Born a Rebel

Tom Petty puts on one of the best shows in Rock and Roll, which is why I saw him so many times in my concert going heyday. The first time was after his Southern Accents album, long ago now, but Petty and the Heartbreakers already had a great body of work to draw performances from. A huge Confederate flag graced the stage behind them on this tour, but was abandoned by a slightly more politically accommodating Petty by the time of the next tour, supporting the Let Me Up album. I remember him singing It'll All Work Out from that album to only a smattering of applause , compared to some of the big hits he was doing. Petty kind of mumbled, "I think that is one of the best songs I ever wrote, but I guess it's just me."
The next time I saw him he shared the ticket with Bob Dylan. Petty and the Heartbreakers opened the show with a pared down version of one of their concerts, and then backed up Dylan for the balance of the show. Dylan was in fine form, playing some songs with just his own guitar and harmonica, and some with full Heartbreaker backing, which blended wonderfully.
The last time I saw Petty he was the headliner of a Rock'n'roll Caravan tour with a few other bands; the only one I remember was the Georgia Satellites. (They kinda sucked.) It was a good show, but the main thing I remember was that I had a horrible poison ivy patch, a welt the size of a frying pan on my thigh. It was weepy so I had to patch over it with paper towels and tape, and wear the baggiest pants I could find: my Dad's brown dress pants. So needless to say, I was far from comfortable, and far from the hippest lookin' cat at the show-but hey-the things we do for Rock and Roll!

"Welcome, My Son..."

Unfortunately, I never got to see PINK FLOYD perform in their strongest incarnation: with Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright all together. I saw them all, just not together! I saw Gilmour during the tour supporting his second solo album About Face, in 1984, and this is the show that I have to say is at least a tie as the best concert I ever attended.
It was a great day all around, great friends, great grass, great expectations. We swam in the icy waters of Barton Springs (spotting some awesome topless sunbathers!), watched Ghostbusters on its debut, and rounded things off with Gilmour, all the while fueled on huge doobies of skunkweed.
Gilmour was relaxed and loose, his stage set was pared down compared to the elaborate Floyd shows of yore: nothing but a pair of what looked like psychedelic lighted dominoes on either side of the players and the usual rock lighting. He performed stuff from his solo albums, There's No way Out of Here,I remember particularly from his first solo album, and lots of great stuff from Face, which I enjoy more than any other solo Floyd album.
Of course he mixed in lots of great Floyd tunes, too. His playing was amazing: blistering at times, sometimes wailing; always emotional and moving. He engaged in nice moments of intimate chit-chat with the audience. He finished the show with Comfortably Numb, better than I have ever heard it , before or since. The auditorium, (which was just a curtained-off half of the Erwin Center) was snowed under with fog machines and weed smoke. (I think even the non-partakers would get a second-hand high from all the weed smoke-times were mighty different!)
Waters was touring for Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking when I saw him perform. Pros has a couple of good songs on it, but the "concept" I always thought to be kind of weak. Even though Eric Clapton was recruited as lead guitarist on the album, Gilmour was sorely missed. Clapton of course wasn't playing on the tour, but Waters had a good back-up band . He split the show into two: first half-Floyd tunes, second- Pros played in its entirety. Without Gilmour's vocal presence the Floyd stuff suffered some, but overall was good; Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun being one of the eclectic choices performed. The stage show had a Floydian screen behind it, with the traditional accompanying images to songs like Welcome to the Machine, and the Pros stuff had Gerald Scarfe cartoons featuring Reg,( or is it Rog?) the dog, as star. Scarfe, whose work was brilliant for The Wall, kind of let his old pal Rog (and us) down on this one; the cartoons looked like they were dashed off on a cocktail napkin on his way to collect the check. We were even treated to an inflatable pig, which did not float, it only appeared and withdrew on the side of the stage. During an encore Waters sang the heartbreaking Final Cut, from the album of the same name. What should have been a highlight of the evening was somewhat marred by the very loud accompanying vocals of a nearby teenage concertgoer. (Now I can understand why Waters spit on an audience member once!) Still and all I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and a good rocking was had by all.
The Pink Floyd tour was during what we called the Psuedo-Floyd lineup: the guys sans Waters, They were supporting the Momentary Lapse of Reason album, and had all the trappings of classic Floyd; but somehow was kind of a hollow downer. This had the feeling of a payday show, a going through the motions,and great as the motions were, they lacked spirit. Gilmour, in contrast to his loose, chatty, fun persona during his solo show, was icy and robotic; barely acknowledging that this was a live show and not some audio-animatronic imitation. The effects were there, the pig was cooler than Roger's. But during On the Run, instead of the crashing airplane that graced classic Floyd and Waters' show, the Psuedoes had a crashing bed, in keeping with the bed motif of the album art. Lame. I should have felt rocked by this show but instead I felt rolled.

