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Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), widely known by her stage name based on her married name Donna Summer, was an American singer, songwriter and actress. She gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s and became known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following.

While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, Summer became the lead singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she left New York and spent several years living, acting and singing in Europe, where she met music producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte in Munich, where they recorded influential disco hits such as "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love", marking her breakthrough into an international career. Summer returned to the United States in 1975, and other hits such as "Last Dance", "MacArthur Park", "Heaven Knows", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" (duet with Barbra Streisand) and "On the Radio" followed.

Summer earned a total of 42 hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 in her lifetime, with 14 of those reaching the top-ten. She claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984, and from her first top-ten hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top-ten hits (10 were top-five hits), more than any other act during that time period. She returned to the Hot 100's top-five in 1983, and claimed her final top-ten hit in 1989 with "This Time I Know It's for Real". She was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the US Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the US within a 12-month period. She also charted two number-one singles on the R&B Singles chart in the US and a number-one single in the United Kingdom. Her most recent Hot 100 hit came in 1999 with "I Will Go with You (Con Te Partiro)". While her fortunes on the Hot 100 waned through those decades, Summer remained a force on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart over her entire career.

Summer died on May 17, 2012, from lung cancer, at her home in Naples, Florida. She sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She won five Grammy Awards. In her obituary in The Times, she was described as the "undisputed queen of the Seventies disco boom" who reached the status of "one of the world's leading female singers." Giorgio Moroder described Summer's work with them on the song "I Feel Love" as "really the start of electronic dance" music. In 2013, Summer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In December 2016, Billboard ranked her at No. 6 on its list of the Greatest of All Time Top Dance Club Artists .

Early life

LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born on December 31, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Andrew and Mary Gaines, and was third of seven children. She was raised in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill. Her father was a butcher, and her mother was a schoolteacher.

Summer's performance debut occurred at church when she was ten years old, replacing a vocalist who failed to appear. She attended Boston's Jeremiah E. Burke High School where she performed in school musicals and was considered popular. In 1967, just weeks before graduation, Summer left for New York City, where she joined the blues rock band Crow. After a record label passed on signing the group since it was only interested in the band's lead singer, the group agreed to dissolve.

Summer stayed in New York and auditioned for a role in the counterculture musical, Hair. She landed the part of Sheila and agreed to take the role in the Munich production of the show, moving there after getting her parents' reluctant approval. She eventually became fluent in German, singing various songs in that language, and participated in the musicals Ich bin ich (the German version of The Me Nobody Knows), Godspell, and Show Boat. Within three years, she moved to Vienna, Austria, and joined the Vienna Volksoper. She briefly toured with an ensemble vocal group called FamilyTree, the creation of producer Günter "Yogi" Lauke.

In 1968, Summer released (as Donna Gaines) on Polydor her first single, a German version of the title "Aquarius" from the musical Hair, followed in 1971 by a second single, a remake of the Jaynetts' 1963 hit, "Sally Go 'Round the Roses", from a one-off European deal with Decca Records. In 1969, she issued the single "If You Walkin' Alone" on Philips Records.

She married Austrian actor Helmuth Sommer in 1973, and gave birth to their daughter (called Mimi) Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer, the same year. She provided backing vocals for producer-keyboardist Veit Marvos on his Ariola Records release Nice to See You, credited as "Gayn Pierre". Several subsequent singles included Donna performing with the group, and the name "Gayn Pierre" was used while performing in Godspell with Helmuth Sommer during 1972.

Music career

1974–1979: Initial success

While working as a model part-time and back up singer in Munich, Summer met German-based producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte during a recording session for Three Dog Night at Musicland Studios. The trio forged a working partnership, and Donna was signed to their Oasis label in 1974. A demo tape of Summer's work with Moroder and Bellotte led to a deal with the European-distributed label Groovy Records. Due to an error on the record cover, Donna Sommer became Donna Summer; the name stuck. Summer's first album was Lady of the Night. It became a hit in the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Belgium on the strength of two songs, "The Hostage" and the title track "Lady of the Night". "The Hostage" reached the top of the charts in France, but was removed from radio playlists in Germany because of the song's subject matter; a high ranking politician that had recently been kidnapped and held for ransom. One of her first TV appearances was in the television show, Van Oekel's Discohoek, which started the breakthrough of "The Hostage", and in which she gracefully went along with the scripted absurdity and chaos in the show.

In 1975, Summer passed on an idea for a song to Moroder who was working with another artist; a song that would be called "Love to Love You". Summer and Moroder wrote the song together, and together they worked on a demo version with Summer singing the song. Moroder decided that Summer's version should be released. Seeking an American release for the song, it was sent to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart. Bogart played the song at one of his extravagant industry parties, where it was so popular with the crowd, they insisted that it be played over and over, each time it ended. Bogart requested that Moroder produce a longer version for discothèques. Moroder, Bellotte, and Summer returned with a 17-minute version. Bogart tweaked the title to "Love to Love You Baby", and Casablanca signed Summer, releasing the single in November 1975. The shorter 7" version of the single was promoted by radio stations, while clubs regularly played the 17 minute version (the longer version would also appear on the album).

By early 1976, "Love to Love You Baby" had reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and had become a Gold single, while the album had sold over a million copies. The song generated controversy due to Summer's moans and groans, and some American stations, like those in Europe with the initial release, refused to play it. Despite this, "Love to Love You Baby" found chart success in several European countries, and made the Top 5 in the United Kingdom despite the BBC ban. Casablanca wasted no time releasing the album A Love Trilogy, featuring "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" No. 80 and Summer's remarkable rendition of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic" No. 52, which was followed by Four Seasons of Love, which spawned the singles "Spring Affair" No. 58 and "Winter Melody", No. 43. Both albums went Gold.

In 1977, Summer released the concept album I Remember Yesterday. The song "I Feel Love", reached No. 6 on the Hot 100 chart. and No. 1 in the UK. She received her first American Music Award nomination for Favorite Soul/R&B Female Artist. The single would attain Gold status and the album went Platinum in the U.S. Another concept album, also released in 1977, was Once Upon a Time, a double album which told of a modern-day Cinderella "rags to riches" story. This album would attain Gold status. Summer recorded the song "Down Deep Inside" as the theme song for the 1977 film The Deep. In 1978, Summer acted in the film Thank God It's Friday, the film met with modest success; the song "Last Dance", reached No. 3 on the Hot 100. The soundtrack and single both went Gold and resulted in Summer winning her first Grammy Award, for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Its writer, Paul Jabara, won both an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for the composition. Summer also had "With Your Love" and "Je t'aime... moi non plus", on the soundtrack. Her version of the Jimmy Webb ballad, "MacArthur Park", became her first No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 chart. It was also the only No. 1 hit for songwriter Jimmy Webb; the single went Gold and topped the charts for three weeks. She received a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The song was featured on Summer's first live album, Live and More, which also became her first album to hit number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and went double-Platinum, selling over 2 million copies. The week of November 11, 1978, Summer became the first female artist of the modern rock era to have the No. 1 single on the Hot 100 and album on the Billboard 200 charts, simultaneously. The song "Heaven Knows", which featured Brooklyn Dreams singer Joe "Bean" Esposito; reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 and became another Gold single.

In 1979, Summer won three American Music Awards for Single, Album and Female Artist, in the Disco category at the awards held in January. Summer performed at the world-televised Music for UNICEF Concert, joining contemporaries such as ABBA, Olivia Newton-John, the Bee Gees, Andy Gibb, Rod Stewart, John Denver, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rita Coolidge and Kris Kristofferson for a TV special that raised funds and awareness for the world's children. Artists donated royalties of certain songs, some in perpetuity, to benefit the cause. Summer began work on her next project with Moroder and Bellotte, Bad Girls. Mororder brought in Harold Faltermeyer, with whom he had collaborated on the soundtrack of film Midnight Express, to be the album's arranger. Faltermeyer's role would significantly increase from arranger, as he played keyboards and wrote songs with Summer.

The album went triple-Platinum, spawning the number-one hits "Hot Stuff" and "Bad Girls", that went Platinum, and the number-two "Dim All the Lights" which went Gold. The week of June 16, 1979, Summer would again have the number-one single on the Hot 100 chart, and the number-one album on the Billboard 200 chart; when "Hot Stuff" regained the top spot on the Hot 100 chart. The following week, "Bad Girls" would be on top of the U.S. Top R&B albums chart, "Hot Stuff" remained at No. 1, and "Bad Girls", the single, would climb into the top five on the Hot 100. The following week, Summer was the first solo artist to have two songs in the Hot 100 top three at the same time. In July 1979, Summer topped the Hot 100 singles chart, and the Billboard 200 albums chart, and the Soul singles chart simultaneously. In the week of November 10, 1979, "Dim All the Lights" peaked at No. 2 for two weeks; the following week "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)" would get to No. 3; and once again Summer would have two songs in the top 3, on the Hot 100. One week later, "No More Tears" climbed to No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 chart, and "Dim All the Lights" went to No. 4; she again had two songs in the top 5 of the Hot 100 chart. In the span of eight months, Summer had topped both the singles and albums charts simultaneously, three times. She became the first Female Artist to have three number-one singles in a calendar year. With "Mac Arthur Park", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", and the Barbra Streisand-duet "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)", Summer achieved four number-one hits on the Hot 100 chart within a 12-month period. Including "Heaven Knows" and "Dim All the Lights" she had achieved six top 4 singles on the Hot 100 chart in the same 12-month period. Those songs, along with "Last Dance", "On the Radio", and "The Wanderer", would give her nine Top 5 singles on the Hot 100 chart in just over a two-year period. The single, "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)" would sell over 2 million copies becoming a Platinum success. "Hot Stuff" won her a Grammy Award in the Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, the first time the category was included. She was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and both Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, as well as Best Disco Recording. That year, Summer played eight sold-out nights at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles.

