Andy Seven's Blog, page 14

Mona

A few years ago I joined a social network site called Blurt and for a while it was great. It was real people reviewing restaurants and stores all over town, and unlike most reviews it was irreverent as hell...."The halibut steak was so nasty even the cockroaches turned their antennae up at it and crawled away in disgust"....No restaurant was too low for reviews..."If you're going to make a Jumbo Jack this bad hold the pubic hairs, bro..." Not exactly Westways magazine material.

The reviews made me laugh more than made me hungry and I was hooked. The site got crazier and crazier, too. Not content to just review hot dog stands and gourmet sushi houses, the reviews extended to car washes, pet groomers, and even ventured into the Oscars, procrastination, and Heaven itself. Blurters even blurted Heaven.

There was a Blurter from Chicago named Crazy Alice who occasionally reviewed LA places and she was very funny and had a trashy attitude. Not the usual nauseating LA princess on Blurt, just a dame with a vicious sense of humor. I friended Crazy Alice immediately.

Unfortunately Crazy Alice was a little too much trashy and she was placed in Blurt Jail, meaning suspension from posting privileges on Blurt for ten days. Big fucking deal. A breath of fresh air and the philistines would rather suck the carbon monoxide of predictability.

As soon as Crazy Alice got out of Blurt Jail she got real loud about stupid Blurt.com and it reached a fever pitch to where she got kicked off Blurt for good. More people, the more acidic critics, were getting suspended or outright kicked off from Blurt for not kissing major ass to the shitty restaurants and night clubs that abused customers but still managed to drop a few dollars to Blurt for online "protection".

One night I got a strange PM on Blurt from someone in Chicago named "Lars". All it said was, "Hi, remember me?" The next day I got a friend request from a Blurter named "Lars". Why would I be friends with someone named Lars. Intrigued, I went to his profile and read a few of his reviews.

"This was a decent enough bar, but after all is said and done I would rather dine at home with a nice steaming plate of lutefisk".

"The theater was comfortable but not as comfortable as my shack with five different varieties of herring".

Every review ended with Lars regaling us of his love for cold Nordic fish delicacies. Somebody was pulling my chain, and I let her know. I PM'ed "Lars" and wrote, "Welcome back, Crazy Alice!"
She wrote back, "You caught it faster than anyone else".

Back to her old tricks, Crazy Alice, I mean Lars continued tearing up the poor city of Chicago with her brutal but funny reviews. And with pickled Norwegian fish, even. It was a fun ride for awhile but Chicago wasn’t a big enough city for her to hide in. Someone caught wind of her return because after two months she was taken down. Lars was no more, pickled fish and all.

I continued writing my reviews of restaurants, shoe repairs and record stores, with the capper being that the Los Angeles Times called me for a comment on the closing of the Virgin Megastore, based on my Blurt review. That was pretty cool.

Everything was going okay, what with my attending a few parties thrown by Blurt for Elite Members Only – I earned mine from talking to the LA Times representing Blurt. A nice sideline while I worked in the Executive Office of the LA County Board of Supervisors. But those were different times.

One day I got a PM from someone on Blurt called “Mona”. I didn’t know anyone called Mona. I clicked on the PM and there was a picture of a classic Beverly Hills fake blonde woman who looked like she stepped out of a real estate advertisement. All the message said was, “Guess Who????”

“Lars, I mean Crazy Alice, is that you?” I asked. She sent me back a PM saying that she was now using her real name (yeah, sure) and she moved her account to Los Angeles instead of Chicago. “I made too many enemies in Chicago”. No shit.

I definitely saw a Modus Operandi in her social networking skills: In the beginning Mona reviewed places sporadically, still being funny but kind of keeping a cool front. But social networking being what it is the yokels, I mean Blurters took her perky blonde photo seriously and assumed that’s what she really looked like. Consequently a lot of the guys added her to their friend list, not realizing what she really was.

And boy, did she play it like crazy. Back to her old tricks, Mona hit the Blurt message board with a raunchy ferocity that split her following straight down the middle. I stayed out of the way because I knew what was to come, yep, you guessed it: Blurt Jail. Apparently she made a few less-than Princess remarks about female bodily functions and an angry Blurt Diva blew the whistle on her.

The days later Mona got out of Blurt Jail and everyone, mostly her Blurt slaves rejoiced like Solzhenitsyn released from a Siberian gulag. “MONA’S BACK!!!!” “WELCOME BACK, MONA BABY!!!”

Don’t think her head didn’t expand like a weather balloon from all this adulation, either. She fancied herself the Queen of Blurt without ever attending an LA Blurt social event. She couldn’t. She was still sitting around the snow in Chicago, Illinois.

As we all know when heads get swollen the old friends either are forgotten or eventually turned against. Mona, no longer needing my worthless LA friendship, began trashing my reviews. “What a great time waster, Andy S.” “Andy S. you’re so tacky. What are you talking about?”

I began wondering what Mona actually did for a living - when she wasn’t posting her magic all over Blurt she sent me chat prompts on Gmail. “Can you believe these idiots? I actually have them believing I’m a real girl living in Beverly Hills. And how weird is this? Rhonda Z. who says she’s straight wants to make out with me, isn’t that funny?”

I hated her Lonesome Rhodes bragging routine because I knew and liked some of these people she was laughing at. Of course she added, “You know I’m only telling you this because I can count on you. You wouldn’t give me away”.
“No, I wouldn’t”, meaning I wouldn’t crawl as low as you ever would.

Meanwhile, the Blurt slaves were all fawning over her – “Oh, Mona, are you coming to the Blurt Party? I’ll take you even though you aren’t an Elite Member”. Ha ha. For once she got real quiet.

I started avoiding her reviews and her profile page with her new avatar being a picture of Faye Dunaway from Bonnie and Clyde. The tagline read, “I’m running this cell block at Blurt Jail”. Yeah, fuck you too, Mona.

And then the strangest thing happened: Mona’s reviews came out less and less. When they did they read more like childhood reminiscences. “ When I was a little girl I went to the Santa Monica Pier”…”The La Brea Tar Pits scared me as a little girl”…the girl from Chicago pining for old Hollywood. Then they just simply stopped.

I wrote a review complaining about a specific Fire Station that harassed all the women in my neighborhood, including my wife. This review created a shit storm of a furor on Blurt, so bad Blurters threatened to have me kicked off the site for good. It got pretty ugly, and I knew my days at Blurt were numbered.