My First Concert

1982 seems like several lifetimes ago. Not quite seventeen, and leading quite the provincial life, my appreciation of music was limited to the radio and the record player. My oldest brother and his friends were several years older than I , and to my young mind, seemed to be quite the worldly sophisticates already. When they invited me to see The Police with them in Austin , I jumped at the chance. I remember a rainy ride up to Austin and a fantastic meal at my favorite pizzeria, Conan's Pizza , at its old location on the Drag. I wasn't real familiar with the music of The Police, but I liked Roxanne and Invisible Sun, the latter from their Ghost in the Machine album, which they were touring to promote. The smell of Clove cigarettes , pot, and a potpourri of colognes filled the smoky air.. The seats were in the nosebleeds, but the music rocked.. I remember the tiny figure of Sting jamming on his upright bass, and the sharp crack of the drums. My brother and his friends, who were more up on the bands songbook, seemed particularly happy with a encore that included a song I later grew to like, Secret Journey.
While sorting through some old papers recently, I found a clutch of old ticket stubs that I had
squirreled away over the years. Many memories were evoked, and I hope to share them in brief over my next few posts.
This was my first concert, and it was a good one, but not what I would consider near the best. Still, as they say, there's something about your first...

Review-THE FOUNTAINHEAD

"A lot of weather we've been having lately, isn't it?"

The Discourse on Civil Discourse

Here we go again.
Another "senseless tragedy" (as opposed to a sensible tragedy) and we are off and running.
The Arizona shooting was a bad thing that occurred in a world wherein bad things are part of the machinery.
And yet there is an attempt to "make sense" of the incident. How could this happen? The verdict was in almost as quickly as the question was posed.
It was you again.
Your unhealthy addiction to freedom of speech.
Your discourse has gotten too "uncivil".
As you tried to hash out a solution to a corrupt government, a wrecked economy, and War without end , you got too nasty, and it infected the air , causing this boy to grab a gun and go a-shooting.
"We need to use our Modern Magic, LAWMAKING, to correct these ills: okay Murder is already illegal. Let's outlaw guns, outlaw speech, outlaw shaving your head, outlaw bullets, outlaw public gatherings at Safeway. Make it against the Law to think negative thoughts when you are within 200 yards of an elected official. There must be more things we can outlaw to ensure this never happens again. Let's outlaw Death itself!"
Sorry, folks.
There are no additional laws that need to be passed. There is no one to fire. No one to kick off the air. Just one fellow among we 400 million Americans who got it into his head that taking his guns to town was a swell idea. He will need to pay for his crimes under the existing law.
AND THAT'S IT!
How can we stop this from happening again?
I hate to say it, but we can't do a thing, the numbers are against us, another person will pick up another gun, or a knife, or a bomb, or a box-cutter, and more bad stuff will happen. The only thing we can truly hope for is that more people will have the guts to try to slow the next one down a little if they can, like those few brave citizens who stopped the Arizona shooter from re-loading.
So enough already about our discourse. Civil or not , it is Ours. Sometimes in the Grown-up world we have to think, do, or say things that are unpleasant, and pinning every murder and run over kitten on our conscience will not stop us from saying what needs to be said.
Nice try, though.

So little time...

There is so much going on right now that I haven't had an opportunity to post. I have a few things I'd like to put together and present but I don't see it happening before Christmas, so, Merry Christmas to all, and here is a new picture so at least you don't have to see Bill Burroughs glowering at you!

A Thanksgiving Prayer-William S. Burroughs

Burroughs' Thanksgiving poem is not the place to go for a feel-good experience, but he always delivers on thought provoking material. Watch the show I put together with his audio here.

I promise I have something a little more heartwarming in the works for the Big Day.

one scary night

"My ass!"

