Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Special note for Pageophiles: If the above connection is a little too slow this might work a little better, though you cannot download the song from the flash file. In fact you might be better off just downloading the file from the  above  site if you can. The file is about 48 Mb and while it may buffer slow at time the song is there. I have tested it. Seems to load better for me in IE and Safari than Firefox or Flock browsers. Be patient. The file below is directly from my file sharing account at boxstr.com

JIMMY PAGE’S SOUNDTRACK TO KENNETH ANGER’S LUCIFER RISING

ESSAY COMING. NECESSARY TO GET IMAGES POSTED WHILE I CAN

DUE TO SOME SCREWY ISSUES HERE.

PLEASE BE PATIENT AND CHECK BACK SHORTLY.  BILL

While the bulk of Paul McCartney’s fine song catalog is made of “silly love” songs he has been known to step off into some deep waters once in a while. The persona of Paul as the likable and cute faced Beatle  often contradicts another side to the man. He is a tough business man and leader. It is more or less considered he was running the affairs of the Beatles towards and the end and was the first to officially call it quits and proceed with legal actions to dissolve the Beatles as an entity. He is an outspoken vegetarian and animal rights activist and is known to voice his political opinions on other matters as well, such as when he wrote Give Ireland Back To The Irish in response to events of Bloody Sunday on January 30, 1972. The song was released less than a month later and was the first single released by Paul and Linda’s new band Wings, with Irishman Hugh McCullough on guitar. It was banned by the BBC but Paul persisted in trying to get airtime for the song and it would eventually reach a position of 16 on the U.K. charts with limited airplay. While the song has a definite political message it is also a rousing rock tune and sounds much better than the other material released on Wings first overly stripped down solo album Wildlife. The song was not released on the album but does appear on newer CD versions as a bonus track.

Also banned by the BBC in 1972 was the bouncing party number Hi Hi Hi, which was also a single release only. The song was reported to have the lyrics “get you ready for my body gun”  (though Paul says the lyrics are misunderstood) and while the lyrics are not spelled High High High it is generally assumed and never outright denied by McCartney (as far as I, a former super McCartney fan, know) that the chorus infers getting a good buzz on. While the songs are early on in the solo McCartney catalog and possess a roughness that along with the albums McCartney and Ram,  would vanish after Band on the Run, I think they are pretty good rock songs and while very tame by today’s standards were banned nonetheless.

Another song I do not have a copy of to make an MP3 is from 1993’s Off the Ground called Big Boys Bickering. Again the song is not on the album but does appear on the Japanese release. Wings had long disbanded and Paul’s sound now is more typical of his professional and polished style. Even when he sings “fucking it up” about six times it sounds sort of  nice and inoffensive. But not inoffensive enough to not get the song banned from airways. Paul said he had considered using the lyrics “mucking it up” but the subject matter, environmental destruction of the planet, was something he really felt passionate about and nothing less than “fuck” would express his rage. I did find a video version of the song, uncensored of course.

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

TRACKS: GIVE IRELAND BACK TO THE IRISH-HI HI HI

PAUL PERFORMING BANNED SONG BIG BOYS BICKERING

Even his deceased wife Linda has had a song banned by the BBC from her posthumously complied and released solo album (from 1973 material) Wide Prairie called The Light Comes From Within. Paul has campaigned for the song, a response to Linda’s often bitterly hateful critics in Britain and America,  to receive airplay, but look, it has the lines:

You say I’m simple
You say I’m a hick
You’re  fuckin’ no one
You stupid dick

I dunno, maybe the BBC has something in this case.

I was lucky to see Paul and Linda perform in San Antonio Texas in the Alamo Dome in the early 90’s and it was a great show. And all those people who ragged on Linda all the time were in fact dicks. I thought they were a great rock-n-roll couple and I really liked the early solo material and Wings albums.

