Andy Seven's Blog, page 12

America Drinks And Goes Home

Dizzy Dean played guitar in a Guns & Roses tribute band and my wife Ruthie made stage wear for him, so he put us on the guest list for an all-tribute band show at the House of Blues. Ruthie plus one; I was the plus one. We were going to see three tribute bands, curious to see who would look the most and sound the most like the real thing. There was a Poison tribute band, the other was a Judas Priest tribute band, and then there was the aforementioned Guns & Roses tribute band.

We were going slowly down the Strip towards the club, the traffic sludgy being that it was Friday night. All seemed to trudge along well until we had to stop at a red light across the street from The Star Strip, a notorious strip club.

In a vain effort to entice potential patrons to drop what they were doing and go across the street, a big-assed stripper in a halter top and ass-baring shorts in sky-high heels strutted onto the crosswalk. Lucky for her she still had the green light.

She went into a little dance, no a twitch, the kind an antelope does when stuck in a bear trap. Then she began twerking, pumping her big bubble butt ass up and down faster than a Dupont paint can mixer. The light changed to green for me, red for her. Still, she twerked in our faces.

“TURN IT LOOSE, WHORE!” I yelled.
“She’s not going to get out of the street”, Ruthie groaned.
“Oh yeah?”

I slammed my size 11 on the accelerator headed straight for Little Twerk. With absolute terror in her cheap blue contact lenses she jumped out of the way from my Murder Chariot. I missed her by that much.

It was a good thing we got to get on the guest list because we didn’t have enough to get in, not enough to drink anything, and just enough to pay for parking on an expensive Sunset Strip parking lot. The House of Blues sat on the Sunset Strip, with an old Mississippi Delta wooden shack frame house and old country porch sitting atop the massive concert hall. There was nothing country about the building – most of the customers were the same old gaggle of coke sniffing Porsche riding cosmos haunting the Strip since time began.

When we entered the club Thorny Rose, the Poison tribute band, were already up and playing loud enough to make an airport jealous. I nudged Ruthie and pointed up.
"Let's go upstairs!"
"Yeah!"

We walked up the stairs to the balcony with a few chunky girls dressed to the nines falling into us running downstairs.
"JESSICA, WAIT FOR ME!"
"Excuse you!" Ruthie yelled. "Bitch".

We pushed through the crowd in the balcony only to find an Olympic sized bar with patrons waiting three deep for their drinks. I looked above me and smiled.
"Hey, check it out!" I yelled. "There's a higher level and it's pretty empty!"

There was a higher level practically kissing the rafters of the barn-roofed club and there were a few scattered night clubbers here and there. Not crowded at all, so we made a bee-line to that level.

"I wish I had a drink", Ruthie complained. "It might make this place a little more bearable".
"Yeah, I know".
I looked below me at the ground floor of the club and there was a dense crowd of fans rocking out to the placebo looks and sounds of Thorny Rose. The guitarist was short and fat, looking more like Buddy Hackett with a wig than like C.C. Deville.

"I've heard of Unskinny Bop but this is ridiculous", I yelled into Ruthie's ear. Ruthie turned to me with some chewing gum.
"As long as we can't have anything to drink let's have some gum. Maybe it'll make things better!" she said. I guess it did.

We hung from the railing enjoying the show, and it was alright. Well, alright until more people began racing up to our level with their drinks in tow. Thorny Rose played their big Cat Dragged In song or whatever the hell it was and after a failed attempt at wringing an encore, got the boot from the sound man, who burbled over the PA, "THORNY ROSE, EVERYBODY....THORNY ROSE. NEXT UP, APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION!"

A big howl from the crowd and I looked down at the lower level to see the bar now five man deep.

A blonde girl with a drink in each hand snuck in next to us with someone who didn't look like a boyfriend. Her hair stuck up from sweat and her skin looked clammy. Her glasses were fogged up like a midnight harbor.
"HEY!!! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" she yelled, her eyes rolling up in her head. "WASN'T POISON GREAT? THOSE GUYS CAN REALLY ROCK THE HOUSE WHHHOOOOOOOO!!!!"

We both smiled with her and at her. Her male friend grabbed at one of her drinks.
"Let me have some of your drink, Marcy!" he yelled.
"NO, RANDY! YOU BOUGHT THIS JUST FOR ME! IT'S...MY BIRTHDAY!"
"Just a sip!"
"SHIT! ALL-RIGHT!"

