DINOSAUR JR, 1985.



I’ve been listening a lot recently to Dinosaur Jr’s debut album, the recently reissued self-titled one with the black and white drawing of the dude standing in a field on the cover. I think it’s gotta be my favourite Dinosaur album. Sure, it’s a bit naïve and rough around the edges, but I like it that way – you can see the joins. Before Mascis became unquestioned dictator and started to hide the grace of his band and his songs behind walls of multi-track recording and Electro-Harmonix artillery (Whoa!), you can hear what an awesome rhythm section Lou and Murph were – listen to them launch into action halfway through ‘Bulbs of Passion’! You can hear how hesitant and pure J’s voice is, and what a brave boy he must have been to yowl his ugly truths so clearly. Sure, a few of the teenage self-pity lyrics might cause a twinge of embarrassment in the more dapper denizens of adulthood, but don’t worry J, we folks who still bite our fingernails and can’t comb our hair properly hear ya through the years. And obviously I don’t need to tell you that even when his confidence stumbles, his guitar is fuckin’ on point throughout. What a hero!

Oh yeah, and check out ‘Mountain Man’ to hear these gawky kids wipe the goddamn floor with today’s legions of stoner rawk posers – muscle ain’t everything.

It’s like anguished, anti-social punk rock that’s discovered the blood of Neil Young in its veins and ran with it. It’s like the pissed off, drunken teenagers who keep you up at night practising in your neighbour’s garage.... If you listened a bit closer and realised they were REALLY FUCKING GOOD.

Next month I’ll get to see Dinosaur Jr 2006 at All Tomorrow’s Parties. What will they be like now that J looks like Everett True in a fright wig and Lou is the kingpin of confessional lo-fi indie? They’ll be great, obviously! I mean, I sort of doubt we’ll hear spirited renditions of ‘Repulsion’ and ‘Forget the Swan’, but, y’know - dude.

DEAD WEBLOGS.

Well I think it’s been at least six months since I’ve had to write a rushed apology for not updating this weblog... not bad going I reckon.

I could blame the bad example set by the blogging slackness of some of my good friends (links 1, 2, 3), but really it’s got more to do with an easter holiday, lack of access to a computer, busy-ness at work… not to mention those old standbys alcohol, self-pity and creative futility. And I had the flu too, so plenty of excuses.

So what have I done in my couple of weeks of grace?

I bought a whole bunch of new CDs, and failed to find time to really listen to them much.

I drank a lot of wine and grimly chilled out to the sounds of Will Oldham, Skip Spence, Bardo Pond and Sunn 0))) whilst reacquainting myself with Charles Burns’ ‘Black Hole’, one of my favourite comics ever for reasons which I’m not sure I can easily explain.

I read no less than 657 pages about the Manson murders (well we’ve all got to some time – may as well be now), together with a biography of Philip K. Dick and ‘Young Adam’ by Alexander Trocchi.

I watched a number of films, including ‘Smoke’ (dir Wayne Wang) and ‘The Straight Story’ (dir David Lynch) – both of which were a hoot – and finally got around to ‘Land of the Dead’, which I’m sad to report was extremely disappointing - a very poor relation to the excellent trilogy which proceeded it.

I also went to see ‘The Proposition’, which was well made with some ace Peckinpah-esque violence, but somewhat let down by Nick Cave’s patchy and ham-fisted script (sorry Nick).

I failed to achieve anything of creative worth, or to further myself as a human being.

I do have some more movie reviews though, which I’ll post for you within the next day or two.

PART TWO: Apocalypse!

The Crazies (George Romero, 1970)

Yes, it’s been Romero season round this way recently, although I’ve still yet to catch 'Land of the Dead'. You’re probably fed up with my constant gushing enthusiasm by now, but it has to be said, this film is a fucking masterpiece.

Made the year after 'Night of the Living Dead' with what seems to have been a much larger budget, The Crazies has no zombies as such (hence it’s unjust obscurity I suppose), but nevertheless expands on the previous film’s key themes, exploding them across a far wider canvas of apocalyptic cynicism, chaotic despair and pure cinematic subversion.

Beginning with a pair of children waking in the night to discover their father midway through a self-destructive rampage, it’s swiftly revealed that a rogue strain of an artificial virus designed to propagate full-scale insanity and death has accidentally contaminated the water supply of a small town, and from thereon-in the film never lets up, its 90 minutes remaining fast, unrelenting and brutally precise throughout – the cinematic equivalent of a Slayer song, but with a hell of a lot more to say for itself.

Confused and desperate conferencing between various branches of government trying to deal with the disaster swiftly builds to Dr Strangelove levels of pitch-black irony, and as an army of gas-masked, heavily armed troops with only the vaguest idea of what they’re doing is mobilised to isolate and confine the local populance against their will, it becomes immediately clear that official bungling poses a far greater threat than the virus itself, which is as yet a vague and unseen element which nobody seems to know much about.

