A while back I spent a delightful Sunday as the self-appointed band psychologist for N.E.E. – a band made of two top producing duos: Arling & Cameron and David Schreurs & Jan van Wieringen (Caro Emerald). But alas, I was of little help. The boys were just too far gone…
But I did come up with this text. As you read it, it may just seem like more of my smart-ass malarky. But alas, it’s all freakishly true. Irony dies the second you say NOOOOO!!!!!!!
Meanwhile, negativity has never sounded so easy (albeit with dark and deeply funky sub-tones). Listen to their EP HERE.
Yesterday I had a night full of holes. And it wasn’t about drinking to excess, but about attending the ‘On Portable Holes and Other Containers’ night at Felix Meritis organised by Paleisje voor Volksvlijt. Artists, philosophers, musicians and writers gathered to present and ponder such questions as ‘Is a hole a container?’, ‘How do we talk about something that does not exist?’ and ‘If you buy a donut, are you also buying the hole?’
The evening was actually quite enlightening. Lately I’ve been looking for new ways to perceive reality, and holes might just be the ticket. But I must admit I am still a little stuck on: ‘How do you successfully describe a knotted hole without refering to the immaterial?”
The night was partially inspired by the excellent and often hilarious book Gaten & andere dingen die er niet zijn [‘Holes and other things that are not there’] by the Easy Alohas. This DJ duo, comprised of Bas Albers and Gerard Janssen, were on hand for what must have been one of their easiest gigs ever: playing silence – or rather a mash-up of John Cage’s ‘4’33”’ and Mike Batt’s ‘One Minute Silence’. Because there was no turntable, the Alohas were forced at the last minute to download these tracks of nothingness from iTunes. This also meant we could not listen to the album they had brought along called The Best of Marcel Marceau – everyone’s favourite mime.
Later I confessed to Gerard of the Alohas that my life is filled with huge, gaping holes. He reassured me as only a holy master of holes can: ‘You shouldn’t see that as a problem. These holes are just spaces that you can fill up with new people and ideas.’ I was suddenly filled with a huge sense of belonging. I was now truly part of the silent majority.
[Full disclosure: You remember when the CERN Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator was first turned on in 2008 and it mysteriously shut down almost immediately, and it was theorised that a particle from the future had travelled back in time to do this in order to ensure that the accelerator would not form a black hole? I am that particle.]
The Guardian just published their online guide to Amsterdam. It’s quite fine indeed and features some fine local contributers — including the folks behind Unfold Amsterdam. My contribution involved asking the Dutch gibberish-hop collective De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig about their favorite Amster-songs. The interview was both hilarious and exhausting. Sadly much of what they said proved to be too racy for a family newspaper. My favorite part was when they claimed that volkszangerAndre Hazes was the nation’s Tupac and was actually black — ‘but you know how the history books always change everything.’
My old friends the Anacondas have just released their third album of post-surf tunes: Bad Buzz/Lost in the Space Age. It comes with a story. After they recorded it a year or so ago, they asked me to help turn it into a ‘concept’ album. Since making a ‘concept’ album out of something that’s already recorded seemed pretty high-‘concept’ in itself, I naturally said yes. And anyway, I always do like a nice ‘concept’. And it’s really quite amazing what some liner notes, visuals and overdubs can do when it comes to fleshing out the ‘conceptual’.
The album’s ‘concept’ is really quite simple — like any good ‘concept’. It begins with the anger we all share: that the shiny space age we were promised never actually showed up (Where are our jetpacks? Where are our slow food pill packs? Who can we lynch?). Now try to imagine how pissed off and bitter a jaded and washed up astronaut would be. Of course: he would be really,really pissed off and bitter. And so Bad Buzz as a ‘concept’ was born. And from there we only told the absolute truth. And as Bad Buzz, I was given the opportunity to rant anti-hippie poetry while wandering the deserts high on Tang crystals, and sound like a psychobilly singer from Pluto (the non-planet) while grunting out the tale of a hotrod rocket race between Major Tom and Barbarella. And for these experiences I would like to say: Thanks fellas! But yes, it’s now best for all parties if they return to their instrumental ways.
