Monthly Archives: June 2008

Introducing Stan Vanderbeek

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1si3JxfYuBA]

Symmetrics (music credits anyone? Possibly Ravi Shankar?)

I don’t think I’ve mentioned American experimental filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek (1927 – 1984) on this blog. Today, I found his Symmetrics[1] of 1972 on YouTube. Vanderbeek is one of those artists I discovered in the post-internet days. Before the advent of YouTube this usually meant reading about him only, apart from the occasional still one might find on the net, such as this[2] very nice one.

Actually seeing Vanderbeek’s output on YouTube has proven to be very rewarding, especially after my disappointment in seeing much-read-about works Wavelength[3] by Michael Snow (born 1929) and that other overrated “structural film” Serene Velocity[4] by Ernie Gehr (born 1943).

These two last ones are deadly serious and devoid of any sense of humor; works such as Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev (1960) [5] by Vanderbeek are anything but that.

Click the numbers to see, hear.

If you like the work of Vanderbeek, you may also enjoy Len Lye.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Abandon all hope, you who enter here“.

Snuff (2008) Chuck Palahniuk

My first exposure to Chuck Palahniuk was the film Fight Club. My second was picking up the novel Haunted and reading the epigraph “There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust,” a quotation from Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Masque of the Red Death.” My third exposure was Diary, a novel I started to read and stopped reading around page 30 for reasons I forget.

The first and second exposures were enough to canonize Chuck.

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

Today, I present you Chuck’s latest novel Snuff, about a porn star on sabbatical, her attempt to break the world record of serial fornication and a portrait of three of the men obliging her in her attempt.

I was a huge Stephen King fan between my twenties and my thirties but if I still would be such an avid reader today, Chuck would replace Stephen. Stephen is a mere horror author while Chuck belongs in the tradition of the fantastique and the grotesque, genres which overlap with horror but which are more of a celebration of the ambiguity and ambivalence of expierence.

Back to the novel.

Since the book industry misses something akin to IMDb.com (although LibraryThing [1] comes close), which allows viewers to rate films, we resort to a randomly picked review [2] by minor writer Lucy Ellmann for the The New York Times who does not like the novel:

“What the hell is going on? The country that produced Melville, Twain and James now venerates King, Crichton, Grisham, Sebold and Palahniuk. Their subjects? Porn, crime, pop culture and an endless parade of out-of-body experiences. Their methods? Cliché, caricature and proto-Christian morality. Props? Corn chips, corpses, crucifixes. The agenda? Deceit: a dishonest throwing of the reader to the wolves. And the result? Readymade Hollywood scripts.”

Don’t you just love this? Negative criticism which makes you feel like reading the books involved. Lucy Ellman conveniently forgets all of the sensationalist writers from the past.

Barry Lederer (1944 – 2008)

I seem to have become somewhat of an obituarist.

The pantheon of disco DJs lost one of its demigods when Barry Lederer (September 9 1944 – May 31 2008) died earlier this week. Now you may ask, if Lederer was a demigod, who were the true gods in disco-DJ-mythology? Most commonly cited in this category are David Mancuso, François Kevorkian, Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, Francis Grasso, Nicky Siano, Tom Moulton and Tee Scott.

In a 2000s interview[1] with disco-disco.com, Lederer noted that his favorite records included:

Abaco Dream“Life and Death In G&A” [2]
The Equals “Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys” [3]
The Detroit Emeralds “Feel the Need In Me” [4]
Bill Withers “Harlem”
Dorothy Morrison “Rain”
Jimmy Ruffin “Tell Me What You Want” [5]
Barrabás “Woman” [6]
Titanic “Rain 2000”
MFSB “Love Is the Message” [7]
Booker T & the MG’s “Melting Pot” [8]
Eddie Kendricks “Girl You Need A Change Of Mind” [9]
Glass House “Working On A Building Of Love”
Donna Summer “Love to Love You Baby” [10]
Voyage the Album [11]
Boris Midney Pinocchio – Album

Click the footnotes to hear the music.

