Weekend links 367

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Human Nature by Esther Sarto.

I Feel Love: “Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder created the template for dance music as we know it”. Bill Brewster on the creation of one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

The Tearoom by Robert Yang “is a (free) historical public bathroom simulator about anxiety, police surveillance, and sucking off another dude’s gun”.

Tim Walker’s Leonora Carrington-themed fashion shoot with Tilda Swinton reaches i-D‘s website at last. More pictures and in better quality.

Joe Dante on the legacy of Nigel Kneale. Related: We Are The Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale, edited by Neil Snowdon.

Beth Comery‘s report on the progress of Gage Prentiss’s planned statue of HP Lovecraft for Providence, RI.

• The Plagiarist in the Kitchen: Jonathan Meades talks food and cooking with John Mitchinson.

• At Dangerous Minds: “Forget Louis Wain’s psychedelic cats, here are his crazy Cubist ceramics”.

• “Court orders Salvador Dalí‘s body be exhumed for paternity test.”

Flash the flesh: Manchester’s gay club heroes – in pictures.

Rick Poynor on the joy and sadness of dust.

MostlyCatsMostly

From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars…To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus: “Beguine”, “Mambo”, “Tango” (1981) by Landscape | I Feel Love (Patrick Cowley Mega Mix) (1982) by Donna Summer | Martian Sperm And Bagpipes (1991) by Helios Creed

Subterranean Modern: The Residents, Chrome, MX-80 Sound and Tuxedomoon

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Subterranean Modern (1979). Sleeve art by Gary Panter.

As often happens, one post leads to another and the next thing you know there’s a themed week happening, so here’s something more about Tuxedomoon. Subterranean Modern was a compilation album released by The Residents on their Ralph Records label in 1979. The idea was to showcase The Residents along with three other groups from contemporary San Francisco, all of whom were underground acts, hence the “subterranean” title. (Just to confuse matters, Subterranean was also a San Francisco record label.) Three of those groups—Chrome, Tuxedomoon, The Residents themselves—have since developed cult followings; hard-rock outfit MX-80 Sound seem a little ordinary and out-of-place in this unique company but such is the nature of the compilation album. The Residents wanted each group to provide an interpretation of I Left My Heart In San Francisco but none of the others were very interested; Chrome’s offering, which lasts all of 27 seconds, is hilariously contemptuous of the idea, a squall of riff and vocals that fades in then quickly fades away. Cartoonist Gary Panter illustrated the cover which is also given the Rozz Tox seal of approval. For more about Rozz Tox, whose enigmatic presence can be found on other Ralph Records releases, see this.

I’d already heard Chrome and The Residents when I bought Subterranean Modern but this was first place I encountered Tuxedomoon’s music. Chrome, who appear on the back cover wearing their Clockwork Orange droog outfits, contribute two tracks that are as good as anything on their early records, Anti-Fade and the chugging Meet You In The Subway, for which they made a video filmed on the city’s BART platforms. I listened to those tracks, and the Tuxedomoon ones, much more than the rest of the album. With the exception of the pieces by MX-80 Sound, everything on the album has since been reissued on other compilations (Tuxedomoon’s tracks are on the Pinheads On The Move collection).

The following is a two-page feature from the NME for 17th November, 1979, profiling the album and the people who made the music. I don’t know whether this was Tuxedomoon’s first UK interview but it says it’s the first interview given by Chrome which gives it some vague contemporary relevance. Helios Creed recently re-formed Chrome, and played a show in London earlier this month. There’s also a new Chrome album, although for me Chrome proper requires Damon Edge, and he died in 1995. (Thanks to Gav for saving the pages!)

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I LEFT MY ART IN SAN FRANCISCO

Checking out the West Coast’s Avant Garde by Michael Goldberg

ralph.jpgSAN FRANCISCO—The true avant-garde is never accepted, barely tolerated. The public has no use for ideas which challenge society’s preconceptions.

Certainly the outright hatred which was heaped on The New York Dolls and, later, The Ramones and Sex Pistols—all groups who spat on the status quo of their times—attests to the difficulty of pushing a radical concept on the public. And those groups were merely returning to the basic, raw values which great rock and roll has always maintained.

So imagine the difficulty of developing and maintaining a style of music which has little, if any, solid tradition to fall back on. In San Francisco, a city where the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship and Steve Miller can sell out the largest of stadiums, an avant-garde underground has been hanging on, etching out the meagrest of niches so that it can continue a dogged pursuit of rock experimentation.

Carrying the torch for “outre” music is San Francisco’s Residents and their parent companies, Ralph Records and the nebulous Cryptic Corporation. For nine long years, the Residents have relentlessly persisted, bowing to no one as they explore a sonic universe of their own devising.

In the wake of The Residents’ relative success—though the group is still practically unknown in their hometown, they have been received by a rather large cult spread out across the U.S. and Europe—other equally unique and esoteric groups have been attracted to San Francisco.