Casablanca then released On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II, her first (international) greatest hits set, in 1979. The album was mixed differently than the original songs issued on it, with each song segueing into the next, and included two new songs "On the Radio" and "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)". It would be the first time that such an album package would be made. The album went No. 1, her third consecutive No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, and gained double-Platinum status. "On the Radio", reached No. 5, selling over a million copies in the U.S. alone, making it a Gold single. Summer would again receive a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

1980–1985

Summer received four nominations for the 7th Annual American Music Awards in January 1980, and took home awards for Female Pop/Rock and Female Soul/R&B Artist; and well as Pop/Rock single for "Bad Girls". Just over a week after the awards, Summer had her own nationally televised special, The Donna Summer Special, which aired on ABC network on January 27, 1980. After the release of the On the Radio album, Summer wanted to branch out into other musical styles, which led to tensions between her and Casablanca Records. Casablanca wanted her to continue to record disco only. Summer was upset with President Neil Bogart over the early release of the single "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)"; she had penned "Dim All the Lights" alone, and was hoping for a number-one hit as a songwriter. Not waiting until "Dim All the Lights" had peaked, or at least another month as promised; Summer felt it had detracted from the singles chart momentum. Summer and the label parted ways in 1980, and she signed with Geffen Records, the new label started by David Geffen. Summer had filed a $10 million lawsuit against Casablanca; the label counter-sued. In the end, she did not receive any money, but won the rights to her own lucrative song publishing.

Summer's first Geffen album, The Wanderer, featured an eclectic mixture of sounds, bringing elements of rock, rockabilly, new wave and gospel music. The Wanderer was rushed to market. The producers of the album wanted more production time. The album continued Summer's streak of Gold albums with the title track peaking at No. 3 on the Hot 100 chart. Its follow-up singles were, "Cold Love" No.33 and "Who Do You Think You're Foolin'", No.40. Summer was nominated for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for "Cold Love", and Best Inspirational Performance for "I Believe in Jesus" at the 1981 Grammy Awards.

She would soon be working on her next album. It was to be another double album set. When David Geffen stopped by the studio for a preview, he was warned that it was a work in progress, but it was almost done. That was a mistake, because only a few tracks had been finished, and most of them were in demo phase. He heard enough to tell producers that it was not good enough; the project was canceled. It would be released years later in 1996, under the title I'm a Rainbow. Over the years, a few of the tracks would be released. The song "Highway Runner" appears on the soundtrack for the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High. "Romeo" appears on the Flashdance soundtrack. Both, "I'm a Rainbow" and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" would be on her 1993 Anthology album.

David Geffen hired top R&B and pop producer Quincy Jones to produce Summer's next album, the eponymously titled Donna Summer. The album took over six months to record as Summer, who was pregnant at the time, found it hard to sing. During the recording of the project, Neil Bogart died of cancer in May 1982 at age 39. Summer would sing at his funeral. The album included the top ten hit "Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger)"; for which she received a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. Summer was also nominated for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for "Protection", penned for her by Bruce Springsteen. Other singles included a cover of the Jon and Vangelis song "State of Independence" (No. 41 pop) and "The Woman in Me" (No. 33 pop).

By then Geffen Records was notified by Polygram Records, who now owned Casablanca, that Summer still needed to deliver them one more album to fulfill her contract with them. Summer had her biggest success in the 1980s while on Geffen's roster with her next album She Works Hard for the Money and its title song — which were released by Mercury Records in a one-off arrangement to settle Summer's split with the soon-to-be-defunct Casablanca Records, whose catalogue now resided with Mercury and Casablanca's parent company PolyGram.

Summer recorded and delivered the album She Works Hard for the Money and Polygram released it on its Mercury imprint in 1983. The title song became a major hit, reaching No. 3 on the US Hot 100, as well as No. 1 on Billboard's R&B chart for three weeks. It also garnered Summer another Grammy nomination, for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. "Unconditional Love", which featured the British group Musical Youth, and "Love Has a Mind of Its Own" did not crack the top 40. The album itself was certified Gold, and climbed to No. 9 on the Billboard 200 chart; the highest chart position of any female artist in male-dominated 1983. The song "He's a Rebel" would win Summer her third Grammy Award, this time for Best Inspirational Performance.

British director Brian Grant was hired to direct Summer's video for "She Works Hard for the Money". The video was a success, being nominated for Best Female Video and Best Choreography at the 1984 MTV Music Video Awards; Summer became one of the first African-American artists, and the first African-American female artist to have her video played in heavy rotation on MTV. Grant would also be hired to direct Summer's Costa Mesa HBO concert special, A Hot Summers Night. Grant who was a fan of the song State of Independence had an idea for a grand finale. He wanted a large chorus of children to join Summer on stage at the ending of the song. His team looked for local school children in Orange County, to create a chorus of 500 students. On the final day of rehearsals, the kids turned up and they had a full rehearsal. According to Grant, "It looked and sounded amazing. It was a very emotional, very tearful experience for everyone who was there." He thought if this was that kind of reaction in rehearsal, then what an impact it would have in the concert. After the rehearsal Grant was informed that he could not use the kids because the concert would end after 10 pm; children could not be licensed to be on stage at such a late hour (California had strict child labor laws in 1983). "It's a moment that I regret immensely: a grand finale concept I came up with that couldn't be filmed in the end". When the final sequence was filmed, Summer's daughter Mimi and her family members joined her on stage for "State of Independence".

In late 1983, David Geffen enlisted She Works Hard for the Money's producer Michael Omartian to produce Cats Without Claws. Summer was happy that Geffen and his executives stayed out of the studio during the recording and thanked him in the album's liner notes, but her request for the lead single would be rejected. The album failed to attain Gold status in the U.S., her first album not to do so. It was first album not to yield a top ten hit, since 1977's Once Upon a Time. The Drifters cover "There Goes My Baby" reached No. 21 and "Supernatural Love" went to No. 75. She would win another Grammy for Best Inspirational Performance for the song "Forgive Me".

On January 19, 1985, she sang at the nationally televised 50th Presidential Inaugural Gala the day before the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

1986–1989

In 1986, Harold Faltermeyer wrote the title song for a German ski movie called Fire and Ice, and thought Summer would be ideal to sing the song. He decided to reach out to Summer and, although she was not interested in singing the song, she was very much interested in working with Faltermeyer again. After a meeting with David Geffen he was on board with the project. Summer's main objective for the album was that it have stronger R&B influences; Faltermeyer who had just finished doing the soundtracks to Top Gun and Fletch, was after a tough FM-oriented sound. On completion, Geffen liked what he heard, but his executives did not think there were enough songs that could be deemed singles. They wanted Faltermeyer to produce "Dinner with Gershwin", but he was already busy with another project, so another producer was found. They also substituted a previous recording called "Bad Reputation", songs like "Fascination", fell by the wayside. Geffen had shared the vision of moving Summer into the R&B market as a veteran artist, but these expectations were not met. Faltermeyer, in a 2012 interview with Daeida Magazine, said, "She was an older artist by then and the label's priority may have been on the youth market. The decision was made afterward by executives who were looking for a radio hit for 1987 and not something that would perhaps last beyond then." The label's President Ed Rosenblatt would later admit: "The company never intended to focus on established superstars". The album All Systems Go, did not achieve Gold status. The single "Dinner with Gershwin" (written by Brenda Russell) stalled at 48 in the US, though it became a hit in the UK, peaking at No. 13. The album's title track, "All Systems Go", was released only in the UK, where it peaked at No. 54.

For Summer's next album, Geffen Records hired the British hit production team of Stock Aitken Waterman (or SAW), who enjoyed incredible success writing and producing for such acts as Kylie Minogue, Bananarama, and Rick Astley, among others. The "SAW" team describe the working experience as a labour of love, and said it was their favourite album of all that they had recorded. Geffen decided not to release the album Another Place and Time, and Summer and Geffen Records parted ways in 1988. The album was released in Europe in March 1989 on Warner Bros. Records, which had been Summer's label in Europe since 1982. The single "This Time I Know It's for Real" became a top ten hit in several countries in Europe, prompting Warner Bros.' sister company, Atlantic Records, to sign Summer in the U.S. The single peaked at No. 7 on the US Hot 100 and became her 12th Gold single in America. She scored two more UK hits from the album, "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt" (UK No. 7) and "Love's About to Change My Heart" (UK No. 20).

In 1989, Summer and her husband, Bruce Sudano, had been in talks to do a new kind of reality-based sitcom. It would be based on their own hectic household. At the time, they lived with their children Amanda, Brooklyn and Mimi, two sets of in-laws, and a maid. The television network started changing the premise of the show, making it less funny, says Sudano, "And because we were an interracial couple, they didn't want us to be married anymore". In 1989, this was "an issue. So with that mentality we just backed out of it."