SCHOOL OF ROCK

2003/ Director: Richard Linklater/ Writer: Mike White

Cast: Jack Black,  Joan Cusack, Mike White, Adam Pascal, Lucas Papaelias, Chris Stack, Sarah Silverman,  Chris Stack, Lucas Babin, Joey Gaydos Jr., Miranda Cosgrove, Frank Whaley

A few things make this movie a special entry into the now growing list of  Uranium Café  movie commentaries. It is the first entry into my new comedy category. I love a good comedy film and this one is a great one, which I shall expound on further soon enough. I can be really picky abut comedies and find most modern comedies really lacking. Along with being a genuinely funny film it is also more of a popular and financially successful film than most of the selections I pander to here, which typically tend to be rather obscure films for one reason or another. For example, perhaps they are great films, like The Servant or The Collector, but cater to a more selective audience. Or maybe they are just bad films and cater to hardly anyone but people like me who have a streak of masochism in them. I would bet that most readers of the Café have heard of School of Rock (or The School of Rock as it is sometimes listed) whether they have seen it or not. Another thing that sits this film apart is that it falls into a unique category (maybe I should create one with this title) of films I have seen more than ten times.

There is a special reason for this I should explain. Because I was an evil man in my past life and I must work out my bad karma in this one while I still have time I am now teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) in China. When there is a day when I just cannot bear to listen to my lazy ass students I (like any other poor soul trapped in a similar situation) I fall back on the mutli-media learning center or, room with the DVD player and projector as it should be called. One has to be selective about what they show of course and two movies I love to show the most is Eight Legged Freaks and School of Rock, with The Incredibles coming in third. Those films will wind up on the Café in due time. For now we take a look at one of my very favorites films of all friggin’ time… School of Rock.

The film is directed by Texas native Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly) and written by Mike White, who also stars in the film. It was conceived written with Jack Black in mind as the lead character, Dewey Finn. Dewey is basically a loser with minimal talent but high in the sky rock-n-roll aspirations. He comes from the old school of rock music when the scene was dominated by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Who and all the other truly great bands. His taste is impeccable, but it is his marginal talent and ego-centric attitude that gets him booted from his band No Vacancy. This puts Dewey in a pickle since he was counting on winning this year’s battle of bands and using the cash to sort out his life. Among life’s pressures is the fact he is behind in rent to his roommate and former rocker (from the Goth band Maggot Death) and now substitute teacher Ned Sneebly, played by Mike White. Then to top it all off  there is  Ned’s overbearing girlfriend Patty, who would like nothing better than for Dewey to hit the road, whether he catches up his back rent or not. With his back against the wall Dewey takes on a substitute teaching job meant for the now responsible Ned at the number one private elementary prep school in the state, Horace Green Elementary. He is greeted by the high strung Ms. Mullins-played deftly by Joan Cusack- and is introduced to his class, a collection of serious students all with eyes on ivy league colleges and gold stars on the performance chart. The chart is ripped to shreds by Dewey who exclaims “What kind of school is this!” and he proceeds to assign recess to the class while he watches the clock tick away.

Things change when Dewey discovers a lot of the class are talented musicians and his sites are set once again on the battle of the bands and the $20,000 prize. He gets his gear from his beat up old van and Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love plays as he runs down the hall and prepares to introduce the students to new class project… a live rock and roll show that all schools will competing in and will land the winners a recommendation to a top ranking college on their permanent records. The kids are all perfect comedic foils for Jack Black to play off of. Summer Hathaway is the class “factotor” who is as serious a student as there is and has no intention of being a groupie for Dewey’s project and is promoted to band manager. Zach is the talented but melancholy lead guitarist who is has some home problems with his over controlling father. Lawrence (Larry) is a shy, insecure Asian kid who plays hot keyboards and is assured by Dewey that he is way cool and will be the “bee’s knees” onstage. Katie, called Posh Spice in a great scene, is the steady playing bassist who Dewey teaches to show a pouty face. On drums is class rebel Freddy Jones (“Spazzy Magee”) who struggles with his instrument but is soon studying Keith Moon, Buddy Rich and Ed Shaughnessy. Other classmates include the swishy “Mr Fancy Pants” Billy who designs some snazzy glam rock outfits for the band that sends Dewey into a fit, Tomika, an insecure over weight girl who belts out Aretha Franklin tunes, and a collection of back up singers and security personnel that collectively have a perfect and rare film chemistry.