Romero’s bitter anger at his government’s contempt for humanity is palpable as we see soldiers throwing terrified women and children out of their homes at gun-point with no word of explanation. Meanwhile, we’re introduced to a few resourceful locals who boast combat experience from Vietnam, want to know what the hell is going on and ain’t gonna take no shit. Into this already tense situation, the virus slowly begins to make its presence felt, as people on both sides start to become hostile and hysterical above and beyond the call of duty, and any thought of keeping control of the situation collapses entirely. Back at HQ, officials nervously discuss the possibility of fatalities, whilst on the ground they’re bringing in flamethrowers to burn the bodies.

Swift cutting between people in dozens of different locations exchanging contradictory information draws the viewer into the same panic experienced by the characters, and as a picture of different events around the town is slowly built up, we find ourselves – as in all the best apocalyptic fiction – completely drawn in, weighing up the chances of the characters desperate plans against the facts as we understand them, rooting for their survival.

The frenzied atmosphere is similar to that created by later outsider horror masterworks such as 'Rabid' and 'Shivers', and good though those films are, it should be noted that one can easily imagine a teenage David Cronenberg sitting gob-smacked in a screening of The Crazies, scribbling down the notes that would launch his career.

The script is excellent, and the characters themselves are well-drawn and empathetic, the acting subtle, convincing and of an extremely high standard for a ‘horror’ film. And, my unceasing admiration for Romero being well-established, I don’t need to tell you that the film-making is fucking spot-on – sharp, effective, intelligent, brutal, powerful and beautiful. More than ever in this film, he tells no lies and pulls no punches; the violence – and there is plenty of it – is shocking and sickening, especially for 1970, although rest assured this isn’t a film that’s going to make comfortable viewing at your next beer-fuelled zombie-fest. As the closest thing the film has to a hero and his pregnant girlfriend slowly abandon their friends to encroaching madness and make a break for the town’s perimeter, the film’s denouement is as devastating as the conclusion to Catch 22.

Once again, a masterpiece. Should you ever feel like talking jive in regard to the relative merits of ‘art’ and ‘genre’ cinema, GO WATCH THIS FUCKING FILM, then get back to me.

Now let us hail the return of...

HORROR MOVIE JOURNAL

Presenting a special, giant sized edition split into three thrilling instalments.

Part One: VAMPIRES!

Martin (George Romero, 1977)

Often stated to be Romero’s best non-Living Dead related film (personally, I’d go for ‘The Crazies’ – see below - but it’s a close call), this is an intelligent, low key affair about a socially retarded teenage boy who attacks women and drains their blood with razorblades and syringes. His superstitious Eastern European relatives have him pegged as a vampire; “Nosferatu!!” his hysterical Catholic uncle frequently bellows, in between commands and threats to stake him through the heart. Romero does an excellent job of exploring the ambiguities of mental disorder versus supernatural phenomena – Martin violently rejects his uncle’s ‘magic’, laughing in the face of garlic, crucifixes etc... but he still cheerfully admits to being 85 years old, and jarring flashbacks suggest he has the memories to prove it. Understandably, he acts mute and near imbecilic in front of his family, but speaks with complete honesty to a late-night radio call-in show he uses to unburden his soul – his slurred monologues are truly chilling, and one of the highlights of the film. Obviously other things happen too, but I want to leave you some reason to watch the damn thing. Romero keeps things together masterfully with his patented combination of sharp editing, almost painful visual realism and occasional outbursts of dream-like imagery that will prove instantly familiar to anyone else out there who regards ‘Night of the Living Dead’ as a holy cinematic text. A strange, excellent film and one to file alongside Abel Ferrara’s ‘The Addiction’ (with which it has quite a bit in common..) and, er, not that many other films at all really, in the roll call of well made, serious, non-generic vampire movies.

Le Frission Des Vampires (Jean Rollin, 1970)

At completely the other end of the vampire scale, weird film junkies heed my words; THIS IS THE ONE! By far the best Rollin movie I’ve seen, and to be honest I can’t even conceive of how he could possibly make a better one. Like ‘Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!’ or ‘Psychomania’, ‘Le Frission Des Vampires’ is one of those examples of mind-boggling, unbelievable b-movie perfection that makes me rejoice in the glory of creation.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rollin's oeuvre, a brief recap: he is the one-of-a-kind French director of surrealistic, soft-porn vampire movies which inevitably involve wide-eyed, under-dressed girls wandering around medieval chateaux getting involved in weird, ritualistic blood-letting and soft-core sexual antics. His films function according to a baffling dream logic bearing only the slightest relation to reality or conventional cause and effect motivations. He directs with an artist’s eye, utilising the kitsch value and primal power of horror movie imagery and mixing it with moments of lunatic surrealism to great effect. Somehow he seems to invest an almost childlike emotional connection into his wafer-thin characters as they stumble through the repetitive, incoherent, fairy tale narratives, giving a strange feeling of innocence to his films, despite their concentration on senseless sex and violence. It’s evident that he films cheaply, quickly, entirely on location in castles and graveyards and often in daylight – the latter a particularly bizarre touch when making horror movies.

