Nadir

I took a screen shot of this from maybe pitchfork a month or two back because I thought it was hilarious and depressing. I'd rather hear The Venetians cover Noiseworks. It's really hard to come up with a combo that is worse. Suggestions most welcome.

I Love/Hate Movies

Here's some movie lists I've put together after listening to a lot of movie podcasts and looking at my favourite films list on my blog profile. That's an off the cuff list written in like half an hour. Many films are not included because I haven't re-watched a lot of those old favourites (listed below). My brain also doesn't feel the need to have rigid rankings for things anymore. I would have once had strict well thought out lists for the top twenty movies of all time, the top ten films set in Melbourne, top seven Scorsese movies, top five worst actors etc. I could probably add to my favourite films list a few more Italian, Polish, South Korean, Japanese, Czech, French and German films, horror movies, film-noir, documentaries and a few more from Robert Altman,  John Cassavetes, John Huston, Woody Allen and a bunch of directors I've never heard of......

*Disclaimer

*These lists are by no means comprehensive, just what I came up with one night when I couldn't sleep. I didn't get out me Leonard Maltin or do any research, otherwise this post would then have taken up the entire internet.

**I didn't have a vcr until 1986 or 87 (my mid teens) plus had boringly strict catholic parents so I missed a whole lotta horror/trash/comedy/action stuff from the 80s. I was not an 80s teenage video shop nerd. I didn't love Joe Dante, John Hughes or teen tits and arse sex comedies. I've never seen a Charles Bronson movie, Troll 2 or Labyrinth. I've actually never seen Porky's from beginning to end but I do remember seeing Recruits. I have no interest in kids or teen films now. I think a lot of people's love for those genres comes from nostalgia ie. seeing them at the right age. By the time The Goonies came out I was too old for it but people just a couple of years younger than me cherish it. I went straight from Temple Of Doom, Back To The Future and Aliens to being obsessed with David Lynch, Wim Wenders and Peter Greenaway. I now find that hilarious and so pretentious.

I'd love to be into just one genre like Westerns, Krimi, Nunsploitation, Gialli, Turkish Rip-offs, Czech New Wave, Made For TV Horror, Rape Revenge, Hospital Horror or Blaxploitation. Being middle aged I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a middlebrow dilettante though. If I find a film I like, I haven't found a tribe - I've found a movie I dig. The films I like/dislike don't define me (Insert quote from Groucho Marx "I don't want to belong to any club...."). I've lost interest in sci-fi. My patience for slow films has dwindled. I've forgotten a lot of (pre 60s) old hollywood classics, musicals, comedies, monster movies, British films etc. that I once saw on telly and liked. I've also forgotten a lot of the names of avant-garde, arty and foreign films that I liked and would have seen at the Melbourne Cinematheque, arthouse/cult-y theatres and The Melbourne International Film Festival. Remember The Carlton Moviehouse, The Valhalla, The Lumiere, The Panorama (that was in Brunswick St. for like 10 minutes during 1993), The Astor, that one that was in Swanston Street?.... I've probably forgotten a few others too.

MOVIES I ONCE LIKED BUT CAN'T IMAGINE LIKING NOW (But you never know though)
Trust
Dazed & Confused
Chasing Amy
Reality Bites
American Beauty
There Will Be Blood
Stalker
Donnie Darko
Badlands
New York, New York
Leaving Las Vegas
Spirits (of The Air Gremlins Of The Clouds)
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas
Betty Blue
Hiding Out
Buffalo 66
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (Probably couldn't sit through this without being wasted man)
The Trip
Suspiria
Rolling Thunder
Wings Of Desire
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
Sex & Zen
Dead Man
Jean De Florrette
Manon De Sources
The Lover
Down by Law
Thelma & Louise
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Better Off Dead (Actually watched this the other day too, pretty naff and oh so quirky. Maybe kids would like it, probably not. I mean this was great for an 80s fourteen year old me. Now all I see is that John Cusack's really fucking annoying)
Simple Men
Two Hands
Bad Lieutenant (Watched this the other day. Keitel was wavering between utter shite and really convincing as a depraved cop. Then came the whining/wailing scenes towards the end. That tipped an already ordinary and obvious film into total nonsense for me. Being young and impressionable makes you like strange things. Bad Lieutenant has put me off watching any of the other films in this particular list because I've proved myself correct twice)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Hot Fuzz
The Holy Mountain (I'm sure if I smoked a holy mountain of weed I'd like it)
Shine
Surviving Desire
Magnolia
Fellini films
Bergman films

