Hamilton Bohannon was an American musician best known for the disco hit “Let’s Start the Dance” (1978).
Other compositions of note include “I Remember” (1981, the basis for “From: Disco To: Disco”, 1996), “Me and the Gang” (1978, the basis for “Get Get Down”, 1999), “Truck Stop” (1974), “South African Man” (1975) and “The Beat (Part 2)” (1979).
His instrumentals have a mesmerizing repetitiveness and a lack of violins which went down well with the people who liked to dance but were not into the kitsch of disco.
Philippe Nahon was a French actor known for his roles in French horror and thriller films.
Nahon was has been described as the fetish actor of maverick director Gaspar Noé, playing a nameless butcher in no less than three films: Carne, I Stand Alone, and Irréversible (cameo).
Above is the gimmicky “30 seconds to leave this film” scene from I Stand Alone (1988).
The film is especially bleak.
Not surprisingly, because it focuses on several pivotal days in the life of a butcher faced with abandonment, isolation, rejection and unemployment.
There was a time when I relished these kind of films. I remember seeing a trailer for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and absolutely wanting to see it.
The attraction for this fare has largely faded.
Nevertheless, watching scenes from I Stand Alone, one cannot help being immediately intrigued.
This happened two years ago but I only found out today.
Also, I had never heard of Joe Frank.
Today, I googled for Ken Nordine and ASMR (one of my guilty pleasures) and I found Joe Frank.
I listened and liked immediately and immensely. Frank is an absolute genius.
Up there in absurdity with the likes of Roland Topor.
Joe Frank was a French-born American writer radio performer known for his philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and absurd monologues and radio dramas, says Wikipedia.
Typical radio dramas include “Bad Karma” (2000) and “That Night” (1994).
“Bad Karma” opens with:
“I’m sitting at a dinner party attended by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Seated at another smaller table are Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milošević, Pinochet and some others I don’t recognize. And then there’s a third table, sort of a children’s table, it has shorter legs and smaller children’s chairs. And sitting there are Richard Speck, Gary Gilmore, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.”
Synopsis from “That Night”:
“Joe’s uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen’s fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we’re on the edge of chaos, it’s great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs).” [3]
“That Night” also mentions maps on a 1:1 scale, just as Borges did in his one-paragraph story “On Exactitude in Science”.
In my book he is noted for his contribution to the oddball Latin jazz album Concepts in Unity (1975) by Grupo Folklorico Y Experimental Nuevayorquino which I discovered in the 1990s when I was collecting releases by Salsoul Records.