1990–1999: Mistaken Identity, acting, and Live & More Encore

In 1990, a Warner compilation, The Best of Donna Summer, was released (No U.S. issue). The album went Gold in the UK after the song "State of Independence" was re-released there to promote the album. The following year, Summer worked with producer Keith Diamond emerged with the album Mistaken Identity, which included elements of R&B as well as new jack swing. "When Love Cries" continued her success on the R&B charts, reaching No. 18. In 1992, Summer embarked on a world tour and later that year received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She reunited with Giorgio Moroder, for the song "Carry On", which was included on the 1993, Polygram issued The Donna Summer Anthology, it contained 34 tracks of Summer's material with Casablanca and Mercury Records, and from her tenures with Atlantic and Geffen.

Summer signed with Mercury/Polygram that same year, and in 1994 she re-teamed with producer Michael Omartian to record a Christmas album, Christmas Spirit, which included classic Christmas songs such as "O Holy Night" and "White Christmas" and three Summer-penned songs,"Christmas is Here", "Lamb of God" and the album's title track. Summer was accompanied by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. Another hits collection, Endless Summer: Greatest Hits, was released featuring eighteen songs. There were two new tracks "Melody of Love (Wanna Be Loved)" and "Any Way at All". In 1994, she also contributed to the Tribute To Edith Piaf album, singing La Vie En Rose. In 1995, "Melody of Love (Wanna Be Loved)" went No. 1 on the US dance charts, and No. 21 in the UK. In 1996, Summer recorded a duet with Bruce Roberts, Whenever There Is Love, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Daylight (1996 film). In 1996, Summer also recorded Does He Love You with Liza Minnelli, which appeared Minnelli's Gently (album).

During this time, Summer had role on the sitcom Family Matters as Steve Urkel's (Jaleel White) Aunt Oona. She made a few appearances in 1997. In 1998, Summer received the first Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording, after a remixed version of her 1992 collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, "Carry On", was released in 1997. In 1999, Summer was asked to do the Divas 2 concert, but when she went in and met with the producers, it was decided that they would do Donna in concert by herself. Summer taped a live television special for VH1 titled Donna Summer – Live & More Encore, producing the second highest ratings for the network that year, after their annual Divas special. A CD of the event was released by Epic Records and featured two studio recordings, "I Will Go with You (Con te partirò)" and "Love Is the Healer", both of which reached No. 1 on the U.S. dance charts.

2000–2009: Later recordings and Crayons

In 2000, Summer participated in VH1's third annual Divas special, dedicated to Diana Ross, she sang the Supreme's hit Reflections, and her own material for the show. "The Power of One" is a theme song for the movie Pokémon: The Movie 2000. The dramatic ballad was produced by David Foster and dance remixes were also issued to DJs and became another dance floor success for Summer, peaking at No. 2 on the same chart in 2000. In 2003, Summer issued her autobiography, Ordinary Girl: The Journey, and released a best-of set titled The Journey: The Very Best of Donna Summer. In 2004, Summer was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame as an artist, alongside the Bee Gees and Barry Gibb. Her classic song, "I Feel Love", was inducted that night as well. In 2004 and 2005, Summer's success on the dance charts continued with the songs "You're So Beautiful" and "I Got Your Love". In 2004, Summer re-recorded the track with the Irish pop band Westlife (with a live performance) for the compilation album, Discomania.

In 2008, Summer released her first studio album of fully original material in 17 years, entitled Crayons. Released on the Sony BMG label Burgundy Records, it peaked at No. 17 on the U.S. Top 200 Album Chart, her highest placing on the chart since 1983. The songs I'm a Fire, Stamp Your Feet and Fame (The Game) all reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Dance Chart. The ballad Sand on My Feet was released to adult contemporary stations and reached No. 30 on that chart. Summer said, "I wanted this album to have a lot of different directions on it. I did not want it to be any one baby. I just wanted it to be a sampler of flavors and influences from all over the world. There's a touch of this, a little smidgeon of that, a dash of something else, like when you're cooking."

2010–2013: Final recordings

On July 29, 2010, Summer gave an interview with Allvoices.com wherein she was asked if she would consider doing an album of standards. She said, "I actually am, probably in September. I will begin work on a standards album. I will probably do an all-out dance album and a standards album. I'm going to do both and we will release them however we're going to release them. We are not sure which is going first."

In August 2010, Summer released the single "To Paris With Love", co-written with Bruce Roberts and produced by Peter Stengaard. The single went to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Dance Chart in October 2010. That month, Summer also appeared on the PBS television special Hitman Returns: David Foster and Friends. In it, Summer performed with Seal on a medley of the songs "Un-Break My Heart / Crazy / On the Radio" before closing the show with "Last Dance".

On September 15, 2010, Summer appeared as a guest celebrity, singing alongside contestant Prince Poppycock, on the television show America's Got Talent.

On June 6, 2011, Summer was a guest judge on the show Platinum Hit, in an episode entitled "Dance Floor Royalty". In July of that same year, Summer was working at Paramount Recording Studios in Los Angeles with her nephew, the rapper and producer O'Mega Red. Together they worked on a track titled "Angel".

On December 11, 2012, after four prior nominations, Summer was posthumously announced to be one of the 2013 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame., and was inducted on April 18, 2013, at Los Angeles' Nokia Theater.

A remix album titled Love to Love You Donna, containing new remixes of some of Summer's classics, was released in October 2013. "MacArthur Park" was remixed by Laidback Luke for the remix collection; it was also remixed by Ralphi Rosario, which version was released to dance clubs all over America and successfully peaked at No. 1, giving Summer her first posthumous number-one single, and her twentieth number-one on the charts.

Controversy

In the mid-1980s, Summer was embroiled in a controversy. She allegedly had made anti-gay remarks regarding the then-relatively new disease, AIDS. Summer publicly denied that she had ever made any such comments, and in a letter to the AIDS campaign group ACT UP in 1989 said it was "a terrible misunderstanding." In explaining why she did not respond to ACT UP sooner, Summer stated "I was unknowingly protected by those around me from the bad press and hate letters. If I have caused you pain, forgive me." She closed her letter with Bible quotes (from Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians).

Also in 1989, Summer told The Advocate magazine that "a couple of the people I write with are gay, and they have been ever since I met them. What people want to do with their bodies is their personal preference." A couple of years later, she filed a lawsuit against New York magazine when it printed an old story about the rumors as fact, just as she was about to release her album Mistaken Identity in 1991. According to a Biography television program dedicated to Summer in which she participated in 1995, the lawsuit was settled out of court, though neither side was able to divulge any details.

Personal life

Summer was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She married the Austrian actor Helmuth Sommer in 1973 and gave birth to their daughter Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer (called Mimi) the same year. The couple divorced in 1976, but Summer kept the anglicized version of her ex-husband's surname as her stage name.

Summer married Brooklyn Dreams singer Bruce Sudano on July 16, 1980. On January 5, 1981, she gave birth to their daughter Brooklyn Sudano (who is now an actress, singer and dancer), and on August 11, 1982 she gave birth to their daughter Amanda Sudano (who in 2005 became one half of the musical duo Johnnyswim alongside Abner Ramirez). In Los Angeles, Summer was also one of the founding members of Oasis Church.

Summer and her family moved from the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles to Nashville, Tennessee, in1995, where she took time off from show business to focus on painting, a hobby she had begun back in the 1980s.

In 1995, Summer's mother died of pancreatic cancer. Her father died of natural causes in December 2004.

Death

Summer died on May 17, 2012 at her home in Naples, Florida, aged 63, from lung cancer. A nonsmoker, Summer theorized that her cancer was caused by inhaling toxic fumes and dust from the September 11 attacks in New York City. However some reports have instead attributed the cancer to Summer's smoking during her younger years, her continued exposure to second-hand smoking while performing in clubs well after she had herself quit, and a predisposition to this disease in the family. Summer was survived by her husband, Bruce Sudano, and her daughters Mimi (with ex-husband Helmut Sommer), Brooklyn Sudano, and Amanda Sudano.

Summer's funeral service was held in Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, on the afternoon of May 23, 2012. The exact location and time of the service were kept secret. Several hundred of Summer's friends and relatives appeared at the funeral, according to CNN. The funeral was a private ceremony, and cameras were not allowed inside the church. She was interred in the Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens cemetery in Nashville.

Reaction

Singers and music industry professionals around the world reacted to Summer's death. Gloria Gaynor said she was "deeply saddened" and that Summer was "a fine lady and human being". Liza Minnelli said, "She was a queen, The Queen Of Disco, and we will be dancing to her music forever." She said that her "thoughts and prayers are with her family always." Dolly Parton said, "Donna, like Whitney, was one of the greatest voices ever. I loved her records. She was the disco queen and will remain so. I knew her and found her to be one of the most likable and fun people ever. She will be missed and remembered." Janet Jackson wrote that Summer "changed the world of music with her beautiful voice and incredible talent." Barbra Streisand wrote, "I loved doing the duet with her. She had an amazing voice and was so talented. It's so sad." Quincy Jones wrote that Summer's voice was "the heartbeat and soundtrack of a generation." Aretha Franklin said, "It's so shocking to hear about the passing of Donna Summer. In the 1970s, she reigned over the disco era and kept the disco jumping. Who will forget 'Last Dance'? A fine performer and a very nice person." Chaka Khan said, "Donna and I had a friendship for over 30 years. She is one of the few black women I could speak German with and she is one of the few friends I had in this business." Gloria Estefan averred that "It's the end of an era", and posted a photo of herself with Summer. Mary J. Blige tweeted "RIP Donna Summer !!!!!!!! You were truly a game changer !!!" Lenny Kravitz wrote "Rest in peace Donna, You are a pioneer and you have paved the way for so many of us. You transcended race and genre. Respect.. Lenny".