The release party is at Amsterdam’s Paradiso on November 6. Oh, and the coolest thing: this album is also available in vinyl. Now there’s a ‘concept’! And a big thanks to Unfold for indulging the above advertorial. Maybe next time they’ll actually get paid — yet another ‘concept’.
Traditionally, conductors have had a certain reputation. Arturo Toscanini and Gustav Mahler were untouchable gods alone on their mountains. Artur Rodzinski was said to bring a revolver to rehearsals to help with motivation. For me, the image of a conductor was formed by my 200-kilogram school band teacher who would bash her baton and munch on rum cake, hunks of which she would regularly tear off to throw at the head of whoever hit a bad note. She was very scary.
So it was refreshing to talk to conductor Otto Tausk about control for Nyenrode Now (pages 16-18). He’s not only the most acclaimed Dutch conductor of his generation, but also a nice inspired guy. And he could put things into perspective: “Having a conductor is like using a condom, it might be better without one but it’s definitely safer.”
Our talk made me realise how my musical development was perhaps somewhat stunted by my scary school teacher. Thanks to her I moved away from classical and took on a more rock’n’roll direction. But who knows? Perhaps there’s still time to take control. Thanks Otto.
And thanks to my conductor friend Greg Hubert who gave me a crash course on how to conduct a controlled interview with a conductor about control — he was my Deep Throat with a baton.
I talk with my whisky rabbi drinking buddy Geoff Berner, who is touring the Netherlands with his kickass klezmer trio, about Odessa, Yiddish and how curling is making a comeback in Canada.
Ah yes, the lone troubadour… One human. One instrument. And a stack of tunes. Once they were a dying breed but now a renaissance seems to be in full effect where one inspired freak falls in love with a mutant instrument and proceeds to learn how to use it as both a lover and a weapon. Personality helps too — and singer/songwriter/accordion-player Geoff ‘The Whiskey Rabbi’ Berner has that in spades. Already a respected cult figure in Scandinavia (thanks in part to his colleagues Kaizers Orchestra) and his native Canada, his songs have been covered by everyone from ukulele legend Carmaig de Forest to Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Certainly he has the ability to transfix any crowd he’s confronted with since it turns out that everyone’s a sucker for klezmer-based tunes that drip with politics, sex and drink — no Jewish wedding to be found here, just one ‘Lucky Goddam Jew’ (as another song is called) who knows how to play and sing from his heart. Berner’s motivation is simple: ‘I want to drag klezmer music kicking and screaming back into the bars.’
So once a guy has a taste for it where can he find some more whisky rabbi drinking buddy types? In Odessa a hundred years ago perhaps?
Geoff: Well, contrary to some beliefs, Jews are actually a pretty hard-drinking racial group. Many of My People can give the Irish a run for their money. There are a large number of traditional drinking songs, including ‘Di Mashke’ (‘the whisky’). Most of them put forward the idea that drinking hard liquor is a privilege of adulthood and we should thank G-d for it, and a man who doesn’t drink is basically good for nothing.
My song ‘King of the Gangsters’ is about Benya Krik, a character in a series of short stories by Isaac Babel, set in the Odessa underworld in the teens. Babel makes Odessa sound like a wild and fascinating place. I think that his stories make the point that when a people is oppressed and denied power in society, its men and women of great talent often emerge from the criminal element, for better or worse.
But time travel is a bit tricky (and I can imagine green zero emissions time travel to be REAL REAL tricky). So what would be a more realistic option?
Geoff: I recommend hanging out with Bob Cohen, leader of my favourite klezmer band, Di Naye Kapelye. He lives in Budapest, speaks Yiddish, Hungarian, Romanian, three dialects of Roma, Zulu, and Brooklynese. He can tell dirty jokes in all these languages. He can tell you where the best food is in places that you’ve never heard of. He was once a Rastafarian for 10 years, and was the first American tourist in Grenada after the invasion.
So I’ve basically lived outside Canada for almost 20 years. But I spent a lot of that time writing about the world from the perspective of a Canadian peckerhead. Now I am planning to return to Canada for a longer stretch to write about Canada from the perspective of eurotrash. That’s my plan… And my question is: what went down in Canada in the last 20 years that may have passed me by that I should really know about if I want to write about the state of Canada… socially, culturally, politically… new flavours of beer… that sort of thing…
Geoff: Canada. What the fuck is it? What’s changed in 20 years?
