardbirds, Three Dog Night, Walk Upon The Water, What's Wrong With My World, YouTube
Posted in film, music | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Despite the recently fashionable status of the Bethnal Green area in east London, this has to date failed to lead to a revival of interest in the 1970s band who named themselves after the hood. Bethnal were formed in Bethnal Green in 1972, and sounded like a cut-price Who minus the vocal skill of Roger Daltrey and the songwriting talent of Pete Townshend. I saw Bethnal at The Marquee in Wardour Street on Thursday 24 August 1978 and had a good night out. Bethnal had plenty of energy but beyond their deployment of a violin, there was nothing very memorable about them. They simply weren’t as good as the other bands I saw at The Marquee that month: The Vibrators on Monday 14 August 1978 and Ultravox! (when John Foxx was still the vocalist) on Tuesday 22 August 1978. I caught plenty of other bands that August too, at venues all around London… Bethnal were simply another night out on the town.
At some point after that Marquee gig, I pulled Bethnal’s first album Dangerous Times out of a bargain bin. It’s bog standard seventies Brit rock. The opener Out In The Street (not the tune of the same name from the first Who album) sounds like a second-rate Pete Townshend song covered by a boogie band, but it’s still enjoyable. The best tracks are covers of We’ve Gotta Get Out Of This Place and Barba O’Reilly, but while acceptable they’re not as good as the originals… And other tracks like Who We Gonna Blame are seriously let down by the vocals. Bethnal’s second and final album Crash Landing was not at all to my taste, since it veers much more in the direction of stadium rock and prog, so even when I came across bargain bin copies of this swansong recording, I left them lying where I found them.
One reason for mentioning Bethnal is because I’ve been enjoying John Eden’s series of blogs at Uncarved about uncool gigs he attended as a teenager. The ninth and most recent in the series is about him going to see The Mission in 1987. Eden appears to have ticket stubs and other memorabilia to jog his memory, whereas I’m relying on internet research to date the gigs I went to 30 and more years ago. I’m a bit older than Eden and I seem to have been more hardcore about my gig going from an earlier age. I liked a lot of seventies new wave and punk acts and among my early live experiences can list The Stranglers, The Damned and The Clash. I hate to admit it but the first band I ever saw was The Jam, and that was sometime before they had a record contract. For me, more interesting than these ‘name’ acts are those who never made it. One of the best bands in this latter category is Burlesque, a jazz rock combo with new wave trimmings, who like Bethnal managed to release a brace of albums that have yet to be reissued on CD.
According to the Billy Jenkins Webzine Burlesque were: “Selected as the ‘Band Most Likely To Succeed’ in both the tabloid Sun and Melody Maker at the end of ’76, it took a flying visit from America by music business legend Clive Davis to sign the band to Arista Records.” I don’t like the construction of that sentence, but I presume an article hosted on a former Burlesque band member’s website will be factually accurate. All I can say is he and his band-mates in Burlesque cracked me up with songs like Steel Appeal (about being sexually turned on by people in wheelchairs). Better yet, Burlesque saxophonist Ian Trimmer wore a tatty army jacket with ‘Bird Lives’ sprayed punk-style across the back; even at the age of 15 I knew that ‘Bird’ was jazz legend Charlie Parker. Making things even more surreal, the one time I saw Burlesque Paul Weller of The Jam was in the sparse audience. That said, Weller was obviously present to check out support act The Pleasers, who were Merseybeat revivalists replete with collarless Beatles’ jackets. The Pleasers even had their own one band musical movement – Thamesbeat!
I caught Burlesque and The Pleasers at some college (can’t recall which one) at some point in 1977, and it is curious to recall some of the acts I saw in the late-seventies that no one I know talks about any more. For instance, I subjected myself to Nina Hagen at The Lyceum, but I’m not sure if this was in 1978 or a bit later. I guess people still rave about Hagen in Germany, but she hasn’t been of much interest to UK based hipsters for the past 30 years. She made her initial international impact with a German language cover of the new wavish Tubes’ song White Punks On Dope, done with re-written lyrics as TV-Glotzer. In the early/mid-eighties Hagen made tunes like New York with disco legend Giorgio Moroder acting as producer, and for me that collaboration is the most notable thing about her.
