Ace Frehley’s comet has gone back to the stars. Really, it’s kind of surprising in some respects that he lasted this long, given his propensity for substance abuse when he was in Kiss, but all credit to him for finally getting off the shit and managing fine without those other two guys. People are sorry to see Ace go. I don’t think they’ll miss Paul or Gene the same way (especially not the latter).
And there goes another of the good ones. Of people that have died in Utah in the last few days, this is the one I’m most likely to mourn; Redford made an actual positive contribution with his work, variously as an actor, a director, and the guy behind Sundance which boosted the careers of so many others. 89 was a good innings, and he put it to good use. I find that much more worthy of memorialising than that other individual from last week.
What awfully sad news to wake up to today. I knew Stratton was going blind, which is an awful thing to befall someone whose chief love that they built their life on is a visual art, but this really is the last of him… I suppose at least he didn’t have to live too long without films. The Stratton family’s grocery store loss was very much cinema’s gain; he did well for a man who never finished high school.
And, for once when I’m doing one of these notices, I’ve actually got a story about Dave and how *I* once taught him something about a film…
…the film in question being Benjamin Christensen’s great barnyard oddity of a movie Häxan, a weird hybrid of horror and documentary before either of those film genres were really a thing. So, picture this: it’s 1999, and Stratton’s restarting his great cinema history course as part of the Continuing Education thing at Sydney University. I can’t resist passing this up, especially given how big I was on silent cinema at that time and that was where the course was. I sign up as a student. In the second semester, we get around to the first half of the 1920s, and for one of his 1922 choices, Stratton picks this. And people are CONFUSED.
Cos the version Stratton showed only had dialogue intertitles; all the expository titles for the opening lecture bit and elsewhere in the film were missing. By the end of the screening, I think the general mood was “WTF”, cos the absence of the expository titles rendered some parts (particularly the ending) kind of incomprehensible. I, on the other hand, was, well, not as confused as the rest of the class, cos I’d actually seen the film before this—got the old Redemption VHS from the UK when we were there in ’96—and so I knew what should’ve been there… so why wasn’t it? Well, I also knew the film had been reissued in 1968 with a narration by William S. Burroughs… was that what we were watching that night? That would explain the lack of expository stuff cos the narration would’ve replaced that… but the print didn’t have the narration. So I was still a bit confused.
Anyway, I got the Criterion DVD of Häxan a few years later and that confirmed my suspicion that it was indeed the 1968 print (which is on that disc as an extra), just that someone had stripped the narration from it for some reason (I can’t remember now if it even had a score or not). On that night, though, everyone was a bit bemused by what had just happened… and your humble scribe here uncharacteristically put himself forth to explain to everyone else “hi, I’ve actually seen this before and David’s copy was missing a whole heap of intertitles for some reason, so it actually does make sense than you’re all probably thinking it does”. And Stratton was quite taken aback by this cos, as he then said, he’d never seen any other version of the film, and had never realised there even was one. Well, he certainly knew by the end of that class. And that, children, is how I, of all people, got one up on the expert and professional. I don’t get to do this sort of thing often, so excuse me if I’m mildly self-impressed for a moment…
Yeah, Hulk Hogan shuffled off his mortal coil last night too. Funnily enough, I’m not seeing nearly as much affection on his passing as I’m still seeing for Mr Osbourne, which I suppose indicates a certain… difference between the two. Hogan was famous enough that even I kind of knew about him in the 80s, and I knew nothing about wrestling; I only started becoming even dimly aware of what it was all about once the Internet started seriously becoming a thing at the start of the oughts, but it was my housemate and bandmate Joe who taught me more about it cos he was a big wrestling nut and had actually run some shows here… so that was also how I kind of discovered just how rotten the business is, and how Mr Bollea above was one of the most rotten figures in it. Whatever else could be said against Ozzy—and let’s be honest, there is quite a lot—I don’t think he ever claimed to be something he wasn’t; conversely, Hogan’s stardom was built upon him doing just that, using the stage figure of Hulk to hide the fact that the real Terry was a bit of a shit. And, as time passed, people became increasingly aware of that as he became increasingly shitty… but what about Hulk, instead of Terry? Steve Shives, an actual lifelong wrestling fan, had some thoughts I found interesting, so I’ll let him speak:
Fuck. I don’t have words for this.
