In the late ’80′s and early 90′s, Jane’s Addiction brought the druggy, draggy Los Angeles underground sound to mainstream audiences with a trio of unforgettable albums: Jane’s Addiction (1987), the classic Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and Ritual de lo Habitual (1990). The fact that Jane’s guitar player Dave Navarro claims to have no recollection of recording the band’s third album gives a peek into the band’s rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and their attraction to dangerous drugs.

During the recording of Ritual, Jane’s lead singer and lyricist Perry Farrell directed a film featuring his actress/music video director girlfriend Casey Niccoli. Gift wasn’t released by Warner Brothers until 1993 and it’s likely that the delay can be chalked up to the film’s bizarre content: Gift mixes live footage of the band at the height of their powers with quirky vignettes featuring a cast of oddball characters. It starts out sweetly enough, but soon spirals into a vortex of intense heroin injection scenes, an overdose, a Santeria wedding, a meeting with a sadistic gynecologist, surfing visions, moronic cops, airhead pizza delivery dudes, an Ice-T cameo and necrophiliac fantasies.

For hip, young people of the era, duped VHS copies of Gift became fetishistic objects of dark adoration – if you didn’t have one of your own you likely “borrowed” one from a soon-to-be-ex-friend. It’s hard to remember a time when a clunky video cassette could have inspired such intense scrutiny, but, then again, it’s hard to remember a time when a band as talented, experimental and ground-breaking as Jane’s was able to make an impact on the mainstream proper. Nirvana’s Nevermind would set off the grunge music revolution only a year after the release of Ritual and one doubts the movement happening at all if not for the marriage of alternative rock sensibilities, metal aggression and Eric Avery’s alternately brooding and melodic bass lines that Jane’s created during this important period. Even Farrell’s cute dress in Gift’s opening scene draws a direct line to Kurt Cobain.

Of course, the film’s soundtrack is a real highlight. Here is how the ’80′s music site Slicing Up Eyeballs calls the shots:

Musically, “Gift” features Jane’s Addiction playing “Been Caught Stealing,” “Three Days,” “Stop!,” “Classic Girl” and “Ain’t No Right” (the latter two were excerpted from the film as the songs’ official music videos), as well as music by sometime Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante and a performance of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” by Jane’s and Ice-T and Body Count

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Did you watch a third generation cassette tape copy of this film back in the day? Leave a comment below. Gift was finally released on DVD in 2010 and the comments on YouTube suggest that it was Casey Niccoli herself who uploaded the film to the Internet, giving us all a little gift of our own collective past.

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This week: The Beast cometh!, Weed Weekly, Wake up and smell the bacon, Joe’s infomercial, Beware the Build-A-Bear Group, Kim wants Google glass to look at porn because Kim is a massive perv, Icke-TV, Bradley Manning’s trial, Kim wants to join the Israeli army to perv over girls because Kim is a massive perv, and Lou Reed gets a new liver…for cash.

[powerpress]

Personnel – Joe Nolan, Kim Monaghan, and Ken Eakins

Linkypoos:

• The Mark of The Beast has Arrived! – Link

• Two excellent reasons to get stoned – Link

• Francis Bacon’s Triptych Turns 40 Link Link

• Tales of Hot Rod Horror 2 Link Link

• Bilderberg comes to the Uk, provides speakers corner for twats – Link, Link

• Awwwwwwww – Link

• David Icke is launching a TV channel … fuuuuuu- Link Link

• Bradley Manning’s Trial Begins Link

• Lots of reasons to join the army – Link

• Lou Reed Gets a New Liver Link

Interludes:

Arnie, The Lonely Island, and Zombi

The player (ya’ll)

For those readers who are unfamiliar with Mod culture, let’s begin with the Wiki:

Mod (from modernist) is a subculture that originated in London, England, in the late 1950s and peaked in the early to mid-1960s. Significant elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits); music, including African American soul, Jamaican ska, British beat music, and R&B; and motor scooters. The original mod scene was also associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night dancing at clubs.[4] From the mid-to-late 1960s and onwards, the mass media often used the term mod in a wider sense to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable, or modern.

The Who’s adopting of Mod signs, symbols and fashion is part of what separated the band from the rest of the post-Beatles flood of British Invasion rock bands. Pete Townsend’s art school sensibilities and his uncanny intuition for trends and fashions found The Who adopting the style and attitudes of British Mod Culture in the 1960′s, and their 1973 album Quadrophenia found the band creating their second rock opera, looking back and telling the story of the birth of Mod in Britain. Mod culture experienced a revival with the release of the Quadrophenia album and the band’s 1979 film of the record effectively marked the end of Mod.

From modern jazz to Georgie Fame, from The Who to The Jam, The Who, The Mods, And The Quadrophenia Connection tells the story of Mod culture using The Who and their classic album as the narrative spine of the film.