Well…
The gap between rich and poor has widened. So your middleclass friends whose careers are progressing will have more STUFF than you ever thought possible. And also they will be stepping around a lot more homeless people on the streets of the cities.
There are far fewer CanCon Rock heroes for the young. The internet has cancelled out the effect of the CanCon radio regulations. The Tragically Hip are still going strong, but they don’t fill arenas, and there’s no one who’s come up to take their place. Sure, the Arcade Fire are huge, but most Canadian teenagers don’t know they’re from Canada, and don’t care anyway.
People work harder than they did 20 years ago. That is, they work ALL THE TIME, constantly using their iphone/blackberry to check on what’s happening with work. At the bar. In the car. At the kid’s soccer practice.
It’s fucking WARMER here, man. You’ll notice it. Even in Ottawa. The river freezes later, and thaws way earlier. In BC, we’re used to seeing crocus flowers shoot up in January now.
We’re at war. When I was growing up, everything was about how Canada hadn’t fired a shot in anger since Korea. How Lester B. Pearson invented peace-keeping and that’s what our army was all about. Now, we get an average of one body bag a week, like clockwork. And have done for several years now. It’s a slow drip, drip, drip in the national consciousness that’s slowly changing our national character, making us more militaristic as a country.
Beer: People with university degrees now exclusively drink decent tasting beer from the micro-breweries. Some of the small Canadian beers are better than even some English ales. Working class people still drink Canadian and Blue. And they think people who drink ‘that fancy shit’ are faggots who think they’re better than everybody else.
Wine: People drink a helluvalot more wine than they used to here. Lots of Australian wine.
Drinking and driving is still practiced far and wide in Canada, to an astonishing degree compared with Europe.
People aren’t living in Canada. They don’t know where they’re living. They’re living on Facebook.
All of Canada is noticeably less white than it was 20 years ago. Canada has done the best job of integrating minorities of any country I’ve ever been to. Sikhs, Chinese, Muslims, Jews, can all wear whatever the hell they like to school, work, whatever, and nobody says boo. We know from experience that in a generation they’ll all be wearing blue jeans, if they’re not already. Even working class people eat sushi, curry, Ethiopian food, whatever. That didn’t happen in the 80s.
Even the conservative party isn’t immigrant-baiting anymore. They’ve figured out that there’s a huge electoral gold mine in the immigrant community, and that, wonder of wonders, most immigrants believe in traditional families, hard work, low taxes, and long jail sentences for criminals–just like the Tories! That’s why the Tories will win the next election.
Anything I’ve left out? Oh yeah: Curling is making a comeback.
Brussels Goes Brel/ The Face of Brelssels/ Oui, I’m Talkin’ to Jou: Brel is Belgian!
The Globe & Mail, 2003
Brussels is out to remind the world that the king of French chanson, Jacques Brel, was in fact as Belgian as fries, waffles, comic books and bilingualism. This chain-smoking icon of heart-on-your-sleeve expressionism died from lung cancer 25 years ago and his hometown is now spending 2003 striving to commemorate him with an intensity that befits a man of such walloping charisma. By organizing hundreds of events such as concerts, cabarets, exhibitions, guided tours, sculpture competitions and outdoor screenings of concert films, it’s as if Brussels wants to overshadow its perceived facelessness brought on by being home to EU bureaucracy with Brel’s horse-toothed and handsome face convincingly twitching between tender romanticism and spitting vitriol within a single wheeze of a melancholic accordion. And indeed, Brel can be seen as worthy poster boy for the dream of what the EU should be. His songs and performances – both singular in their urgent need to shake the world free of hypocrisy – transcended language barriers and made for large rapt audiences whenever he toured across Europe, USA, USSR and the Middle East. As one of the most covered songwriters in history, Brel’s message was also echoed in such diverse English interpreters as David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone and Mark Almond. He also came up with a concept for Belgium that seems equally applicable for across Europe (not to mention, Canada…): “If I were king, I would send all the Flemings to Wallonia and all the Walloons to Flanders for six months like military service. They would live with a family and that would solve all our ethnic and linguistic problems very fast. Because everybody’s tooth aches in the same way, everybody loves their mother, everybody loves or hates spinach. And those are the things that really count”.