MOVIES I ONCE LOVED BUT HAVEN'T SEEN FOR OVER 15 YEARS (So who knows? But I reckon I might still like 'em. Middlebrow alert!)
My Life As A Dog
Brazil
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Bad Boy Bubby
Love Serenade
Naked
Bliss
La Haine
Millers Crossing
Midnight Express
Angel Heart
3 Women
Stop Making Sense
The Elephant Man
Hana-Bi
End Of The Century
A Better Tomorrow
Paris Texas
Scanners
Deathdream
The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Living End
Pure Shit
Stone
Hardboiled
The Filth & The Fury
Drugstore Cowboy
Delicatessen
Tokyo Drifter (Watched this after I put up this blog post. Classic)
Fresh
To Die For
Proof
Rain
Targets
Race With The Devil
Marathon Man
The Getaway
Performance
Re-Animator
If
Stroszeck
Night Of The Creeps
Lenny
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
The Temple Of Doom
Woyzeck
The Ice Storm
Eating Raoul
Shock Corridor
Deep End (A 70s British film with a Polish director and Can on the soundtrack. How could you go wrong?)
Melvin and Howard
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf
Three Colours Trilogy
Breaking The Waves
Mulholland Drive
Last Temptation Of Christ
Secretary
Day Of The Dead
Akira
Pink Flamingoes
Branded To Kill
Le Samourai
Shaft
Truck Turner
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
The Comfort Of Strangers
Nil By Mouth
Fun
Gas Food Lodging
Sexy Beast
The Fourth Man (Nobody ever talks about this film. It was directed by Paul Verhoeven in 1983 before he moved to Hollywood. It's his best film, I reckon.....although I only saw it once, maybe 28 years ago. John Hinde presented it on ABC TV)
Going Down
Death In Brunswick
Romper Stomper
Bachelor Party
Lantana
The Boys
Chunking Express
Do The Right Thing
Repo Man
Predator
Family Plot
Trees Lounge
Colors
My Beautiful Laundrette
Meantime
Living In Oblivion
The Age Of Innocence
Roadside Prophets
Route 66
Those 80s and early 90s Jon Jost films I saw, maybe at the Melbourne Cinematheque.

MOVIES I ONCE LOVED BUT NOW HATE
Clerks
Wild At Heart
Raising Arizona
2001: A Space Odyssey (Maybe this just doesn't work on blu-ray/telly ie. not in a cinema. I originally saw it in the early 90s on a 70mm print in the best cinema in Melbourne and it blew me young little mind)

MOVIES I'M INDIFFERENT TO (AKA Meh...What's all the fuss?)
Kill Bill I & II
Heat
The Proposition
DIG
Vertigo
One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
Lord Of The Ring Trilogy
The Departed
Scarface
Blade Runner
The Breakfast Club
The Big Lebowski
E.T.
The Graduate
Cinema Paradiso
The Princess Bride
Rocky
Marnie
Robocop
The Hateful Eight