One day at work I got another chat prompt on Gmail….from Mona. She said, “What a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Did you know I was raped by a fireman twenty years ago? They aren’t heroes. What a bunch of bullshit”.
ME: Thanks, Mona. I wasn’t going to war against the entire Department, just that station.
MONA: I know that. Those Blurters are just a bunch of clueless assholes, blowing the whistle on you just like they did to me in Chicago and now in LA.
ME: Are you in trouble again?
MONA: Yeah, some girls on Blurt have it out for me. Well, fuck it. You probably noticed I haven’t posted in awhile, huh?

ME: Yeah. Are you in Blurt Jail again?
MONA: No. Mona’s days of drinking and drugs have finally caught up with her. I’ve been diagnosed with cervical cancer.
ME: Oh, fuck, that’s awful.
MONA: Yeah, I have bigger problems now than Blurt Jail. Aw, fuck them anyway. If they had any idea what I really looked like with my gray hair and glasses they wouldn’t give a fuck about me. Well, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. Mona’s in a lot of trouble.

(Personally her rap about sympathizing with me and her terminal sickness had an Andy Kaufman vibe about it so I tried to tread lightly and not take the whole business too hard. Fool one person and you’ll fool them all, and I didn’t want to be just another one of her stooges.)

Once she let the cat out of the bag about being elderly, aka closer to my age, we talked about bands from the Seventies we used to go see, her favorite story being about Edgar Winter’s White Trash at the Hollywood Palladium. We were friends again.

One week later, I got another Chat prompt from Mona:
MONA: Can you talk?
ME: Yeah.
MONA: It doesn’t look good. I’ve been sitting here all day on the laptop bored off my skull. I have this nurse who’s sticking all these needles in me. It sucks. Yesterday he had to bathe me because I was too weak. I’m not used to guys seeing me naked and there’s no sex. Ugh.
ME: That’s bad. I’m getting off Blurt next week. I’ve had enough of their shit.

MONA: You’re better off. I get friend requests every week from stupid guys, it’s ridiculous. Well, it’s bath time, kid. Talk to you later.
ME: Okay, Mona. Hope you get better.
MONA: It’s not in the cards, but thanks.

I knew the joke was over when she chatted with me a few days later.
MONA: It doesn’t look too good. I can’t hold my shit in, literally, or my food or anything. I just chat with people all day but I can barely do that anymore. I’m too fucking sick.
ME: That’s fucking awful, Mona.
MONA: I hate doing this, but look. If I don’t send you any more chats or anything, then you know the shit’s hit the fan. Here’s my brother’s phone number: 312-555-6666. We were never very close but since my illness he’s been coming around and helping me. If you don’t get any more messages call my brother and he’ll tell you what’s going on, okay?

ME: Alright, Mona. I’ll pray for you.
MONA: Good, throw in a few fucks and shits in for good measure. Bye now.

The chats stopped as predicted. Sick of the online harassment and mob mentality, I pulled out of Blurt for good. It was just as well; the more subversive reviewers all got reported and harassed to the point of either quitting or just being outright kicked off the site. It just turned into a champion ass kissers website.

Of course I checked the message board before leaving and there was a topic called “Where Are You, Mona???” From what I figured I was one of the few that got this bit of news, with everyone else left out in the lurch. Actually, from what Mona told me the only ones who knew of her illness were me and someone else from LA and a couple of Blurters from Chicago, otherwise it was pretty confidential.

Three weeks went by and not another word from Mona. It didn’t hang me up but I couldn’t help being curious. Finally curiosity got the better of me and I found her brother’s phone number and dialed it with my Virgin Megastore phone.

“Hello?” a man answered.
“Hi, I’m a friend of Mona’s and I’ve been trying to reach her. Do you know where I can find her?”
There was a pause at the other end of the line.
“No, I’m sorry. My sister died last week”.
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. Well, thank you anyway”. I hung up.

Blurt.com…..it took Blurters about a year to realize that their hero Mona checked out for good. How they eventually find out I don’t know. Maybe somebody finally broke the news after being sworn to keep it hush-hush. I don’t know and I don’t really care.

God damn Mona. I think about her from time to time because I can’t forget her. There’s something so simultaneously sad and disturbing about people like her. People who go on the internet for a little love and acceptance, committing social larceny by hiding behind a different name, a different picture, and even a different gender just to find some kind of acceptance.

The internet is an endless mine field of internet frauds, tens of thousands of lost souls lying about who they are just so they can be somebody’s hero, pretending to be and do things they will never achieve because they’re more frightened than the people they show off to.

And the ritual goes on every day, friend requests and people dumping friends and making friends with people they’ll never meet and flirting online with their fake pictures and their heavily guarded personal information.

Yeah, I think about Mona all the time because there’s an endless line of unhappy people who can’t see any sunlight in the darkness of their monitor screens, so they have to become someone else. Mona with her gray hair and glasses, the burnt out party animal who ended her last days conning young hipsters on the internet and feeling she had the last laugh. It makes me sad to think that there are people who think there’s some payback because the disguise only amplifies the loneliness.

The information superhighway is littered with roadkill, people who need to con every day just to score points and seek acceptance, resulting in a virtual Tower of Babel where thousands all speak to each other in different languages, never listening to the other person with the outcome being complete chaos of hellish proportions. Have fun with your social networks, everybody, but just remember that it’s all just a bad dream. Just like Mona.

P.S. Blurt.com is still up and running, with their patented tagline: REAL REVIEWS, REAL PEOPLE.

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - Jailhouse Edition

Some people like their Oz and some people like their Orange Is The New Black but I like my prison dramas with a Seventies exploitation flair, and thanks to You Tube and the people that uploaded them you can catch the two most notorious prison films of the Seventies: Short Eyes and Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Both films could play in a double feature at a movie theater and not appear redundant because both films are very different from each other. Let’s take a look at both films:

Short Eyes (1977): Written by Miguel Pinero, who also has a small role in the film, the movie begins with a Curtis Mayfield song, who also shows up as an inmate in the film, too. Crazy! Short Eyes takes place in the Manhattan Men’s House of Detention, more commonly known as The Tombs, where actual filming took place.

The characters are pretty well-sculpted: Don Blakely as the intense Black Muslim El Raheem, Shawn Elliott as the two-faced bully Paco, and Tito Goya as the young and pretty “Cupcakes”, highly desired by the inmates for some shower room booty. Poor Cupcakes, his girlfriend’s waiting for him on the other side!

After watching the inmates cutting up for awhile the focus turns on Juan, brilliantly played by Jose Perez. Unlike the rest of the inmates Juan questions the difference between right and wrong and struggles inwardly with his demons, striving to take the high road just to maintain a semblance of sanity. Nothing challenges his principles more than the arrival of a new inmate to The Tombs named Clark Davis.