(post title stolen from a friend on Bluesky—hi Kitty, hi Tim)
Australian celebrity chef Peter Russell-Clarke dies aged 89
Born in Ballarat in 1935, Russell-Clarke began his career at age 14, working as a junior artist at an advertising agency, before moving into freelance cartooning and working as a food consultant for popular magazines, including New Idea and Woman’s Day.
He went on to produce his own cookbooks before shooting to wider fame through his catchy “g’days” which featured in the theme song of his 1980s ABC cooking show Come and Get it.
The show ran from 1983 to 1992, with 900 episodes written and hosted by Russell-Clarke wearing his signature neckerchief.
His appearances on Come and Get It made him one of Australia’s pioneering TV celebrity chefs.
“I realised that the bloke in front of the camera got more applause than the person who wrote it,” he told the ABC in 2017.
“So I wrote myself into the series and I became known as a cook rather than a painter or a writer.”
I share part of PRC’s surname, so, in the 80s when he was at his peak with Come and Get It, the kids at primary school used to amuse themselves singing the theme song with my first name inserted. It was irritating. Still, not going to blame Peter for that, of course, not his fault that primary school kids could be little shits (I mean, I probably was one myself at times, let’s be honest)… Anyway, there goes another one of those people, the ones that were just always there when you were little, maybe not so much as you get older but they’re a presence nonetheless… and when they go, another bit of your own past departs with them. Bye, Peter, looks like you had a pretty decent time among us…
So Swaggart kicked the bucket at last, clearly holding on to life with grim determination for two weeks after his impending death was announced. Hopefully we may see his fellow scumbag Jim Bakker, who Swaggart described as “cancer” before his own downfall—wow, WE were a paragon of moral uprightness and superiority to our fellow Christians, weren’t we? Not wrong about Bakker, but Swaggart really was the last person who should’ve been sniping at him—HOPEFULLY, I SAY, we may see Bakker follow him sooner rather than later. For his sake, of course; may the Lord bless him by saving him any more embarrassment at having to hawk those fucking food buckets for the apocalypse on his show so much…
And just a few hours later it’s goodbye Douglas McCarthy from Nitzer Ebb… no word on what took him out, but he was apparently diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver last year so I’m guessing alcohol caught up with him at last. A damn shame, whatever the case. I was shocked to discover he wasn’t even 60 yet; apparently he was just 15 when Nitzer started, so only 18 when the first single came out.
I never saw Nitzer Ebb live, but I gather they saw me; back in 2006 they were one of the main acts at the Under the Blue Moon festival, performing upstairs at Newtown RSL while I was downstairs with the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we were part of the DJ lineup, and also we played a short live set (friends of ours were also playing support upstairs that night), and apparently Douglas and Bon came down to witness our semi-musical shenanigans and enjoyed whatever the hell it was we were doing. So there you go. Lift up your hearts:
And, with rather more hair, here he’s guesting with Alan Wilder’s side-project (as it still was at that time) Recoil on a cover of Alex Harvey’s “Faith Healer”:
News just breaking that Brian Wilson has left the building. Apparently he was diagnosed with dementia last year, as if the poor bastard didn’t have a life full of problems… one of the biggest of which, of course, was Eugene Landy, who I’m glad Brian outlived and achieved things without (wish he could’ve outlived the scumbag Mike Love too, but we can’t have everything, I suppose). Brian lived a more difficult life than most people in the world of pop music, and he’s at rest at last, and I suppose we can be grateful for that for him.
Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies aged 82
Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors with his gloriously funky and often socially conscious songwriting, has died aged 82.
“After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend and his extended family,” a family statement reads. “While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.” […]
Among those paying tribute to Stone was musician Questlove, whose documentary about Stone, Sly Lives!, was release earliest this year. “From the moment his music reached me in the early 1970s, it became a part of my soul,” he wrote on Instagram. “Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note … His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.”
I’ve got to say, the timing of this news is kind of hilarious, given that it comes only a few months after Sly Lives!, the title of which was supposedly a dig at people who, understandably, could’ve sworn the artist formerly known as Sylvester Stewart had in fact ceased to be with us many years ago. Well, he’s definitely not now… The amazing thing about him dying now, of course, is that somehow he lived long enough to do so; given the amount of drugs he was hoovering up during the 70s (which I suspect contributed to at least some of those undefined “underlying health issues”), I’m surprised he made it out of the decade, never mind this far into this one. The band itself was probably doomed to a short life, especially once the drugs took over, but that was a mightily bright flare-up while it lasted… by way of an example, here they are on TV in 1968 before things started to go downhill:
You must be logged in to post a comment.