I put together a little treat that I hoped would do the trick if you were looking to get into the Halloween spirit, but I couldn't get it to download onto this blog no matter what I tried. Please click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWrwCbTBezY to visit my YouTube channel and view One Dark Night. The above picture I meant to include in the collage but somehow overlooked!

I wonder if anyone (other than Brer) can identify the theme music?

Race With the Devil

Another bit of classic 70's horror, filmed on location in San Antonio, Castroville, Bandera, and Leakey, Texas, released in 1975. In the wake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Central Texas seemed to be the new Transylvania. For those of us from the area, it added another layer of fear, seeing such familiar terrain and people as the backdrop to a tale of terror, this being one of the worst kind: Satanic horror!

Folks from the San Antonio area might be amused to see the old Alamo Speedway at the beginning of the movie, along with a cameo by local legend/radio personality Ricci Ware as a racing official.

This is a genuinely scary and fun movie, with acting a cut above the usual of the genre, and a simple straightforward plot that keeps you hooked.

Dalak!

"Plaaay!"

Mickey and the Haunted House. Another Halloween must. The whole cartoon is great by the way, but the music is really fun. In this 1929 short you can see a pretty rare example of Disney's recycling some animation cycles: some of the dancing skeleton scenes are taken from , logically enough, Skeleton Dance, a Silly Symphony from the year before. Even so, they have some fun with it by having the wind blow away all but the dancing legs!

By the way, I finished Blatty's sequel to The Exorcist, entitled Legion. This was the source to the movie Exorcist III. Oh, what an unholy mess, pun of course intended. It was not all bad, but it was so perfunctorily resolved after an immense build-up, it made me envision Blatty really working hard until the check from the publishers cleared, and then just sewing it up ASAP so he could hit the horse tracks.

Kinderman, the pre-Columbo Columboesque detective is the star of this one, and he is transformed into something of a Jewish mystic. In fact, the whole tale seems to have been written to support his philosophy that Lucifer was the big bang, an explosion of matter into a previously only spiritual universe, and that we are all part of him, trying to find our way back to God. Throw the oh-so-popular early 80's go-to topics of serial killers and televangelists, and you got yourself a sequel sir.

Even the book adds in the back of this 1983 paperback were a degradation from the awesome crap of the 70's. Here we have adds for V.C. Andrews "greatest" releases. I suppose I shouldn't mock, I have never read any V.C. Andrews. But still...

'Magic' is Fun!

The year:1978.

The place: The Dixie Drive-in.

Ah, yes, good times. Mom loaded up the kids and took us to a double feature: The Phantom of the Paradise and Magic. Never mind that on the way to the theater a small pick-up swerved around us completely out of control , slamming into a telephone pole and vaporizing its unfortunate occupant before our eyes. Shaken and in shock we crept our way through the darkened traffic lights to the drive-in, glass from the wreck still glittering the hood of our car. We were not in too much shock to know Phantom kind of sucked and that Magic was pretty damn good.

Not so much a horror story as a psychological murder/romance, concerning Corky, a successful ventriloquist/magician/comedian, (played brilliantly by a young Anthony Hopkins), and his dissolution into madness as his Dummy alter-ego, Fats, starts calling the shots for the otherwise meek and sensitive entertainer.

Of course there is horror involved. Somehow things can never go well when you put a dummy in charge, (as all voters know) and people who stand in the way of Corky's re-connecting with his childhood dream girl (Ann Margaret) start finding themselves the victims of Dummicide.

The movie is based on a novel by William Goldman, and there was always some speculation on the side that Fats may not just be a fragment of Corky's psyche, but a malevolent force that sought to possess him, an idea that is fed primarily by a scene in the movie that shows Corky raging at the seated Dummy, whose eyes move around without Corky there to manipulate them!

I heard in the director's commentary on the DVD that it was an error that was left in just to bedevil viewers. Nice!

I have watched Magic several times over the years, and have a certain fondness for it. It has one of the most memorable previews ever, as shown above. "Magic is FUN...We're dead..."

Trick or Treat!

One of my "must see" viewings every Halloween is "Trick or Treat", a Donald Duck short featuring Donald, his nephews, and a friendly old hag named Witch Hazel. This song is fun and catchy. I can hardly ever say the phrase "trick or treat" without hearing this song in my head!

We had a great comic book story version of this for years before ever seeing the cartoon, and the phrase "Whiskers from ye billy goat!" was much quoted from it.