I don’t like Hagen’s voice, so I’ve no idea why I went to see her circa 1978 – I can only assume there was some other act on the bill that I wanted to catch. I can’t remember where I saw Hagen’s one-time boyfriend, the Dutch rocker Herman Brood, but it may have been on a multi-act bill with his consort of that era. Brood is Holland’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll junkie, but I haven’t heard mention of him in London for years, despite his 2001 jump from the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel leading to saturation media coverage of his suicide and subsequent funeral in The Netherlands.
Back in the late-seventies I used to see a lot of bands and my tastes were very varied. I would catch Sham 69 one night and Wire the next; groove to The Vapors on Saturday then freak-out with Gloria Mundi or The Virgin Prunes on Sunday… I even saw Motorhead, but I much preferred The Pirates! Having started out as Johnny Kidd’s backing band, The Pirates had been around since the late-fifties. On record they weren’t bad, although I didn’t really bother with their vinyl, I just liked them live… and in 1978 you’d have been just as likely to find me at a Pirates or Wilko Johnson gig as at a punky-reggae party. I was also going to see British reggae bands like Steel Pulse, Aswad, Misty In Roots and Matumbi. Since I much preferred small clubs to concert halls, I didn’t bother with visiting Jamaican acts although I liked their sounds. The Lyceum Ballroom in The Strand was the biggest place I went to with any regularity. I only ever went to The Hammersmith Odeon once, to see Lou Reed in 1979, and I considered the experience shitty.
Out of the stew of music I caught live 30 and more years ago, it is curious to see what’s disappeared. Amazingly, bands like The Pleasers made it onto CD in the late-nineties, whereas as far as I know the output of Burlesque and Bethnal has never been reissued on that format…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1977, 1978, Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Arista Records, Aswad, Barba O'Reilly, Bethnal, Bethnal Green, Billy Jenkins, Bird, burlesque, central London, Charlie Parker, Clive Davis, Crash Landing, east London, Giorgio Moroder, Gloria Mundi, Hammersmith Odeon, Herman Brood, Ian Trimmer, John Eden, Johnny Kidd, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Lou Reed, Lyceum Ballroom, Matumbi, Melody Maker, Misty In Roots, Motorhead, New York, Nina Hagen, Paul Weller, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Sham 69, Soho, Steel Appeal, Steel Pulse, The Beatles, The Jam, The Marquee, The Mission, The Pirates, The Pleasers, The Strand, The Sun, The Vapors, The Vibrators, The Virgin Prunes, The Who, Ultravox!, Uncarved, Wardour Street, We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Who We Gonna Blame, Wilko Johnson, Wire
Posted in music | 53 Comments »
Friday, June 12th, 2009
After noticing that Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher is listed on the Wikipedia as a living person, I figured it was worth blogging this scumbag and his boss Detective Chief Inspector Victor Kelaher. I don’t want people to forget that Plicher and Kelaher were worse than slime; and it is still worth pointing out they got away with most of the shit they pulled, so much for so called ‘justice’. According to Wikipedia, Pilcher was born in 1936 and so if he isn’t dead yet, he ought to be very soon. And as far as I’m concerned Pilcher deserves to rot in hell.
After a transfer from the Flying Squad to the Drug Squad in 1967, Norman ‘Nobby’ Pilcher became notorious for the vigour with which he pinned possession of drugs charges on pop stars and hippies, and for the dubious methods employed in his undercover operations, which included paying off informers with drugs. As is evident from reports in the alternative press and various histories of that time, it was widely believed that Pilcher was planting the drugs his victims were convicted of possessing. He was the detective who busted John Lennon and thereby got himself immortalised as ‘semolina pilchards’ in the song I Am The Walrus by The Beatles. Pilcher also took particular delight in hounding Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and there are those who believe that this was a significant factor leading to the musician’s death.
Pilcher and his boss finally found themselves in hot water in the early-seventies, when they claimed during the drug smuggling trial of Basil Sands that this man – who’d been caught red-handed – was innocent, and had been working with the police. After the judge directed the jury to discount any private belief they might have that Kelaher was at the centre of a drug smuggling ring, since this was something that should be addressed at a subsequent trial, Sands got seven years. Thanks to a convenient nervous complaint ‘requiring’ hospital treatment, Kelaher avoided subsequent problems with the Home Office but three junior officers – Pilcher, Detective Constable Nick Prichard and Detective Constable Nigel Lilley – were belatedly brought to trial in September 1973, convicted of perjury and jailed. Sentencing Nobby Pilcher to a four year stretch, Justice Melford Stevenson told the disgraced detective: “You poisoned the wells of criminal justice and set about it deliberately.”