Realising that there is strength in numbers, Ralph Records gathered together three of the most uncompromising bands in San Francisco (and possibly on the West Coast): Chrome (with roots in L.A.), MX-80 Sound (who migrated from Bloomington, Indiana, last year), and Tuxedomoon (whose core members came from Denver, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois), and convinced them to join The Residents (originally from Shreveport, Louisiana) in a joint project. The project is a compilation album, Subterranean Modern (Ralph).

Continue reading “Subterranean Modern: The Residents, Chrome, MX-80 Sound and Tuxedomoon”

Weekend links 210

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Crashing Diseases And Incurable Airplanes (2014) by USA Out Of Vietnam. Artwork by Amy Torok.

Amy Torok’s cover art for the debut album by Canadian band USA Out Of Vietnam is pleasingly reminiscent of the surreal and psychedelic collages of Wilfried Sätty. The music within has been described as “a cross between ELO and Sunn O)))” which it is up to a point, although to these ears the group are more in the Sunn O))) camp than the post-Beatles pop of Jeff Lynne and co. The sound is big whatever label you apply, and promises much for the future.

Mysterious creatures of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s ‘Tentacles’. The Aquarium bought one of my drawings last year for this exhibition which juxtaposes tentacular artwork with live creatures. The show runs until 2016.

• Jon Hassell’s 1990 album, City: Works Of Fiction, has been reissued in an expanded edition including a live concert collaboration with Brian Eno, and a collection of remixes/alternate takes.

• Photographer Jonathan Keys uses antique camera equipment to give his views of contemporary Britain a patina of the past.

Roman Polanski and the man who invented masochism. Nicholas Blincoe on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Venus in Fur (sic).

• Mixes of the week are by James Pianta, E.M.M.A. (whose Blue Gardens album I helped design), and Balduin.

• Sweet Jane unearths another great article about psychedelic London: The Fool and Apple Boutique, 1968.

• “Did Chris Marker think history to be not only an infinite book but a sacred one?” asks Barry Schwabsky.

• Front Free Endpaper on the story behind the cover photo of A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White.

Mapping the Viennese Alien Event Site. Christina Scholz explores another Zone.

Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue. The first and only movie about Moondog.

Rick Poynor on rediscovering the lost art of the typewriter.

• At BLDGBLOG: 100 Views of a Drowning World.

Miguel Chevalier’s magic carpets

Venus In Furs (1967) by The Velvet Underground | Sex Voodoo Venus (1985) by Helios Creed | Venus As A Boy (1993) by Björk

Weekend links 161

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My friend James Marriott died last year. He was 39. His final book, The Descent, a study of Neil Marshall’s acclaimed horror film, is launched on Friday at the Cube Microplex in Bristol. The book is published by Auteur, a UK imprint, in their Devil’s Advocates series. James was finishing the book a year ago this month, and sent me a late draft for comments. In addition to examining Marshall’s film in detail he also looks at its sequel and explores the micro-genre of cavern-oriented horror. When it came to literature James preferred Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti; he enjoyed their cinematic equivalents too but he also had a great appetite for horror films of any description, and would happily wade through hours of giallo trash in the hope of finding something worthwhile. I miss our long, digressive email exchanges, and the opportunity they afforded to swap new discoveries.

• “For artists not working in digital media — those who cut, build, draw, paint, glue, bend, and make things in the more traditional manner — there is something of a ‘Surrealist’ popularity at hand today,” says John Foster.

• At Open Culture: Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black starring a 19-year-old Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone performs six songs on The Sound of Soul (1968).

• I’m not remotely interested in Baz Luhrman’s latest but I do like the Art Deco graphics and logos created by Like Minded Studio for The Great Gatsby.

Alejandro Jodorowsky: “I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul”

• The Clang of the Yankee Reaper: Van Dyke Parks interviewed.

• A 45-minute horror soundtrack mix by Spencer Hickman.

• At But Does It Float: Album art by Robert Beatty.

Topological Marvel: The Klein Bottle in Art

Anne Billson on The Art of the Voiceover.

Soviet board-games, 1920–1938

A Brief History of Robot Birds

Le Chemin De La Descente (1970) by Cameleon | Descent Into New York (1981) by John Carpenter | The Descent (1985) by Helios Creed

Weekend links 29

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A Folies Bergère dancer, c. 1909.

Six Novels in Woodcuts: The Library of America publishes a boxed set of Lynd Ward’s works: Gods’ Man, Madman’s Drum, Wild Pilgrimage, Prelude to a Million Years, Song Without Words and Vertigo.

• RIP ace graphic designer Raymond Hawkey. Related: Raymond Hawkey: An eye for detail, and Hawkey’s James Bond cover designs from the mid-60s.

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, an exhibition at Duke University, North Carolina, features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, using vinyl records as subject or medium.

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The Île de la Cité, a steel engraving by Albert Decaris (1950).

Fred Tomaselli will have a new exhibition of his work at the Brooklyn Museum next month.

Socialist Monuments in Bulgaria photographed by Linda Ferrari.

• What would Howard think of the Mythos Art Dildo?

Space is Process, a film about Olafur Eliasson.

Thurston Moore’s Indie Books.

Chris Colfer in a leather bar.

Ephemeral New York.

• Chrome! Helios Creed’s YouTube channel.