Needless to say there are hurdles galore with trying to set up the gig with Ms Mullins and the show organizer (Frank Whaley) but in the end they get the chance to play. In a classic scene they celebrate their enthusiasm while Led Zeppelin’s The Immigrant Song blares over Dewey’s van speaker. Jack Black actually begged the surviving band members to use the song. It was a difficult task  given the band’s  reputation for not allowing their songs or logos to be used to benefit someone else’s commercial undertakings. A video of Black begging in posted below.

It is uncovered of course that Dewey is not a teacher and has been pretending to be Ned all along after Patty rats him out and even calls the cops on him. But in a scene “…that is so punk” the kids get the school bus to take them to the “Mozart concert field trip” and pick up a despondent and beaten down Dewey who gets out of his bed and goes out to do the only thing he can do… rock. He admits that Zach is the better player and song writer and they play Zach’s song School of Rock (If You Wanna Be A Teacher’s Pet), rather than Dewey’s epic opus,  Legend of the Rent. They lose out to his old band of posers No Vacancy and again Dewey is shattered, but the kids remind him that rock is not about winning or losing but about putting on one great show, which they did. The movie wraps up the dissatisfied audience chanting “School of Rock…” and they return for an encore of AC/CD’s It’s a Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock-n-Roll. The humor continues as the credits roll and when it is all over it is a movie I could easily sit and watch again in a day or two if I had a hankering.

I really am not sure why I do not tire of this film. On one level it is really just a formula film and the type I normally avoid. The characters are stereotyped and the storyline is predictable even before you watch the movie. Losers or outcasts find themselves by the end of the movie by being true to their dreams and doing the best that they can. If only real life were so simple. Everyone’s self esteem is bolstered after performing the song they worked so hard at and against the wishes of everyone else in the film who only wanted to hold them all down. There is not a bad word in the film nor any overtly sexual situations or violence. It is good clean fun and whenever I play it for my students here it is received with enthusiasm. They laugh at all the funny parts (remember that English is not their native language) and get the moral of the story, whatever that may ultimately be. I avoided this movie for a couple years because I just did not think I would like it. The picture of Jack Black with a Gibson SG surrounded by little kids just reeked of corny formula. And on one level it is just that, but it is so well done and so enjoyable I can only say if you have not seen it yet please run out and get it. It is one worth owning. And in a potentially controversial statement I feel much better than Black’s other rock-n-roll movie Tenacious D.

JACK BLACK BEGS LED ZEPPELIN TO USE THE IMMIGRANT SONG FOR

CRUCIAL SCENE IN SCHOOL OF ROCK

Dark metal progenitor Glenn Danzig hails from Lodi New Jersey. His screaming Elvis meets Jim Morrison at Anton Levey’s Satanic church styled voice came in into the music scene with his first band The Misfits in the latter 70’s and they as were raw and viscous as anything else that was punk and east coast at the time. What set The Misfits apart was not their musicianship but Danzig’s unique howl and his penchant for building catchy hooks around B-Movie themes, such as Astro Zombies, Return of the Fly and Night of the Living Dead. The band’s onstage appearance was spooky and their garb and make-up seems to predate both Goth fashion and even the Black Metal look that would come out of Scandinavia with bands like Mayhem and Emperor. I am familiar with this band through a couple anthologies I have and the music is stripped down and played pretty fast. The songs are loaded with dark humor and inferences to old sci-fi and horror films. The band’s label was even called Plan 9 records after the Ed Wood Jr. cult movie classic Plan 9 from Outer Space.

The Misfits were a hard rocking outfit and their brief moment on the punk scene proved to be more of an influence on later bands and trends than Danzig would have ever cared to admit. He mostly dismisses his time with the band now but says it was a fun time. It served as a suitable vehicle to release his dark vision with a theatrical flare he become adept at. There is some sort of band now called The Misfits that I know little about except that they dress up the same way and play sounds about midnight movies.  I have heard a couple songs even and they do not sound that bad but do not be confused, this is not the same Misfits that penned such immortal lines as:

I’ve got something to say, I killed your baby today.
An’ it doesn’t matter much to me as long as it’s dead.
An’ I’ve got somethng to say. I raped your mother today.
An it doesn’t matter much to me as long as she’s spread.