But what really counted for Brel was to follow his heart and that meant that he was quick to forsake his family’s suburban Brussels cardboard factory – as well as a wife and two daughters – for the chanson clubs of 1950s Paris. Here he paid his dues with years of heckling from the black turtleneck set who could not quite get their beret clad head around this rather odd and emoting foreign entity. But with the help of the business brain of Jacques Canetti (brother of the Nobel Prize winning writer, Elias) and an immortal song, “Ne me quitte pas”, Brel entered the 1960s as France’s most shining star. With the mastery of his art, he could now nail audiences to their seats with his sweaty and intense sincerity. But just as American journalists were hailing him as the “magnetic hurricane”, his heart told him to quit the “idiotic game” of touring and with typical dramatic flair he emphasized his resolve by coming out during his 1967 farewell concert dressed in pyjamas and slippers. But he did not rest… Perhaps spurred by the feeling of mortality brought on by a cancer diagnosis, he went on to focus his considerable energies on film acting and directing while still finding plenty of time to indulge in his passions for flying, yachting and exotic affairs. This latter obsession subsided when during his last film, L’aventure c’est l’aventure, he fell in love with the young dancer/actress Madly Bamy and together they spent the last four years of his life on Hiva-Oa island, the same Polynesian pearl made famous by Gaugain. Here Brel created a huge fan base among the natives by air taxiing much needed supplies between the islands. He only returned to Europe on occasion: once in 1977 to record his final album – managing to attain new heights with but a single lung – and the last time to die at age 49. His body was later returned to Hiva-Oa and buried a few meters from Gaugain.
Paying worthy tribute to such a dynamic legend – especially one who did not shy away from depicting his countrymen as “Nazis during the wars and Catholics in between” – has proven a challenge. For example, the contrast between an inspired exhibition of comic strip tributes and the decidedly kitsch fireworks program at the Mini-Europe theme park seems to suggest that Belgium remains a divided country. But perhaps a year’s worth of reminders to Brel’s legacy will prove unifying. As his daughter France observed: “While the French relate to my father intellectually… the Belgians feel him. Brel is somebody who ate mussels and fries and drank beer. He belongs to them, he’s one of them.” And visitors to Brussels can perhaps best express their oneness to the idea of both a united Belgium and a united Europe by settling themselves down in one of Brel’s charming old haunts to listen to his worldly tunes and to indulge in some fine mussels, fries and beer…
An emerging musical saw scene is setting the city’s teeth on edge.
By Steve Korver, 18-10-2007, Amsterdam Weekly.
‘There are six of us,’ says Erin Woshinsky, when asked if there’s an emerging musical saw scene. And indeed, there seems to be many following the sawdust trail set by Marlene Dietrich—who used hers to entertain the troops—and the protagonist of Delicatessen who played his on the rooftops of Paris whenever he felt bummed out.
Woshinsky, AKA Miss Whips, plays singing saw in the duo Bad Kitten with a guitarist who could be David Lynch’s even weirder brother. Woshinsky explains: ‘I first heard it on a Melvins’ record a couple of years ago. It was such a sad, but beautiful, song. I got a normal saw and made a bow out of a stick and some fishing line. It worked—kind of. But later, someone gave me a Stradivarius.’
Before being given one—also a Sandvik Stradivarius—for his birthday 10 years ago by a musician friend, Wim Elzinga (‘I am a painter/musician/huisvader’) had only heard of the musical saw from Pippi Longstocking. ‘Apparently, beside Sandvik’s huge saw factory in Germany, there’s some old guy in a shack who makes them.’ While one can use any old saw—in theory—the official musical saw has unsharpened teeth that all go in the same direction. ‘Once, in an emergency, I actually had to use it to saw something and it worked, but not so well,’ says Elzinga, ‘with every stroke or two, it got stuck. But I do imagine Scandinavia when I play it—that it was invented by some lumberjacks who just got bored, drunk and stumbled across the sound.’
Woshinsky, meanwhile, sees it as a hillbilly thing: ‘Whisky. Back porch. Saws and spoons. You know.’