Clark Davis is the focus of the focus of the story, flawlessly played by Bruce Davison (Willard, Last Summer). Clark Davis is an angry black/Puerto Rican’s dream come true: a privileged, blonde white man who faces a pedophilia conviction for molesting black & Puerto Rican girls. Davison, newly admitted to The Tombs, confesses his obsessions and crimes alone to Juan without a touch of guilt.

His account of molesting the little girls makes Juan bang the panic button because prior to Clark’s confession he thought he had a clear handle on ethics. Clark wants Juan to promise him he’ll cover for him in case the inmates go to town on him for his disgusting crime. Juan’s barely keeping his shit together trying to decide whether he should help him or just kill him on the spot.

What happens in the last twenty minutes is some of the most intense film making ever made, questioning the principles of every inmate on the block. The back story to Short Eyes on IMDb is pretty damned fascinating:

Miguel Pinero, the author of the play upon which this film is based (and the actor who plays Go-Go), wrote the play as part of an inmate writers' workshop while incarcerated at Sing Sing Prison for armed robbery. He missed the premiere of the film because he had been arrested for armed robbery. All of the money he received for the film ($40,000) he gave away to homeless friends and former prison-mates. He reportedly lived on the street even after the film's acclaimed release, using a pay phone as an office.

Tito Goya, who plays Cupcakes, was arrested for a murder committed in 1978 (eight months after the film was released). He was murdered in prison in 1985.

Bruce Davison's monologue was done in a single take.

Short Eyes won the New York Critics Circle Award and an Obie Award for the Best Play of 1974.

Short Eyes was nominated for six Tonys in 1975, including Best Dramatic Play.

Fortune And Men’s Eyes (1971): Will forever go down in history as the play Sal Mineo worked on when he was murdered on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood. But that’s not fair – this is another great prison play turned into a motion picture.

Once again we see a baby-faced white guy named Smitty, played by Wendell Burton sentenced to prison (this one was shot in Montreal, Canada) and the cellmates he’s stuck bunking with. And what a bunch!

There’s Rocky (Zooey Hall), the brutally handsome kingpin bully who wants to rape every male in the big house, his slave - a boy called Mona, the awesome Queenie (Michael Greer) who flames queerer than any character in the history of the cinema. He kind of serves as the Mistress of Ceremonies through the whole story and even offers some much needed comic relief.

And boy is it needed. There is so much forced male rape, yes, one-on-one and gang, too, you won’t be disappointed. After witnessing endless shankings and rapes Smitty freaks out and his roomie Rocky offers him some much needed protection, never realizing that Rocky’s circling around his boy hole like a hawk swooping down on a chicken coop.

Here’s some back story about Fortune And Men’s Eyes:

Wendell Burton, aka Smitty, is now a minister in Texas.

The 1969 production in Los Angeles starred Don Johnson as Smitty and Sal Mineo as Rocky (!). I’d pay a fortune (pun) to see that production, especially since we’re talking about Boy And His Dog-era Johnson. According to Wikipedia, in 1966 a New York production featured Jon Voight as Smitty and Dustin Hoffman as Rocky, obviously sealing their relationship to come in “Midnight Cowboy”.

If you see a lack of blacks in Fortune And Men’s Eyes it’s because playwright John Herbert was Canadian and our story takes place in a Canadian pen. In fact, it’s the most published Canadian play ever written and has won countless Canadian drama awards.

So there you have it: Free movies in their entirety on You Tube! If you have a Sony Blu-Ray player you can play You Tube on your television set in the comfort of your den or bedroom instead of perched in front of a desktop monitor. Here’s a list of a few more movies you can scope on at You Tube:

The Ruling Class, Les Bonnes Femmes and Les Biches (Chabrol), every Barbara Steele horror film ever made, RoGoPaG (Godard & Pasolini), The Decline of Western Civilization (the homeless punker one), and many more. Happy viewing!

My Living Doll: Aphrodite Meets the Space Age

In the early Sixties teenage America fell under the spell of the Horror & Sci-fi movie explosion hitting drive-in theaters all across the country. It was tearing them away from their TV sets, and CBS fought back by programming an army of shows to win them back. Shows like The Munsters, My Favorite Martian and Lost in Space were hitting the airwaves harder than John Glenn’s orbit in Friendship 7. There was one show in the bunch that was the most memorable and stranger than the rest called My Living Doll.

My Living Doll starred musical actress Julie Newmar and Forties matinee idol Bob Cummings. Although it was a situation comedy it was more sophisticated that the other shows listed above; I think it simultaneously helped the show and destroyed it, too.

My Living Doll began as the tale of Dr. Bob McDonald, psychiatrist for a NASA-based agency, who gets a call in his office from the head scientists in robotics warning him of a robot on the loose rampaging around the building. Expecting a terrifying nuts and bolts cyborg to wreak havoc in the hallway, Dr. McDonald is accosted instead by a beautiful Amazon clad only in a towel!

Julie Newmar lists her training in mime as background for the role of Rhoda (formerly AF 709) and she uses it to full advantage. Her jerky robotic movements are flawless in their execution and her facial expressions as a machine processing bizarre human behavior and equally perfect. Watching her defuse lecherous men's advances with cold, mechanical responses is space age feminism at its finest.

Viewing the episodes of My Living Doll: The Official Collection DVD, are a mixed bag between sexual tension and feminine comedy (beauty contests; kleptomania at a Beverly Hills jewelers, etc.) with the feminine comedy being more fun to watch. The sexual tension business is neither funny nor sexy, due to Cummings working the camera too hard.

Speaking of Cummings, the character of Dr. McDonald was intended to create some spark of sexual tension between himself and Rhoda, but the producers shot the pooch by hiring a tired old guy to play a young, available bachelor. Just think what the show would have been like if they hired someone like, oh, Adam West to play Dr. McDonald. (Never mind).

Legend has it that Cummings was not only jealous of Newmar’s popularity but even wanted to take over her role as the robot. The poor man thought kids were tuning in to watch him!

I remember watching this show shortly before Newmar hit pay dirt as The Catwoman on Batman and liked it, but it was obvious the show was doomed. With her Amazon build and low, husky voice, Newmar was on a wavelength that wasn’t TV friendly at all. Although the producers tried to make her look wholesome there was an aggressive eroticism about this robot that definitely made the show too bizarre to be successful.

Walking a tightrope between beautiful and funny is a major risk, Thelma Todd being the most infamous example, but few pull it off as brilliantly as Julie Newmar, and if you want to see it done to perfection than seek out My Living Doll: The Official Collection, Volume One, available on MPI Home Video.

Smell Check 2015

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and what could be more sensual than wearing a seductive fragrance to put your loved one in the mood? In other words, it’s just about time for Smell Check 2015.