The Misfits spilt up after prolonged disputes in 1983 and Danzig went on to form Samhain. Everyone probably knows that is the original Celtic word for what has come to be known as Halloween during the good ol’ pagan days. Samhain is the lesser known period of Danzig’s career. It is the bridge period between the now legendary Misfits and the later to come Danzig period. There are a few significant changes in the musical approach that challenge the criticisms that Samhain was just the Misfits with out the punk. The music did slow down and became heavier and brooding, and that seems be to Danzig’s liking since ultimately that is where his sound would evolve. The lyrics became less about midnight movies and more about dark and demonic themes. Danzig appears to take his occult matters seriously at times (and tongue in cheek at others)and he seems as if he comes from some dark castle in Norway rather than Bruce Springsteen’s backyard. Another element is that the music and production is simply better than The Misfits. I have Intium and the EP Unholy Passion. Unholy has some really dark guitar by Pete Damien. I have not explored the other albums too much although I do own them all.

During the live shows Danzig would appear on stage covered in fake blood (I assume) wearing a leather cowl and S&M looking garb and was known to make use of his sizable biceps by actually leaping into the audience and pulverizing ungracious fans. Again internal strife signaled time for change and Danzig formed a long lasting partnership with Def American Record’s Rick Rubin and with bassist Eerie Von dropped the Samhain band name and formed what is now known in one incarnation or another as Danzig. I do have a special note concerning Danzig the band before going further. Pete Damien was canned (Danzig is notorious for firing band members and the line up list is exhausting to look at) and replaced him with heavy blues based guitarist John Christ (nice last name for a Satanic metal band’s guitarist wouldn’t you say?) who is from Baltimore Maryland and was school mates with my old cult movie pal in Seattle Matt Gehringer who shared some small school stories of John before he filled in on guitar for some of Danzig’s finest moments before he too was sacked after a couple fantastic albums.

Essentially Samhain and Danzig were pretty much the same entity at one time and some Samhain projects were even finished a couple years after albums were being produced under the Danzig name. A Samhain reunion tour happened in 1999 but Danzig has since said there would never be another. There is bad blood between him and Eerie Von and Peter Damien and Danzig does not seem like one to waste time trying to rekindle long dead fires. He is a work horse it seems and has plenty of other activities to keep him busy.

The first three Danzig albums, the eponymous Danzig, Lucifuge and How the God’s Kill are considered to be some of the best stuff Danzig has ever produced. They were followed by a live EP Thrall Demon’s Sweat Live that contained the live version of the FM hit Mother and the not too bad Danzig 4. But the first albums showed a marked departure from what he had been doing in The Misfits and Samhain, which despite his seriousness sometimes were simply campy and comical and at other times just poorly played and produced. On Lucifuge his voice was just so astonishing that it is really beyond belief. And not only his voice but the direction of the band had become clearer aswell and John Christ’s simple but heavy and tight guitar work was something sorely needed for Danzig’s soaring vocals. The band left the indiscipline of punk behind and moved into more polished metal territory. The vision of the music became more centered around typical metal themes and were even a tad epic in their scope at times. The Lucifuge album is one of my favorite albums really and if you are curious about Danzig but not familiar I would recommend you start with this one. Simply because his voice is so powerful and the guitar work is clear, professional and heavy.

As the 90’s decade advanced there were the obligatory numerous firings and line up changes. The list is long my friend but the outfits tended to be pretty tight and heavy in a dark aspect. However in the mid 90’s Danzig took it upon himself to release a strange album called Black Aria, which is an instrumental album of drone sounds and strings. It is Wagnerian in its intent but rock stars should not dabble in Wagner. I listened to a few minutes of it once and turned it off and never listened to it again. It was not want I wanted from Danzig I guess. Call me narrow minded. I can listen to the Bach Cello Suites if I want this type of thing, but who knows, I still have the music here somewhere and maybe I will give it a try again. Sometimes you can put something away for years and return to it and see it from a different angle.

But even stranger is the next album called Blackacidevil which I always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt on because he was so attacked by fans and critics but finally have to admit I do not like it too much myself. It seems to be an attempt at a heavt metal techno sound and there seems to be drum machines and all that industrial banging stuff which is great by bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails but not so endurable here.