Elzinga has a broad saw repertoire: ‘People are really impressed when I break into the ‘Wilhelmus’. I also like to play Caruso songs, all that Naples opera stuff. I was on vacation on Sicily and it was working out horribly: we got robbed, but we bought a tape of Caruso at a gas station and it really saved the trip. In fact, I think the saw sounds like one of those over-the-top fat lady opera singers. All vibrato. It’s really a compelling sound. More metallic and not wooden like a violin. When you amplify it and add galm… Ah, it’s just beautiful.’
Woshinsky has had a variety of feedback to her playing. ‘People react really weirdly to it when we play on the street. Some think it’s hilarious. Others think I’m tricking them—that the sound is coming from somewhere else. Once on the streets of Taiwan, a goose started squawking in time to the music. Another time we were playing under the entrance to Zuiderkerk and someone from the apartment above dumped water on us. And just last weekend, some young pimply-faced cop said we couldn’t play it on the streets because it was a weapon. Can you believe that?’
In December, Elzinga is programming Tuesday nights at De Nieuwe Anita and hopes to get together with a couple of other local saw players. A power-saw trio? You heard it here: not even the police will be able to keep this revolution down.
Le Flic en la Fille (1968)
“…A certain aesthetic vertigo may wash over contemporary viewers as they suck back the funk-propelled opening sequence of this Alain Delon vehicle. Our media soaked brains have been trained to expect a pimped up Cadillac convertible torqueing through the streets of Harlem; but instead we witness a ragged Delon – who by this time was no longer the mere object of lingering camera shots on his crotch – leaving behind a trail of squeezed off Citroen DS’s as he careens through the streets of Paris (or should it be Marseilles?). Musicologists – most probably whiteass ones – cite this film’s soundtrack as the missing link between John Barry’s earlier compositions for Beat Girl AKA Wild for Kicks (1960) and the later blaxploitation soundtracks of Isaac Hayes and Melvin Van Peebles. This particular cinematic artefact – file under nouvellevagueploitation – has Delon playing Marc Stefovic as the tough cop who uses the last few golden shimmers left on his heart to fall for a night-club singer. In his attempts to de-fatale this femme, he ends up being dragged into a world that begins with sex, drugs, and gangsters and ends in the bed of some very prominent and very right wing French political figures…” [Poster design by Joost Swarte]
1999 Space Club (1979)
“…Imagine yourself being projected as a hologram to a night-club circling the earth where you could then indulge in an evening of celestial delight and virtual carnality. To late ‘70s Hollywood, the concept seemed sound: a television series that fused Love Boat romance with Battlestar Galactica special effects. Lucien Samaha, an art director who had made his name designing the club sequences for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, was called in to develop a feature length pilot which would introduce viewers to a glittering world where HO-Js (holographic DJs) provided the soundtrack – a ‘Studio 54 in Space’, as it were. While pirated video copies of this now hopelessly obscure pilot are highly prized among kitsch aficionados, it’s the theme song – with its eerie foreshadowing of such modern dance variants as Drum ‘n’ Bass – which does the superior job of evoking the 1999 as we know it. Perhaps with this release, a cartel of party organizers will be inspired to band together to save the Mir Space Station from it’s seemingly imminent doom…” [Poster design by 75B]
W.E.E.K.E.N.D. (1973) “…As one of the more blatant examples of cultural denial, this television pilot set in early ’70s San Francisco could be more aptly titled ‘W.H.I.T.E.W.A.S.H.’. The story follows the high jinx weekend adventures of a group of teen students who are living away from home for the first time and whose idea of a good time makes the Brady Bunch look like pack of drooling crackheads. They live in a universe where one smells neither a hippy nor a whiff of anything that does not evoke good clean hetero fun. One is quick to suspect that the city’s elite Moron Minority – armed with the belief that The Mamas and the Papas weren’t already watered down enough – supplied the production funds. But much is forgiven by the sheer pop punchiness of the title track, bouncing as it does with the zest of pure innocence…” [Poster design by Mevis & Van Deursen]
Hashi the Drug Sniffing Canine (1975)
“…Contrary to wishes of the show’s painfully naive creators, Hashi never joined the Lassie sweepstakes to become the dog icon of the ’70s. In fact, the only entertaining thing about this television pilot which tells the tale of a JFK airport sniff dog, is the title track and its trippy descent into cosmic maelstrom. Plot-wise, it was meant to depict Hashi’s moral confusion brought about by being suddenly confronted by his much beloved former master, a once sweet boy now turned smuggling adult. Predictably the movie ends with Hashi squealing on him, but the musical subtext makes clear that the happily subversive composer had other things on his mind — namely that Hashi had had a sniff too much and was tripping like some crazed bitch in heat…” [Poster design by Greet Egbers]