Clearly a guy who knows what he likes, this is the formula Rollin has followed throughout his career despite commercial disinterest and public bafflement (or so I can only imagine, although who knows, maybe people turn out in their millions for this nonsense in France..?), his body of work stretching beyond film into novels and comic books on broadly similar themes. “Why??” is the inevitable question which springs to mind, and not one to which Rollin has ever bothered to provide an answer, but when he has produced movies as crazed and poetic as ‘Le Frission Des Vampires’, who cares?

First thing to note is that there’s an absolutely killer psychedelic rock soundtrack, second only to the legendary wig-outs accompanying 'Vampyros Lesbos', performed by the kind of whacked out, post-hippy musicians for whom any hope of finding a career NOT throwing together semi-improvised freak-beat mania for sexy vampire movies is clearly a distant memory (any chance of a CD release? – I’m looking to you, Johnny Trunk).

So anyway, in brief; honey-mooning couple arrive at remote chateau to visit aristocratic cousins, find them dead and in their graves, but are looked after by two hypnotised, nubile servants. The cousins, who turn out to be a pair of uproariously camp comedy vampire hunters rocking a stunning regency dandy / hippy cross-over look, return from the dead with evil schemes! A vampiric femme fatale emerges from the grandfather clock at the stroke of midnight and seduces our fair lady, dragging her off to freaky graveyard ceremonies! Her husband (“an electrical engineer!”, as he’s keen to remind everyone) is understandably perturbed! Characters spout garbled mouthfuls of sub-Anne Rice vampire talk! Everybody tries to get it on with everybody else! Breasts are ritually and unnecessarily revealed as if they were lost treasure maps! There are dozens of costume changes, with the outfits getting increasingly ludicrous as the film progresses! People emerge from nowhere and disappear in puffs of smoke! Fangs are bared, blood is shed and our heroine eventually drives her husband over the edge by casually chewing on a dead pigeon! There’s an intense showdown on a beach! Pretty much everybody dies!

And to think, some people still maintain the contemporary hollywood films are ‘good entertainment’... when will they learn? Needless to say, for anyone who considers themselves a fan of ‘this sort of thing’, ‘Le Frission..’ is fucking essential.

All Hail the Edgar Broughton Band!

By far the best thing I’ve heard in the past couple of weeks is a mystifyingly overlooked album recorded by three moustachioed, unkept freaks in London in the spring of 1969. It is (hushed tone) ‘Wasa Wasa’, the debut LP by the Edgar Broughton Band. It has recently been reissued on CD by Harvest/EMI, and it is mindbogglingly fucking amazing.

I was tipped off about its greatness by Galactic Zoo Dossier, who in turn admit to picking up on it via a recommendation in another great underground zine, Black to Comm, so let’s regard this post as the next stage in what will hopefully be a long succession of word of mouth/print news spreading, cos all aficionados of truly warped rock n’ roll genius need to hear this shit right now.

Basically, Edgar Broughton Band (who dress like prison guards from a Hammer horror movie and look like they’d be at home arm-wrestling Sonny Barger) manage to cook up a witches cauldron of everything exciting and weird that was happening in rock music circa '68-'70 and blast it rough and ready and loud as fuck through a gigantic, echoey free festival sound system, instantly launching fields full of Hawkwind fans onto the biggest bummer of their acid-gobbling lives (or so one would imagine).

As advertised in GZD, opening track ‘Death of an Electric Citizen’ sounds like Captain Beefheart leading first album era Stooges through a brutally mangled blues nightmare. No, really, it does. Satirical Vietnam skit ‘American Boy Soldier’ could be the Bonzo Dog Band channelled via the Manson Family. ‘Why Can’t Somebody Love Me?’ is an absolute MONSTER proto-metal jam based around churning, monolithic post-Hendrix riffage with Edgar delivering blasts of terrifying, cathartic bellowing between shrieking, fumbling fuzz-tone solos.. he really fucking means it, man! ‘Neptune’ continues in a similar vein, but adds lashings of histrionic King Crimson styled prog carnage to proceedings.. jaw-dropping! ‘Evil’ and ‘Crying’ crank things up further before the stunning ‘Love in the Rain’ explodes into hair-raising, orgasmic ferocity, spunking formless, liquid life/death noise over the collapsing skeleton of rhythm & blues like Jimmy Page era Yardbirds tackling the Stooges ‘LA Blues’.... holy fucking jesus! And having torn through some of the wildest and most vital music of their era, the band are content to let it all hang out on the closing ‘Dawn Crept Away’, 14 minutes of utter LSD-fuelled dementia taking in frantic beat poetry, incoherent howling, evil hard rock jams and freaked out tape experiments.

HEAVY in every conceivable sense of the word, ‘Wasa Wasa’ is a stone-cold underground rock classic, and the current reissue should be a cinch to pick up an a bargain price, so in the name of Satan check it out... if you dare.