In any case Danzig returned with a some decent heavy albums in the late 90’s and early 21st century such as Satan’s Child 6.66, I Luciferi and Circle of Snakes. I listened to I Luciferi for a month a while back and felt it was a return to the sound he had done during the early Danzig albums. Yes, some bands can branch out and experiment and do a variety of things and still pull it off. Other bands need to stay close to what it is they do best, or they might wind up like Metallica.

Danzig ultimatley did not wind up in some experimental abyss and though his material is sometimes weak, as is any performers, it is very strong at others and even on his worst albums his voice is dynamic and driven. It is a dark world his lyrics and music creates but not one full of angst and morbid, suicidal gloom. It is more like an atmospheric horror movie. Some songs are like 50’s rock roll played for an audience of demons in Hades (such as Blood and Tears on Lucifuge). All in all good stuff. But the Danzig legacy does not end with gothic metal music. Nay, there is but but one more chapter in Glenn’s creative universe we should peek into before we close the book.

Verotik Comics is Glenn Danzig’s foray into the field of comic book publishing and writing. The company came about in the 90’s while some of his Danzig projects were floundering a little. His energy was focused, I speculate, into getting his comic book titles off the ground and accepted in the comic book world. The company has been successful but do not expect to run down to the drug store comic book stand and pick these titles up. They are ultra violent and sexual and are found in comic book stores to be sold to persons over 18 only. A couple more popular titles are Santanika an Verotika and his list of talents include among others Frank Frazetta himself who has supported Danzig’s company and its policy of total creative freedom to the writer and artists. Other artists include Simon Bisley (sample from Prophesy included) and the legendary Esteban Maroto who did some of the greatest Warren stories ever, including some very sexy Vampirellas. I will let Danzig express himself in closing on the subject of Verotik comics:

“If an adult’s comics purchases are still limited to Superman and The X-Men, I think he or she needs their head examined. There’s nothing wrong with those titles, but with so many great comics out there that are pushing the envelope of what comics can be, I think people are really missing the boat. My feeling is that if a publisher is not hiring the best possible artist and writer, giving them artistic freedom and backing them with quality production, why bother?”

For further info check out these two Danzig based sites with Satan’s blessings.

http://www.the7thhouse.com/

http://www.danzig-verotik.com/verotik/

THREE SELECTIONS FROM THE MISFITS WITH DANZIG

Attitude

Last Caress

Return of the Fly

THREE SELECTIONS FROM DANZIG’S SECOND SOLO ALBUM LUCIFUGE

Long Way back from Hell

I’m the One

Blood and Tears

Rather than do a reasonably well researched post as I normally try to do I will keep this one sort of short and maybe even a little personal. I have always liked Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar playing. I understand the guy himself used to be quit a temperamental personality and the arguments between he and Deep Purple singer Ian Gillian were the stuff of rock-n-roll legend. Legend has it that during the recording of Machine Head they had to record in separate areas of the studio to avoid each other’s presence.

I guess things did not fair much better when David Coverdale took over the singing chores though a couple great albums were recorded during that period, in particular Stormbringer. Blackmore departed the band and formed Rainbow with members of the ban Elf, which included Ronnie James Dio on vocals.  Dio was not a real big star at this time though his name popped up in the rock magazines of the day, and so when I first heard his vocals I was simply blown away. He would do three albums with Rainbow then a couple with Black Sabbath before going on to his solo career. His fantasy filled lyrics really brought out some new stylings from Blackmore on this fine album. The guitar work is quit gymnastic and there are lots of fills and over dubs. the next album, Rising, would be more straight forward and is probably a better album technically, but this is such a strange and special album I just wanted to promote to anyone who has only heard Man on the Silver Mountain.

Of course Rainbow went on to evolve into a corporate rock band when Joe Lynn Turner took over the singing and lyric chores and those were some forgettable albums overall in my opinion. These days Blackmore is back to his fantasy themes with Blackmore’s Night, featuring his current wife, Candice Night,  on vocals, and great vocals they are. The style is renaissance themed rock and Blackmore is featured playing more acoustic guitar than he did in his heavy metal heyday. All great stuff by a great guitar player and really moody , dark guy who once punched a lighting technician for missing a light cue. I think Candice has mellowed him out.