Let’s Get Higher (1989)
“…Many may assume that a film on the last days of Disco would deal with the personal breakdowns and deaths incurred from promiscuity and drugs. However, the charm of this documentary lies in the fact that it also investigates the smaller, more banal, accidents and tragedies which eventually forced adherents to find an alternative to their alternative lifestyles. Viewers are allowed entrance into the worlds inhabited by: a man who caught a flesh-eating microbe from his salami prosthetic, an amputee whose limb was lost when overly tight pants restricted the blood flow, and an aphasic woman who woke up speaking Swedish after being hit by a flailing arm on the dance floor (the ubiquitous Dr. Oliver Sacks being on hand to provide some startling insights)…” [Poster design by Dept]
Milano Cool (1969) “…‘Solving Crime… and lookin’ mighty fine’ sums it up: an American packs in his livelihood as private detective to go to Italy to seek fulfillment to his dream of becoming a clothes designer. Unfortunately events conspire against our somewhat schmucky but always suave hero, and he is forced back into the dick trade. A certain po-mo brand of hilarity can be gleaned from the film’s many continuity problems brought on by the fact it was filmed during Italy’s hottest summers on record. Shirts subtly change shade and lapels grow and shrink as our hero endlessly walks like some funked up Strut-asaurus Rex through the streets of Milan in search of clues. Film buffs probably already know that Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, while obviously paying homage to the vintage cop shows of the 70s, derived much from this film, particularly as a character study where talk, charm and consummate style provided the real action…” [Poster design by Piet Schreuders]
New Day (1951) “…with hindsight through jade(d)-tinted glasses being 20/20, modern folks naturally scoff at the concept of a three hour musical based on the teachings of Norman Vincent Peale and his ‘Power of Positive Thinking’. Leavened as it was with lashings of sacchrinated syrup, it was inevitable – even in 1951 – that a Broadway production of New Day: We’re So Happy! would die before it even hit the boards. The musical would have most certainly remained buried and forgotten had it not been for an Atlanta R&B recording duo scoring a modest hit in 1999 with a mutated version of what was supposed to be the show-stopper, ‘New Day’. With the further revelation that the Ren & Stimpy catchphrase ‘HappyHappyJoyJoy’ was actually lifted from another of this musical’s song titles (an affiliate of the show had picked up a dog-eared set of production notes complete with poster mock-up at a garage sale), enough interest was generated to result in current plans to stage a revised interpretation, New Day: We’re So Fucking Happy!…” [Poster design by Jan Bons]
Zona Sul (1995) “…A quality soap operatic film from Brazil? Shocking but true… Like the deep resonance of a Brazilian samba – or a cuppa fresh roast coffee for that matter – this example of contra-tropicalist film-making literally seethes with sophistication. While following genre code (the infidelities are intemperate, the coincidences inconceivable and the revenge exact), it’s the multifaceted performance of Carmen Miranda’s daughter Maria that holds the story together. She evidently learned from the tragedy of her talented mother’s Hollywood stereotyping as Miss Frutti-Tutti and created a character of depth and passion. The part was obviously written for her (the script being peppered with her character’s steadfast refusal to drink any cocktail that smacks of citrus, and always opting instead for a martini “dry…as dry as the sands…”)…” [Poster design by Floor Koomen]
Space Beach (1968) “…While sharing genre (Science Fiction) and release date (1968) with Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the tragically under-rated film Space Beach preferred to thematically explore the future of sensuality over that of technology. Situated on a utopian planet where daily life is infused with peace, glee and harmony, the inhabitants have evolved the contrasting habit of choosing vacation destinations based on their suitability for melancholic introspection. The theme song’s use of theremin calls forth such a place: a barren beach where hazy red colors dance and contort to the setting of twin suns…” [Poster design by Mevis & Van Deursen]