The Legend of Boggy Creek

This one haunted my childhood , seen by seemingly everyone but the members of my family. I remember camping out with some relatives who had seen the movie, and they chilled and regaled us with various scenes from the movie. (The guy being hassled by Bigfoot while sitting on the pot was a fave!) Years later I got the movie on DVD and finally got to see it. Whoo-ee, a bit of a stinker, but for all it's cheap glory it managed to weave a pretty effective atmosphere, and its' documentary style (aside from the weird musical interlude) really made it fun. When I got the DVD I was shocked to see it was rated 'G', so infamous a film of terror! Then I watched it...Is there anything milder than 'G'? Still it spooked my son and nephew when we watched it, especially when I slipped out of the room and then came back in in a gorilla mask!

I read The Exorcist this week, continuing my October habit of reading great works of horror, and really enjoyed it. I was impressed at how closely the movie stayed with the book, save for a few minor dead-end side plots. But what really gave me a blast of the nostalgia of growing up in the weirdness of the early 70's era that spawned both Boggy and Exorcist, was the Bantam book order form in the back of the old paperback copy that I read.
....In Search of...Extraterrestrials by Alan and Sally Landsburg
....The Devil's Triangle by Richard Winer
....In Search of Ancient Mysteries by Alan and Sally Landsburg
....Not of This World by Peter Kolosimo
....The Reincarnation of Peter Proud by Max Ehrlich
....Chariots of the Gods by Erich Von Daniken
....A Complete guide to the Tarot by Eden Gray
....Gods From Outer Space by Erich Von Daniken
....The Outer Space Connection by Alan and Sally Landsburg.

Kind of brings it all back, eh? (BTW, all were in the $1.25-$1.95 range...sigh...)

The Spirit is Willing

Do you remember this movie? It was in fairly heavy rotation on TV when I was growing up, but now seems to have slipped into the mists of time. The things that stood out in my memory were first the theme, which, as it turns out was written by the same guy that wrote the Addams family theme, and the ghost of the wacky lady in the red nightie. She always scared me, even though she was played for pretty broad laughs. Turns out this was produced by Master Schkockmeister William Castle! I saw the guy who plays the teenage son , Barry Gordon, on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm the other day playing an old Rabbi. I always think of him as that nebbishy kid from The Spirit is Willing!

When Vampires Didn't Suck (as such)

Last evening I finished doing something that I have wanted to do for many years. Every October, I tell myself I really ought to re-read Dracula, seeing as I was a high school freshman the one and only time I read it. It affected me powerfully then, bringing vivid dreams and (I must confess) the very brief but memorable placing of garlic in my bedroom window.

It still packs quite the punch, though I haven't busted out with any garlic (yet!).

Stoker did an amazing job of weaving this complex tale through the first person point of view of numerous different people from different classes, sexes, and nationalities, in a very convincing way. I admired the novel from a technical as well as an entertainment standpoint, and though the Victorian prose sometimes got a bit thick, it was much more fast-paced and accessible than I remembered.

Movies have never gotten the Count just right, but for my money, the BBC's Count Dracula got the closest. My brother and I were such fans of this version we made an audio cassette recording of it when it re-played on PBS in the pre-VCR year (for us anyway) year of 1979. The cast was great, Louis Jourdan brought a suave yet decayed European elegance to the Count, and the true star of the show, Van Helsing, was played to absolute perfection by Frank Finlay. The haunting theme music performed the sublime miracle of capturing everything about Dracula: it was haunting, powerful, menacing, hypnotic, yearning, malevolent,...sad. Amazing.

I won't bore you with rants about how much vampire stuff mostly blows in this Twilight era. You know it and I know it. The modern twisting of the vampire myth to make the daemonic desirable is but one of the many illustrations existing in entertainment today that celebrates the spiritual degradation of the current zeitgeist. See The Monsters Among Us in my archive for more on that if you want.

If you haven't read Dracula, or read it a long time ago, do yourself a favor and enjoy it. If you have never seen The BBC's Count Dracula, track it down and see what I mean.

And keep the garlic handy!