TRACK LIST: The Man on the Silver Mountain-Self Portrait-Black Sheep of the Family-Catch the Rainbow-Snake Charmer-If you Don’t Like Rock-n-Roll-Temple of the King-Sixteenth Century Greensleeves-Still I’m Sad

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JENIFER

2005/Director: Dario Argento/Screenplay: Steven Weber, Story by Bruce Jones

.
Cast: Steven Weber, Carrie Anne Fleming, Brenda James, Harris Allan, Beau Starr, Laurie Brunetti, Kevin Crofton, Julia Arkos, Jasmine Chan

Some people simply worship Dario Argento. For years and years I just figured I was missing something or that I was not enough of a true film fanatic to see the brilliance in his work that his rabid sycophants did. Now I remember my reactions to films like Tenebre ( by the way, the second picture from the left in my banner is a scene from Tenebre I touched up in Photoshop) and Phenomenon and even his “magnum opus” Suspiria and do not feel I was so out of touch by feeling confused and bewildered. They were not really great movies at all in my opinion. Maybe not terrible movies, but Tenebre was so… so… terrible that I do not see what the big deal has always been about that movie. Okay there was a great axe murder scene with a spurting stump, but the rest of the film was so weird and Italian.

A pensive Dario Argento comtemplates taking a night

course in how to direct a sensible narrative.

Often supporters will admit his narrative technique lacks…well… narrative technique and that his story lines are illogical and incohesive and that his true skill lies in his camera work and atmospheric settings. I have even read some people compare his work to Mario Bava’s. There is no comparison and his technical skill and set designs are average at best even in his better work. The last thing I saw before Jenifer was something called Do You Like Hitchcock, and I figured it would have all these slick Hitchcockian references and gags but it had nothing of the sort really, not on any sophisticated level anyway. It was a goofy movie with a typical Argetno ending that was more like the ending to an EC comic book than a good horror/suspense movie. Well, now that I have expressed my general feeling about this “horror genius” let me give you my opinion of a short piece he did for the cable TV series called Masters of Horror (view my insightful comment on Takashi Miike’s ode to to incest and abortion Imprint elsewhere in the Café).

Poor Steven Weber comes home from working all day as actor and scriptwriter for horror megalomaniac Dario Argento and has to settle for cold cuts for dinner again.

Jenifer is a short made for TV film and to be honest, I did not completely dislike it, in the same way I did not dislike another shorter work Argento did in a double-feature called Two Evil Eyes with George Romero , where he did a graphic and psychotic version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat with Harvey Kietel in the lead role. Neither of the episodes were great pieces and hit and miss master Romero absolutely wasted one hour of my life with a Creepshow style “return from the dead and chase the girl ( played by the amply endowed Adrienne Barbeau ) around the house” story, but the shortness of the pieces made them endurable and somewhat enjoyable really. Honestly, I am not expecting Martin Scorcese or David Lean when I watch this stuff. Argento’s narration challenged approaches that undo his longer films were thankfully absent in these two shorter films (each about one hour long) and I found both of them decent little horror bits. Of course in Argento’s hands Jenifer has more than a few problems. Some of these can be excused if you realize the story is from a comic book story by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Bernie Wrightson ( I even found page samples below on the net). So we are not transposing Poe from paper to film here. Jones is a capable writer of suspense and horror comics that typically have a surprise twist at the end in the way older style horror comics did, such as the EC and Warren titles did, as well as the old Marvel and DC titles from the turn of the 70’s period.

Lovely Carrie Anne Fleming before Dario Aregento gave her a make over.