Randy practically tore the plastic cup out of her cold, nearly dead fingers and took a rather long, generous sip from her drink.
"HEY, ASSHOLE! THAT WAS MORE THAN JUST A SIP! GIMME THAT!"
"Oh, okay! What the hell!" Randy was getting kind of drunk clammy himself.
"DON'T BOGART MY BIRTHDAY DRINK, DUDE! GET YOUR OWN!"
"You got two drinks, girl!"
"I - SAID!" Her eyes began closing down like she was ready to go to sleep. "GET YOUR OWN COCKTAIL, RAN-DEEEE!"

Finally the lights turned down again and the crowd cheered. The Wizard of Oz voice from the PA wryly yelled, "GIVE A WARM HOUSE OF BLUES WELCOME TO....APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION!"
"WOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!" Marcy hooted loud enough to split my already broken ear drums.

Appetite For Destruction came out to low, cold blue lights as the band cranked up the highly dramatic beginning to "Welcome To The Jungle". Dizzy Dean wore a top hat, black curly wig, dark sunglasses with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.

They slammed into that perennial metal classic when the fake Axl Rose went into his patented Jimmy Cagney soft shoe shuffle, swaying back and forth with the mike stand. Marcy lifted up her drink in the air and one-sixth of it sloshed on us.

"WOOOO-HOOOO! AXLLLLLLL!!!! HEY, I'M SORRY GUYS! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" Marcy yelled.
"It's no problem", Ruthie smiled. "We have to freshen up!"
"Let's get the fuck out of here!" I yelled in her ear.

Illustration by Derek Yaniger.

We quickly went down one level, the one by the bar, but the steps to the ground level was jammed with people and took a lot longer. For one thing one guy was pushing and shoving his girlfriend on the staircase.
"DAMMIT, MISSY, WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE I LOVE YOU????" He then shoved her so hard I thought she was going to fall on me.

Ruthie was about to step down to the ground floor until I saw something grotty and yanked her by the arm back up on the stair case. "LOOK OUT!!!!"

We both looked down at a deep puddle of bubbly orange vomit with spiky white speckles sticking up from the mush. As soon as anybody stuck their foot in that sickness they would surely slip across the floor with their pants painted in that puke.

"YUCK!" Ruthie grabbed her nose and mouth. We traversed around the vomit puddle and walked around the heavily packed ground floor.

In the dark all over the club we could see overweight men in their thirties and forties wearing their best black tees bearing the emblem of their favorite band. Aging groupie faces were marching around in fishnet stockings and short skirts, sized too small for most of them.

We found a small area by the sound board and club goers jealous of our discovery kept trying to stand in our spot. The room stank of stale beer and the floor was sticky of not so dry drinks. There was even a faint stench of wee in the club, which greatly enhanced the drama of "Paradise City".

Because of our unintentional sobriety everything appeared clearer and sounded more vivid than ever. We processed people with disabled motor skills, pissed to the gills, and it crackled with a disturbing electricity. I took a look around and saw grotesques worthy of a George Grosz caricature.

Above the noise and smell of Clubland I started thinking: When I drank, did I ever act like this? Was I really that bad? I must have been the most unbearable asshole in the world. This is so bad I just want to call up everybody on the planet and apologize for ever getting drunk and obnoxious. This is the hardest wake-up call I've ever been handed.

The topper to the show was the acapella section of "Sweet Child O' Mine" WHERE WILL WE GO? WHERE WILL WE GO-OH-OH???? AYE-AYE-AYE! when a few club-going commandos began swinging at each other and the bouncers dove in like a pair of firefighters putting out a blazing skyscraper.

"I think I've heard enough", I yelled over the loud music. "How about you?"
"Yeah, let's go", Ruthie agreed. We spat out our gum in the bin, done with the show. As we exited the club I took one last look and swore I saw a cloud of steam rising in the air around the room.

When we got outside the stars popped from the dark might blue sky with harsh punctuations of glaring street lamps every few feet. The air was comparatively fresh and clean from the night club's olfactory cocktail of stale beer, urine and vomit. We got to the car, I pulled out of the lot and looked at Ruthie.
"So that's the House of Blues. I not only heard everything, I smelled it, too".
"Yeah, we got a lot of bang for our non-buck. Well, Dizzy was great!"
"Yes, he was". I drove down Sunset Boulevard thinking about club soda on ice with a splash of lime juice. Straight, no chaser.

Menswear Apocalypse

Up until twenty years ago, when the word menswear came up the most common visual brought to mind were very well-groomed guys in suits, safari jackets and houndstooth slacks. Slacks, slacks, slacks, a real menswear word. Repeat after me: Haggar, Jantzen, Bally.

