Looker (2008) is a new erotic photography book by American photographer Richard Kern, with text by British writer Geoff Nicholson, the boyfriend of American erotomaniac Dian Hanson.
There is also a film titled Looker.
Novels by Geoff Nicholson include (from the fantastic Fantasticfiction.co.uk):
Cover art of Cities of the Red Night depicting Brueghels “The Triumph of Death“.
I read Cities of the Red Night this July while in Spain; I had to let it ferment for a while and unfurl it. it was a profound reading experience; and my first semi-sustained one after my first and only aborted attempt to read Burroughs by way of Naked Lunch.
I have the fondest memories of Burroughs in Drugstore Cowboy, and his Gus Van Sant-directed appearance on MTV with Thanksgiving Prayer[1] (unavailable in Europe).
Cities of the Red Night stated that spontaneous ejaculation is a heroin withdrawal symptom. This caught my attention. Today, I looked it up and it is apparently confirmed by medical literature. The novel is the perfect introduction to Burroughs’s whole language is a virus trope, later adopted by the likes of Laurie Anderson, Steven Shaviro and other postmodernists.
From my wiki:
Cities of the Red Night is a novel by William S. Burroughs. It was the first book in the final trilogy of the beat author, and was first published in 1981. Drugs play a major part in the novel, as do male homosexuality. The plot of this non-linear work revolves around a group of revolutionaries who seek the freedom to live under the articles set out by Captain James Mission. At the same time in near present day, detective Clem Snide is searching for a lost boy, abducted for some sort of sexual ritual. Another subplot weaved in thematically through the narrative is a world plagued by a fictional disease, Virus B-23, that destroys humanity and is sexually transmitted and sexual in nature, causing for example spontaneous orgasms. Addiction to opiates provides some resistance to it. The disease is viral, and, at first, it appears to be an allusion to AIDS, although, it must be remembered that the first case of AIDS was not discovered until after the book was first published.
See also:’the cities of the red night were six in number, alternate history, Dr Benway, Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted
Finally, whence the quote came:
“Self-identity is ultimately a symptom of parasitic invasion, the expression within me of forces originating from outside. Language is to the brain as the tapeworm is to the intestines. Even more so: it may just be possible to find a digestive space free from parasitic infection, but we will never find an uncontaminated mental space. Strands of alien DNA unfurl themselves in our brains, just as tapeworms unfurl themselves in our guts. Not just language, but the whole quality of human consciousness, as expressed in male and female is basically a virus mechanism.” —Cities of the Red Night
Triumph of Death (1562) – Pieter Brueghel the Elder
“You probably don’t doubt that the origins of rock and roll are bawdy in nature. You’ve read Gershon Legman and his fellow travelers to take note. You know why Scheherazade was not killed by the king.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlALQf3fahM]
Yet you don’t know American record label Federal Records and their 1951 “Sixty Minute Man“[1], on which a male singer boasts of being able to satisfy his girls with fifteen minutes each of “kissin'” “teasin'” and “squeezin'”, before “blowin'” his “top.” The single reached #1[2] on the R&B chart in May 1951 and stayed there for a 14 weeks. “Sixty Minute” defined what was to become rock and roll which has always been about wine, women and song. —The bawdy origins of rock and roll, Sholem Stein, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1998, in a Pleasantville review.”
Note by the editor: “Big Long Slidin’ Thing” is another example in the category “dirty blues,” an often-overlooked category in rock and roll historiography.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTyMuxTyfiI]
“Sixty Minute Man,” “Big Long Slidin’ Thing“[3] and “Number One” (the Patrice Rushen song, which I managed to sneak in by footnote) are WMC #72, 73 and 74.
Tomorrow it’s been 10 years since Charlie Feathers died.
You probably discovered him by listening to The Cramps in the eighties. Maybe via the Born Bad series.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUA9lOzDi2A&]
This track is the hiccup-styled “I Can’t Hardly Stand It.” It’s WMC #71.
Discogs has its first appearance on The Cramps‘s 1980 cover of the composition, released on I. R. S. Records.
If you like C. Feathers, you may also like Tav Falco and Alex Chilton.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4A5ybTAOWw&]
Some Office Baroque footage, Some footage similar to Office Baroque
Gordon Matta-Clark died thirty years ago today. He stayed in Antwerp for a while in 1977, just before his death, working with Florent Bex, creating Office Baroque, which he called anarchitecture. Pieces of his “building cuts” were sold around the world[1].