Since last year I’ve learned a lot about fragrances in terms of projection – the power of your scent projecting out; sillage – the staying power of the scent on you; dry down – when the top notes of a scent drift away and the middle and base notes take over.

Numerous great fragrance review sites have popped up on the internet, with my favorite being Fragrantica.com, where you can find endless reviews from cologne and perfume fans on every scent you’re curious about. The site has barometers showing projection and sillage rate of each fragrance, all voted on by users, in addition to breakdowns to all the notes used in each fragrance. It’s amazing.

In the past few years I’ve found myself gravitating more towards niche fragrances as opposed to designer fragrances, easy on my nose but not so easy on my wallet. In the long run I’ve got to admit it’s all been worth it. The great scents I’ve discovered. Here are a few, some old and some even older:

Tobacco Vanille (Tom Ford) – Everybody loves Tobacco Vanille, and so do I, but with all that said I don’t get a lot of tobacco in this scent. I get cinnamon and honey with a whiff, ahh, should be kind of feminine but it still maintains a masculine tone all the way through. I’m loving this, but for a tobacco vibe I’ll stick with Mugler Pure Havane.

By the way, while many niche fragrances carry high price tags, nobody ups the ante quite like Tom Ford. A large bottle of his juice will set you back by $250-350. Whew! Because of his greedy price fixing frag fans madly scramble towards cheaper scents that emulate the same notes, or they simply buy testers, which are in ample supply on eBay.

Andy Warhol Silver Factory, now known as Silver (Bond No. 9) – Silver Factory was the first release in a series of Andy Warhol-inspired fragrances that Bond No. 9 released in 2007. Several more releases followed, like Andy Warhol Montauk, Success Is A Job In New York City, and one that even had a silk-screened portrait of Andy himself circa 1964. Each bottle bore an original design by Warhol that enhanced the desirability of the fragrance.

In 2013, Bond No. 9’s license with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ license expired, so Silver Factory is now called Silver Bond No. 9, cased in a simple silver bottle with the familiar Bond No. 9 star shape, it’s still the same fragrance in a different package.

And what a great fragrance it is! According to the oppress release it includes: Jasmine, iris and violet, the favorite flower of Andy Warhol. Base notes include: bergamot, mildly bitter grapefruit, lavender, amber, a mix of wood resins, sweet vanilla and sensual cedar wood. I’m not getting all the flowers listed but I’m definitely getting patchouli and leather, even though it’s not listed anywhere. Anyway, this is one of the greatest scents out there. I’m loving it and lusting it at the same time.

Demeter Oud (Demeter) – I didn’t get enough oud from this, to be honest, but instead got a gingerbread fragrance. I like gingerbread but the oud didn’t deliver here at all. Demeter isn’t the best in terms of projection or sillage, but it’s low budget so you get what you pay for.

Oud Save The King (Atkinson) – I got a tester of this and Rebecca got a tester of Oud Save The Queen, and I thought the Queen was better and stronger than the King. Oud Save The King had a sort of Designer’s Imposter’s vibe to it, no oud to be smelled for miles and bad projection and even worse sillage. Maybe Demeter had a hand in this!

Muscs Koublai Khan (Serge Lutens) – Tabernac!!! I love most Serge Lutens but this was a little too raunchy for my taste. This is for guys who like to go “down there” when their girl or guy hasn’t bathed in a week. It’s nasty and it’s strong.

Koublai Khan features civet - a thick yellowish musky-odored substance found in a pouch near the sexual organs of the civet cat and used in perfume, and castoreum, which is the yellowish secretion of the castor sac which is, in combination with the beaver's urine, used during scent marking of territory. Need I say more? The dry down gets better, but who’s going to wait three hours for that nasty crotch funk to evaporate?

Aoud Musk (Montale) – This was good, the oud had a beautifully full presence I really enjoyed. Montale also gets points for storing their scents in a can rather than in a bottle. This makes it better for posterity in that it keeps out light from fading the scent.

Aoud Musk is an “elegant blend of saffron, ebony, vetiver and amber notes, placed on the base of sensual musk and agar”. It has a sweet woody scent that’s a little on the dark side, but I like that sort of thing.

A*Men Pure Havane (Thierry Mugler) – Next to Pure Malt this is the best of the A*Men frags out there. When you spray Pure Havane you will smell Swisher sweet cigars, you will smell sweet cherry flavored pipe tobacco, you will smell a little incense, some wood, cocoa, labdanum and styrax. You can spray this all over me 24/7 and I will never get bored with it. My signature scent at the moment and not for the weak of heart!

Just a few words about niche fragrances: although they cost about as much as a pair of nice shoes they’re definitely worth the trouble of seeking out. While there are some nice designer fragrances out there, the vast majority of them cater to a large marketplace, which means the scents aren’t going to get too risky or unusual. The more adventurous scents can be found in niche fragrances, so they’re worth the extra money.

The Afterword to The Foreword

Hi, everyone, just letting you know that I've created an author page for myself on Amazon.com. If you click on there you can see all my books that are available, as well as my Twitter feed (tweet, tweet) and maybe some extra stuff that I sometimes post here, some stuff not. It's a sort of virtual Andy Seven clubhouse. Yeah, it's my clubhouse and it's freaking me out! Click here for some action:
http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Seven/e/B00NCD4S2S/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Long Gone Saturday Night

"There's nothing more rebellious than some ugly person dancing around thinking they're wonderful"
-Kim Fowley

Another one gone: no sooner did I write a eulogy for the great Jack Bruce do I find myself mourning the loss of the great Kim Fowley. Kim Fowley, legendary Hollywood songwriter, performer, producer and Whirling Dervish passed on ten days ago, January 15, 2015. What makes Fowley so unique from all Hollywood movers and shakers is that there isn't anyone in Hollywood who couldn't claim Fowley as a musical associate, and that was the key to his staying power as an artist.

Through the garage, psych, glam, punk and metal eras and beyond there wasn't a style or project he deemed too small or beneath him. His work transcended trends due to his absolute belief in everything he worked on.

Talking to Kim was not for the weak of heart: he fixed his steely gaze at you from that skull-like face and spoke with a directness that either frightened you or made you laugh. It was actually a pretty good acid test to see who was sincere and who was just another Sunset Boulevard huckster.

And Sunset Boulevard! How many songs did he write about Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard? Songs like Hollywood Nights, Terrors In Tinseltown, Hollywood USA, Canyon Woman, Hollywood Child, Mayor of the Sunset Strip, ad infinitum.

