The Naked Bunyip (1970)

 

Barry Humphries died today. This is one of his many films. The Naked Bunyip is a 1970 Australian documentary film directed by John B. Murray. The film explores sex in Australia using a fictional framework. A shy young man is hired by an ad agency to conduct a survey on sex in Australia. The somewhat clueless young man investigates homosexuality, transvestites, prostitution, and strip clubs along with every other variant on the "norm". While doing his interviews he meets celebrities, self proclaimed sex experts, prostitutes, female impersonators, pop stars, actors, and legislators as well as self appointed moral guardians.

The Naked Bunyip is a sex documentary and a blend of fact and fiction; "[it] incorporates the fictionalizing of the 'real' that had been a feature of tendencies in French 'new wave' and the American avant-garde narrative cinema." Graeme Blundell plays a shy young man who works for an ad agency, and the agency hires him to survey about sex in Australia. The film consists of "unrehearsed and unscripted" interviews as Blundell's character investigates a variety of sexual experiences, all except for the "normal" heterosexual experience.

Among the people interviewed are Dame Edna Everage, Jacki Weaver, Aggy Read, Harry M. Miller, and Russell Morris.

The Commonwealth censors insisted on five minutes of footage being removed but the producers refused, simply blacking out the offending images and bleeping the soundtrack. On the black footage, Murray inserted a picture of a bunyip performing a parody of the forbidden action. Murray also previewed the film without cuts to censors, angering the censor. This led to a debate about censorship which helped lead to a reform of censorship standards

Cream Farewell Concert as transmitted on BBC TV January 5th 1969 - RIP Ginger Baker

The drummer with Cream Ginger Baker died today, aged 80. This is the end to a remarkable life of creativity and adventure. This film is a documentary style presentation of the last gig Cream did from their original 2 1/2 year existence. The band would later reform in 2005 for a series of very well paid performances.

An eye opening docu-concert of the legendary band Cream, that I just had to share. Insights on the nuances of their musical process and ofcourse the elabourateness of their skill and their free flowing improvised form of Rock n Roll in their gig at Royal Albert Hall in 1969.

Pretty eye-opening if you want to dig deeper into one of the most influential trios in Rock n Roll music history especially if you're an aspiring musician. You'll see and understand the legendary band better. It's a brilliantly shot and executed docu-concert. Here's Cream and their awe inspiring, magnificent process! Enjoy! :)

This was one of those occasions which it can truly be said: those who were there, will never forget it. November 26th, 1968, at the Royal Albert Hall - it only seems like yesterday. And having looked at the film again, the concert really does seem as fresh and pulsating as it was then.

First, the musicians themselves. They above all others blew apart the myth that rock’n’roll was music for the simple-minded, by the simple-minded. Maybe Dylan and Lennon had showed that lyrics could encompass subtle philosophical and poetic ideas. But it was Baker, Bruce and Clapton demonstrated that harmonically and structurally what was dismissed as rock’n’roll could be every bit as complex as any contemporary, so-called classical, music. Each musicians had a deep respect for the other two, although on the surface envy, even hatred, drove them on. None was prepared to be outshone by the other two, and this intense rivalry gave their music-making a thrilling edge. It was dangerous and explosive and it jangled the nerves.

Second, I believe that what still gives the film its power is partly a result of the circumstances in which it was made. It’s easy to forget how primitive recording equipment was in 1968. It had only been a year I had seen the very first colour video recorder at the BBC, and editing videotape was at best hazardous. So what you see in the film, apart from the interview, was all ‘live’. There is not a single edit anywhere. You could have seen what you see immediately after the concert itself, sound and picture. Of course it’s rough; raw would be a better word. It’s often clumsy and just plain wrong. But I think is still has the extraordinary energy of the occasion. Although you would expect me to say this, I don’t think I’ve seen another recording of a concert in which the atmosphere is so exactly as it was on the night.