MOVIES I NEVER LIKED (yeah I know)
Harold & Maude
The Life Aquatic
Last Tango In Paris
Angel Baby
Top Gun
Star Wars
Pretty Woman
Priscilla: Queen Of The Desert (One of my heroes, Philip Brophy, wrote a monograph on how much he hates this movie. What a legend!)
The Last Waltz
Shawshank Redemption
Schindler's List
Boondock Saints
Forest Gump
Fight Club
Silence Of The Lambs
The Green Mile
Gladiator
Japanese Story
Gangs Of New York
Memento
Snatch
Dead Poets Society
Chinatown
MASH
Easy Rider
Citizen Kane
Broken Flowers
Lost In Translation
The Castle
Pump Up The Volume
24 Hour Party People
Wonderland
Swingers
Before Sunrise
Inglorious Bastards
....and a million more

MOVIES I USED TO HATE BUT NOW QUITE LIKE
The Shining
The Godfather
Groundhog Day
Taxi Driver
Crocodile Dundee
Dirty Dancing
The Tenant
Psycho
A Clockwork Orange (Well half of it)
Rio Bravo
Zabriskie Point

LOVED IT, HATED IT, LOVED IT AGAIN
Dogs In Space

MOVIE DIRECTORS I CAN'T STAND
Todd Haynes
Wes Anderson
Terrence Malick
Michael Winterbottom

NEVER SEEN
Tootsie
It's A Wonderful Life
Razorback

THREE CLASSIC 70s FILMS I ONLY DISCOVERED IN 2017
Chilly Scenes Of Winter
Puzzle Of A Downfall Child
(Thanks to Bill Ackerman & Mike White for alerting me to those above two)
The Dion Brothers

(Discovered this on a very dodgy print at either youtube or a pirate-y site while I was having a Stacy Keach fest. Hey its got Margot Kidder as well. This film's also known as The Gravy Train. Funnily enough it's written by Terrence Malick. He also wrote the script to Pocket Money which I really like too. He seems a bit looser and just plain better when he's doin the script sans the directing gig)

93 Darkside/Jungle

This one goes into the category of 'Heard it but never knew what the fuck it was and jeez it's a hardcore bewdy!' More dark 93 bizniz, this time on a funky jungle tip.



This is from the same EP. Melodic rhythms, bleepedelia and trippy kindness, you know what I mean. Lovely but it also gets a bit dark (I always wondered where the Omni Trio acolytes were).



Not so lovely, this one. Fantastic euphoric gloom.  Get on a bad trip and send your brain down the gurgler. This one will make you see spiders on the wall,

The Hip Hop In 2017

A REALLY DEEP ANALYSIS OF RAP FROM A FAN LOSING INTEREST

I finally got the urge to play some rap for the first time this year. I had five albums waiting in the wings - Thugger, Migos, RJ and two from Future. After an initial listen to Thugger Girls I thought 'Hmmm.....I dunno....I think listening to Future's 2014 mixtape Monster sounds like a much better idea'. It was a great idea because it seems even better than it did three years ago. Monster was the first place Fuck Up Some Commas appeared and contains the two below classics.





I guess it's pretty easy to get overlooked if you're from LA as Kendrick is so ubiquitous, has anybody got any room for another LA rapper? Last year however there were two excellent LA albums Schoolboy Q's Blank Face and Still Brazy from YG. This year we've got RJ's proper debut album. He has made guest appearances on DJ Mustard's Ketchup (2013) & 10 Summers: The Mixtape (2015). RJ's done a handful of mixtapes but his best album so far is the collaboration he recorded with Choice Rich off Mackin. The new record MrLA, on initial listens, doesn't seem as effortless as that collab with Choice but it's better than anything that K Lamar has done since Good Kid...

Two hours plus of Future was a hell of a lot to take in. His two albums are the best of this bunch though. HNDRXX seems much stronger than than the self-titled effort....

Culture from Migos seemed ok, much better than Beautiful Thugger Girls anyway....

I dunno I guess I have to give all these albums more of a listen. Then there's Drake, Young MA, DJ Quik & Problem, Kehlani etc..... can I be bothered though?

Maybe if I still had an hour and half commute daily or drove a car I'd be more in the mood to be digging this stuff.

93 'ardcore/Darkside.....