The pantheon of male fashion was Playboy, Esquire and GQ Magazines, manly graveyards of stiff, stodgy non-style. Every fabric was of a barfy earth tone, and on the opposite end of the spectrum when Miami Vice was the rage, colors were so alarmingly explosive, it was impossible to wear something with a modicum of modesty.

And then something funny happened: designers began taking notice of what rock musicians were wearing and incorporated this influence in their designs. Clothes looked more rock & roll in design and colors became freer, not Technicolor goofy as in the past, but tasteful.

With the advent of designers as diverse as Commes Des Garcons, Paul Smith and a few others, menswear became as challenging and as exciting as women’s fashions. Choices in menswear became more diverse, and consequently there is now a larger market with men making these choices, rather than enlisting their girlfriends to make them.

While female models were getting younger and thinner than ever, the whole Paul Newman/Sean Connery looking model was slowly getting weeded out in favor of a new male counterpart. Models like Andrej Pejic, Paul Boche and Cole Mohr were now getting major editorials and runway work, garnering huge followings in the process.

New exciting menswear magazines began popping up like Another Man, V Man, Essential Homme, Numero Homme, Fantastic Man and too many more to mention. These exciting new models could be seen in all of the aforementioned magazines.

As I stated in a previous blog title, “Once Rock Stars Looked Like Models, Now Models Look Like Rock Stars”, and the posted pictures bear this revelation out. Most of the models shown here (Erik Andersson, Dylan Fosket, Val Bird, Jaco Van den Hoven and Karl Byrne) could easily be in a rock band and garner a huge following.

What’s the significance of this? Well, once upon a time rock music was all about the packaging of a band, with cool hair and clothes being an important component. With that in mind, menswear designers have been employing the same strategy to sell fashion to young men, launching bombshells of hard rocking visuals as potent as the first New York Dolls album cover or a Supergrass CD.

The end result is that men of all ages and persuasions can enjoy fashion like they never have before, looking cool without having their girlfriends to run the show for them. This is truly Men’s Liberation at its finest, and everybody wins.

*********************

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the late, great Craig Lee, my former comrade in punk rock noise. One of my earliest memories was when he and Alice Bag approached me about joining The Bags on saxophone. I was flattered, but I didn’t really think there was a place for me in their band; it seemed pretty complete to me. I went to see them perform at The Whiskey A Go-Go just to see if I could mentally place myself in their songs.

Craig played good punk guitar and he did this odd Harpo Marx routine as he played, making these cross eyed wild Harpo Marx expressions. It wasn’t that weird if you think about it, because around that time Ron Mael was doing a Charlie Chaplin thing in Sparks and Rick Nielsen was exhuming Huntz Hall in Cheap Trick, so Craig was probably getting into the whole slapstick rock look.

At any rate The Bags were tearing it up, but I just couldn’t hear my squalling saxophone fighting itself through their sonic skronk. As a side note, my horn playing is very loud in general and many singers have a major chore singing over my sax playing, so it would have been a constant battle, anyway. Unfortunately they took my rejection personally, which wasn’t the intention, but I ended up playing with old Craig a few years later.

In 1980 I played in a band he put together called The Boneheads which also sported a gaggle of scenesters including Robert Lopez of The Zeros (aka El Vez) and Elissa Bello of The Go-Gos. It wasn’t a band that took itself too seriously, which I really enjoyed. We sounded like a cross between The Contortions and The B-52’s, very Alphabet City + downtown New York. Craig wrote most of the material, sang a lot and I thought he did a great job.

I ran off a little while later to play with someone else, but I saw Craig again nine years later at a show. It would be the last time I would ever see him, and he was unnaturally friendly - he had a tendency to be abrasive with me in the past. I didn’t know that he had medical problems, so I had no idea he was so close to leaving us.

He said the funniest thing to me. “Andy, you know, you really ought to be a writer. That’s your true calling. That’s what you really should be doing. I bet you’d be so good at it”.
Looking back, not only do I now agree with him, but there’s a touch of clairvoyance in that remark that only the dying can see. I’ve never forgotten that advice and I have even more difficulty forgetting Craig after giving me that message. That’s a send-off message I will take to the grave with me.

WRANGLERS' CANYON/CRASH WALKER Double Novel Out Now!

