Saturday, 10 October 2015

William S. Burroughs: Photo-Collages (Mexico, Tangier, Paris, etc 1954/61)

"The photo collage is a way to travel that must be used with skill and precision if we are to arrive [...] The collage as a flexible hieroglyph language of juxtapostion: A collage makes a statement."

(1962)

Details

'Joy Division is the modern Rembrandt'

Friday, 9 October 2015

The Widdershins (Journey on James)

The first time I caught The Widdershins must have been early 87 when they played at the Baden Powell in Vic Parade which was my first job out here behind the bar and I missed their soundcheck but started work as they were having their meal and then got talking with James and Juliet and had a great chat about nothing and everything and then I heard their set. Oh man they were fucking beautiful. Juliet's voice of course grabbed me. I remember asking who were her influences and she pointed to her cig and said that and Stevie Nicks but it was James's guitar that really stood out for me. I remember taking an old London friend of mine to a gig they did at The Club in Smith St and telling him before to really make a point of listening to James's guitar lines...and well Nag and myself had been in London before and seen some of THE great bands of the punk/post punk time and yeah he agreed that James had that something that elevated him above a lot of other musos. But when all is said and done I will just remember him as being an exceptionally nice human being that I would catch up with from time to time over the next 30 years. A SAD loss to obviously those that loved him but to us as well

A day with Frank Zappa (1971)

As Capt. Willard says: 'a real slice of life doc that gives you a genuine sense of what “a day with Frank Zappa” in 1971 might approximate. And… it’s not glamorous. There’s a lot of home/basement footage of Frank, as well as Gail, naked rug rats (Moon Unit & Dweezil, ages 4 & 2) and a handful of the characters that inhabited their world, including Miss Lucy (Zappa’s sometimes nanny & star of 200 Motels) of the G.T.O.’s, live footage of the Flo & Eddie version of The Mothers, and more. Frank pontificates on a wide array of topics, so casually diverse it even managed to surprise me a bit (having spoken with him myself on a half-dozen occasions), including his own infidelity on the road and how his wife deals with it. Something I’d never heard him really discuss. It’s all enjoyable because much of Frank’s pompous bitterness from his later years is absent here. His attitude is still Frank, however, and you really do get a feel for Grace Slick’s famed quote about Zappa being “the most intelligent asshole” she ever met'