Gershon Kingsley was a German-born composer and electronic musician known for his instrumental “Popcorn“.
That composition was released on the album Music to Moog By (1969).
The ‘Popcorn’ instrumental starts at 10:00.
RIP Anna Karina (1940 – 2019)
Anna Karina was a Danish actress best-known for her work with the French New Wave and Jean-Luc Godard.
She appeared four times in the film On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time (1959) by Marxist/situationist Guy Debord, a much more interesting figure than Godard.
These four appearances were from television commercials. Three fragments are from a Monsavon commercial, a fourth I have been unable to identify.
In the first clip (13:53) Anna stands in front of a mirror in the same bathroom as in which she takes a bath in the third clip.
The voice-over: “What was directly lived reappears frozen in the distance, engraved in the tastes and illustions of an era and carried off with it.”
In the second clip (14:41) she is in the bath and rubs herself with soap.
The voice-over: “There is no more should-be; being has been consumed to the point of ceasing to exist. The details are already lost in the dust of time. “Who was afraid of life, afraid of the night, afraid of being taken, afraid of being kept?”
In the third clip (17:30) she is seen at the wheel of a convertible car, a bird’s eye view, three young people get out of the car.
The voice-over: “In the final analysis, stars are not created by their talent or lack of talent, or even by the film industry or advertising. They are created by the need we have for them.”
The fourth clip (18:09) begins where the first clip left off.
The voice-over: “The advertisements during intermissions are the truest reflection of an intermission from life.”
Translations are from [1].
RIP Jack ‘The Way I Walk’ Scott (1936 – 2019)
Jack Scott was a Canadian-American singer and songwriter.
1959 saw him chart with “The Way I Walk“, made famous twenty years later by The Cramps on their Gravest Hits (1979).
I was fourteen when this came out but only discovered this in my early twenties. In the garage rock period in the mid 1980s, when we were dressed rockabilly style.
RIP Danny Aiello (1933 – 2019)
Danny Aiello was an American actor, often characterized as a character actor.
Aiello played in The Stuff (1985) by Larry Cohen. In that film he is Mr. Vickers, a man who works for the FDA and approved ‘the stuff’. He is later eaten by his dog who was being fed ‘the stuff’ too. They were both addicted to ‘the stuff’.
The Stuff is a typical Cohen film, at once critical of society and sensationalist.
It belongs to a small category of Hollywood films with an anti-consumerist message. Another important film in that category is They Live (1988).
Perhaps these are the two only films in that category.
RIP Marie ‘Roxette’ Fredriksson (1958 – 2019)
Marie Fredriksson was a Swedish singer known as the lead singer to Roxette.
I have nothing with that band. Perhaps it’s a generation thing, I was 24 when their song “The Look” came out, so too old to make any sort of impression.
To me it’s more pap than pop because, let us be honest, this was 1989 and instead of listening to “The Look”, you could have been listening to “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis, “I’ll House You” by Jungle Brothers, “Work That Mutherfucker” by Steve Poindexter, “Sueño Latino” by Sueño Latino, “Pacific State” by 808 State, “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy, “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone Lōc or “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak.
Furthermore, in 1989 there was also “Love Shack” by The B52’s which brought pap-ish joy without the bombast of Roxette. Both bands share their use of the guitar but Roxette sounds like American middle of the road arena rock.
And if you were into guilty pleasures, you could have been listening to “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew or “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic.
“The Look” was featured on Grand Theft Auto IV, on the Vice City FM† channel, at least half of the songs on that channel are better than Roxette’s.
A long time ago, I decided to do only appreciative criticism, but since this blog has evolved into a necrology, it seems fitting that I strive for completeness and thus ‘bash‘ Roxette.
On the other hand, as the video above shows, Roxette had lots of fun.
Life is a stage and each must play his part… so Roxette, enjoy your symptom.
RIP Roger ‘outsider art’ Cardinal (1940 – 2019)
Roger Cardinal was a English art scholar famous for originating the term “outsider art” in his book Outsider Art (1972). Outsider art coincides with the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1970s.
In that book, new to me was the work of Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve (1863 – 1934) who made work with seashells such as Mask of Queen Victoria (above), reminiscent of rocaille .
In that tradition is also Festoon, Masks and Rosettes Made of Shells (1656) by Jan van Kessel senior and Arcimboldesque Head and Beethoven Portrayed by Arcimboldo by Jan Švankmajer.
RIP Irving ‘calypso’ Burgie (1924 – 2019)
Irving Burgie was an American songwriter best-known for two songs: “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell“, both made famous by Harry Belafonte on his album Calypso.
I’m interested in the era when traditional folk songs (which are per definition authorless) were appropriated by Western musicians and turned into pop hits.
This seems to also have been the case with the Belafonte songs Irving Burgie “wrote” .
In the words of Sholem Stein:
Harry Belafonte, a New Yorker of Jamaican origin, released wildly popular “calypso” hit records in the period 1956-1958. In reality “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jamaica Farewell” – both featured on Calypso (1956) and both written by Irving Burgie – were mento songs sold as calypso. Previously recorded Jamaican versions of these now classic “calypso” hits can be heard on the compilation Jamaica – Mento 1951-1958 (2009) [above].
Louise Bennett-Coverley gave Harry Belafonte the foundation for his 1956 hit “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” by telling him about the Jamaican folk song “Hill and Gully Rider” (the name also given as “Day Dah Light”).”