Whether seeing him at Canter's in 1966 or Rodney's English Disco in 1974 or a Weirdos/Nerves show he promoted in 1977, even seeing him at the screening of "New York Doll" at the Director's Guild Theater in 2005, Fowley was there, a permanent fixture on the local scene.

My favorite album by him was Good Clean Fun, followed by Outrageous, where he took his manic Sunset Blvd. energy and distilled it into wild, raw, savage tracks, treading a demented balance between Steppenwolf raunch and Frank Zappa-style freakazoid documentary.

And speaking of Zappa, Fowley was one of the craziest voices on "Freak Out", the first Mothers of Invention album, babbling all the way through sides 3 and 4 in an improvisational foreign language known only to himself. Fowley can also be heard laying down an unbelievable rap about Wild man Fischer on the legendary "An Evening With Wild man Fischer" album.

With the loss of Kim Fowley the world has lost a lot more color. Things look a lot paler than they used to.

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

Captain Beefheart fans will have to postpone their mourning for a little while, because Rhino Records in association with Warner Bros. have just released an amazing four-disc box set of iconic Beefheart albums titled Sun Zoom Spark. The discs included are the long out of print Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, with a fourth disc comprised of unreleased outtakes and demos mostly recorded during The Spotlight Kid sessions.

Many Beefheart fans consider this period (1970-1972) to be his most fully realized (read freest) work ever, arguably better than his later Virgin Records output. I would advise many newbies to start with Safe As Milk, followed by Trout Mask Replica, and then this chunky monster of a box set.

But getting back to Sun Zoom Spark, the fourth disc is guaranteed to get even the most rabid fans to buy it. Beautifully packaged with tons of Don Van Vliet art, this is one of those box sets that's impossible to resist.

In addition to this treasure trove of newly released stuff is a download of the complete Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot outtakes, posted in its entirety on You Tube by Idiotska's Live Corner, seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdwDSfsVFY. Clocking in at over three hours(!) this is even more phenomenal than the Sun Zoom Spark CD. An early version of "Ice Cream For Crow" titled Drink Paint Run Run starts the action, and it amply demonstrates Zoot Horn Rollo and Winged Eel Fingerling playing some of the most incendiary guitar you'll ever hear.

The three hour tapes reveal snippets, references and full-on previews of Low Yo Yo Stuff, Circumstances (played as a dirge), Sun Zoom Spark, Harry Irene, Suction Prints, Sheriff of Hong Kong, Ice Cream For Crow, Flavor Bud Living, Sue Egypt, Dirty Blue Gene, and even a hint of Up On The My-Oh-My.

I intend on getting the Sun Zoom Spark package because you get the great bonus disc as well as the very first official Warner Bros. release of Lick My Decals Off, Baby, which Rhino had in limited release for only two years, so seeing it back in print's pretty exciting. If you can get through a blistering thirty-minute version of Pompadour Swamp then your ship's come in. Forty years in the making and worth every minute waited.

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Hello, world, I'm still trying to sell my Lydia Lunch records. If you want to bask in her ridiculously nihilistic oeuvre here's your big chance!

I'm selling her 1979 album Queen of Siam on Ze Records, the Eight Eyed Spy album released on fetish Records in 1981, and an autographed 7" Teenage Jesus And The Jerks single baby Doll b/w Feud In Flop, all for the low price of $90. Robert Quine fans note that he played guitar all over the Queen of Siam album, so there's some major skronk going down for sale. Here's the link if you're interested:

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - Hugo Haas Edition

Nine months ago I reported on full movies being available for viewing on You Tube. The variety of films available is staggering: in addition to rare noir gems I've viewed nearly forgotten silent films, obscure foreign classics, garish Italian giallo horrors, and even contemporary films with a twist, like Point Break in French and Looking For Mr. Goodbar in German.

If you're a Hugo Haas fan like me, and don't laugh, Richard Hell and Robert Quine formed a friendship over their love of all things Hugo, then you'll find a treasure trove of heretofore unreleased (on DVD) Hugo gems on You Tube. The best ones generally star his battleship blonde Cleo Moore.

Three films I've recently viewed are The Other Woman, Edge of Hell and the bizarre race drama The Night of the Quarter Moon. As beat as some of Hugo's films look many of them were released by major studios, mostly Columbia Pictures and a few from 20th Century Fox. Here's a small rundown of what you can catch on YT:

Night of the Quarter Moon (1959): One of Haas' last directed films, this sports a top-notch cast which includes Julie London, Nat King Cole, Jackie Coogan, Disney star Dean Jones, and Agnes Moorehead. Unfortunately it might be one of the worst films I've ever seen.

If I followed the film properly, and yes, it is confusing, Ginny Nelson (Julie London) gets her windows smashed in by some racist punks. Hubby Roderic Nelson (John Drew Barrymore) gets a call at work about the vandalism and races to the scene of the crime to stop the carnage. The police appear from out of nowhere and arrest Barrymore even though the punks are still brandishing bricks and rocks.

This is one of those movies that are supposed to wind you up because the bad guys just can't stop winning and the victims can't stop losing. Because London is "colored" she seeks the advice of attorney Nat King Cole, whose first recommendation is to "forget it". What the fuck???

The film can't make up it's mind what London's ethnicity is, either: first we're told she's black (!) and then we're told she's Latina. The films keeps flip-flopping about her being Latina and then going back to her being black. No question Miss London is a ravishing woman, but she's as Caucasian as it gets.

London spends half of the film building her court case against Agnes Moorehead, playing another cunty mother-in-law like in Bewitched and trying to contact her mentally ill husband, now sequestered away at Mama's house and forbidden to speak to Julie.

The film ends with an intense court battle which results in a lurid display meant to bolster London's case. I won't say what it is, because it's so stupid no court on planet Earth would entertain it. But Hugo Haas probably thought this was powerful stuff. I'm still trying to figure out what race Julie London was supposed to play.

Edge of Hell (1956): Hugo plays Valentin, a former Russian star of the theater, now reduced to living in the streets of New York on the bum. His only bread and butter is Flip, a scruffy dog who performs ordinary circus tricks like hopping around in a circle (wowie zowie). All through the picture Valentin spouts his philosophy on life to both his hobo pals and his rich clients - more on them in a second.

Edge of Hell follows Valentin through his daily life full of homeless whimsy, cloying and cute with bums who wouldn't hurt a fly. The squeeze play happens when Valentin brings Flip to a rich kiddies party to entertain the brats. After getting paid a paltry $20 for entertaining the snot noses and it's time to split the shindig, the rich birthday boy breaks down and demands that Flip stay at his plush home.