I'd heard Megadrive's Takin Control EP which contained the tune Demon from '92. I thought I'd come across Mega 2 before but perhaps I haven't. Classic hardcore into darkness/92 into 93 bizniz.



God I thought A1 was good but hold your little horses check out A2. That mental liquid bass frequency drop at 0.53 is astounding then the keyboard/bass/whatever the fuck it is riff comes in at 1.20 like it's straight from an Iration Steppas track. Mind and ears blown. Rewind!



The cheap and cheerful, made in 10 minutes style doesn't always work for everybody but fuck this works. What a ruff diamond. So Tight is pretty odd. The vocal science here is psychedelic and creepy. At the 3.36 mark it's crazy/weird time as the hoovers enter and the beats go off the charts. Never even heard of this until tonight = v happy.



This like So Tight is from The Man With No Name's '93 Follow The Leader EP. I guess there are a bunch of darkside tunes similar to this like Boogie Times Tribe's The Dark Stranger. You know, with a repeated sample of film dialogue, dark synthy strings and atmospheric lulls. It's a great formula joined here with some choice choppage and mentastic smears. The Painted Man sounds like a really scary horror monster of a thing but according to youtube it's a sample from Peter Pan (?)!



I've just figured out how I ended up back in 'ardcore/darkside zones. On the weekend we went to the pictures and saw IT which was pretty good. Anyway I couldn't get that bit of dialogue from the 90s tv mini series of IT out of my head and had to come home and play it. I didn't always like Neuromancer's Pennywise but the song has featured in several of my favourite darkside dj mixes. Over the years that demented "They all float down here" refrain has wormed its way into my brain (whoops....this one is from '92).

93 Darkside

Wow. Loving this. I don't think I've heard it before. Maybe it's in an old mix but I've never ID'd it before. I tried to listen to some current music today (rap and even some 2017 drum'n'bass) but I ended up here in 1993 darkside zones soon after. There's a good reason for that, which is that this music is so much better than anything from the here and now. This was the future and there was more future to be heard the next day....blah blah. I'm still discovering stuff from this era so it's not all a sad nostalgia trip. Uncovering unheard gold from '93 is still exhilarating.

Many rate Skanna's Night Stalker EP as one of the classics of 93 darkside. I'm not about to disagree with that!



Now I know my ears have never come across this one because that steppy bass drop at 3.38 is totally unfuckingforgettable. These records are now going for absurd prices on discogs. I missed the boat collecting these. I should have started six or seven years back when I got back into 'ardcore/darkside/jungle. The prices weren't so obscene then, I mean they were still high but...

ZANOV - Green Ray

Green Ray is another recently discovered killer space jam from France, sure it was on my radar but I'd never bothered to check it out. I'm starting to think maybe the French released even more cosmic synth LPs than the Germans did. I don't love them all, some are just good like Oliver Roy's Pochette Surprise and Cristal by Phillipe Guerre but I guess those two incorporate romantic classical aspects into their progressive electronic sound. Zanov's Green Ray (1976) is all pulsating drones and swirling analogue synthesisers. Strap yourself in for close up encounters with space weather then set the controls for an ominous metagalactic chase through the asteroid belt.

RIP Holger Czukay

The man behind Can.

RIP Walter Becker

Six years ago I finally succumbed to the genius of The Dan. I could have posted their entire first 4 LPs and Aja. So much pleasure, so many levels. Thank you Mr Becker.

Didier Bocquet - Eclipse

Another space synth jam that was unknown to me until I discovered it on the youtubes. It's another bewdy, this time from 70s France. Eclipse's tone is one of robotic gloom and dark solitude which becomes unforgivingly frosty. This might be the best of the recent interstellar discoveries on the blog which have included Anna Sjalv Tredje's Tussilago Fanfara and the previous post Hingus from Sven Grunberg. Get in your obsolete spacecraft to traverse the infinite void and disappear into Didier Bocquet's intense deep space trance.

Didier puts on his space hair before the voyage.