Beyoncé penned a personal note: "Donna Summer made music that moved me both emotionally and physically to get up and dance. You could always hear the deep passion in her voice. She was so much more than the queen of disco she became known for, she was an honest and gifted singer with flawless vocal talent. I've always been a huge fan and was honored to sample one of her songs. She touched many generations and will be sadly missed. My love goes out to her family during this difficult time. Love, B".

David Foster said, "My wife and I are in shock and truly devastated. Donna changed the face of pop culture forever. There is no doubt that music would sound different today if she had never graced us with her talent. She was a super-diva and a true superstar who never compromised when it came to her career or her family. She always did it with class, dignity, grace and zero attitude. She lived in rare air ... She was the most spectacular, considerate, constant, giving, generous and loving friend of 35 years. I am at a total loss trying to process this tragic news."

U.S. President Barack Obama said, "Michelle and I were saddened to hear about the passing of Donna Summer. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Donna truly was the 'Queen of Disco.' Her voice was unforgettable and the music industry has lost a legend far too soon. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Donna's family and her dedicated fans."

Summer was honored at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards ceremony. Singer Natasha Bedingfield honored Summer, calling her "a remarkable woman who brought so much light and who inspired many women, including myself, through her music. And if we can remember her through her music, this will never really be the last dance." After her statement, she began to sing "Last Dance", Summer's Academy Award-winning song. As she sang the song, photos of Summer were displayed on a screen overhead.

Fans paid tribute to Summer by leaving flowers and memorabilia on her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A few days after her death, her album sales increased by 3,277 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Billboard Magazine reported that the week before she died, Summer sold about 1,000 albums. After her death that number increased to 26,000.

Legacy

According to singer Marc Almond, Summer's collaboration with producer Giorgio Moroder "changed the face of music". Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach No. 1 on Billboard's album chart: Live and More, Bad Girls and On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II. She became a cultural icon and her prominence on the dance charts, for which she was referred to as the Queen of Disco, made her not just one of the defining voices of that era, but also an influence on pop artists from Madonna to Beyoncé. Unlike some other stars of disco who faded as the music became less popular in the early 1980s, Summer was able to grow beyond the genre and segued to a pop-rock sound. She had one of her biggest hits in the 1980s with "She Works Hard For the Money", which became another anthem, this time for women's rights. Summer was the first black woman to be nominated for an MTV Video Music Award. Summer remained a force on the Billboard Dance/Club Play Songs chart throughout her career and notched 19 number one singles. Her last studio album, 2008's Crayons, spun off three No. 1 dance/club hits with "I'm a Fire", "Stamp Your Feet" and "Fame (The Game)". In May 2012, it was announced that "I Feel Love" was included in the list of preserved recordings at the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. Her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame page listed Summer as "the Diva De Tutte Dive, the first true diva of the modern pop era".

Keri Hilson portrayed Donna Summer in her 2010 music video for "Pretty Girl Rock." In 2018, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, a biographical musical featuring Summer's songs, began performances on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, following a 2017 world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.

#12/31 #05/17

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zendzen00 · 4 years

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Internet was WHAT?

Probably a high percentage knows that Internet really expanded between the 1980s and the 1990s, specially thanks to Internet pioneers that decided to come up with new terms such as “cyberspace” or with new acronyms like “MOO” and “MUD” (supposedly might be referred to videogames)

Yes you already knew that, of course. But do you know how Internet actually was? It was the coolest war machine! Kind of...

I will explain myself better trying to wrap up the basic concepts:

Internet started as a small publicly owned computer network established in 1969 in the United States. At the time it was not called how we know it today but it was called internetworking, in fact the term Internet only emerged in 1974 as an abbreviation. The “modern” Internet dates from 1983 with the establishment of a network of networks independent of the US armed forces.

A moment of transition happened when CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) adopted internet protocol (IP) for its internal connection and then consequently, in 1989, they opened their first external IP connection.

It’s expansion was also contributed by Globalization which was at its first steps. Naturally, further in the years Internet returned the favor by letting Globalization actually happen.

So, with the internationalisation of the internet, it’s first key applications were e-mails and bulletin boards. And believe it or not, the world wide web (or as we all know it as WWW) publicly launched in 1991. Then of course, the new century saw the rise of social media with the launch of Facebook in 2004 and consequently in 2010, smartphones took off.

But the most absurd part is internet’s technological innovation.

The Internet started as a vast machine that occupied a whole room and turned into a normal object that we can carry around and keep on our laps

Internet went through different developments such as computer networking, shared codes for transporting and addressing communication, and of cloud computing

The Internet became a connective software that facilitated accessing, storage, linking

Internet’s development of communications infrastructure.

Can you believe that Internet did all this in just thirty years? But the most important part was how Internet was at the actual beginning.

Remember when I said that in 1989 CERN opened their first external IP connection? Do you think that’s casual? I don’t think so.

Even though Internet is seen as an agency of peace, it was actually a product of the Cold War.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a satellite orbiting the Earth; a factor that was not really appreciated by the Pentagon, which saw this action both as a demonstration but also as a threat. In fact, the Pentagon set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)— a new, independent military body whose aim was to bridge the space gap and to ensure that a technological defeat from the Soviet Union would never happen again. The main idea was also to have one single network in order to maintain all the information together and also to have all different computers around the world function together as a unit. This network was called ARPANET.

Computer networking could facilitate in some way the development of a sophisticated military command and control system that was capable of withstanding a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. This idea led the military to sponsor a system without a command center that would be destroyed by the enemy in case of attack. This was not a problem because the military also had the idea of a development of network technology that would permit the use of the system even if some parts were destroyed. The military had different concerns because they wanted to have a networking system that could serve different specialized military tasks; in fact, this concern incouraged the creation of a diverse system that allowed different networks to be incorporated.

The military seemed young Tony Starks, huh?

Yes the military did it’s part, but what about other developments?

The military-scientific complex shaped the Internet but also the American counterculture did its part in the 1980s. Basically the counterculture reconceived how the computer could be used to advance its vision of the future. In fact, its activists transformed it from a tool of a techno-elite into a creator of virtual communities, a sub-cultural playground and an agency of democracy.

That’s not it.

A third influence was a European welfarist tradition that created great public health and broadcasting systems. While the internet was born in the US, the world wide web was created by Tim Berners-Lee.

He was inspired by two fundamental ideas:

opening up access to a public good

bringing people into communion with each other

Berners-Lee had the desire not to promote the web through a private company because he thought it might trigger competition and lead the web to be divided into different domains. This would destroy his conception of a universal medium for sharing information.

Now my actual question is: did you really know all THIS? Because I did not.

Starting off, it was incredibile how the military thought of a way to use the network in order to keep their data secret but only knowledgeable among the people who actually had to know the facts; in fact there was a contract between the military and scientists in order to keep the situation a secret. We can call that era of internet WEB 1.0 and the one of this era WEB 2.0.

The Internet is a complete different world now, in which you can search things and probably have an opinion, even though at some point you couldn’t have that either, or at least you could give your opinion but it wouldn’t matter.

Unfortunately there is also another kind of web called the dark web, which are networks that use the Internet but require a specific kind of software, configurations and also authorizations to access. Also the internet has its dark side.

With the rise of social media the Internet completely changed. From what was a military experiment, it turned out to be a daily necessity for everyone: from searching important things such as news to also looking for memes or school-related articles. Not to mention also how the internet and social media became a platform that gave access to bullism or actually cyberbullism; apparently with the Internet things can get better but also worse.

If the old Internet could see where the new Internet is at, probably it would tear its hair off.

REFERENCES:

Curran, James. “The Internet of history: rethinking the internet’s past”, in Misunderstanding the Internet

Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet

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filmstruck · 6 years

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Let’s Face the Music and Dance: Two Sad-Eyed Musicals by Herbert Ross by Nathaniel Thompson

If you polled critics or movie buffs about significant American film directors, it’s highly doubtful that Herbert Ross would appear anywhere close to the top 100. That’s not a slight against his abilities but rather the simple fact that he doesn’t fit the auteur idea of a director who puts an indelible stamp of authorship on every film he touches. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a great auteur to be a solid director—Hollywood is loaded with dozens of skilled craftsmen who were never lauded by the critical powers that be—and Ross fits the bill with a pretty astonishing run that kicked off with his underrated 1969 debut, a musical version of GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, and continued all the way through, more or less, to at least STEEL MAGNOLIAS in 1989. There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how rare it is for directors to have a “hot streak” of more than four films in a row, but Ross managed to pull it off a couple of times over.

Somehow you also never hear of Ross cited as a significant director of musicals, though he dipped his toes in at least three times – or four if you count the dance-crazy FOOTLOOSE (’84), his biggest box office hit. You can see two of them in FilmStruck’s five-film spotlight on Ross, and it’s interesting to note how they snugly fit in with his recurring theme of nostalgia as both a soothing mental snuggly blanket and a dangerous pitfall that can blind you to the harsh realities of life if you aren’t careful. That also goes for his other third bona fide musical, FUNNY LADY (’75), which is also worth tracking down and far more interesting than most critics like to admit.