Dad offers Valentin $500 for the dog and with asthma attacks hitting him by the score and an eviction notice (he lives in a cold basement) hanging in his face, will he sell his pride and joy Flip or die on the cold streets of New York? Despite the noir title there ain't much noir going on here.

The Other Woman (1954): Noir all the way, and this time Cleo's on board doing what she does best. Cleo's plays Sherry, an untalented bit player who can't act her way out of a paper bag. After getting kicked off the movie by director Walter Darman (Haas), Sherry's madder than a wet hen and devises a scheme to get even with Darman.

Begging Darman to come over her place to prove there's no hard feelings, he finally relents and has a few drinks with her. Passing out from all the booze, he eventually wakes up to some fish story from her about how they had a night of sex.

Since Darman's a married man she starts with the blackmail phone calls, demanding he pay $50,000 ASAP or she's going to tell all to Darman's wife with a few muddy, dark photos. Since Hugo can't scrape up 50K to shut her up he makes plans to have her ass offed.

Ironically this is the best of the three Haas films; shot on a shoestring budget with cookie-cutter plotting, Haas proved his best work was in cranking out simple noir films. Everything else just paled in comparison, and Moore seemed to make everything work. As John Cale once sang, simple stories are the best.

The prominence of You Tube is more robust than ever, largely due to alternative video services' poor decision making: satellite television providers with increasing their monthly service fees - ours was $100 a month for basic service which we dropped a year ago; and video disc rental services like Netflix, who dramatically slashed their catalog of films without rhyme or reason. These bad decisions ironically opened up a large playing field for You Tube to actually grow and flourish in ways in all its years as a website.

My Spurs Are Sharp (Wranglers' Canyon No. 9)

I guess I should've left town but I did what I did and what's done is done. After the late Sheriff Elroy Frehley passed his badge over to me it was expected by the townsfolk for me to give him a proper eulogy, but, balls! Let the worms eat his ass. He humiliated me before the entire citizenry of Jonestown and I wasn't about to boo hoo hoo like the rest of the liars assembled.

Damn straight I was going to make an appearance at his burial...way in the back of the chapel. When they did turn around to peer at me during the service there was fear in their eyes. They had a lot to be afraid of. They treated me like an abused tom cat and now it was my turn. Being the new town Sheriff gave me all the turns in the world that I wanted, they knew it, and they were scared, scared shitless.

The first thing we did was get our shit from the hotel to our new office, throw Frehley's crap out in the back and use his long bottomed drawers to wipe the mud off our horses. Fuck him.

Mumblin' Pete might be one of the quickest draws in the country but he couldn't make a pot of coffee for shit. It tasted like butt paste. On the plus side he rubbed tons of castor oil over my cuts and bruises that I had all over me. I needed a lot of relief because every inch of my body burned like hell.

We kept waiting for that coward Deputy Shugg to drop by but I guess the fear of God was all over him, too. He never did turn up. Too bad. I had some serious jawing to do with him and I was chomping at the bit.

I sat back in the Sheriff's chair with my long legs propped up on the desk watching Mumblin' Pete sweeping up the floor.
"Quit sweepin' for a second. Can't you hear everybody weeping outside?"
"Mnhjhgsh sgssh opw fehk".
"I know they've been whining all morning, but for some dad blasted reason I'm not getting tired of it".
Mumblin' Pete spat a big gusset on the floor. "Gfdsds uyt!"
"Hear hear!"

The jail cells were pretty empty and I thought it might be a good idea to start pulling a few yokels in so they'd get a good idea of what they've got to look forward to. Besides, it wouldn't help being stuck in this office all day or else we'd look like the real prisoners.

"Drop that broom, Deputy, we got some patrolling to do. I reckon we'll start, at, ahh....Sailor Jerry's".
Pete got excited and ditched the broom lickety split.

The little stroll we took over to Sailor Jerry's Dancehall was something to see. All the pretty, pretty people of Jonestown parted at the sight of us and split off to all the extreme corners out of our sight. It suited me just fine.

Jonestown was in a state of mourning for days following Frehley's funeral so Mr. Butcher left out one of his big free lunches for all the mourners. The usual fare was out on display: possum, hogs, squirrel, gopher, chicken, beef, lamb, and probably an unlucky iguana along the way.

Mayor Randall was jamming his fat worthless face by a table near the bar. Every once in awhile Jerry would step away from the bar and play some sad tune on the pipe organ.

"Froou sfg rt bjigc hhu ouijbxd?" Mumblin' Pete asked.
"Nah, you get the drinks", I said. "I'll just hang back here. I'm getting mighty tired of watching everybody look all scared".

Pete was a stand-up guy, though. He got the whiskey shots. When everyone noticed him buying, folks figured we were both here and gaped at me standing by the corner. Pete also grabbed two plates of food.

"You can have mine. I'm not much for eating today", I told him, not leaving my gaze at the frightened mob.

My eyes caught Randall beckoning me over to his table. I didn't budge. He made fun of my singing and my good looks, too, so he can sit in the dog house until his ass gets eaten by worms. I took my shot and just shook my head slowly. All that was missing was my turning my thumb down like some Roman emperor.

Miss Odessa saw me and put her money where her mouth was, walking up to me.
"Odessa".
"Sheriff".
"Where's the other gals? Clara and Teresa seemed mighty fired up when I was being disgraced and all".
"Teresa's kinda hiding after the big fracas and Clara left town, scared out of her wits. Right before she left she kept saying that if you didn't brand her hide the Hiss Ranch would after they shot up the Sheriff".
I sighed loudly.

Odessa shook her red hair and shrugged her pretty shoulders.
"If it makes a difference to you me and Charity never believed you were a killer and we stayed out of that whole circus going on last week".
"I believe you". She picked up a bottle and poured another shot for me.

Jerry played a nice, slow dirge, probably some old Maritime tune about burial at sea.

"The ocean is my resting home
Waves rock me Lord, so I won't be all alone
The rolling sea, Jesus spake to me..."

Mumblin' Pete was bawling all over again. He would've kept it up, only something funny happened. This hombre stepped in and he looked pretty familiar. I couldn't place his face too well so I just squinted and peeled my eyes a lot.

The guy was as dressed in dark blue, wide as a freight train and kinda barked at Sailor Jerry like a mangy mutt. What little I heard I didn't like. The bar patrons kinda backed off him the way they did to me just a second ago. Some of them even looked at him and then at me. What gives.

Jerry got up from his organ and went behind the bar, looking kinda nervous. I was kinda nervous, too. He went out of his way to serve the guy. I bent my ear closer to what was going on. It didn't sound too good.

There was a lot of nigger this and nigger that. I know Jerry's always dealt with loudmouth guys before but this guy had an extra scare on him. People were quietly walking away from this scene, washing their hands from the whole deal, just like they did when my head was on the chopping block.