Sven Grünberg - Hingus

Been on a cosmic synth bender listening to a bunch of stuff Ive never checked out before despite these acts being on the peripheries of my cosmic radar like Clearlight, Automat, Dominique Guiot and Czeslaw Niemen (Thanks Hardly Baked). In the midst of this retro-futuristic space rabbit hole I came across Hingus, a 1981 LP from Estonia. I'd never heard of it before but this is a little classic of the aforementioned genre. It's great to know there's still a few things out there left to surprise and delight us all. Check out this epic space jam from Sven Grunberg.



This is the final track of the album which had me in intergalactic astonishment. Wow man.

Lanark Artefax

Gotta say I was very sceptical about this recently released tune. Thought it was a 90s IDM throwback....which it is really. By the end of the track though, a pleasantness creeps into the stark beats which had me transfixed.

I heard somewhere a while back that there was an IDM revival happening. Did it ever really go away? Anyway these guys must be a part of that. Whether or not they can get beyond Tri Repetae or LP5 I guess only time will tell.

Suburban Lawns

Their one great moment. If only all their stuff was this good.

The nostalgia for ye olde sharity blogs continues. I found the debut Suburban Lawns LP 10 years ago on a blog I used to frequent often but can't remember the name of now, I'm sure you can probably track down an mp3 or maybe it's been reissued since then.

Singer Su Tissue is an enigma with quite a fanboy following on the interweb. The discussions usually entail whether she is autistic or just an art school hipster and speculation as to what she is doing doing now. Her online presence is nil so this all adds to the mystery.

Ariel Pink - Feels Like Heaven

This washed away all the dark and negative vibes in my life today. Like when you loved a pop song when you were little. It's all about the 3 and a half minutes of bliss. Then you can play it again. The verses are a bit Morrissey-esque doncha think?

Upper Astral - Crystal Cave - Back To Atlantis

 

Here's some more Upper Astral. This is the A-side and fucking amazement, even my dog loves it! and he hates most new age usually because it has rain or thunder in it. Weirdly, this track occasionally dips into a little bit of darkness. So it's not all euphoric vistas that we think of as new age today. These were the early days of new age though. Skybirds and Journey To The Edge Of The Universe are the other two Upper Astral tapes that I would highly recommend. I'm sure I first heard those due to the Crystal Vibrations blog. New Age was never a bad word in my world though, I was introduced to this stuff when I was in my teens. There used to be a new age shop in every second Melbourne suburb in the early 90s as I recall. It was usually a creepy vibe in those shops. I hated all the other shit apart from the music though. Now I think I wish I'd bought some of the art, really? no not really. Maybe there are still some of these shops out there? I wouldn't know, I live in the middle of nowhere these days.

Anna Själv Tredje - Tussilago Fanfara

Discovered this vintage cosmic synth LP from Swedish duo Anna Sjalv Tredje the other day. Here it is in full on youtube. Tussilago Fanfara was released in 1977 on Silence, the legendary Swedish label. Berlin school electronics for the most part. The second track is tres spooky with its sinister whispers, foreboding washes of sound and black night tones of gloom. The final tune changes it up a bit with a Cluster/Ashra style jam. An underrated gem.

sleeve!

new age

This is the only part of Channel For The Light on the youtubes and the best bit isn't on it!

I've discovered a few new age related things on the interwebs since that post where I mentioned the Crystal Vibrations blog. Hidden Valley has been keeping the scented candle burning for old new age tapes on the blogosphere since CV became inactive in 2012. This dude is obsessed with the legendary Californian label Valley Of The Sun. Many of that label's classic catalogue of 80s tapes have been posted there, a couple of which i've not heard.

For those who need more there's a whole bunch of new agey stuff at the Sounds Of The Dawn blog too.





Upper Astral had an incredible run of tapes from 1981-1983.

Twin Peaks: The Songs So Far...