Now, as they like to say in school, let’s compare and contrast. GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS was an easy target when it opened among a slew of doomed Hollywood roadshow song-and-dance projects that went down in flames, most notably STAR! (’68) and PAINT YOUR WAGON (’69). No one seemed to hate it (after all, the film earned a couple of Oscar nominations and, for what it’s worth, snagged a Golden Globe for Peter O’Toole), but audiences were a lot more eager to see sexy ‘30s outlaws and counterculture motorcyclists than Vaseline-lensed odes to Hollywood’s musical tradition, so the odds were stacked against this one before it even opened. Luckily time has proven the strength of Ross’s film, an inventive and emotionally effective adaptation of James Hilton’s classic novel (earlier filmed as an Oscar-winning 1939 production starring Robert Donat).

I have to be upfront that I’m a little biased since I’m a sucker for just about anything with Petula Clark, but there’s an infectious charm to this film that makes the emotional punches land even harder. It’s clear that former choreographer Ross relished the opportunity to pull out all the stops here with a widescreen 70mm period film set over multiple eras, and a splashy score and book by John Williams and Leslie Bricusse, a luxury similar to what Bob Fosse would be afforded the same year with his colorful and often exhilarating big screen take on SWEET CHARITY (which has also amassed a dedicated fan following). Stepping in for a departed Richard Burton, O’Toole brings a sweetness and slightly dizzy sincerity to his part that pays dividends as his character ages through the film; you really believe his mannerisms and body language as he transforms through the various phases of Mr. Chips over the course of the running time. Just throw out any comparisons to the classic black-and-white version of the story and you’ll find this one has continued to age quite beautifully.

Though it was made only 12 years later, Ross’s PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (’81) might as well be from a different planet in terms of its target audience and philosophy. Once again, we have a big-budget musical revamp of a preexisting property, in this case an acclaimed Dennis Potter miniseries that originally aired on the BBC in 1978. It’s also a true MGM musical and the last legitimate gasp of the studio in that realm, which seems wistfully appropriate. Steve Martin (whose extensive musical talents are still often overlooked) and Bernadette Peters, a real-life coupe who had just starred in THE JERK (’79), teamed up again here for a film that’s anything but a comedy as Potter transposes his original London-set script to Great Depression-era Illinois. Otherwise the story’s the same, as traveling sheet music salesman Arthur Parker escapes from his dreary reality (including an unhappy marriage to the always welcome Jessica Harper) by drifting off into the starry-eyed tunes he hawks. After hooking up with schoolteacher Eileen (Peters), he’s subjected to several cruel twists of fate far removed from the optimism of his daydreams.

The mixture of bleak Midwestern tragedy and glitzy musical numbers is still a powerful one that distinguishes this film from its more scaled-down BBC presentation, but the overriding philosophy is the same: entertainment might be an easy way to escape for three minutes or a couple of hours but using it as a yardstick for reality is only going to ruin your life. It’s a message that moviegoers of the early ‘80s really, really didn’t want to hear and the film flopped at the box office. That’s a shame as it’s chock full of classic sequences, most notably Christopher Walken’s scene-stealing tap dance number as a charismatic pimp (a scene that was cut out wholesale when this used to run on commercial TV) and, my personal favorite, Martin and Peters miming the timeless FOLLOW THE FLEET (’36) performance of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. (Astaire’s very vocal disdain for this film probably didn’t help, but don’t let his opinion dissuade you from watching it.) Even more than GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, Ross feels like a kid in a candy store here with rows of dancing chorines, instrument-playing school kids and an eye-popping array of glittering costumes. It’s the sort of film you never forget once you’ve seen it, and you don’t have to look much further than films like DANCER IN THE DARK (2000) or even the unflinchingly downbeat INTO THE WOODS (2014) to see how unexpected and potent its influence continues to be. Like much of Ross’s work, it’s a resilient and crafty little number that has a way of winning you over in ways you might never expect.

#FilmStruck #Herbert Ross #Goodbye Mr. Chips #Pennies From Heaven #Steve Martin #Peter O'Toole #Petula Clark #Bernadette Peters #musicals #StreamLine Blog #Nathaniel Thompson

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fakenigel · 6 years

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The Domestic Cold War and Reagan’s California (1967-1975)

It got by George Washington

The ideas of justice, liberty, and equality

. . .

Ronald Reagan, it got by him

Hollyweird

Acted like a actor

Acted like a liberal

Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California

Now he acts like somebody might vote for him for president

-Gil Scott-Heron, “Bicentennial Blues,” The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (1975)

Reagan’s California

Ronald Reagan is associated with many of the most fundamental changes that have taken place in American politics over the last five decades. The “Reagan Revolution” (along with Thatcherism, the UK’s counterpart) is often seen as being responsible for the neoliberal turn that American politics and economics have taken since the 1980s. Reagan ushered in anti-union and pro-business policies that fall under the banner of supply-side economics, or more euphemistically, “trickle-down economics.” Reagan also did his part to revolutionize the American security state. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which Reagan administration officials were caught selling arms to Iran (who was under an arms embargo) in order to fund the Nicaraguan anti-communist Contra fighting forces, went a long way in institutionalizing the use of private military contractors and defense companies.[1] Reagan accomplished all of this as the president of the United States, an office he held from 1981 to 1989.

A less examined portion of Reagan’s political career, but one in which he and his political associates also affected extensive political change, is his tenure as the governor of California. Reagan served two consecutive terms as the governor of California, from 1967 until 1975. The Watts riots in Los Angeles occurred two years prior to his first term in 1965. Thus, as a Republican, law-and-order governor, Reagan presided over some of the most tumultuous moments of California and the United States’ history. These include, but are not limited to:

1967 - Summer of Love; thousands of youths migrate from around the United States to California’s Bay Area to be a part of a burgeoning counterculture movement

June 6, 1968 - Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; occurs roughly five years after his brother’s, John F. Kennedy’s assignation, three years after the assassination of Malcolm X, and just over two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 17, 1969 – Black Panther shootout with rival United Slaves (US) organization; shootout left two Panthers (Bunchy Carter and John Huggins) dead, US and their leader Ron Karenga believed to possibly be opportunistically working with state and federal security apparatus to neutralize the Black Panther Party.

August 9, 1969 – Manson Family murders Sharon Tate and four others; Charles Manson and his white youth followers lead to association of the psychedelic, hippie and drug counterculture with violence.

December 9, 1969 – LAPD instigates an early morning shootout by initiating a surprise raid on the Los Angeles Black Panther Party headquarters; raid comes only 5 days after Fred Hampton was assassinated in Chicago by a similar early morning unannounced “raid”; Panthers survive shootout by shooting back and holding their ground until media and the public arrive to scene.

August 7, 1970 – Jonathan P. Jackson killed in attempt to kidnap and take hostages from a Marin County, California courtroom, which he planned to trade for the release of his brother and their transportation to a county supportive of the Black Panther Party;

August 21, 1971 – George Jackson, probably the most well-known face of California’s revolutionary prisoner movement, is killed by guards in San Quentin prison during an alleged escape attempt; controversy exists over the facts surrounding the escape attempt, particularly how he supposedly smuggled in a pistol without the guards seeing, as well as the circumstances of the guard’s gunshots that took his life.

December 16, 1971 – California Correctional Officers Association (CCOA) in conjunction with Attorney General Evelle Younger’s office attempt to frame Soledad psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Rundle (a self-ascribed “New Republic liberal”[2]) for two killings of Soledad guards after he publicly advocated for prison reform, especially for prisoners in need of mental health treatment; conspiracy is discovered because the prisoner (Tony Pewitt) who was used by the state to frame Rundle refused to go through with the plan and alerted him, at which point Rundle contacted private detectives and media.

1973-1975 – Rise and demise of the Symbionese Liberation Army; a Maoist group led by an escaped black convict, Donald DeFreeze, and comprised of majority white student radicals goes on a highly publicized string of violent acts in the name revolution, including the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, the college-aged heir to the Hearst family fortune.

This small list of political violence during Reagan’s governorship is by no means exhaustive, but it does comprise many of the better known incidents. One trend that is clear is that as time went on, the radical left became associated with greater amounts of violence, both as the supposed aggressors and as recipients of state violence. All of this contributed to the sentiment that many participants in the 1960s and 1970s radical left today hold themselves, that America’s radical left was predisposed toward counterproductive and self-destructive violence. This violence soured the view of the radical left in the eyes of the general American public and led to defeat of the movement. The trend of increasing violence applies to all sects of the radical left—the black power movement, the youth student movement, hippies, Maoists, radical prisoners, and even “defectors” from wealthy families who ended up involved in radical left activities (like Patricia Hearst). The combined effect of all of this violence was the delegitimation and sundering of radical left politics.

Charles Manson was associated with the hippie youth counterculture.[3] His crimes marked a shift from the initial, positive, psychedelic Summer of Love to the mood after the Manson murders and into the 1970s which was much darker. By the time Manson was arrested, the psychedelic positivity associated with LSD in the late 1960s had been replaced by a heroin and amphetamine fueled paranoia and pessimism. In the case of the Black Panther Party, it is more evident that authorities were attempting to eliminate the organization and that instigating violence against the Panthers (such as the LAPD shootout) was a method toward this end.