Randall glanced at me from time to time, wondering what my next move would be. He wasn't alone. Jerry was about to rip the jackass across the face with his hook but saw me coming closer to the action.

I marched slowly towards the front of the bar. As I came closer I realized who the bully was. He was the big jerk who came in with Hiss the other day when old Hiss made his ultimatums.

"Ahoy, friend", I said. "Care to tell me what your business is around these parts?"
The bully turned around with a frozen sneer on his face, blue eyes blazing with cold fire.
"Just here to have a drink, partake in the funeral rites for the Sheriff, and teach this coon some manners".

"You had your drink. Now before you leave I want you to apologize to my friend for your bad manners".
His eyes widened. "Over my dead body".

"You know", I raised my voice so everyone could hear. "That reminds me of a story. Once I worked on a ranch. We had about a dozen horses on this ranch. We had black, brown, white, spotted horses, all kinds. But there was this one brown horse. The most aggressive horse I've ever seen. It kept biting and kicking the black and white horses. It would only run with the other brown horses. The ranch hands kept trying to get this stupid brown horse to ease up around the other colored horses, but it just kept kicking and biting away. Well, you know, they had no other choice but to take that dumb fucking beast out in the field and shoot it in the head. Now, what do you think of that?"

"That's the stupidest story I've ever heard".
"Well, I reckon you'd say that because you're just like that dumb ass beast".

He reached for his gun, and before he could fire I pulled mine out and shot him in the leg. Pete shot him in the hand so he got a double-dose of gunfire. The shot to the leg made him fall like a sack of bricks. I jumped right on his chest and pinned his arms down.

"I KNOW YOU! YOU'RE THAT GEEK EVERYBODY LAUGHED AT!"
I punched him in the mush.
"BUT NOW I'M THE SHERIFF! NOW APOLOGIZE!!!"

I got off him and he limped up and smashed me with his good hand in the face with his gun, hobbling out fast from the saloon and riding off. I almost passed out.
Mumblin' Pete ran out the doors and peeled out a few shots in the air to scare the bully off.

I staggered to the bar and Jerry gave me the whole bottle and rang his bell. I saluted him and walked out.
"Come on, Pete. This damn town's been harmful to my health".
"Bnghhw ebj svkl wwxg eeubm cdennm okjkn xbwhbhj, xuwhwjh! Qswhhj?"

I dunked most of the bottle for the rest of the night. My head was throbbing like crazy. We pulled the cots out of the cells and slept in them, right by the stove, catching some warmth from the cold Arizona night.

Two hours later, the darkness of our room were cut through by bright flashes of lightning. Pete opened the door and there was a massive torrential downpour of rain coming down, the kind you only get in the desert. The rain was punctuated by booms of thunder and bright flashes of lightning.

I woke up for a spell and cussed.
"Close the door, Pete. Don't things ever slow down around here, nohow?"
"Ghfr hgjs iofjk dcmnkdj egddjk!"

We both finally nodded off back to sleep, even though the sky was pissing rain and St. Peter was playing drums and Baby Jesus was flipping the light switch on and off like a maniac. Two hours later we heard an even bigger boom, only this one came from the front door. And it wouldn't stop.

Someone was banging to Kingdom Come on our door, so I finally cussed again and woke up in my drawers. I flipped the door open and saw Shorty from the hotel.

"Sheriff! Sheriff! The barber shop and general store are on fire! Hurry!" Shorty screamed, all drenched in rain, his features pale. I looked behind him down the street and noticed not all the bright lights were from the thunder, but from a string of wooden buildings burning down.

I ran over to Pete and shook his ass up and threw my clothes and coat on. "FIRE!"
Pete jumped up and threw his duds on and we raced down the street to see the flames leaping wildly from our favorite joints. The flames were getting closer and closer to Sailor Jerry's.

"GHET HNJHLKLK OPOOI HU!!!!"
A crowd of people were trying to bang blankets against the fires.
"STOP THAT!" I yelled at the crowd. "NOW LISTEN UP! I WANT Y' ALL TO GRAB BUCKETS, AS MANY AS YOU CAN AND BRING THEM OVER HERE!"

"GET SOME SHOVELS, TOO AND DIG FOR DIRT. DIG UNDER THE MUD UNTIL YOU REACH SOME DIRT AND FILL THE BUCKETS WITH DIRT. WE'LL KEEP DOUSING THE FLAMES WITH DIRT! C' MON! GO!!"

For a second they just stood and stared and then Bo the Blacksmith jumped to my side and yelled, "YA! LETZ GO I HAF BOOKETS SHERIFF ISS RIGHT!!!"
They all skedaddled and ran to get their shovels and buckets.

We formed a line of folks digging and others passing the buckets to a few hardy men throwing huge masses of dirt into the flames. It was working slowly but not fast enough.

"COME ON, FASTER! THE FLAMES ARE CATCHING! WE GOT TO STOP THE FIRE BEFORE IT GROWS!!!"

The fire didn't stop the rain from pouring heavier and heavier, the sky flashing like a lantern going crazy and the thunder booming so loud it made us all jump.

While I was working on the fire fighting train I saw a figure in the distance on a horse holding a torch. The man looked pretty big and wide, kinda like that bum I clobbered the other day.

"DEPUTY, TAKE OVER! I HAVE SOME SHERIFFING TO DO!!!"
Pete looked up at me with a confused look on his face. Good luck to anyone who can understand his orders.

I vamoosed over to Clyde as fast as I could, loosening the reins and hopping on him. He looked pretty freaked out over the thunder and lightning, the poor old guy. I kicked Clyde's ribs with my spurs and we rode off as fast as we could. The man with the torch saw me coming after him from the distance and dropped his torch, riding quickly away.

Thanks to the lightning I could catch quick spurts of light illuminating him riding away so I couldn't lose him. The wind blowing the rain in our faces made riding tough. The thunder made Clyde so panicky he rode faster than I ever remember him riding before. He ran like the Devil was after him.

We reached the town limits, getting into the forest and the mud felt deeper and more slippery than ever. For all of Clyde's running the poor beast slipped and sent me flying off him, ass over elbows into the mud.

Clyde breathed heavily, steam pouring out of his nostrils and he trotted around in circles. I was covered in wet mud. I got up from my knees and looked up.
"I think I broke my tail bone", I groaned, rubbing my poor ass. "How about you, Clyde?"

The lightning flashed a few more times until I noticed a looming shadow not five feet away from me. I looked up at where the shadow was and finally figured out what is, now was. I found Deputy Shugg.