Herrmann (1983) “…Music and story attempted to fuse in this flawed cinematic experiment which sought to pay ultimate tribute to the blistering Hitchcock soundtracks of Bernard Herrmann. But no number of his trademark contrasts and flourishes, can save the Repulsion-on-acid story-line which doggedly observes a loner (yes, his name is Herrmann as well) in a constant state of facial flux as he does inner-battle with a variety of religious, gender and control issues. However, the film has endured as a cult due to the mass of literature it has accumulated from the hands of German film critics bent with Cabalistic obsession. The title alone has filled tomes of speculation. Ignoring it as a mere tribute or even as a clear allusion to gender conflict, certain conspiracy logicians see the title as representative of the teetering duality of the character who has as his component parts: a ‘Herr’ (represented in the music as the bombastic and pompous percussion and horn) and a plain ‘Mann’ (heard as the cautiously tiptoeing and vaguely paranoiac piano). The swooping theremin – or [t]herr[a]mann, as they like to point out – darting as it does between these musical themes, would be representative of the inner-conflict itself…” [Poster design by Goodwill]
Shiva’s Daughters (1970) “…A classic case of cultural appropriation or should we say blatant plagiarism? Aaron Spelling: you are so busted… A delight for Connoisseurs of Camp, this is the Bollywood classic used as the initial inspiration for the television series Charlie’s Angels. Shiva, as the Charlie prototype, has a busy day job as Creator/Destroyer of the universe and leaves most of the fighting of evil to his three daughters who are helped along by his able intermediary Boswalla. Armed with only their wits and loaded lingamatics, our heroines manage to take care of a rampaging tiger, a nasty blue serpent and an malodorous dwarf. But unlike pool-side Charlie, Shiva does make a spectacular appearance at the film’s conclusion to dance his cosmic dance and to kick some serious heretical rishi butt. Indeed: ‘many arms make light work’…” [Poster design by Dept]
The Only Guy (1955)
“…With ‘Hollywood Looks At Itself’ films (Barton Fink, The Player, Ed Wood, etc.) established as a genre, it’s surprising that the story behind this long suppressed and short-lived television series has not yet been adapted to the big screen – the line between absurdity and tragedy has never been more razor fine. The show’s formula, with the main character (played by actor Fred MacMurray’s twin brother Martin) as the last man on post-apocalyptic Earth who plucks his ukulele on a rainy beach and opens his heart to a different animal each episode, came from necessity: each animal mysteriously died at the end of the shooting day. It was only when MacMurray himself died halfway through the season, forcing the show’s cancellation, that the producers sought to seek an explanation. It turned out that the culprit was the show’s main ‘gimmick’: namely, the X-Ray camera it was shot with. Except for a few obscure Mexican snuff films (most notable: Feast of the Dead II: The Pinata Unmasked), this was the last time this dubious technology was used…” [Poster design by Joost Swarte]
*******
the HYPE
“…They’re amazing zeitgeist-mimics, and were that not enough, the disc is loaded with brilliant, bogus blurbs and poster art for these fantasy flicks, fortifying the mini-mythology they’ve manufactured…” – Montreal Mirror
“…The liner notes, masterfully written by expatriate Canadian Steve Korver, allude to the theme song’s ‘eerie foreshadowing of such modern dance variants as drum ‘n’ bass,’ furthering the illusion that these soundtracks are part of some large-scale revision of musical history…” – EYE
“…Music For Imaginary Films, puts the cart before the horse in that respect, creating a variety of alarmingly plausible film scenarios for which the pair provide suitably authentic music…And that inspired Steve Korver, the guy who wrote the liner notes, to go on about the cabalistic connotations of the title…” – Splendid
“…The disc is a well-realized package, complete with miniature reproductions of movie posters (each created by a differant party for stylistic variety), complete with evocative liner notes, written by Steve Korver…” – Retroactive
“…The liner notes are exquisite, showcasing art and storylines from faux films that thematically run the gamut from French new wave cinema (Le Flic et la Fille) to campy Bollywood glitz (Shiva’s Daughters). An ambitious project, to say the least…” – Windsor Star
“…The liner notes themselves are worth buying the CD for…” – Alaska Sun Star
“…The liner notes are as entertaining as the tunes, and the tunes are all impossibly catchy. A must-buy…” – North Shore News
“…And a round of applause, please, for Steve Korver’s super-visionary liner notes to these nonexistent flicks…” – Detroit Metro Times
“…contains delicious posters for each of the movies, along with plot summaries and mini-reviews of every flick. Beautifully penned by Steve Korver, they’re just convincing enough to avoid falling into dull parody, yet still massively amusing… As a package, it’s fantastic…” – Wiseacre
“…Dankzij de bijgevoegde filmposters en synopsissen overstijgen deze nummers de status van `herkenningsdeuntje’ van bestaande filmgenres. De synopsissen zijn goed geschreven geestige parodieën, de posters fraai en erg goed qua diversiteit in stijl…” – Writers Block Magazine
“…Steve Korver’s razor-sharp movie synopses in the liner notes provide insight into twisting plots, summarizing the complex characters trapped in simple worlds…” – Dinomentia
Volkszanger André Hazes died last week, aged only 53.