Meet Crash Walker: a man too obtuse for trouble, too lazy to kill anyone, and in addition incredibly boorish, self-centered and incredibly good looking enough to earn contempt from everyone he meets, especially from other men. He is the star of my double novel set WRANGLERS' CANYON/CRASH WALKER.

The western novel format is an extremely limited one. Most stories from that era are rigidly defined; they have to be, of course, since they are confined to a specific point in time. The standard western tale has been told countless times via literature, television, radio shows and motion pictures for over a hundred years. The biggest challenge for me was to write something fresh within that classic genre.

I made a concerted effort to avoid the current nouveau Western clichés by drawing on a pair of disparate influences: With Wranglers' Canyon I went for a more surreal approach, so I used Alejandro Jodorowsky's classic film "El Topo" as a major influence, but more importantly I drew from the erotic horror films of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco.

As for our hero, Crash Walker, although he populates both novels, no two stories could be more different; in Wranglers' Canyon our hero is a floater, drifting between jobs as a cattle driver, ranch hand, rodeo rider, singing star, convicted criminal, ultimately promoting to Sheriff of Jonestown. He accepts the role forced on him.

In the second novel Crash Walker,which takes place 100 years later, he's a western television star in Hollywood during the post-JFK era. This time he’s the target of an ominous conspiracy to exploit him as a puppet politician propped up to serve a small Californian committee of powerful businessmen. In the second novel, unlike the first, he doesn’t accept the role forced on him.

He’s also charged with the murder of a right wing television star, making him simultaneously famous and notorious, but not quite the way he wants it. Through it all he films toy commercials, performs publicity stunts, makes public appearances, visits his mentally insane missile designer father, and dodges an even more mentally unstable ex-girlfriend.

Walker is even more of a fantasy figure in the second novel than in the first one, i.e. his name isn’t even real, it’s a showbiz name created by a casting agent. While the first novel challenges the bridge between fantasy and reality, the second one has its feet firmly planted in reality with our star earning his keep with fantasy.

TV westerns were a major pop culture force during the Sixties, putting our hero squarely in the center of the action in Hollywood, placing him at Sunset Boulevard parties, teen festivals by the beach and Hollywood movie premieres. If it happened in the Sixties then Crash Walker was most likely there.

The book you’re reading is presented in the double novel format so popular during the paperback publishing boom of the Forties and Fifties. Both novels have been joined together in one volume because in addition to starring Crash Walker they also have parallels in characterization and plot development. This was a surprising coincidence, given that both novels were written four years apart of each other.

In both novels Crash Walker responds to a whirlpool of turbulent change forced upon him by men of control, greed and societal pressure. These are tales about troubled times and the man who meets them head on.

Wranglers' Canyon/Crash Walker, Andy Seven’s double novel is available for $3.99 at all popular eBook retailers, including:
Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Wranglers-Canyon-Crash-Walker-Seven-ebook/dp/B0149J3P8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440213205&sr=1-1&keywords=9781483557540
iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/wranglers-canyon-crash-walker/id1032555968?mt=11
Nook (Barnes & Noble):
COMING SOON!
Oyster:
https://www.oysterbooks.com/book/APoGRc2kxCC2tR8NZvJNtm/wranglers-canyoncrash-walker

Each website provides a short sample - about four chapters worth - of the novel for previewing before purchase so you can see what deviltry is brewing in this shiny beast.

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - Tortured Women Edition

During the 1970's a whole slew of films documenting the unhappiness of the American women proliferated, whether it was John Cassavettes' "Woman Under The Influence" or Alan Rudolph's "Remember My Name". One thing was certain, in the Seventies women were unhappier than ever and the cinema was there to document it so well.

Some of these films have finally made it in their fullest form on You Tube. One of them, That Cold Day In The Park is available on DVD, but the other two are not. Fortunately they are now available on You Tube for your viewing pleasure. They all come highly recommended.

That Cold Day In The Park (1969) - Directed by Robert Altman, this film stars Sandy Dennis as a young spinster who socializes with couples much older than her. Just when you think she's going to drown in her cobwebs she looked out her window and sees a meek-looking teenage boy sitting alone on a park bench, staying in the same spot even in the pouring rain.

She runs out to get him and gives him shelter in her apartment. He's a mute and doesn't speak, virtually behaving like a small infant (shades of The Baby!) with her bathing him and all the rest. Of course, things are never what they seem and we find out that there's more to this teen than meets the eye. Dennis progressively behaves more carnally towards this puppy boy until things take a deadly turn.