These cases were of considerable interest to the underground press, and publications such as Oz and Friendz ran stories claiming much of the illegal drug trade in London was controlled by bent cops, that there was an extensive network of police spies to enforce this control, and a subsequent huge cover-up by the authorities to prevent the full extent of the corruption around Kelaher being exposed. Friendz in particular alleged there was a close connection between Kelaher and the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). It was claimed a Mr Collins of the BNDD was granted diplomatic immunity and bustled back to the United States because he’d been involved in using US government money to set up drug deals with Kelaher. These allegations shed an interesting light on tales of the US authorities hoping to fit-up the Kray twins by involving them in drug running. Incidentally, Customs & Excise had previously caught Kelaher in the Holland Park flat of a prostitute called Mrs Roberts, the former wife of a drug smuggler he’d nicked (Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Roberts), and at the time Kelaher was bestowing expensive jewelry – including a gold watch – on the woman.
All of this can be found in considerably more detail in The Fall of Scotland Yard by Barry Cox, John Shirley and Martin Short (Penguin 1977) and many other print sources.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Barry Cox, BNDD, Brian Jones, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Detective Chief Inspector Victor Kelaher, Detective Constable Nick Prichard, Detective Constable Nigel Lilley, Detective Sergeant Norman Pilcher. Norman Pilcher, Friendz, I Am The Walrus, John Lennon, John Shirley, Justice Melford Stevenson, Kofi Roberts, Kray Twins, Martin Short, Nick Prichard, Nigel Lilley, Nobby Pilcher, Oz, Reggie Kray, Rolling Stones, Ronnie Kray, The Beatles, The Fall of Scotland Yard, Victor Kelaher
Posted in True crime | 21 Comments »
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
After World War II, Ibiza was one of several spots strewn across the Mediterranean that attracted two distinct expatriate types from northern Europe and North America. There were writers and artists ostensibly escaping from the crass materialism of New York and London, many of whose views were so incoherent that what they were really objecting to became by default the innate human capacity for rational thought; and the rich who felt hostility towards even the mildest attempts at wealth redistribution, and who liked the tax breaks offered to them by Spain’s fascist junta then headed by General Franco – even if the areas in which they settled tended to be those in which anti-fascist sentiments prevailed. Both groups were also swapping the cold of northern winters for year-round sunshine. In summer months their ranks were swelled initially by beatniks, then by hippies and ultimately by post-acid house ravers.
The Ibiza scene of the sixties included fixtures such as the musical duo Nina and Frederik, a Danish couple who combined beatnik and hippie leanings with aristocratic pretensions, since they were also known as Baron and Baroness Van Pallandt. In their publicity photographs of the late-fifties and early-sixties, Nina and Frederik are a perfect representation of the international beatnik jet set. On an eponymous Columbia records EP containing the songs I Would Amor Her, Oh Sinner Man, I Listen to the Ocean and Sippin’ Cider, they are depicted holding hands in matching orange V-neck jumpers, black slacks and black open neck shirts. The front cover shows the couple smiling face on to the camera, with Nina a little shorter than the bearded and wavy-haired Frederik. Nina is wearing red lipstick and her hair is pulled back. The flip-side of the record’s picture sleeve shows them in the same pose but taken from behind, and it becomes clear that Nina naturally has the same light brown shade of hair as Frederik, but she has dyed it blond and tied it into a pony tail. Nina and Frederik’s music, light folk sometimes tinged with calypso rhythms, is to my mind a lot less enthralling than their image.
Nina and Frederik were very much a musical phenomenon of the early-sixties with the songs I Listen To The Ocean, Little Donkey (their big hit), Longtime Boy and Sucu Sucu making the UK singles charts in 1960 and 1961; in the same years they made the UK albums charts with two different but identically titled eponymous albums on the Pye and Columbia labels respectively – the duo also saw action on the EP charts with their eponymous first four tracker, a follow up imaginatively titled Nina and Frederik No. 2, then Christmas At Home With Nina And Frederik, and their sole 1962 UK chart entry White Christmas. After his singing career hit the skids, the Baron took to using his yacht for dope smuggling, something Howard Marks documents in passing in his autobiography Mr Nice. For some years prior to this the Balearic Islands had already been acting as a magnet to hippie drug dealers. Incidentally, it has been reported that the 1994 murder of Frederik Van Pallandt was a hit organised by an Australian crime syndicate who’d reneged on an agreement to pay the Baron $10 million for smuggling their drugs on his yacht.