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Kevin Schreck is a first-time director whose Persistence of Vision tells a tale of artistic obsession, tracing the career of master animator Richard Williams. Williams is best known for 1988′s Who Framed Roger Rabbit which seamlessly mixed live action and animation, putting the director on the map as one of the master storytellers in the medium.

The success of that film lead to a breakthrough for Williams’ pet project – The Thief and the Cobbler. Conceived in 1964, the movie began as an animated version of the satirical Persian folktales that feature the character Nasrudin – a kind of Sufi fool whose failures teach moral and social lessons. Several versions – and failed funding schemes – later, Williams won two Oscars for Roger Rabbit and made a deal with Warner Brothers to fully finance and market his self-described “masterpiece.”

Schreck’s handling of the subject matter here is respectful without being reverent. The nearly-three-decades-long tale of Williams’ film is convoluted to say the least and Schreck has trouble with pacing in the beginning – the director’s handling of failures of the first version of Thief nearly brings Persistence to a standstill, but once Williams’ project snaps into focus, so does Schreck’s.

Williams’ gorgeous, hand-drawn animations are all beautiful and the footage from Thief is outrageously ambitious. That said, it’s a shame that a movie about beautiful pictures doesn’t labor over its own visuals more. Much of the found footage here looks like lo-fi YouTube downloads and some of Schreck’s own footage is pixelated and washed-out on the big screen. I haven’t found similar criticisms online and I suspect many critics have screened Persistence online or at least on small screens. It’s hard to blame projection problems as certain scenes were jarringly crisp and clear. I’m all for low-quality images in a context where they make sense aesthetically, but in a film about an artistic obsessive who handcrafts perfect pictures, they don’t.

Williams never does get his picture made. It’s eventually taken out of his hands, chopped to pieces and released in various versions under various titles including Arabian Knight and The Princess and the Cobbler. Schreck’s telling of the Thief story shows that the director knows a good subject when he sees one, and his poised, thoughtful Q & A session following the film’s first screening at the Nashville Film Festival found him to be a thoughtful, imaginative artist who already has a good handle on the kind of stories he wants to tell. The end credits of Persistence assure us that Williams is currently working on a new animation project that is “unlike anything anyone has done.” I’ll be looking forward to Schreck’s next film as well.

Here is the cult-tastic “Workprint” version of The Thief and the Cobbler which fills in the blanks in the animation with storyboard images. This is as close to Williams’ original vision as we are ever likely to get.

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Sad news tonight for rock fans: The Doors’ keyboard player Ray Manzarek died on Monday after a long battle with bile duct cancer. Manzarek brought jazz influences to The Doors’ brand of dark, poetic rock and held down most of the bass duties on stage and in the studio – playing a keyboard bass with his left hand and an organ or electric piano with his right. Manzarek had a jovial, engaging persona, but was also known for his controversial and obstinate relations with his surviving bandmates and the band’s music. In this Los Angeles Times article, Doors drummer John Densmore remembers his friend:

“There was no keyboard player on the planet more appropriate to support Jim Morrison’s words,” Densmore said through a spokeswoman. “Ray, I felt totally in sync with you musically. It was like we were of one mind, holding down the foundation for Robby and Jim to float on top of. I will miss my musical brother.”

For me Ray was an invaluable contributor to a band that I consider to be America’s greatest. The Doors were massively popular, but their influence was outrageously deep. It’s no exaggeration to say “No Doors, no punk rock.” Their songs are among the most original and moving of those of their peers, and are now considered to be timeless classics. Their live shows – inspired and infuriating – were the stuff of legend.

Smooth sailing, Ray. One more passenger on the Crystal Ship.

A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time
When we get back
I’ll drop a line

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Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain recently premiered his new show on CNN. The title of Parts Unknown references both the remote locations the show seems to focus on as well as the odd bits of fruits, veggies and animals that make their way into the more exotic dishes Bourdain puts on display. The title also has a hint of ominousness to it and it’s these dark overtones that tell you Bourdain is really on to something, here.

Fans of No Reservations will find plenty to like here, but fans of particular episodes of Bourdain’s former, famous Travel Channel show will be especially pleased. For me, No Reservations was at its best when the places were gritty and the stories Bourdain uncovered were dark and deeply human – episodes from Columbia, Laos and Lebanon all leap to mind.

The first handful of episodes from Parts Unknown are packed with Bourdain at his edgy best: He recalls the destructiveness of the L.A. Riots in an episode focused on the city’s Koreatown neighborhood; he illuminates the violence and oppression in present-day Myanmar; he returns to Columbia.

In my favorite episode yet, Bourdain visits Morocco, comparing the present-day country and the city of Tangier to their counter-cultural legends, illuminating the lives and works of artists like Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Brian Jones and the Master Musicians of Jujuka along the way. Oh, yeah! Bourdain even schools you on how to make homemade majoun. If you don’t know what majoun is, you really need to watch this video.