Filmed during the hoary hippie era, That Cold Day in The Park has a trashy groovy vibe about it that's dated as hell but still has that kitschy TV rock star veneer about it. Luana Anders has a great part as a Patti Smith-type hooker that raises the energy level of this mostly downbeat film.

By the way, as a side note did you know that Sandy Dennis was girlfriend to cool jazz bop genius Gerry Mulligan? What an angular silhouette they must have cut.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977) - Although the only full movie version is in German you can still follow along and figure out what the hell is going on. Based on Judith Rossner's best seller, Goodbar is the disturbing story of good Irish Catholic daughter Theresa, a teacher for deaf mute children (Madonna) who prowls the discofied bars of naughty New York at night (Whore). There's some serious sexual Jekyll and Hyde hijinks afoot in this story.

By day Theresa juggles her teaching with trying to get a decent hearing aid for a sweet ghetto child, trying to gain the confidence of her protective brother (a great LeVar Burton) and arguing with social worker William Atherton (best known in Day of the Locust).

By night Theresa falls for no-good hustler Richard Gere, sleazier here than he was in Breathless, if that's possible. Before she meets Gere we see her hooking up with guys and actually charging money for her services. What a tramp! The scary part is that she's supposed to be the stable daughter in her family. Guess who plays the unstable one? You guessed it, Tuesday Weld.

I won't give the ending away, but I will say that things don't go well, and why should they, when a brazen hussy flings her quiff like a party favor? Oh well, at least the poor kid gets her hearing aid. Someone gets a happy ending.

Looking For Mr. Goodbar has never had a proper DVD release in the United States because of clearance problems regarding the heavy disco soundtrack. Basically what this means is that the DVD company would have to pay a small fortune to the songwriters and publishers for permission to use their songs in the picture. This also explains why films with rock heavy soundtracks have either taken forever to be released or not been released at all.

As a side note, director Richard Brooks co-wrote the screen play for The Killers with John Huston but never received credit for it. I hope he got paid, anyway.

Play It As It Lays (1973) - I reviewed this before a few years ago on my blog (The American Nightmare of Frank Perry). In fact, I was the one who posted this little gem on You Tube, so don't forget to subscribe.

Play It As It Lays is the story of Maria, former model and star of a 10th rate flop biker film. The unhappy wife of a wild, temperamental film director, we see Maria get an abortion, mope about the beaches of Malibu, visit her autistic son and drive endlessly down the freeway in her convertible shooting off her gun. Does any of this really lead up to anything?

Tuesday Weld is perfectly cast as the disillusioned California blonde swilling booze and popping pills with gay producer friend Anthony Perkins, reuniting them professionally for the first time since Pretty Poison. It's great seeing Perkins play a sane human being for a change. This time Tuesday's the psycho in an empty headed blonde way.

That's it. This is only a small sampling of films demonstrating women at their most tormented. What makes the these films so deft is their reluctance to simplify their subject in a Phil Donahue women-are-victims sort of way. Make no mistake, these dames are screwed up badly and are living wrecks, but that's what makes these movies so enjoyable. You want to see them wreak havoc on their lives and everyone else's, and there's no Joan Crawford quick fix happy ending going on here, either. I didn't even mention Diary Of A Mad Housewife, also directed by Frank Perry, also available on You Tube and a must see on your YT list. But anyway, watch and feel the pain, the sadness and madness of what it means to be a woman.

We Can Go Anywhere

One of the few pleasures left on the internet without fear of reprisal or stalking is the amazing and virtually miraculous app called Google Earth. The word miracle definitely comes to mind because the fact that I can go anywhere on Earth and see what it looks like is absolutely remarkable.

Google Earth works brilliantly in concert with Mapquest in that you can quickly identify what your destination will look like before you even get there. Pretty phenomenal resources if you ask me, and anyone taking this for granted most be crazy in their rapidly decaying brain.

The application begins with a pic of planet Earth, asking you where you want to go. You type in an address and once filled in, you start flying over the planet, narrowing down to the country and over the city and into the neighborhood, taking into the street you’re looking for. This can be a little dizzying, like you’re parachuting into the location you’re looking for.

The weird part is typing in old homes and finding that many of them have been torn down to make way for some ugly Los Angeles condo. Pretty depressing. On the other hand, my last house in Providence, Rhode Island and first home in LA are virtually unchanged since the day I last lived there.

I checked out my last home in Providence, and other than the lawn being changed into some ridiculous bush pageant has been virtually unchanged since I last moved out in 1964. That’s pretty remarkable. Thanks, Google Earth!