Ibiza also harboured top flight forgers, and it was here that the infamous Clifford Irving produced a biography of his neighbour Elmyr de Hory, who had very successfully faked paintings by assorted artists. Using de Hory as his inspiration, Irving went on to take the New York publishing industry for a ride with a fake Howard Hughes “autobiography”. When the scam was exposed and Irving became a hot news item in 1972, the coverage Baroness Nina received on the back of a short affair she’d had with him as he perpetrated his hoax revived her career as an entertainer. As a result, Van Pallandt enjoyed minor Hollywood fame, including appearances in four Robert Altman movies: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979) and O.C. and Stiggs (1985).
In an article entitled In Search Of The Beautiful Ghosts about the old days in Ibiza, which was published online via the Nth Postion website, Damien Enright reminisces about those who could be found in the cafes and bars of the old town. Among the things recalled are the moonlight gatherings instigated by Elmyr de Hory on the sea front beneath his house Figueretes. Of even greater importance was a watering hole called The Domino, the first foreign owned bar on Ibiza and the chief spiritual home of expatriate beatniks and hippies in Spain. During spring high tides, the sea came up through the floor of The Domino, but it was nonetheless somewhere the rich would socialise with beatnik dropouts.
Among the beatnik regulars in Ibiza were the Dutch counterculture activists Bart Hugues and Simon Vinkenoog; writers including the poet George Andrews (who co-edited The Book Of Grass with Vinkenoog), and Irma Kurtz (then a beat poet, more recently Cosmopolitan’s agony aunt); and lots of lesser known artists including Jan Cremer, my mother’s boyfriend Bruno de Galzain and photographer Lester Waldman. Aside from Nina and Frederik, the beautiful people who Enright recalls from the island’s jet set heyday include Terence Stamp, Nico, Terry Thomas, Charlotte Rampling and various rock stars including members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Among the hippie crowd, Jenny Fabian who authored the roman-a-clef Groupie and worked the door at London’s UFO club, was one of the island’s more famous boosters.
In terms of other international beatnik connections, the London based but itinerant guitarist Davy Graham ranks among the more prominent. Another musical couple who spent a lot of time in Ibiza were Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings. Henry, I’m told was intellectually brilliant, but like Davy Graham became a notorious junkie. With his partner Hennings, Wolff recorded the influential Tibetan Bells (Island Records 1972) and a series of follow-up albums. They are early examples of ambient trance grooves which introduced a broad mass of western listeners to instruments such as Tibetan bells, gongs, and singing bowls. Wolff may also be the Henry Wolf (only one ‘f”) who appears in Barbet Schroeder’s first feature film More (1969), a narrative of junkie dropouts who high-tail it to Ibiza; but rather than Tibetan Bells, this movie features a Pink Floyd soundtrack.
The sounds may have changed, but when house music and super-sized clubs like Manumission arrived in Ibiza it was nothing new. The roots of the current Ibiza party scene stretch all the way back to the early-sixties.That said, it looks to me like the scene in Ibiza was better in 1962 – when my mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, first visited the island – than it is now. Early web reports suggest that this year (2009) Manumission will even disappoint fans of super-sized clubs (it won’t be running). So it goes…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: A Wedding, Barbet Schroeder, Bart Hugues, Bruno de Galzain, Charlotte Rampling, Christmas At Home With Nina And Frederik, Clifford Irving, Damien Enright, Davy Graham, Elmyr de Hory, Frederik Van Pallandt, George Andrews, Groupie, Henry Wolf, Howard Hughes, Howard Marks, I Listen to the Ocean, I Would Amor Her, Ibiza, Irma Kurtz, Jan Cremer, Jenny Fabian, Julia Callan-Thompson, Lester Waldman, Little Donkey, Longtime Boy, Manumission, More, Mr Nice, Nancy Hennings, Nico, Nina and Frederik, Nina and Frederik No. 2, Nina Van Pallandt, O.C. and Stiggs, Oh Sinner Man, Pink Floyd, Quintet, Robert Altman, Rolling Stones, Simon Vinkenoog, Sippin’ Cider, Sucu Sucu, Terence Stamp, Terry Thomas, The Beatles, The Book of Grass, The Long Goodbye, Tibetan Bells, UFO, White Christmas
Posted in counterculture, culture gossip & parties, music | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
This 2008 DVD is a TV-style talking head documentary that mainly covers the early years of stadium rock band Pink Floyd, and inadvertently reveals how they used the British counterculture to hitch a ride to success. The Floyd themselves come across like a bunch of talentless drama students in the pathetic promo films that are cut into the main feature. Sound wise they vary from seeming like a pleasant if not entirely convincing imitation of The Who (“Arnold Lane”), all the way down to prefiguring a lot of really bad indie bands (“Scarecrow”). There is also some far more interesting archive material on here, but most of it is rather too familiar. There is the famous footage of Beatle John Lennon walking into the “14 Hour Technicolor Dream” at Alexandra Palace (29 April 1967), which anyone actually interested in this sort of thing will have seen dozens of times.