“Jamaica Farewell” was compiled and modified from many folk pieces to make a new song. Burgie acknowledged his use of the tune of another mento, “Iron Bar””.–Sholem Stein
I remember vividly how one night my parents went to a Harry Belafonte concert in Antwerp and lodged me and my brother in a fancy hotel which had a pool that was partly inside and partly outside the hotel. It was winter and the pool outside was steaming into the open air. This must have been before the first oil crisis. (update: I called my mother, it was the Sofitel, located on the Boomsesteenweg 15, Aartselaar)
RIP Clive James (1939 – 2019)
Clive James was an Australian-born author, satirist and critic working in the United Kingdom.
I was introduced to his work in the 1990s when he presented tv series such as …on Television (1982-88) and Clive James’s Postcard from… (1989-95).
His self-deprecating tone was priceless.
Querying my database, I found out James also expressed his political views. As early as 1969 he contributed “Wind Up Black Dwarfs” – a plea for realpolitik – to London OZ.
RIP Gahan Wilson (1930 – 2019)
In the United States, Gahan Wilson died. I saw his death announced on the Facebook page of Tim Lucas.
Gahan Wilson was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator.
I was unacquainted with the work of Wilson. Dave Letterman introduced him in the 1980s as the “guru of gruesome, wizard of the weird and the Michelangelo of the macabre.”
Me being European, Wilson reminds me of Tomi Ungerer (1931- 2019) or Roland Topor (1938-1997) and perhaps more of Topor, since like Topor, Wilson was not political.
Wilson is regarded as the only heir of Charles Addams (1912-1988) and often mentioned in one breath with Edward Gorey (1925-2000) .
The epithet ‘sick humor‘ sometimes pops up, although I have to disagree on this one, as, as a European, I am used to Hara Kiri, most likely the epitome of 20th century sick humor.
Since I found out about his death, I watched the “The Waitress” episode of The Kid (2001) and Wilson’s appearance at David Letterman’s (March 30, 1982) when he published Is Nothing Sacred?. I also listened to a reading of the wonderful story “The Sea was Wet as Wet Could Be” (1967).
His cartoon “I am an insane eye doctor and I am going to kill you now…” is frequently cited as of his best work. In it, a non-suspecting man reading an optometrist’s ‘eye examination’ with the text cited is approached from behind by a knife wielding optometrist.
There are body horror elements in his work and the cartoon “Harry, I really think you ought to go to the doctor.”, in which Harry is a regular man with the head of a prawn, is positively Lovecraftian.
The ‘worries of pleasure’, or, the baseness of Western erotica vs. the exaltedness of Eastern erotica
This is the picture I referred to when in my previous post[1] I mentioned ‘something’ that kindled my interest in oriental erotica, perhaps for the first time.
It is the cover of the book Eroticism by French writer Georges Bataille as it is depicted in Onfray‘s book Le Souci des plaisirs which I bought during my recent visit to Pau and which I read last Thursday.
Bataille’s cover is illustrated with a photo of an Indian erotica masterpiece: a detail from the Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, part of the Khajuraho Group of Monuments.
When I was writing De geschiedenis van de erotiek I already speculated that the conception and experience of sexuality (and ergo erotica) in the east, cannot be that much different from ours in the west:
“In the West, there is an idea that the art of love in the East is more sophisticated than ours. Whether this is true, cannot be said with certainty. After all, what is sophisticated and how can we look into the bedrooms of countless couples who make love every night in the East? Do they make love like we do or is their business conducted in a more tantric way? Hard to ascertain, difficult to refute.” (Geerinck, 2011)
But Onfray seems to disagree and repeats trite clichés on the exaltedness of Eastern sexuality in ‘Le Souci des plaisirs’.
Onfray is right about one thing: the photo of the highly sexual Khajuraho Group of Monuments is totally out of place on the cover of Bataille’s book in the sense that Bataille’s Erotisicism is exclusively about western eroticism.
Bataille owes this to himself.
He should not have written:
“Numerous Indian temples solemnly remind us of the obscenity buried deep in our hearts.”
In the section “Les leçons de la couverture” (The lessons on book covers, pages 118-19) of ‘Le souci des plaisrs’, Onfray comments on this 10/18 edition of George Bataille’s L’Erotisme The subscript to the photo of the cover reads “Dieux et déesses hindous, couples mithunas et apsaras, temple de Kandarya construit sous Vidyadhara (1017-1029), Khajuraho, Madhya Prasesh, Inde.”
Onfray, surprised about the cover, asks rhetorically.
Obscenity? Really? Where?
He answers that obscenity seems to be a Western thing when he says that as far as the affirmation is concerned “that at the bottom of our hearts there is buried obscenity,” this probably holds true for Bataille and Sade and other “nihilists of the flesh”, but certainly not for the contemporary Indians of Khajuraho…” (“Sûrement pas pour les Indiens contemporains de Khajuraho…”)
So I wonder, is obscenity really a purely occidental thing, just as perversion? Is it a coincidence that sadism and masochism are two perversions of sexual love that first came to fruition in the west?
And what about Japan, notorious for its kinkiness?
Is Japan the exception that proves the rule?
Because if sadomasochism is typically Western, why is it to be found elevated to perfection in Japan, a country largely devoid of Christian influence?
Japan is usually regarded as part of the West, ever since its Samsung- and Sony-ization.
So is sexual perversion the dividing line in the East–West dichotomy?
Questions.