Two footnotes. Eric Clapton later told me that the main reason the group split up was because “the music was not honest”. I’ve always thought it was through sheer exhaustion. In their belief two-and-a-half year existence, Cream played over 300 gigs, travelling night after night here, Europe and in the States. No wonder there was a friction. And yes, Ginger Baker often thought Jack deliberately played played too loud so that Ginger could not hear himself. During the filming of Beware Mr Baker, Ginger admitted that he had quite frequently wanted to throttle Jack. “But hey,” he told me, “I loved the bastard.” And that was the due. Jack was held in awe, especially by Ginger and Eric. More importantly, he was also held in enormous affection by those knew him, including me, but especially Ginger and Eric.

Second, the film was originally commissioned by the BBC for its ‘Omnibus’ arts slot. In other words, Cream were then thought worthy of consideration alongside Debussy and Picasso. Today the BBC has more-or-less abandoned its archival responsibilities to the arts and mistaken laddism and silly women in fancy dress for culture. More fool them. And as for ‘Sky Arts’; Remembrance Sunday on the Anniversary of World War One in 2014, for instance, was ‘remembered’ by ‘An Evening with the Bee Gees’. - Tony Palmer

TRACKLIST:
1:55 Sunshine Of Your Love
6:53 Jack Bruce interview
11:44  Politician
17:20 Eric Clapton interview
21:48 White Room
25:44 Jam intro Spoonful
31:25 Spoonful (cover Willie Dixon)
34:44 Ginger Baker interview
39:40 Ginger Baker drums solo
46:20 Jack Bruce interview
48:36 I'm So Glad (cover  Skip James)
53:30 Anthony Burgess interview
53:00 Frank Zappa interview
53:33 We're Going Wrong

Brian Jones (1942-1969)

Next Tuesday, 3 July it will be 50 years since Brian Jones, dandy, guitarist, sitar player, and much more, died in his swimming pool in Sussex.

In this video The Vinyl Geek dives into the subject of Brian Jones, the enigmatic founder and original leader of The Rolling Stones. His passing at 27 sent shock waves through the world of rock but who really was Brian Jones?

Brian was central to the sound of the early Rolling Stones, with Ruby Tuesday featuring him with recorder, piano and vocal harmony:


Brian only played, recorded and produced his own music once. A Degree of Murder (German: Mord und Totschlag, French: Vivre à tout prix) is a 1967 West German film, starring Anita Pallenberg and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Brian Jones created the soundtrack to it:

 

The difference between hearing and listening | Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016)

Sounds carry intelligence. If you are too narrow in your awareness of sounds, you are likely to be disconnected from your environment. Ears do not listen to sounds; the brain does. Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on accumulated experiences with sound; it can be focused to detail or open to the entire field of sound. Octogenarian composer and sound art pioneer Pauline Oliveros describes the sound experiment that led her to found an institute related to Deep Listening, and develop it as a theory relevant to music, psychology, and our collective quality of life.

Pauline Oliveros died yesterday, aged 84.

Ben: Diary Of A Heroin Addict

Ben Diary of a Heroin Addict from Olly Lambert on Vimeo.

The full horror of terminal addiction. In life, whatever you feed, will survive. Be careful what you feed.

Ben had already edited his footage while alive into a rather incoherent 45-minute film. There was a story in a local newspaper that was later picked up by the BBC about this film, and Gecko Productions, a small independent production company, got in touch with Anne and asked her if they could make a proper documentary out of it.

She was ready by then – and Gecko employed Lambert to do the job. Lambert’s previous documentaries had been set predominantly in war zones – Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza – but he instantly saw the compelling nature of the very different material he’d been handed here.

Though he flinched at some of the footage – over 30 hours, it repeatedly shows Ben injecting heroin into his groin, since his veins were too damaged. “I thought it was too dark at first,” says Lambert. “But by the next morning, I thought the fact that I’d had such an emotional response to it is probably exactly why I had to do it.” Lambert ended up making a film that was very different from the one Ben had hoped to make.