By Steve Korver, 29-09-2004, Amsterdam Weekly
When the news came through last week that people’s singer André Hazes had died, it pushed the Shakespearean drama then unfolding around the Hells Angels right off the front pages. Dré is dead.
Every bar in town began playing his songs. Text messaging traffic doubled for the first hours as the news spread, according to KPN. Signings of the condolence register on his website at a rate of more than a dozen a minute. His memorial, this past Monday — his body lying in state at the centre line — packed the ArenA stadium with over 50,000 people as the likes of Blof, René Froger, Guus Meeuwis and Xander de Buisonjé paid tribute. Time stopped the following day at five minutes before noon when he was cremated. Many Amsterdammers opened their windows to let ‘Zij gelooft in mij’ ring out into the street. It was a simultaneous demonstration of sympathy that may have helped to make the single, his signature song, the number one hit he always craved for in his lifetime.
Some outsiders to the Hazes phenomenon might lump him with the sentimental singing superstars of other countries — France’s Johnny Halliday, Canada’s Celine Dion, Germany’s Udo Jurgens, England’s Robbie Williams… But André was different. He was a 130-kilo blob of heart-on-your-sleeveness, a sweaty and unlikely icon who sang straight from the heart while dripping (literally) with the residue of tragedies and marital breakdowns which were first lived, then obsessively covered by the nation’s tabloids, and then written up into song format with the aid of a rhyming dictionary.
Often described as the ‘Netherlands’ only true soul singer’ or ‘a Dutch fado singer’, André considered himself a bluesman like his first hero Muddy Waters. But in fact, he was always more of a levenslied boy. The levenslied is a Jordaan-born genre that mixes sing-a-long drinking melodies with lyrics that glorify poverty, neighbourhood bonds and the simple pleasures of issuing curses, making babies, drinking coffee, and passing comment on passers-by — and which sometimes dwelt suspiciously long on the ‘long stiff tower’ of Westerkerk. Besides a greater degree of honesty than usual in the genre, Hazes’ contribution to the levenslied was to dump the accordion and replace it with guitar, which he liked because of — as he put it — its ‘Kedang!’ sound. He turned the levenslied into levenspop.
When the Gemeentelijke Vervoerbedrijf was asked if they would continue their transport strike on the night of his ArenA memorial concert last Monday, a spokesman answered: ‘Of course we are… André was a man of the people, he’d understand.’
Although his wide vibrato was certainly expressive, Hazes wasn’t a ‘great’ singer. But he was certainly a ‘big’ singer. And you couldn’t help but like a guy who was willing to cry in the name of communication. Like no other, he deserves his stature as a true people’s singer. He also deserves a statue — whether decked out like a Blues Brother or more relaxed in his tracksuit — alongside those of Tante Leni, Johnny Meier and Johnny Jordaan on the Elandsgracht.
His death at the relatively young age of 53 is very sad. Hazes had long been a walking warning against the dangers of caloric excess. He lived his life as he sang his songs: as if each moment would be his last. While that last sentence might sound like a cliché, there are times in life when only a cliché will do. Andre knew this better than most. And bless him for it.