So nearly every episode of the new season of Twin Peaks has featured a song played live in the Bang Bang bar for the final credits sequence. Chromatics paid ethereal homage to Julee Cruise at the end of the first or second episode. The only other time I've heard this group was on the Drive soundtrack a couple of years ago. The tune in that film was pretty ordinary but Shadow's got a perfect vibe for Twin Peaks. When that synth swells up it gets very very lovely.



I've skipped ahead to episode 4 because the band at the end of episode 3 were fucking awful - the music and their hair! Anyway at the end of the 4th episode were Au Revoir Simone with Lark, which I really enjoyed. Is this the worst band name in the history? This group's been around for like 15 years. Can't quite put my finger on what is magic about this tune, just a beautiful classic melody I suppose. The keyboard player on the right is the star of the band with her Addicted To Love schtick.



I would never bother listening to Sharon Van Etten but Lynch made me sit through this slowcore country folk tune and I gotta say it was the best thing about episode six. That might not be saying much though as this instalment was the fucking pits and made me stop watching the new season for a month. I was later advised to keep checking out the new episodes which I eventually did.



A second appearance for this badly named synth trio. Like if 80s indie pop was informed by Stereolab and Broadcast. Backwards not possible pop.  Another lovely tune.



This is the lady who sang a Spanish a cappella version of Crying in Mulholland Drive which was amazing. This is a good vocal performance too if not quite as mind-blowing. Moby, who once sampled the original Twin Peaks soundtrack on his smash hit Go, is playing guitar with Rebekah Del Rio here at the end of tonight's episode.

*I've left out a couple of performances ie. NIN, Hudson Mowhawke etc. as they were underwhelming.

Great LP Covers II - Scientist

These first 3 got my vote as I actually own the albums but the bottom 3, which I've just discovered at discogs, are also the fabulous. There are some other great Scientist records like the Dub Landing series but those covers are not so great.

This put me in mind of an old comic from Britain Tiger & Scorcher. My older brother used to read it in the 70s. I remember it had motor racing, stunt men, wrestling, soccer and maybe it had boxing too. Cricket? Dunno...if only they'd invent a machine where I could instantly research such things.

This one might actually be the best of the lot. I wish I was at that contest! Just quietly I reckon Scientist would have won.

*Great LP Covers Part I

Quiet Evenings - Transcending Spheres

After that previous post about Not Not Fun I had a chuckle to myself and thought 'What am I going to do next check out the new releases on Digitalis or Hooker Vision?' These labels covered the scene(s) of many names hypnagogia, glow fi, tropical, neo-kosmiche, altered zones, nu age noise etc. I had a little look on the intewebs only to find Hooker Vision ceased operations in 2014 and Digitalis seems to have perhaps closed its doors around the same time. So I won't be doing a post featuring 2017 releases from those labels. Maybe I need to check out Gift Tapes, Pizza Night, Taped Sounds, Olde English Spelling Bee or Catholic Tapes. Those labels probably don't exist either. I reckon 6 years is the perfect amount of time for a label to exist anyway. Don't hang around too long to become boring. Imagine if Flying Nun or Ghostbox halted after that amount of time, they would have been perfect.

From the ye olde Hooker Vision blog

Anyway I did discover an old album by Quiet Evenings from 2011. Quiet Evenings contain the husband and wife team, Grant and Rachael Evans, who also ran the Hooker Vision label. Rachael's other musical project is the fab Motion Sickness Of Time Travel and her husband was in Nova Scotian Arms, Crippling and a whole bunch of others. Transcending Spheres turns out to be a lost classic that funnily wasn't released on any of the aforementioned labels. It's here at bandcamp though. Synths drift and hover, beats remain discreet and guitars even appear amongst the narcotic glaze. It's dark, it's haunting and it's sublime.