I also visited my old grammar school Providence Hebrew Day School and realized it hasn’t been renovated a touch since I last attended there (the same time period). In a weird sense, there’s the feeling of time travel in these Google Earth travels. If your old haunts haven’t been touched since you last left them you are essentially traveling back through time to visit them again. That’s simultaneously miraculous and eerie, but that’s the bizarre miracle of Google Earth.

Another benefit to scoping out unknown areas is the ability to possibly avoid a bad neighborhood, or at the very least preventing yourself from making a bad turn at the wrong corner.

Can you imagine being invited to a party in some seedy area, like the Downtown arts district where Peter Ivers got killed, and not knowing what the building even looked like in the dark? Well, thanks to Google Earth you can print up a pic of what this dank hipster hole looks like before you get there, saving you dangerous hours of circling around some fucking loft nightmare.

So, while you’re dumping your little man figure into the landscape and sliding your slider to get a closer look at a weird storefront, just remember that you can also sit back and laugh at atrocious banalities like Kat Von D’s High Voltage Tattoo wall mural (pictured above) without attracting too much attention. Technology wins again.

Beggar's Buffet

France has made a habit of taking us Americans to task for not appreciating our hometown artists, so it’s somewhat ironic that France has finally lifted its taboo on Bernard Buffet in nearly forty years with a huge retrospective of his work. Bernard Buffet has experienced some of the most extreme highs and lows of anyone in the art world.

Buffet painted in the Expressionist style, emphasizing harsh deep lines alternating with thin, scratchy ones and using thick applications of color. His content and style was simple enough to appeal to the man on the street as well as art critics. His art hit a nerve so immediately he made millions and won awards by the time he reached his mid-twenties.

Blessed with movie star good lucks, fame and fortune, he incurred the enmity of none other than Pablo Picasso. Picasso was incensed that his children allegedly found Buffet’s art more fun to look at than Daddy’s. Picasso led a rather loud campaign against Buffet out of sheer jealousy.

He also incurred the hatred of writer Andre Malraux, Pres. Charles de Gaulle’s Minister of Culture. Malraux branded Buffet’s genius paintings as “bourgeois” = I’ll translate it for you: “He’s too fucking rich, famous and good-looking so let’s just attack him because we’re a bunch of ass-wipe snobs”.

In retaliation Buffet did something that made him an even bigger fucking king in my opinion= HE STARTED DOING CLOWN PAINTINGS! Crazy, wild, deformed looking clowns! Lots of them! Enough to piss off every art snob from Paris to Marseille. And prints of these clown paintings sold by the millions. Every French household had a Buffet clown print in the house. Bernard officially joined The Ranks of The Terminally Uncool. He was sort of the Gallic Keane.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, unfortunately, was when he broke up with his boyfriend, Pierre Berge, over a spat about Yves St. Laurent. Berge ran into the arms of St. Laurent, and Buffet in turn fell in love and married beautiful singer and actress Annabel Schwob. The art community felt he’d gone traitor by marrying a woman. Is there no French word for bisexual?

In spite of it all the French government employed Buffet to design a postage stamp and Japan opened a Bernard Buffet Museum in Osaka. He continued to paint up until he contracted Parkinson’s Disease in his seventies and lost the ability to paint. With the loss of his only passion, Mr. Buffet committed suicide by self-inflicted asphyxia in 1999.

After all the awards and millions earned does it really matter if a jealous cognoscenti badmouths the work of an unimpeachable master? Buffet struck a chord with the average Frenchman, Picasso’s kids and me. And that’s what all great art should do.

*****************

If you haven’t seen the works of Belgian animator Raoul Servais you’re in for a treat. Every animated work is a masterpiece of sight and sound and can be dug up anytime on You Tube. This one is one of my favorites by him: it’s an animated version of Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux’s paintings. It’s called “Papillons De Nuit” (Night Butterflies) and is absolutely dazzling to watch.

I also recommend “Siren” and Chromophobia”, but all his works are breathtaking visually and well worth your time. You won’t be sorry!

"Race With The Devil"

Metal will always be with us, even for those of us who don't listen to it as often as the true believers do. Case in point, 20 years ago when I listened to 3WK Classic Rock Radio and they played a great 60's pop song called "Sunshine" by the legendary English band Gun. I liked it so much I bought a used copy of it on eBay. What I didn't reckon was checking out the phenomenal flip side, an insanely wild metal romp called Race With The Devil.