I like him, much as I like the near-contemporary and also short-lived Robert Smithson. Whither now, anarchitecture, and other visionary environments?
In answer to your comment[2], yes, it feels sometimes as if I have reached the limits of appreciative criticism.
I dedicate to you, Lichanos, Network, WCC #61.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q]
Scrub to 2:48 for “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more“
I’m not much of an album man, I prefer singles and compilation albums. Nevertheless Sweetheart of the Rodeo is one of my top 50 albums (I feel a new series coming on).
[Youtube=http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=One9fHq-3qc&]
Sweetheart of the Rodeo was the sixth album by American rock band The Byrds, released on July 29 1968. It serves here as the seminal recording of country rock. It was the most commercially unsuccessful album recorded by the group at the time of its release.
Country rock is a musical genre formed from the fusion of rock with country music, with its roots in the American folk music revival.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK70vImXkgY]
After the darling of the young enthusiasts, Bob Dylan, began to record with a rocking rhythm section and electric instruments in 1965 (see Electric Dylan controversy), many other still-young folk artists followed suit. Meanwhile, bands like The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Byrds, whose individual members often had a background in the folk-revival coffee-house scene, were getting recording contracts with folk-tinged music played with a rock-band line-up. Before long, the public appetite for the more acoustic music of the folk revival began to wane.
Enough facts already.
“Hickory Wind“[1] is WMC #69 and “Blue Canadian Rockies“[2] WMC #70.
Manny Farber is dead, reports the film blog Elusive Lucidity[1].
Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies (1971) – Manny Farber [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Manny Farber (1917, Douglas, Arizona, United States –August 17, 2008) was an American painter and early nobrow film critic. He taught at the University of California San Diego alongside Raymond Durgnat, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
His film criticism has appeared during stints at The New Republic (late 1940s), Time (1949), The Nation (1949-54), New Leader (1958-59), Cavalier (1966), Artforum (1967-71). He has also contributed to Commentary, Film Culture, Film Comment, and City Magazine. He contributed art criticism to The New Republic and The Nation during the 1940s through 1950s.
His 1957 essay “Underground films: a bit of male truth” coined the term underground film.
In his essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” originally published in 1962, he eloquently championed B film and under-appreciated auteurs and coined several terms, such as termite art and monsterpieces.
Postwar film critics and theorists of his stature have included Parker Tyler, Edgar Morin, Amos Vogel, Ado Kyrou and Raymond Durgnat while his closest ally in music criticism was the untimely departed Lester Bangs.
Most of Farber’s film writing has been collected in Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies (depicted above).
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kkgQHcdlZU]
“Respect“, a feminist anthem
Aged 91, American music journalist turned music producer Jerry Wexler died last Friday. While at Billboard magazine in 1947 Wexler coined the term “Rhythm and Blues” to replace the tainted term “race music.” He is one of the major record industry players to have marketed 1960s soul music to a white audience.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJM5K51peVw]
He produced such hits as “Respect“[1] and “Son of a Preacher Man“[2], which are WMC #65 and 66.
I watched the 1999 film adaptation of Breakfast of Champions yesterday evening. I decided to check this film – after having read the delightful novel in Spain a week ago – because I considered the novel unfilmable. Unfilmable because of the book’s tone, which hovers perfectly between the surreal and the very mundane. Unfilmable also because it is an illustrated novel (with crude illustrations by Vonnegut himself, the anus illustration at the beginning sets the tone) and because the novel features many matter-of-fact explanations (what is a cow?, what is earth?, etc.).
The film was written and directed by minor American director Alan Rudolph and stars Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte and Barbara Hershey. The film was widely panned by critics. It is indeed painful to watch.
Some feebly redeeming elements include the score by Martin Denny, revisiting Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly in lingerie and the over-the-top cross-dressing scene by Nick Nolte towards the end.
The only way to adapt this unfilmable novel would have been to add at least a third person omniscient voice-over, instead of trying to hide its novelish antecedents.
This [1] unidentified excerpt – from a Vonnegut documentary I presume – is exactly what I have in mind.
Breakfast of Champions (the novel) is cult fiction item #8.
![[1]](http://studio-online.com/socomments/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/gordonmatta_s.jpg){kind=link}