The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) came along in the mid-1970s and seemed to synthesize these separate currents into one organization. The SLA was a self-described Maoist insurgency group headed by a black escaped prisoner (Donald DeFreeze) and composed of radical students from multiple ethnic backgrounds (but primarily middle class whites). The group kidnapped Patricia Heart and forced her to commit crimes with the organization, such as bank robbery and car theft. The SLA provided the final proof to the public that the radical left had devolved into something unnecessarily violent, shortsighted, and counterproductive. These are ideal circumstances for a conservative law and order governor to prosper. And prosper Reagan did. Reagan won two elections and chose not to run for a third term before eventually becoming the country’s president in 1980.

Amidst this period of sustained political violence and turmoil Governor Reagan greatly increased the power of domestic police and intelligence in the state of California. To be more specific, it appears that Reagan (with assistance from Richard Nixon’s presidential administration) ran a counterinsurgency program designed to neutralize and delegitimation the radical left opposition throughout the state. The term counterinsurgency, a term primarily associated America’s foreign military operations, is important here. While domestic police are, in theory, not supposed to care about private citizens’ political beliefs, military counterinsurgency doctrines are precisely concerned with the political beliefs of their targets. In fact, in a counterinsurgency warfare, elimination of an ideology may be seen as more important and vital than elimination of particular individuals and leaders.

This reality is ignored because of an American exceptionalist attitude and bias that tends to whitewash the nature of domestic intelligence practices and operations. This whitewashed view says the government security apparatus (from the federal agencies to local police) operates by different rules domestically than it does internationally. One way this manifests itself is in the idea that anyone who is victimized or killed by the domestic security apparatus deserved such treatment on some level, even if the public still widely condemns the action. It is understood that in modern warfare, beginning primarily with Vietnam, the United States and its allies assassinate important enemy officials outside of direct engagement and that these assassinations are carried out to hamper the enemy’s effectiveness (a macro consideration)—not in response to particular actions carried out by the individuals (a micro consideration). For example, the 2008 joint Israeli and U.S. car bomb assassination of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, known to be a particularly intelligent and effective military tactician, did not come in the course of combat, it was carried out clandestinely away from an active battlefield. The assassination received condemnation from some Western allies,[4] but the methodology was clear. Mughniyah was killed for simply being a highly skilled leader for the enemy. In the academic literature on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, such tactics are vividly referred to as attempts at “leadership decapitation.” There is hesitation from domestic observers within the United States to ascribe such simple and undemocratic motivations for the repression (via assassination and incarceration) that the Black Panther Party and others faced, but the facts of the situation suggest that the Panthers faced a concerted leadership decapitation effort from the United States government, and much of this was executed by and through Reagan’s gubernatorial administration.

I argue that the sustained counterinsurgency operations against California’s radical leftists in the 1960s and 1970s have more in common with the American intelligence community’s counterinsurgency efforts overseas in theaters like Italy, Latin America, and Indochina (where the Vietnam War was raging) than they have in common with more sanitized narratives that take the purported actions and statements of groups like the SLA at face value. Historical investigation has shown that the Western powers, as well as lesser powers like the authoritarian Latin American regimes of the era, operated under the same general counterinsurgency doctrine. This doctrine was developed by a myriad of anti-communist hardliners from a variety of countries, but British, French, American, and former-Nazi intelligence and military personnel seem to have been key in the intellectual development of the doctrine. Declassified documents and information gathered from governmental and non-governmental investigations have revealed that a key element of this doctrine was that Western intelligence operatives ought to implicate communists (and the wider radical left) in terrorism and indiscriminate violence. The function of this violence would be to strengthen the existing status quo by discrediting the left and driving a scared and disoriented public into the arms of the state and its security apparatus. The existence of such activities in the so-called Second and Third Worlds are well established (Operation CONDOR in Latin America and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and Indochina), but irrefutable evidence of similar tactics was discovered by Italian parliamentary investigators in the early 1990s. Italian investigators concluded that neo-fascist elements of the Italian state and security apparatus committed terrorist attacks in the 1960s through 1980s that were wrongly attributed to anarchists and communists, as well as clandestinely encouraging other terrorist attacks and forms of political violence.

There is an immense value to this type of inquiry. There is an obvious and inherent value in gaining a deeper understanding of how modern states (and private organizations) engage in repression and stamp out dissent. This ought to interest anyone with even a passing interest in radical, left, or anti-capitalist politics. Further, these tactics were deployed against non-revolutionary liberal reformists, not just radical leftists. Thus, this research should give anyone who is interested in genuine democracy, representative or otherwise, serious pause. This research also challenges existing narratives of the decline of the American radical left. By challenging the basis of California’s political violence of the 1960s and 1970s and suggesting that the state played a more prominent role in committing and encouraging violence than is commonly understood, one challenges the narrative that the radical left caused its own downfall by sliding toward violence. Such an investigation into American political violence of the 1960s and 1970s is overdue. I hope to spur such an investigation and conversation.

The American security apparatus invests in public relations perpetuate the myth that organizations like the FBI and CIA operate within the confines of the law domestically. Juan Bosch, the democratically-elected president of the Dominican Republic who was deposed in a coup orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson’s administration, argued that America had developed a government with power and decision-making bifurcated along domestic and international lines.[5] Bosch argued that the Pentagon (he uses the term as a catch-all for the American security establishment), what he saw as the ultimate power in the United States, had accepted to stay out of domestic affairs as long as it was given absolute supremacy in international affairs. But incidents like the Watts riot (and the other urban ghetto uprisings), as well as growing radicalism in America’s middle class white youth, led the American security establishment to conceive external and internal “insurgency” as one and the same. Churchill quotes Lawrence from The New State Repression (1985) concerning this conceptual shift in security and intelligence:

[I]nsurgency [was no longer viewed as] an occasional erratic idiosyncrasy of people who are oppressed and exploited, but a constant occurrence—permanent insurgency, which calls for a strategy that doesn’t simply rely on a police force and a national guard and an army that can be called out in an emergency, but rather a strategy of permanent repression as the full-time task of security forces.[6]

Churchill presents the quote from Lawrence in the context of domestic politics, but this shift in counterinsurgency strategy was taking place globally, in part because the United States (after World War II) was in a position of power and coordination over the rest of the world’s capitalist countries and their security agencies. The shift was simply that insurgency was no longer viewed as an episodic threat. The threat of insurgency, specifically communist, was constant, and thus required constantly active repressive forces to combat it. Reagan takes control of California amidst conceptual shift. The individuals that Reagan goes on to appoint to various position within California’s security apparatus reflect this conceptual shift as well as its international scope. California’s security apparatus under Reagan employed many international Cold Warriors. They brought their counterinsurgency expertise from theaters of “hot” war back home; not enough attention has been paid to how this expertise was deployed domestically. If there is an “American exceptionalist” conception of domestic policing, then these activities would be precisely the type that would be missing from, or obscured within, the mainstream historical record and popular consciousness. These are a few of the Cold Warriors and intelligence veterans that worked in California within Reagan’s administration:

Evelle Younger. Younger served as California’s Attorney General from 1971 until 1979. He began his career as a promising young FBI Special Agent under J. Edgar Hoover. He joined the precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), at the age of 24. Prior to his appointment to the position of California’s Attorney General, Younger was Los Angeles’s District Attorney and presided over the prosecution of Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Younger was directly involved in the establishment and operation of governmental programs like the California Organized Crime and Intelligence Branch (OCCIB) as well as LAPD’s notorious Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS).

Louis Giuffrida. Giuffrida was chosen by Reagan to head the California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), a program established by Reagan during his final gubernatorial term to develop and disseminate

effective methods of neutralizing California’s then-vibrant radical left and to ‘train police forces from all across the U.S. and from many other countries in counterinsurgency . . . tasks that could not, at that time, be conducted at FBI headquarters or the International Police Academy, or other federal police training institutions.’[7]

Giuffrida had been an army counterintelligence officer, and according to Churchill, had long been “associated with organizations on the extreme right.”[8] For a thesis he wrote while attending the US Army War College, Guiffrida discussed and planned for “the establishment of concentration camps to imprison potentially millions of black Americans in the event of a revolutionary uprising in the United States.”[9]

William Hermann. Herrmann is a mysterious figure. He served as the primary counterintelligence advisor for Reagan while he was governor, but he held a multitude of positions over his shadowy career. According to Schreiber, Hermann also worked for the System Development Corporation, the Stanford Research Institute, the Rand Corporation, and the Hoover Center on violence.[10] Hermann also worked with another Reagan confidante, Dr. Earl Brian (Reagan’s Secretary of Health), at the controversial Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, a behavior modification program hosted at UCLA.[11] Hermann was publicly opposed to the kinds of social protest that were taking place within California’s black and youth populations at the time.[12]

Dr. Earl Brian. Brian was Reagan’s Secretary of Health. Brian was a proponent of behavior modification (what Schreiber suggests is a euphemism for mind control which was something of an obsession for intelligence agencies during the 1960s) in the pursuit of crime prevention.[13] Under Reagan’s securitized California, open advocates for racial and economic equality were essentially criminals, not to mention the actual radical prison reform movement that was taking place.