On the Hi-Fi in July - Not Not Fun

I really don't recall how I ended up here but I'm glad I did even though it's probably not very cool. I can't remember the last Not Not Fun album I bought. It was a couple of years ago at least, that Rangers Reconsider Lounge record maybe. Tonight somehow I had arrived at the label's bandcamp site and ended up coming away with three of their 2017 releases. There was a time when everything they released was really bloody good. I perceived that they had reached some kind of peak around 2010/2011 with a gradual drop off of choice releases in the following years. After listening to these recordings tonight though, perhaps we were a bit hasty in our move away from this great label. Or maybe I'm on a hypnagogic nostalgia trip. Either way it doesn't matter to me, I really enjoyed all of these albums. So with a little help from your friends go ahead and check these out.

Video Salon - Video Salon
Video Salon's haunting drones and shimmering vocals are delightfully mesmerising. This is seductive classic stuff. Brian Pyle (Starving Weirdos, Ensemble Economique) and Galya Chikiss are the duo Video Salon.

Iguana Moonlight - Wild Palms
A synth voyage into the tropical hot dog night. Lovely sonic sketches of solitude by the seaside. These sounds match that cover art perfectly.

Robedoor - New Age Sewage
While we're still in drone territory here, this is much darker and turbulent than the above two releases. New Age Sewage is amorphous psych drone noise on an epic scale. I'm kinda amazed by this actually. I was not expecting to like this so much. By far the best Robedoor thing I've ever heard.

Canada Effervescent - Crystalline
This is retro new age. Crystalline sounds like a tape from the 80s heyday with it's faux harp, piano and environmental sounds amidst the gentle ripples of the cosmic lite synth and other new age accoutrements. This is perfect sleepy time music. I feel calmer already. Nice.

Does anyone remember the great blog Crystal Vibrations? One of my favourite blogs of all time, I wish he still did it. Crystalline reminds me of the many great new age tapes that were posted there.

Shango Dance Band - Position Pass Power

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE NIGERIAN ARMY BARRACKS

Deep in a rabbit hole on the youtubes last night I discovered this lost gem of psych tinged afrobeat from the early 70s. Some of these dudes were from Fela Kuti's 60s group Koola Lobitos. Position Pass Power is on the Shango Dance Band LP which was reissued last year.

I'm amazed that there is any undiscovered stuff from 70s Nigeria left after the massive excavation of the last 20 years. They made a hell of lot of great music in those parts during that era. I still haven't got around to listening to Now Again's Ten years in the making 4 LP compilation from 2016 Wake Up You: The Rise & Fall of Nigerian Rock 1972-77. I thought that was probably going to be the epic final chapter in Nigerian 70s archival sets but maybe not. Let's hope the gems continue to be unearthed.

TV Movie Of The Week

I was aware of some 80s and 90s tv movies from America thanks to HSV7's The Midday Movie in Melbourne hosted by the late Ivan Hutchinson. To be honest I reckon Duel was the only 70s one I'd ever seen or at least remembered until recently. After checking out a lot of 70s British telly lately I decided it was time to investigate the American tele-movie of the 70s. The history of American made for tv movies is fascinating. In the 70s these films were big events that would get astronomical ratings figures. Then there's also this whole feminist angle of it as well with a lot of these movies being primarily targeted at ladies in the 18 - 49 demographic. These movies were often female driven with strong ensemble casts of women.

Amanda Reyes was instrumental in me undertaking this exploration. She is an American tv movie expert who originally came to my attention last year via the podcast world. She has featured as a guest on The Hysteria Continues and Supporting Characters but she has her very own podcast Made For TV Mayhem. Reyes has recently published the book Are You In The House Alone? Growing Up With Gargoyles, Giant Turtles, Valerie Harper, The Cold War, Stephen King & Co-Ed Call Girls: A Tv Movie Compendium 1964-1999. I keep hearing her pop up as a guest on different casts of pod promoting this book. Reyes is the most unpretentious academic I've ever heard. Her passion for tv movies knows no bounds plus she's incredibly knowledgable and articulate on the subject. Heaps of people know lots of stuff out there on the interwebs but most of them are really really fucking boring or are just plain horrible. Amanda however is a star with her infectious sense of humour and amiable personality.