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Nico was a fashion model, an actress and a siger/songwriter who is best known for her time with The Velvet Underground and her contributions to their debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico. The Warhol Superstar is familiar to cinephiles for her gorgeous turns in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Warhol’s Chelsea Girls.

Christa Päffgen was born in Nazi Germany in 1938. Her father was killed in the war. By the age of 13, she had quit school to sell lingerie. At 5′ 10″ with outrageous cheekbones, she was a star model on the rise while still in her teens.

While taking acting lessons in New York with Lee Strasberg, Nico met rockers like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Jimmy Page produced her first single and Bob Dylan wrote the song “I’ll Keep it with Mine” for her to perform. An introduction from Jones got Nico into Warhol’s inner circle and the rest is history.

While many are familiar with the first half of Nico’s story, not as many know much at all about the rest of her life. Nico’s solo musical career is full of courageous experimentation and her refusal to be just another pretty face is admirable even by today’s standards. Her drug problems are the stuff of legend and her strange death wraps even the end of her tale in an air of mystery.

Susan Ofteringer’s film Nico Icon sheds light on all of this and more. This rather heavy-handed plot summary at IMDB says it all:

A look into the many lives of Christa Päffgen, otherwise known as Nico; from cutie German mädchen to the first of the supermodels, to glamorous diva of the Velvet Underground, to cult item, junkie and hag. Many faces for the same woman, whom, you realize, just couldn’t bring herself to care enough to live.

Here is the film in its entirety. Highlights include early images of Nico as a young model, the origin of her famous name, lots of post-Velvets interview and performance footage of the chanteuse, and a moving homage by friend/bandmate/producer John Cale who closes the film playing piano in front of two massive Julian Schnabel paintings, giving a haunting recitation of the Nico classic “Frozen Warnings.”

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In France, the publishing world is falling over itself to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s modern book of parables, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). In the book, the title character relates the story of his cosmic adventures to a downed pilot on Earth.

Since its writing in 1943, the book has sold more than 145 million copies worldwide and has been translated into nearly 300 languages and dialects.

Saint-Exupery was a pilot himself and he died while on a mysterious reconnaissance mission in 1944, not living to see the book’s publication in France in 1946, after World War II had ended.

To mark the anniversary, Folio will be issuing a booklet of 24 drawings by Saint-Exupery as well as a cartoon edition of the book. Find out about other pending publications at The Raw Story.

The Little Prince has seen numerous film and television adaptations, but, for me, Will Vinton’s 1979, Claymation masterpiece is the most magical. Throwing my own celebration for Saint-Exupery, here is the film in its entirety.

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What is your favorite adaption of The Little Prince?

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George Pal’s Tulips Shall Grow was released in 1942. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Cartoons this stop-action masterpiece is about the enduring love between a Dutch boy and girl who face the invasion of their idyllic homeland by The Screwballs: A race of mechanical men who threaten to destroy everything in their path. This flick is a transparent metaphor about the Nazi occupation of Holland and a call to the Dutch to fight on to see a day when their beloved tulips would bloom once again.

The gardeners at the Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art were digging up thousands of tulips today. They planted 55,000 of them this year so the clean up is also a massive undertaking.

Never that appreciative of flowers, I was schooled on the beauty of tulips by a friend years ago and have never forgotten the lesson. For me – besides their obvious charms – it’s the transient nature of the flowers that really gives them their intense mystique, and seeing piles and piles of ragged, colorful blossoms being shoveled into black garbage bags today reminded me of this film.

As a prelude to the film, Wiki offers this history lesson on The Battle of the Netherlands and the occupation of Holland.

The battle lasted from 10 May 1940 until the main Dutch forces surrendered on the 14th. Dutch troops in the province of Zealand continued to resist the Wehrmacht until 17 May when Germany completed its occupation of the whole nation.

The battle ended soon after the devastating bombing of Rotterdam by the German Luftwaffe and the subsequent threat by the Germans to bomb other large Dutch cities if Dutch forces refused to surrender. The Dutch General Staff knew it could not stop the bombers and surrendered in order to prevent other cities from suffering the same fate. The Netherlands remained under German occupation until 1945, when the last Dutch territory was liberated.

Also, my companera swears the movie is a perfect match with Dark Side of the Moon.

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When I started this blog way back in 2004, I was publishing it through Blogger. A special piece of code allowed me to use their interface while publishing it to my own website. When Google bought Blogger, they decided to get rid of this service and I had to move fast. 963 Collective came to the rescue and migrated my archive to a WordPress page on my site’s own server. Under pressure to move quickly, we did a bare bones build with the idea that I could dress it up later.

It’s taken me far too long, but I finally found the right collaborator. Under the project name of Paper Lion, we’ve dreamed up a blog that pays homage to the aesthetics of my website while updating it with a fresh new look and giving me a lot more flexibility behind the scenes.

In my 10th year of Insomnia, let me take this opportunity to say thank you for reading.

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