Gun were probably smitten by Cream judging by the choir-like harmonies which provide the fanfare in this song. It then blasts into a furious galloping boogie tempo with that blazing guitar line made immortal by Adrian Gurvitz and worshiped by all metal fans worldwide. The lyrics read like some incendiary western pulp novel: "You better run, you better run from the devil's gun. Strange things happen if you stay, the devil will get you any way...." and then Gurvitz rips out a maniacal laugh reminiscent of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. The addition of horns in the production never comes off as too obtrusive; it actually punctuates the rhythm quite well. Great stuff!

The Gun

Gun didn't really strike it big in America, but the Gurvitz Bros. continued making records in the power trio format, even forming a band with ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker called the Baker Gurvitz Army. After all was said and done, nothing could top Race With The Devil. Not long ago an old broadcast video of Gun performing the song (it was probably Beat Club) was available on You Tube, but has since been taken down. Drat!

Black Oak Arkansas

Black Oak Arkansas play a comparatively loose version of the song. The three guitars harmonize prettily, taking a little bit of the edge off the song. Jim Dandy Mangrum sings in an almost Las Vegas croon, recalling David Lee Roth. No big surprise as Mangrum was a heavy influence on Roth in the early Van Halen days, both visually and musically. While I wouldn't call this the definite cover version (unless you're a serious Ethel Merman fan), there's something almost irreverent in the way they refuse to take the song too seriously. Everything's a party with these guys!

Girlschool

Girlschool make up for their lacking vocal talent with their powerful guitar interplay and in this regard acquit themselves rather well. I like the tempo on this version, too, although other live videos on You Tube show them dragging the beat. Just like Black Oak the fanfare is carried by the guitars rather than with vocals, a good call by them. This is probably the best live version by them I've seen so far, and here they are in top form.

Judas Priest

Ah, Judas Priest. Nobody can rock a cover tune like the Priest, whether it be a brooding Fleetwood Mac song (The Green Manalishi) or a moody Joan Baez ballad (Diamonds And Rust). Rob Halford puts his balls to the wall and flawlessly tackles the Nordic God fanfare all by himself with enough operatic relish to strangle Wagner himself. Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing bring the hoary Sixties classic straight into the Eighties with an awesome, modern guitar sound, never losing the intensity of the tune.

Metal will always be with us, whether we like it or not. There's something unshakable about it. Even if you don't like it you'll discover a song or two so pure and honest in its vision that you'll find yourself listening, anyway. It doesn't care about your age or politics or even what the fuck you're wearing. And that's why metal has outlived punk and ll its other descendants through the years.

GQ:George Quaintance: Gentlemen's Queertopia

I’m pretty new to the George Quaintance camp compared to a lot of erotic art fans. In 2012 I saw the Quaintance retrospective book which Taschen released. What I saw in this lavishly packaged book looked a lot like romantic pulp fiction covers, i.e. sexy senoritas, seductive belly dancers, etc. The only difference is that George Quaintance’s paintings had not one woman in them, but perfectly sculpted men with hairless bodies and beautifully colored skin.

If "Brokeback Mountain" was a picture book, this would be it. George Quaintance creates a veritable gay cowboy paradise where every man has the perfect looks and body, rodeos are for tyin' and wranglin' boys, the sun always shines, and every mesa is the Garden of (sw)Eden. The book is pretty pricey so I settled for the 2012 calendar, which was better because the images were large and in charge.

The Taschen Gallery just opened an exhibition of Quaintance’s amazing paintings in a show called “The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance”. This was a herculean task in itself because he only produced less than sixty paintings in his lifetime, and many were simply traded or sold to private collectors. More than a few paintings had a NOT FOR SALE caption written beneath them.

Many of the paintings shown depicted men of in cowboy settings bathing, swimming or horseback riding. They’re mostly depicted in various stages of undress. These western settings suggest a virtual queer Utopia where men are perpetually young and fit and don’t require female company.

The best bathing paintings were Rainbow Falls, Sunset, Havasu Creek, and Morning In The Desert. In these paintings the boys either seem to be taking a shower or frolicking in a waterfall stream.

There are also many paintings of men bonding with their horses, as seen in the paintings Stallion, Manolo, and Dashing. It’s fascinating that Quaintance created these works during the late Forties-early Fifties when western films were at their peak and the image of the cowboy was the All-American image of masculinity at the time.

According to the gallery’s biography on George Quaintance, he was at one point or another a “vaudeville dancer, coiffeur designer, window dresser, magazine cover artist, photographer and portraitist”.