“He wanted to film his recovery from drugs,” Lambert explains. “He wanted to be a romantic hero.” Lambert’s film instead presents the sad story of a man fighting a losing battle. It has won Ben’s mother’s approval. “I think the documentary is absolutely amazing,” she says. “I think they’ve really honoured us as a family. They’ve not dumbed it down. But they’ve not sensationalised it either.”

If Anne Rogers now hopes this film about her son’s suffering will achieve some social good, her son’s relationship to the footage he left will remain a more tortured one. Lambert believes that Ben became almost as dependent on his camera as he had been on heroin. “At the end, the camera was the one person he could talk to in the middle of the night,” he says. “That camera was in and out of Cash Converters all the time. He had to pay up to £200 every time he got it back. That’s a lot of money when you’re really desperate. But he always went back to get it. It was the one thing he hung on to.”

Jefferson Airpline Live at the Monterey Pop Festival

Paul Kantner has died, aged 74. Kantner was a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane who stayed with the seminal San Francisco psychedelic band through its transformation from 1960s hippies to 1970s hit makers under the name Jefferson Starship. But by the mid-1980s, when Grace Slick and Mickey Thomas were lead vocalists, Kantner thought the music so “mundane” that he left the Jefferson Starship and successfully forced the remaining members not to use the name “Jefferson”. (His former bandmates called themselves Starship and had three No1 songs, including Sara and We Built This City).

This video is from the 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival by Jefferson Airplane. A triumph of psychedelic rock.

Jefferson Airplane plays:
Somebody to Love
Other side of this Life
White Rabbit
High Flying Bird
Today
Young Girl Sunday Blues

The albums

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966)

Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

After Bathing at Baxter's (1967)

Crown of Creation (1968)

Volunteers (1969)

Are all worth checking out, listening to again and again. They are gold.

Motörhead: Live Fast Die Old (Documentary)

To summarise Lemmy Kilminster is a few words is impossible. So here are his. Rest easy Lem, you did good.

Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin: A Hero of the Future

Chemist and pharmacologist Alexander ‘Sasha’ Shulgin passed away Monday “peacefully surrounded by friends and family.” He was 88.

DIRTY PICTURES is a documentary about Dr. Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, the chemist who discovered the effects of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) and over 200 other mind-altering drugs. Shulgin's alchemy has earned him the title "The Godfather of Psychedelics," and a reputation as one of the great chemists of the 20th century.

Working from a lab in his home, and using himself and his wife Ann as test subjects, Shulgin's discoveries have brought him into conflict with the law but made him a worldwide underground hero. The two books they co-authored, "Pihkal" and "Tihkal", have built a foundation for cutting-edge neuroscience and medical research. DIRTY PICTURES examines the impact of Dr. Shulgin's lifelong quest to unlock the complexities of the human mind.

Alexander "Sasha" Theodore Shulgin (June 17, 1925 -- June 2, 2014) was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author. He was the scientist behind more than 200 psychedelic compounds including MDMA, more commonly known as Esctasy. Considered to be one of the the greatest chemists of the twentieth century, Sasha's vast array of discoveries have had a profound impact in the field of psychedelic research. By employing unorthodox methods; testing his creations on himself, working from a makeshift lab in his home, Shulgin has gained the reputation of a modern day alchemist within the scientific community.

Shulgin’s work lives on in his books TIHKAL and PIHKAL.

Syd Barrett is Dead

Syd Barrett has been dead for a while. Roger Barrett, who was Syd, died a few days ago. Not much will change with his passing for me or the many who liked the music but this is a tribute to a truly great artist.

"Suddenly the rush of the mighty great thunder,
confronted Swan Lee as his song he sang,
In the dawn, with his squaw, he was battling homewards
It was all written down by Long Silas Lang.

The land in silence stands...
The land in silence stands...
The land in silence stands."

Swan Lee (Silas Lang) 1968

Silas is the name of my son, born 14th April 2000.