Spoiler Alert! 4 From THE MADE FOR TV MOVIES Cannon

Night Terror aka Night Drive (1977)
Wow this was a great entry point into the genre. Valerie Harper plays Carol a meek housewife who is chased in her car across country by a psychopathic cop killer. The killer has no vocal cords and has one of those portable voice box devices that you put up to your neck when you need to talk. It rains a lot. Strange stuff happens on this harrowing journey. Night Terror's got creeps in petrol stations, weird drunk people etc. After an exhausting night on the road Carol reaches full transformation in order to survive the killer's last ditch attempts to eradicate her.

All movies should be car chases at night in monsoon like conditions!

Reflections Of Murder (1974)
I couldn't believe how good this one was either. I haven't heard Amanda talk about it but I'm sure she'd love it. It's set in a boarding school on an Island near Seattle. Three of its teachers are involved in a love triangle that goes awry more than once. Rainy atmosphere with lots of rain, actually come to think of it water is a ubiquitous motif here. There's a drowning in a bathtub, a body in a skanky swimming pool, a ferry ride etc. The two ladies are Joan Hackett and cult actress Tuesday Weld. The main dude in this is Jack McCoy from Law & Order...er....that's Sam Waterston. Reflections Of Murder comes with a twist.

The Victim (1972)
Elizabeth Montgomery is an icon of made for tv movies. Here she stars as Kate the sister of a missing person. A storm has has trapped her at her sister's strange overly furnished mansion. Where is her sister? Is she dead? Why is the maid so creepy? What's in the hamper? What's with the lying husband of missing sister? The power has gone off and the phone line is dead. It's raining a lot. Where's the dog? Will Kate survive the night?

Trilogy Of Terror (1975)
Karen Black stars in this famous telly movie anthology. We've got three separate stories here and Black plays different characters in each. The first segment where she plays Julie a college professor who is coerced into a sexual relationship by a student is very unsettling.

The most famous segment is the third one where Black's character Amelia is terrorised by a Zuni Fetish Doll that comes to life while she's on the phone to her mum. After a very entertaining battle Amelia eventually overcomes the crazy doll or does she? No rain in this as far as I can recall but there was satanic wallpaper. Trilogy of Terror tips into the comedy horror category.

Anthony White - Block Party

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE DISCO - PART 12

1977
More funky 12" mix gold from Walter Gibbons. How bout those high-hats and that cow bell? 

Loleatta Holloway - Hit & Run 12" Remix

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE DISCO - PART 11

1977
Gibbons this time does a proper remix as opposed to the cut & paste of 10 Percent. Mmm mm....that fuzz guitar is soo good. Pure magic sonic architecture for the head and the toes. All that space created is fucking sublime.

Double Exposure - Ten Percent

SPACE DEBRIS GOES TO THE DISCO - PART 10 (%)

1976
According to Turn The Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, Peter Shapiro's excellent 2005 book, this was the first disco mix released commercially on a 12". Walter Gibbons was to go from strength to strength in the remix department. Ten Percent was an auspicious start.

Ariel Pink - Another Weekend

2017 just got a whole lot better. Ariel Pink has a new album Dedicated To Bobby Jameson due out in a couple of months. Something to look forward to.

Love the artwork. If you wanna know who Bobby Jameson was check out his blog. AP loves his LA mythology. It's a wonder Ariel didn't try and get him to do something for Pom Pom? Jameson would have fitted right in with Pom Pom's maverick LA contributors Don Bolles and Kim Fowley.

This video's from a couple of months ago. Tears On Fire is not on the new record, it was on the Ariel Pink & Weyes Blood collab EP Myths 002 which was released in January and I totally missed it. 

Classic tune from his great Pom Pom (2014) LP. Never seen this video until today and it's amazing. I know I'm not paying attention but whatever. One of the best videos of the century so far. It makes me wanna drink cheep beer, have a ciggy and be weird.