Likewise, did we really need quite so much recycled footage from “Wholly Communion” directed by Peter Whitehead, when the BFI reissued that on DVD in 2007, and anyone who hasn’t seen it clearly isn’t interested in the British counterculture anyway. There is a very brief piece of footage of The Flies playing at Alexandra Palace, but while the BBC “Man Alive” documentary made at the time showed them throwing flour at the audience and allowed you to hear them rockin’ out, pretty much all you get here is a shot of their drum kit with something else dubbed over the top. This is a shame because The Flies were the business, and self-evidently a lot better than Pink Floyd live; presumably this is why the director Stephen Gammond cut their sound from the audio track, he clearly wants to big up original Floyd frontman Syd Barrett and takes many historical liberties to achieve this. There is some footage of The Pretty Things doing “LSD” here too, but this is cut around talking head shots, so you can’t enjoy the music in all it’s glory. Worse yet, while three really tedious Floyd promo shorts are included in their entirety as bonus features, live footage of The Pretty Things and The Flies isn’t accorded the same treatment.
Among the historical turns, we get far too much of Suzy Creamcheese, less than nothing is all I want of this twerp. Like so much else here that doesn’t come from “Wholly Communion”, the Creamcheese footage is culled from the earlier “Man Alive” documentary, and it is even more irritating on a tenth or eleventh viewing than on the first or second! That said, there is some nice pushin’ and shovin’ with the filth going down in the recycled shots of early sixties CND demos. However, the real highlight begins on the last fraction of a second of this movie’s sixty-second minute. Gammond has included 1.04 seconds of archive footage featuring my mother – Julia Callan-Thompson – blowing bubbles. While there is equally brief footage of her at the UK’s premier hippie happening in the “Man Alive” documentary, it is a different shot to the one used here. My mother, at 23 years of age, is clearly the hottest babe in the place! While this film would be much better if Gammond had devoted more time to footage of my mother, the little you get makes the disk worth buying. You can see a bit more of her in the audience at the Alex Trocchi/William Burroughs 1969 ‘State of Revolt’ Arts Lab event covered in Jamie Wadhawan’s “Cain’s Film” – and, of course, as an extra in various British and Bollywood movies of the sixties.
With the odd exception, the talking heads on Gammond’s documentary are a real snore fest. Tired old stories I’ve heard trotted out dozens of times are aired yet again. This film was obviously made on a shoe-string, there isn’t nearly enough archival footage to break up the tedium of the talking heads, and sometimes in a desperate bid to move things along the director simply cuts to recent footage he’s shot in Portobello Road and Camden. The focus on Pink Floyd and John “Hoppy” Hopkins as central to the counterculture is reductive, and also very boring. If Gammond had instead adopted a scatter-shot approach to the underground, one that pulled in a varied cast of characters, his film would have been both more enjoyable and closer to the psychedelic experience. Regardless, and as I’ve already said, it is still worth seeing just for that 1.04 seconds of my mother blowing bubbles at the “14 Hour Technicolor Dream”.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
And some more specific links:
Julia Callan-Thompson:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/rhhm.htm
The ‘real’ psychedelic scene:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/praxis/voices.htm
Wholly Communion etc. review:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/film/whitehead.htm
Trocchi/Burroughs State of Revolt:
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/luv/splinters.htm
Tags: 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, 1960s, 29 April 1967, 60s, Alexandra Palace, Arnold Lane, blowing bubbles, CND, happenings, Hoppy, Joh Hopkins, John 'Hoppy' Hopkins, John Lennon, Julia Callan-Thompson, London, LSD, Man Alive, Peter Whitehead, Pink Floyd, Portobello Road, psychedelia, Scarecrow, sixties, Suzy Creamcheese, Syd Barret, The Beatles, The Flies, The Pretty Things, The Who, underground, Wholly Communion
Posted in film, Julia Callan-Thompson, psychedelia | 24 Comments »