The Dark Secret of Harvest Home

1978. The Golden Age of "made for TV " movies!

I haven't seen this movie since then, but I remember it well. Bette Davis' performance as the Widow Fortune was powerful scary. (She reminded me of Mrs. Tennyson, my 7th grade Reading teacher at that time!) Later, when I was in 10th grade I read the Thomas Tryon novel Harvest Home on which this mini-series was based, and really enjoyed it as well. The great combination of Fall/Harvest imagery and ancient/pagan ritual made for a very evocative seasonal impression, that has stuck with me for all these years.

I have waited for years for this movie to be released, it is available on DVD only in bootlegs; some old VHS copies are still floating around for sale. It is available for viewing on YouTube and I think I shall watch it there. ( Might not be the best quality, but hey, after 32 years, who cares?)

Tryon also wrote another good book, The Other, which also had a memorable movie made from it, about a little boy on a New England farm, who is haunted by the spirit of his less than innocent dead twin . Reading Tryon, Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft at this time convinced me that it was a very good thing that New England was on the other end of the country from me!

The Raven

Poe, Dore', and Basil Rathbone...Nice combo...I am pretty pleased at how this arrangement came out except for the blackout at the end, where a couple of misfire credits show through the darkness. I am pretty proud of this, but not THAT proud!

Once Upon a Time

This is a collection of nice stuff from the Golden Age of Illustration, set to the track "The De Lesseps' Dance" from the Shakespeare in Love soundtrack. I wanted to present these with no added effects so that I didn't get in the way of the great pictures. I recommend watching this on full screen. Enjoy!

Cosmic Consciousness

A few weeks ago while perusing the clearance section of a nearby Half-Price Books, I came across a copy of Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D. The title of the book rang a bell; I recalled that Colin Wilson had made mention of this work several times in his illuminating The Occult and its sequel Beyond the Occult. I looked at the photograph of the author, saw the book was only three bucks, and decided to check it out.

And I am glad I did.

First off , the biography of Bucke is amazing. For a more complete account, click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Maurice_Bucke. But , in brief, Bucke was born in England, immigrated with his family to Canada, lost his parents at an early age, went to the United States to seek his fortune where he was attacked by Indians, survived (the sole survivor, no less) a horrible snowstorm that wiped out his mining party and cost him a foot and several digits, went back to Canada, became a medical doctor, went to Europe and mastered psychiatry, returned to Canada and oversaw an insane asylum where he instituted many progressive developments in the care for the mentally ill. Whew. And that was just his mainstream biography. His "mystical " biography began through his love of poetry, Walt Whitman being his primary guide. He could recite Whitman's Leaves of Grass verbatim from memory, as well as innumerable other works: truly, an amazing man with an amazing mind.

Cosmic Consciousness is the best known of his several works, and has been reprinted often since its first publication in 1901. The first part of the book lays out his theory in a very cogent and well researched manner. In its simplest form it is this: man's consciousness has evolved over the ages, from simple consciousness: the very basic awareness that all animals have of their immediate surroundings and needs, to self consciousness, when man became aware of himself, his place in the world, how to use reason and imagination, and the knowledge of the certainty of his own death, and lastly, cosmic consciousness, a state of awareness that has slowly been developing over the centuries, becoming more and more present as generations unfold. Cosmic consciousness is a sudden awareness that manifests itself in a revelatory manner to an individual , illuminating the wholeness of the universe as one enormous living and organic presence, bringing with it a great feeling of spiritual immortality, intellectual enlightenment, moral profundity, and shedding in that instant the fear of death, and the sense of sin.

The second part of the book is a rundown of the various historical figures that Bucke believed to have obtained cosmic consciousness, such as Jesus Christ, Gautama the Buddha, Mohammad, William Blake, and others , including, of course Walt Whitman. He uses the recorded words and deeds of these individuals to support his theory and breaks them down in a very interesting way.

Bucke makes his case in a very scientific manner. The theory has every potential to go off into mystical hocus pocus but it never does in Bucke's hands; he treats his subject with seriousness and sobriety. Still, the cumulative message about Cosmic Consciousness and its effect on humanity as it develops is profoundly optimistic and affirming.

The book came to me at a good time. I have been prowling around various religious, mythical, and philosophical works, and have been noticing a subtext in most of them that point to this very kind of unifying vision, all shown through the particular local vernacular of its source. I will post more on this later, but I believe that Bucke is correct, and the 109 years that have followed the publication of his book, with all the historical and technological upheavals that have occurred, show an intellectual and spiritual trend away away from the local "masks" of God, and a move towards a universal Spiritualism.