Colton Westbrook. Westbrook is unique. Unlike the other characters listed previously, Westbrook did not have a personal relationship with Reagan. He was also black. But Westbrook is important because of his background and role that he played within California’s security and intelligence apparatus. Westbrook appears to have been the undercover handler of Donald DeFreeze prior to his escape from formation of the Symbionese Liberation Army and escape from prison. This occurred while Westbrook was creating and running the Black Cultural Association (BCA) at Vacaville Medical Facility. Schreiber describes the BCA as

ostensibly an education program designed to instill black pride in Vacaville inmates. In reality, it became a cover for an experimental project to explore the extent to which unstable or susceptible prisoners could be controlled for the purpose of infiltration of Bay Area radical groups.[14]

Westbrook is alleged to have been a CIA agent, though he denied this charge. Other aspects of Westbrook’s known employment history suggest that he was employed with the CIA in some fashion. From 1967 to 1969, Westbrook was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Police Special Branch. Westbrook’s cover was that he was working for the Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E), a known CIA front corporation. Westbrook’s time in South Vietnamese overlaps with the time period when the Phoenix Program was active. The Phoenix Program was a Vietnam War-era clandestine American counterinsurgency, assassination, and psy-ops program designed to weaken the Vietcong through methods like assassination. If overseas methods of counterinsurgency were transmuted back to the domestic front, then individuals like Westbrook would have been the personnel capable of completing such a transportation.

A fair rebuttal to concern over the presence of foreign intelligence operatives finding employment in Reagan’s administration is that domestic law enforcement is a perfectly logical career for any veteran of the armed services. If one looked at the demographics of individuals in high ranking domestic law enforcement officials across the country during this era, one would find many veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. But Schreiber poignantly describes the likelihood of someone like Colston Westbrook ending up as the head of the Black Cultural Association:

Of all the “outside guest coordinators” that could have been chosen for the Black Cultural Association, such as people with experience in social work, criminal justice, or organizations advocating prisoner rights, Vacaville wound up with Colston Westbrook, undercover liaison for the CIA during the Phoenix Program. And he was handpicked by former psy-ops officer William Herrmann, then advising Governor Ronald Reagan on counterintelligence. And it happened at the height of the black prisoner reform movement, right after the CIA’s Operation CHAOS provided funds to Vacaville, which was an ongoing MKULTRA and MKSEARCH site for experimentation on prisoners.[15]

Several of these individuals continued working with Reagan during his time as POTUS, indicating that these were actual relationships, and not disinterested political appointments. In 1981 Reagan appointed Guiffrida to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Brian and Hermann were both also given positions in Reagan’s White House administration, but both would end up marred by scandal.[16] Given these individuals roles in America’s foreign military and intelligence apparatus, and given Lawrence’s suggestion that insurgency went from being conceived of as an episodic problem to a constant threat during this time, the presence of such counterinsurgency experts in close proximity to one of the “ground zeroes” of America’s radical left and left counterculture is striking. Clearly Reagan’s gubernatorial administration prioritized the black power movement (generally represented by the Black Panther Party) and largely white, student, youth radical movement (personified by Students for a Democratic Society and the hippies) as threats to state and national “public order.” The backgrounds, skills, and expertise of individuals who held security and intelligence positions during Reagan’s tenure reflect this prioritization.

Belew discusses the way that many right-wing, anti-communist paramilitary organizations during this time were populated with Vietnam veterans who wanted to continue the anti-communist effort at home in the United States.[17] If Belew’s convincing analysis is correct, then it is reasonable to suspect that law enforcement may have been seen by some superpatriotic veterans as a way to continue the war against communist subversion at home. While civilians tend to see a clear distinction between the purpose of (and tactics utilized by) domestic police and the military when its engaged in conflict overseas, the domestic law enforcement personnel with overseas military and intelligence anti-communist backgrounds may have seen their purpose as a continuation of their overseas efforts, just with a different set of constraints and rules of engagement, rather than as a distinctly different activity.

[1] Erik Prince, perhaps America’s (and the world’s) best known private warrior, learned much of what he knows from Oliver North, the Reagan official who supposedly masterminded the Iran-Contra strategy.

[2] Don Jelinek, “The Soledad Frame-Up,” The San Francisco Bay Guardian, June 22, 1972, 4.

[3] Despite Charles Manson espousing racist beliefs and the notion that he hoped to start a race war with his murders, Manson and his crimes were associated with the white youth counterculture.

[4] Meron Rapoport, “Italian FM Says Mughniyah Killing in Damascus Was Act of ‘Terror,’” Haaretz, February 22, 2008, https://www.haaretz.com/1.4994953.

[5] Juan Bosch and Helen Lane, Pentagonism: A Substitue for Imperialism (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1968), 51.

[6] Ward Churchill, “The Security Industrial Complex,” in The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 47.

[7] Churchill, 48.

[8] Churchill, 48.

[9] Matthew Cunningham-Cook, “Contingency Plans,” Jacobin, Spring 2018, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/contingency-plans.

[10] Brad Schreiber, Revolution’s End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

[11] Schreiber

[12] Schreiber

[13] Schreiber

[14] Schreiber

[15] Schreiber

[16] “Eventually, both Brian and Herrmann worked with Reagan when he became president. In a highly complex and internecine case, Brian was accused by former Attorney General Elliot Richardson of stealing software from a company called Inslaw. Brian was also an alleged accomplice in the Reagan attempt to undercut President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free Americans kidnapped by Iran. Brian was never indicted on either charge. Herrmann, who was later affiliated with the CIA and FBI, also participated in the aforementioned Iran arms-for-hostages deal, the “October Surprise,” on behalf of Reagan.” (Schreiber)

[17] Kathleen Belew, “Theaters of War: Mercenaries, Paramilitarism, and the Racist Right from Vietnam to Oklahoma City” (Yale University, 2011), 13.

#hopefully this is how my dissertation starts

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dillinger · 7 years

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L’esprit français Countercultures

La maison rouge presents L’Esprit français, Countercultures, 1969-1989, a thematic group exhibition by curators Guillaume Désanges and François Piron. From Narrative Figuration to the hardcore graphics of Bazooka, from Les Editions Champ Libre to the first «radios libres» (a form of pirate radio), from Hara-Kiri to Bérurier Noir, the exhibition looks at the formation of a critical, irreverent, dissenting «French spirit» by proposing a multitude of crossovers and affinities.

Through some sixty artists and over seven hundred works and documents, spanning newspapers, flyers, posters, and extracts from films, videos and television shows, it purposely looks to other creative «genres» than those generally in the spotlight of contemporary art. It is an opportunity to show rarely-seen pieces, such as notebooks from the Dziga Vertov Group (formed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin), a monumental sculpture by Raymonde Arcier, and Henri and Marinette Cueco’s «school books», and to commission original works from Kiki Picasso (Il n’y a pas de raison de laisser le blanc, le bleu et le rouge à ces cons de français, 2016-2017), Jean-Jacques Lebel (L’Internationale Hallucinex, 1970-2017) and Claude Lévêque (Conte cruel de la jeunesse, 1987-2017). France as a country doesn’t like itself, yet invariably sees itself at the centre of a self-reflexive, selfcelebrating cultural model. A generation was shaped by the ideas thrown into the ring by May ‘68, which advocated every kind of freedom - political, social, aesthetic, freedom to live as one pleased; meanwhile, the country remained in what amounted to a political status quo. This situation would have a lasting impact on different countercultures, liberation movements or protest movements and, without realising, give rise to new forms of avant-gardism whereby popular culture such as film, rock music, comics, journalism, television and graffiti influenced the more traditional cultural productions of literature, philosophy, contemporary art and the theatre. They produced an indefinable nebula of autonomous practices that came and went between these different fields, demonstrating a singular «French spirit» made up of idealism and nihilism, caustic humour and eroticism, darkness and hedonism. A distinct brand of humour appeared to permeate the fringes of French society, from the emergence of a «youth movement» - irreverent, arrogant and politically ambiguous, one that grew up in the shadows of Guy Debord’s «society of the spectacle» - to the crisis that monopolised political thinking from Giscard to Mitterrand. Working within this diachronic («the French spirit») and synchronic (1969-1989) framework, the exhibition seeks to pinpoint an impossible identity by exploring its cultural backroads and alternative branches (from which, paradoxically, an excellence recognised beyond French borders grew). Emphasis is therefore on deviant figures, anti-heroes and creators from outside accepted history, because they were either too marginal or too mainstream.

Themes of sexualities, militancy, dandyism and violence run through the exhibition, which is structured as chapters. The focus of these chapters includes alternative education and sabotage of the French identity, but also the influence of Marquis de Sade on certain radical practices. Alternative means of production and diffusion in the media and the press, ongoing protestatory violence and its equally brutal repression contributed to a darkening social landscape against a backdrop of crisis, growing mass unemployment, segregation, and the soulless, tightlywound housing projects that became a catalyst for social malaise. This original and subjective mapping of very different personalities takes in every type of creative expression - plastic arts (Lea Lublin, Pierre Molinier, Pierre Klossowski, Michel Journiac, Claude Lévêque, Daniel Pommereulle, Jacques Monory, Françoise Janicot…), comics and illustration (Roland Topor, Olivia Clavel, Kiki Picasso, Pascal Doury…), literature and thinking (Félix Guattari, Guy Hocquenghem…), music (Marie-France, Serge Gainsbourg, Bérurier Noir…), theatre (Copi, Jean-Louis Costes…), film and video (Carole Roussopoulos, Jean-Claude Averty, Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou…) - and also explores important sites such as La Borde psychiatric clinic, La Grande Borne housing projects, Les Halles shopping mall and the Palace nightclub. In France, it’s just a short step from counterculture to subculture, and many of the artists shown deliberately and openly chose not to go towards art but nonetheless stayed close, sometimes very close, as though to tap into it without having to conform to it. Others, within this field, never strayed from ways that «weren’t the done thing»: figuration, caricature, ethnography, political militancy. These aesthetic dissidences are all forms of resistance to a formal order of things, and which restore diversity to a rather colourless history of French art. The purpose of this invocation of once marginalised ideas and practices is to shed a non-nostalgic light on cultural mutations, but also bring a certain form of energy back to life.