The general story is this: Police detective Frank Spivey (Steve Weber) rescues a girl from being murdered with a meat cleaver by an apparently homeless, deranged man. The man is shot and mutters the girl’s name with his last breath: Jenifer. As it turns out Jenifer is a mentally retarded and grotesquely deformed girl who happens to have a knock out body. For some reason Spivey allows the girl to live in his house where in no time she bites his wife in the face, rips the family cat to bits and is found sucking on its entrails in the bathroom, murders a carnival circus freak collector and chops him up and hides him the frig, then finally murders the innocent, little neighbor girl and does the same to her as the cat (I might add that no police ever appear to question anyone in the disappearance of the child… is this the same country that has the Amber alert?). During all this Spivey allows the slobbering freak to seduce him in bed and does not try to stop his wife and teenage son from leaving. To regain his balance and perspective on life he decides the best thing to do is to quit his career as a police detective and live in a run down , ratty cabin in the woods. Needing a career change he manages to beg a woman into giving him as job as a stock boy in a local grocery store. He lets Jenifer hang out at the cabin all day while he stacks pinto beans and toilet paper but she sneaks into town and sees him chatting with the woman and gets jealous and stalks her teenage son at an outdoor teenage party. Later Spivey finds her chomping on his guts in a tool shed. Needless to say he finally decides enough is enough (most guy’s would have decided that when he bit their wife’s face or ate the house cat and when they took a gander at her mutant face) and takes Jenifer out to kill her with an axe, but is shot by a hunter who rescues Jenifer and no not doubt the cycle starts all over.

Miss Fleming as Jenifer, a girl not concerned with the politics of vegetarianism.

The movie is a no brainer and to try and make anything more of out it is a lost cause. That a man like Spivey, no matter how unhappy, would throw away his family and career and cover up the murder of a child to protect a mentally retarded deformed girl who is “good” in bed is simply too unbelievable. Yes men can be slime, but most would not do this even to protect a Playboy Playmate! The violence is excessive and is simply exploitive gore. Every murder involves intestines and body organs and the scene of the nude little girl being gnawed on is simply bad taste. It the type of trick a no talent film maker would employ, the proverbial hammer on the head, trying to appear controversial because they are incapable of doing anything else. I put a photo of Argento in front of a fire place in this post that typifies the guy in my opinion. He is really trying to be this master of cinematic horror and wants us to be intrigued by his dark mind and black heart but ultimately his work is lacking and directionless and falls back over and over again on outdated shock and gore gimmicks to hold it together. You cannot say the same of Argento’s role model Mario Bava, though Bava did dabble amply in violence and even gore, but at his peak he was a brilliant film maker. While I admit Argento can be engaging and entertaining on one level I simply do not consider him to be in the same league as Bava.  Argento did do much to usher in the revival of the “giallo” style films in the 70’s and his use of color is sometimes interesting, but it is the continual lack of consistency that I find annoying with this guy’s work as a whole. All that being said, reviews on Deep Red, Suspria and Tenebre are coming one day.

While I suppose my music preferences are mostly those that fall under the umbrella of rock-n-roll I have also developed a likening for a wide and diverse range of other type of music as well, while becoming a fanatic for very few. These interests may be as diverse as Phillip Glass and King Crimson, or Mozart and Black Sabbath. I grew up in the south, mostly between Kentucky and Texas. Later I would pack up and head for the “enlightened” city of Seattle. The quotation marks can be interpreted to mean “haha, bullshit!” Arrogance and snobbery are more the impressions that linger of the Emerald City. One thing I came to dislike in the attitude of many Seattlites was a disdain for the south and the things of the south, such as country and western music and bluegrass. This is not a blanket criticism, but certainly one that applies.

Therefore as time went by songs like these on Marty Robbins’ timeless Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs began to a special place for me that they did not have when I was living in San Antonio Texas and hearing them all the time. The album was recorded by Nashville outsider (he was from Wyoming) Robbins in 1959 and the hit songs from the album, El Paso and Big Iron, were as far outside the hit pop song formula of the day as a song could be. He is accompanied on guitar by Grady Martin and Jack Pruett and with up-right bass played by Bob Moore. The playing is tight and remarkable really and Robbins’ voice has hardly ever sounded better. He spins tales of gun battles and dying cowboys and tragic love that are cinematic in their effect and the songs stand up as well today as they did nearly 50 years ago. Let’s see where Kid Rock or Britney Spears is in 50 years.

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PLAY LIST: El Paso-Big Iron-Streets of Laredo-The Hanging Tree