Besides heavy rock I've always loved the avant-garde.
It started with my beloved Bowie when I was 11, leading to a hugely important Lou Reed and the Velvets, shambling into Iggy and the New York Dolls, happening on the Talking Heads and New Wave and resurging with the Smiths, their 80's indie shoegazing mates and finally maturing with those glorious creeps that were Radiohead.
But here I want to big up the Talking Heads, which I'm currently listening to on my headphones, whilst the Missus catches up on Judge Judy on TV.
The Talking Heads were 70's geeks with guitars. Awkward twitchy rockers, who appealed to my own sense of late teenage geekiness, angst and alienation in a way Bowie and Lou Reed had done earlier.
I was a gangly emaciated thing in the late Seventies; incredibly long fuzzy hair, a beard, glasses, colourful hippy clothes; a worried, vegetarian, patchouli-wearing Undercurrents-reading weirdo with a penchant for writing poetry, writing songs and head-banging to the heavies of Budgie, Wishbone Ash and Rush.
Somewhere between the rocks I made a snug place for the Talking Heads and their anxious ilk.
I first heard the Heads at my sister Rene's in the late Seventies. Rene had a huge LP collection lent against the wall, which you could flick through. James Gang, Three Dog Night, Family, her beloved Van Morrison and yes, Talking Heads. I think it was their first album, with Psycho Killer on it. You know, fa fa fa fa fa fa.
As I got deeper into hard rock bands towards the end of the Seventies I forgot the Heads a bit but re-united with them in 1983 with their album Speaking in Tongues, which included the wonderful This Must the Place [Naïve Melody].
Next came Little Creatures in 1985, which I bought with my Missus when we lived in North Wales. More poppy than former Heads, it was the sound of our summer that year. Songs like And She Was and Creatures of Love kept the Heads talking.
But it would be years later when I really found the Heads sound I loved the most. In 1990 we'd had a friend's teenage daughter living with us for a year, Laura. Laura had tons of tapes and when she left they got left behind for me to listen to.
Among the Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgardens there was a Talking Heads cassette with 2 albums on it, one on each side: Fear of Music and Remain in Light.
Fear of Music had some gems, like heaven and Life During Wartime, but it was the LP Remain in Light that completely redefined what I liked about the Talking Heads. Fusing indie rock with African rhythms, Remain in Light is the most perfect mixing bowl of funk, world and indie rock you will ever hear. I cannot name any songs as it's irrelevant. In Light is all good and if I could dance anymore I would dance to it till I dropped, awkwardly, of course, in true geeky style! Its a brilliant album from a brilliant band.
Do you like the Talking Heads?
Watched a few more old horror flicks on You Tube of late. Here are a few thoughts:
The Boogens; good old 80's schlock that would have been packaged in a garish VHS video cover but really is quite tame. I enjoyed it. The actors weren't teenagers, not too bad and the colours of the filming were strong and bright. I particularly liked the remote setting and that quaint aura of the log-cabined American hills.
As a story the Boogens is basically about an underground creature which is disturbed by mining. Yep, its been done before I agree. The action is centred around the mine and an old house with victims of the critter popping up in both.
If you like early 80's backwoods creature films then the Boogens is for you.
The Post: this wasn't a horror film. It was a newspaper film, a sub-genre I like as well, largely as a result of enjoying All The Presidents Men years ago, which I adore. The Post is about the Washington Post too and is set just prior to the Watergate scandal when the Pentagon Papers broke. The film's tension and therefore all its interest lies in the tussle between the Paper's genteel owner and its feisty Editor hell-bent on printing the Government's dirty secrets about the build-up to the Vietnam war.
I enjoyed the Post a lot. Its not got the hypnotic crumb-trail of President's Men but it has a big headline and some decent copy to keep you entertained.
The Awakening: this is a horror flick and stars Charlton Heston, he of the Apes and the Hur. I like old actors like Charlton, that starry generation of Hollywood leads like Newman, Douglas and McQueen, who carried a film by sheer screen presence. The Awakening is no different and it reminds me of the Omen with Gregory Peck holding the action together with his seasoned voice and serious demeanor, just like Heston does.
Essentially a mummy film from 1980, it has similarities with Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, where a beautiful daughter-Queen is at the heart of the cursed family, of which Heston plays the obsessed Father and Professor of Egyptology. The undertones of incest lend it a somewhat seedy feel. I still have half an hour to go. I shall report back.
What flicks have you seen lately readers?
I was pleased to see that the US's Vinylz Inc still sell wall canvases of old ANALOG covers and still includes this John Schoenherr' Moon Crawler, the inspiration for the SpaceX II Surveyor toy and Project SWORD Annual Moon Crawler, one of my favourite space vehicles.
There are more ANALOG covers too, maybe an ideal Chrissy prezzie!
https://vinylzart.com/shop/search.php?mode=search&page=1&keep_https=yes