World music classic #47

As the days of my life have progressed, I’ve made up certain rules from myself: only eat chocolate if it’s from the brand Cote d’or, never buy music albums with ugly cover art, not allow to let in new stuff unless it connects with old stuff, etc… One of these rules is not to discuss music with anyone who does not have at least some cursory knowledge of Neil Young, Lee Perry, Arthur Russell, Serge Gainsbourg, Kraftwerk and Fela Kuti. I know that this makes me sound like an arrogant prick, but to my defense I blame it on my placement within what is known as the autistic spectrum.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRZdEqpTmD4]

Another part of my defense is that I have listened to a great variety of music. One of the albums which has enjoyed lots of my time and attention is the 1976 Super Ape album by Jamaican veteran Lee “Scratch” Perry, an album I rediscovered a couple of weeks after I had initially erroneously dismissed it. Super Ape is generally classified as a dub album, and to my knowledge, it is also the first reggae concept album. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

More goodness from 1976 (and here is more from my wiki):

ECSTASY,PASSION , AND PAIN – TOUCH AND GO 05:09	Jackson Sisters – Miracles 04:08	Side Effect – Always There 05:02
Rare Pleasure – Let Me Down Easy (1976)	Nature Zone – Porcupine 03:46	juggy murray jones/ Inside America 1976 07:28
Eddie Harris, It’s alright Now

… à aultre ne veulx estre

Staying with our theme of love letters from great men and women, I want you to have “… à aultre ne veulx estre” (Eng: to anyone else I do not want to belong), which I believe to be by Marguerite of Navarre. Aultre means other in Rabelaisian French.

See also: Aultre ne veulx estre (No desire to be otherwise), quotation from Félicien Rops.

Dino Risi (1916 – 2008)

Dino Risi (December 23 1916 – June 7 2008) was an Italian film director. With Ettore Scola, he was one of the most prolific exponents of Commedia all’italiana and was best-known for films such as Il Sorpasso and Profumo di donna.

Il Sorpasso (1962) – Dino Risi

The Easy Life (Italian: Il sorpasso) is a 1962 Italian cult movie directed by director Dino Risi. Often considered Risi’s masterpiece and one of the most famous examples of Commedia all’italiana film genre and a poignant portrait of Italy in the early 60s when the “economic miracle” (dubbed the “boom” -with the actual English word- by the local media) was starting to transform the country from a traditionally family-centered society into an individualistic, consumerist and shallower one.

Trailer [YouTube]

The soundtrack includes Italian 1960s hits such as “Saint Tropez Twist”[1] by Peppino di Capri, “Guarda come dondolo”[2][3] by Edoardo Vianello and “Vecchio frac” by Domenico Modugno.

PEPPINO DI CAPRI – ST. TROPEZ TWIST (1962)

French theory: the Annales School

The Annales School is a school of historical writing named after the French scholarly journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale (first published in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre) where it was first expounded. Annales school history is best known for its approach to history diametrically opposed to various great man theories, incorporating social scientific methods into history resulting in one of the first currents in social history. The Annales school critics influenced later thinkers like Michel Foucault, who, in turn, influenced other Annales thinkers such as American cultural historian Robert Darnton (The Literary Underground of the Old Regime) and the best-known exponent of this school: Fernand Braudel.

The Annalistes, especially Lucien Febvre, advocated a histoire totale, or histoire tout court, a complete study of a historic problem. While several authors continue to carry the Annales banner, today the Annales approach has been less distinctive as more and more historians do work in cultural history and economic history.

The images shown (Thomas Müntzer als Theologe der Revolution, 1921 in a French 10/18 translation and Le Problème de l’incroyance au XVI^e siècle. La religion de Rabelais, 1942) are only tangentially related to the Annales School and were sourced at the enigmatic page La Passion des Anabaptistes by Belgian comic book creators Ambre and David Vandermeulen.

I can’t help but wondering what – if there was one – the relation of the Annalistes was to Georges Bataille, who started his journal Documents in the same year as Annales d’histoire économique et sociale. Perhaps Valter “Surreal Documents” knows?

World music classic #45 and 46

“Show ‘Em Whatcha Got” (1988) Public Enemy

Both images lead to YouTube clips.

Love Letters of Great Men

Love letter from Beethoven to an unknown woman (his Immortal Beloved), published in the fictional book Love Letters of Great Men. And I thought my handwriting was bad.

dir – mein Leben – mein alles – leb wohl – o liebe mich fort –
verken nie das treuste Herz deines Geliebten
L.

ewig dein
ewig mein
ewig uns

And this is the English translation

you – my life – my all – farewell. Oh continue to love me –
never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved
L.

ever thine
ever mine
ever ours

By Freudian free association: Du and Dir are German words for you. “Du” (Bist Alles)[1] is also the title of a European popular song by Peter Maffay later covered by David Hasselhoff [2]. In 1969, when this song came out, you could also have been discovering Kool & The Gang and The Stooges.

Jahsonic

Aantekeningen uit Dodenstad.