Deputy Shugg hung from a tall oak by the neck, his nose cut off, his eyes gouged out, half his fingers cut off and his peter was missing, too, I think. There was a lot of dried blood between his legs. It was hard to tell because I had to go by the lightning blasts every ten seconds. One thing's for sure, I finally found the Deputy.

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This concludes the public edition of "Wranglers' Canyon". To see how the rest of this ruckus turns out be sure to get the eBook edition of the complete "Wranglers' Canyon" coming in July 2015.

Style Up From the Floor Up

The art of creating fashion is contingent largely on two things: the design, which becomes the pattern; and the fabric that’s used. To use an example, if I design a turtleneck sweater it’s not going to look special, but if I make it out of soft lambskin leather, than it becomes something entirely special.

Conversely speaking, anyone can design a leather jacket, but if you tweak it by adding extra compartments or stitch it differently than the normal methods then you’re on to something fresh and original.

Several years ago Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta released a series of leather fishnet tops that were stylish and wearable. Anyone can make a fishnet top for men, but the move towards fabricating it in leather makes it a definite game changer.

I don’t think you need to be a fashion egghead to pull it off, either. At the very least a splash of leather on a pair of leather pants or a shock of satin on a canvas jacket makes the whole design become chic, exotic and one-of-a kind. Just make sure it makes sense!

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If there’s an extinct cultural phenomenon that’s sorely missed it’s TV commercials for local boutiques, esp. menswear. Two of the most popular stores that regularly aired commercials in the Seventies were Zachary All and Wilson Bros’ House of Suede & Leather.

Zachary All was a men's suit outlet in the Miracle Mile District of Los Angeles (La Brea Tar Pits/LA County Museum of Art) and sold men's suits made mostly of double knits and synthetics. The commercials featured a very Italian-American New Yorker named Eddie, who was actually Armenian.

While he talked to us out there in TV land the vast expanse of the store was projected behind him, showing an endless array of plaids, stripes and brown suits being pulled from miles and miles of clothes racks. Eddie was very proud to let us know that Zachary All had styles to suit big and tall folks, too.

Wilson Bros’ House of Suede & Leather was more interesting because it was three kind of dorky Richard Gere lookalike brothers. They loved to rock the tans, browns and sepia leathers, and to be perfectly honest with you, when I think of the Seventies the color brown would be the primary color. Pastel for the Eighties and black for the Nineties.

Here for your entertainment is a great collection of Wilson Bros’ commercials You Tube channel “shinyfast” uploaded (thanks!). Tony Wilson takes the lead like a leather Diana Ross and the other two do a leather Cindy and Mary. I like the part where they join Tony at the end and pipe in with “SUEDE” and “LEATHER” like some Richard Gere tag team.

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Just a few fashion websites you might want to know about. I like a vendor from Korea called “New Stylish who rock a little goth and a little emo”, so if you don’t mind wearing skinny pants and jackets this might be your place. Please bear in mind that size transference from Asian to American sizes needs to be done, but they’re very helpful in that department. Shipping is also surprisingly quick for being across the globe. Here they are:

https://newstylish.com

If you’re more into the Sixties mod/ska/freakbeat look, you may want to look into Atom Retro who have a great extensive catalogue. They have velvet Edwardian suits like the ones The Kinks used to sport on their album covers. How awesome is that?

http://www.atomretro.com

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Tom Ford is rapidly becoming the Glenn Danzig of fashion – humorless, conceited and frightening. To add to the horror show that is Ford he’s filmed a batch of videos in collaboration with GQ Magazine (also scary in their own right). They can be seen on You Tube and bear such distinguished titles as “Tom Ford on Dressing Like a Grown-Ass Man”, “Why A Well-Groomed Eyebrow Can Make Or Break Your Look”, and “How to Succeed In Business Without Dressing Like a Jerk”.

In these videos he’s paired with a GQ fashion editor to evaluate an average Joe (average if stepping off the runway is considered normal) and edit their look. Whatever remarks the GQ editor makes are quickly stepped on by Mr. Ford. Every video includes a highly severe haircut, which makes me wonder if the clothes are doing all the talking, why even bother with the blow dry?

The resulting look that Mr. Ford throws together is actually a lot worse than what the problem dresser came in with. Proof positive that clothes designing and styling are two entirely separate skills, and in the case of Tom Ford never the twain shall meet.

Jack Bruce Forever

I had an epiphany when I listened to “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream last night. Ginger Baker’s drumming was amazing, his brilliantly tuned drums accentuating the bizarre staccato melody and Eric Clapton’s lyrical blues guitar with its perfect setting of sustain making the song sound beautiful. But none of it would have amounted to anything without Jack Bruce’s eccentric blues melody and understated yet perfectly rhythmic vocals.

To call Jack Bruce the pulse, the spine and the real heart and soul of Cream would be an understatement. The band simply never would have existed without him. Many bands before Cream played the blues in a reverential manner. What made Cream stand out from the pack was the way Bruce never oversang the blues like too many have before and after him, and his blues melodies were perfect in their respect for tradition while still adding something new and intriguing with each listen.

Bruce was a tireless collaborator who shined no matter who he worked with, a partial list would make any music lover drool: Leslie West, Manfred Mann, John McLaughlin, Public Image Ltd., Carla Bley, John Mayall, Lou Reed (“Berlin”!), Graham Bond, and Frank Zappa, to name a few.

Most of Jack Bruce’s lyrics were written by poet Pete Brown and they worked brilliantly with Bruce’s dramatic songs, White Room being a good example. Brown’s lyrics were wild enough to keep up with Cream’s unbridled acid blues, my favorites being like SWLABR, Tales of Brave Ulysses, World of Pain, Deserted Cities of the Heart, and Passing the Time.

Even after Cream’s demise Bruce still managed to keep the jazz/blues sound exploding on his first solo album, “Songs for a Tailor”. Tracks like Ministry of Bag, Rope Ladder To The Moon and Never Tell Your Mother She’s Out of Tune employed horns and keyboards, significantly expanding his musical palette after performing in a trio format for the past several years.

Occasionally he was driven to playing in Cream-style bands in the years to come because the fans demanded it: there was West, Bruce & Laing (aka Mountain pt. 2) and BLT and probably a few more I left out, so he was never remiss in keeping his fans happy. A true showman til the end.

I wish anyone seriously making a go of being a blues singer would study Jack Bruce because he embodies the best of blues in that he never hollered and always managed to sound Scottish even when tackling classics like Born Under A Bad Sign. And nothing was more shocking than hearing him sing lead on the chorus to Public Image Ltd’s song “Ease”. Jack Bruce was a timeless talent whose influence will be felt for a long, long time.