The biography also points out that Quaintance only lived to be 55 years old and ironically produced only 55 paintings in all. The exhibition also featured a well-researched timeline on Quaintance’s life and work, which took up and entire wall at the gallery. It was pretty awe-inspiring.

If I were asked why I responded immediately to George Quaintance and his art I would say that his use of color and light is some of the most impressive I’ve seen. I also think his depiction of homoeroticism has a surrealistic flavor more mysterious than most erotic art ever made. You want to meet these people and understand how they live. This is part and parcel of what makes for great art, and George Quaintance is deserving of your attention.

The Flamboyant Life and Forbidden Art of George Quaintance is on exhibit at the Taschen Gallery, 8070 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, through August 31, 2015.

Damn The Darkness

Last month I was In Las Vegas and visited the much heralded Kiss miniature golf course. Prior to going there I fantasized of being in a cool, fun miniature golf course filled with crazy rock & roll props and stuff. It was a little bit like that, but then again…

The KISS miniature golf course can be found at the end of a completely empty strip mall, and unlike many mini golf courses, is indoors. Inside the walls are all painted black with paintings of the band and other images (‘70s hookers) in either blacklight or fluorescent paint. The images are painted with a heavy hand by a man who was probably blind in both eyes.

There are some interesting statues, like a big Gene Simmons head (no pun intended) with an enormous protruding tongue you need to tee your golf ball into. There are lots of fake amplifiers and giant phallic guitars to put your way through.

The music piped through the PA is largely composed of material spanning the band’s entire career, solo albums and non-makeup period, as well. When a Paul McCartney & Wings track played over the PA it was met like an unwelcome intruder, so yes, there’s some scattered vintage rock tunes programmed in addition to the KISS songbook. By the way, it’s very hard to play below par to “Beth”.

The golf course also had a rock & roll party lounge roped off from us slobs, a fully stocked bar, as well as a KISS souvenir shop. The people who worked there were pretty nice so I don’t want them to feel like I’m fucking with them, but nevertheless, it had a low budget ghetto vibe about it.

I suppose it could’ve been worse: imagine an Oasis or a Smiths golf course. Yeah, a KISS golf course suddenly sounds pretty good.

*********************

While I was standing in line at Amoeba Records yesterday the store played a video of Donny Darko, the Magna Carta to all Emo kids the world over, on the monitors. The film raised a multiple series of questions about mortality and other major life issues, but the grim attitude it shipped is what struck me the most.

Every cool person in the movie is pale skinned and glum and all the smiling, happy people came off looking like idiots. Well, fuck us happy people! I was also amused at the myopic view given towards Graham Greene’s story “The Destructors”. Donny interpreted the story of a bunch of street kids mindlessly destroying an old man’s carefully constructed house as “creativity through destruction”. There’s no reference made whatsoever to the story being written shortly after World War II, and that it’s more likely about the brutal bombing of London.

I remembered how ten years ago I threw all my black clothes away and began wearing more bright colored clothes. As ridiculous as it may sound, doing that was more subversive than wearing flat, empty black.

I also discarded that fey hipster negativity, my new mantra being “Damn The Darkness”. It’s too easy to embrace the dark and the grim. It’s not fatalistic; it’s passive acceptance of a grotesque, ugly, horrible world without creating an alternative. You don’t have to wear a stupid pink sweatshirt screaming “CHOOSE LIFE”, but you’re going to have to do more than just frown and say “Everything sucks”. Putting shit down all the time doesn’t make you cool.

Illustration by Yuki Ramaro

***********************

Several plateaus are reached when you work on a novel. The first one is obviously getting all that insanity down on paper and the third plateau is putting the final touches to your work. Right now I’m reaching the middle plateau, doing rewrites of all the things banged out for the first draft. Wow!

If you’re a serious writer you’ll know how great rewrites are. You get to read the whole novel back to yourself and keep all the good parts and fix all the shitty, jacked-up sentences and paragraphs, etc. etc. You also get to beef up all the parts that you kicked out so quickly you neglected to fill in with enough details.

The joy of rewrites is being able to step back and fix an already exciting project you’re working on. It’s not unlike Henri-Georges Clouzot’s film “The Mystery of Picasso” where the great master steps back, looks at a brilliant section of his painting, you’re thinking “That’s so brilliant”, and then he literally paints something else right over that section! Picasso’s approach can be applied to all artists. That’s rewriting for you: your novel might read really cool, but you can always make it even better.

RIP Ornette Coleman

Blog to be posted soon.