Chapters in the exhibition: Fire away!, Forbidden/ Tolerated, Good Sex Illustrated, Sentimental Sordid, Dancing on Ruins, Diagonal Parallels, Cold Cuts, Inner Violence.

Artists of the exhibition

Djouhra Abouda et Alain Bonnamy, Olivier Agid, Émile Aillaud, Gilles Aillaud, Malek Alloula, Raymonde Arcier, Adolfo Arrietta, Jean Aubert, Jean-Christophe Averty, Igor Barrère, Cathy Bernheim, Bérurier Noir et Laul, Alain Bizos, Julien Blaine, Bertrand Blier, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou et Raphaël Marongiu, Régis Cany, Claude Caroly, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jules Celma, Olivia Télé Clavel, Nicole Claveloux, Collectif Eugène Varlin et Jacques Kebadian, le Collectif Mohammed, Coluche, la Coopérative des Malassis (Henri Cueco, Lucien Fleury, Jean-Claude Latil, Michel Parré, Gérard Tisserand, Christian Zeimert), Copi, Jean-Louis Costes, Alfred Courmes, Jean Criton, Marinette Cueco, Jorge Damonte, Jacqueline Dauriac, Pierre Desproges, Elles Sont De Sortie (Pascal Doury et Bruno Richard), Catherine Faux, Dan & Guy Ferdinande, Lucien Fleury, Marie France, Bernard Froidefond (Lastar Crémière), Dominique Fury, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Pierre Gallèpe, Jean-François Gallotte et Joëlle Malberg, Gébé, Michel Giniès, le Groupe Dziga Vertov (Jean-Luc Godard et Jean-Pierre Gorin), Daniele Huillet et Jean-Marie Straub, Les Insoumuses (Nadja Ringart, Carole Roussopoulos, Delphine Seyrig et Ioana Wieder), Françoise Janicot et Bernard Heidsieck, Michel Journiac, Jean-Paul Jungmann, Peter Klasen, Pierre Klossowski, Eustachy Kossakowski, Arnaud Labelle-Rojoux, Claude Lalanne, Lulu Larsen, Alain Le Saux, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Jean-Patrick Lebel, Claude Lévêque, Lea Lublin, Annette Messager, Pierre Molinier, Jacques Monory, Chantal Montellier, Alain Montesse, Philippe Morillon, Didier Moulinier, Edgard Naccache, ORLAN, Frédéric Pardo, Michel Parmentier, Kiki Picasso, Loulou Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, Daniel Pommereulle, Professeur Choron, Reiser, Michel Saloff-Coste, Siné, Romain Slocombe, Lionel Soukaz, Lucien Suel, T5Dur, Thierry Tillier, Roland Topor, Jean-Marc Toulassi, Clovis Trouille, le Groupe Utopie, Paul Vecchiali, Bernard Vidal, Georges Wolinski, Henri Xhonneux, Jean Yanne, Rocking Yaset, Pierre Zucca.

exhibition : February, 24 - May, 21 2017

http://lamaisonrouge.org/en/la-maison-rouge/

#art #JEAN PAUL PARADINHA

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Embraces Satanic Panic

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This article features The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It spoilers. The piece also contains information regarding violence and abuse that may upset some readers.

Director Michael Chaves and company are not subtle about their influences in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. It’s there in the first scene. As we’re reintroduced to Ed and Lorraine Warren, darkness has fallen over a family, and a Satanic presence is in the home. A young child lays bedridden, cursed to endure demonic possession, and an old priest arrives late in the foggy night. When Father Gordon gets out of his cab, The Conjuring even reenacts an image so famously associated with The Exorcist that Warner Bros. made it that movie’s poster almost 50 years ago.

But maybe it’s a good thing The Conjuring flicks are getting blunter about who they’re borrowing from. The earlier movies in the series regularly evoked William Friedkin’s 1973 exorcism movie, including with their 1970s settings. But we’re past those small winks and nudges in The Devil Made Me Do It. The threequel has moved on to 1981 and away from worrying only about demons. Aye, we now must also dread the occultists and cults who summon them. And at a glance, it’s kind of fun that the series is playing with the heightened religious paranoia of the Reagan era.

If the original The Conjuring was set during a golden age for religious horror movies, then The Conjuring 3 continues Ed and Lorraine’s thread at the moment when that fear of Satanists became more than fiction to millions of Americans. Within two years of The Devil Made Me Do It’s setting, a rising tide of Satanic Panic would lead to dozens of school officials, employees, and parents being accused of participating in Satanic rituals which included blood orgies and human sacrifices—with many serving years or decades in prison. It was the beginning of a new kind of paranoia in American life, and it was inspired, at least in part, by the spooky imagery of movies like The Exorcist.

Friedkin’s original “the Devil made me do it” chiller was not the first big Hollywood movie about the danger of demonic activity in 20th century America, but it was the most popular. Released the day after Christmas in 1973, The Exorcist became a pop culture phenomenon, the likes of which the horror genre has rarely seen before or since. When adjusted for inflation, it sold more tickets than Avatar, Titanic, or any film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With an almost clinical documentarian disaffection, the movie’s shock horror scared the hell out of audiences, leading to a massive surge in church attendance. Not that all church leaders were receptive. In fact, evangelist Billy Graham famously alleged the film itself was evil, saying “the Devil is in every frame.” Apparently, the celluloid prints were all individually cursed. (One can only imagine what Graham would’ve made of the streaming service Shudder.)

But that is perhaps the real key to the rising fear of Satan in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Films like The Exorcist were just a snapshot of a culture in the midst of ideological upheaval. There was the increased secularization that came from younger generations demanding more than their parents’ hegemonic status quo, but there was also a simultaneous revival of evangelism and modern Christian fundamentalism, which was in part a reaction to that same rapid change.

Movies like Exorcist tapped into the zeitgeist, and maybe shaped it, slightly, but those forces were already there. At most, something like Friedkin’s film just gave anxiety among religious Americans a new image of what that indescribable fear looks like. For example, thanks to The Exorcist, the Ouija board went from a harmless child’s game to being viewed in some households as the gateway to Hell forevermore.

And beyond horror films, there was a growing (and more grounded) fear of cults in this period. That’s because in August 1969, followers of Charles Manson broke into the homes of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca over the course of two nights, murdering seven people between them, including Tate’s unborn child (she was eight and a half months pregnant).

The murders were committed in a ritualistic, grisly fashion that included messages written in blood on the walls. Meanwhile, Tate’s husband and the father of her child, Roman Polanski, had recently directed the first major Hollywood blockbuster about Satanic cults, Rosemary’s Baby (1968), in which a pregnant woman is offered up to the Dark One. The grim parallels did not go unnoticed in the seedier corners of the press before the “Manson Family” was finally arrested in December of that year.

The culture-shattering effects of the Manson murders are still being felt 50 years later as major movies continued to be made on the subject. Even The Conjuring films have tapped into it, with the original Annabelle spinoff in 2014 being set in 1967, the same year that the novel Rosemary’s Baby was published. That movie revealed the Annabelle doll was commandeered by a demon controlling a Manson-like cult called the Disciples of the Ram, which were responsible for a random home invasion that ended in ritualistic slaughter. The Disciples of the Ram is also the cult name-dropped in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Additionally, the central characters in Annabelle are named Mia and John, after Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, who played a married couple introduced to a cult of witches in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

By the time 1980 rolled around, movies like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and their slew of copycats were slowly turning into a mirror—not so much of reality but of what many folks feared to be the rising menace of cults and occult-inspired crime. It was the era of a “silent majority” rejecting counterculture and its various eccentricities, including the rise of actual Satanism as a government-recognized religion.

Indeed, Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan and wrote The Satanic Bible in 1966, which despite its provocative title and imagery was largely a derivative philosophical text about self-actualization. Some have even convincingly argued that LaVey simply pilfered then-obscure 19th century philosophers and added an occult gloss to get attention and tax exempt status for his new venture. It also was a hell of a way to troll devout Christians.

If provocation was the goal, the Church of Satan got its wish, contributing to a conservative rejection of leftist counterculture, particularly following media obsessions with ritualistic serial killers like the Zodiac Killer in northern California, or the Jonestown cult, which committed ritualistic mass murder and suicide by the hundreds in 1978, all in the purported name of socialism. Meanwhile, evangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. was founding the “Moral Majority” in 1979 as a political movement designed to elect Republicans based, in part, out of a fear of the secularization of American society.

By the 1980s, millions of Americans were primed to believe that the Devil, or at least his nutso disciples, walked among us like the friendly neighbors in Rosemary’s Baby, all while secretly waiting to serve you up to Beelzebub. Consider the villain in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, a mysterious woman who damns a child to possession simply because… she can? In a world where Satanic cults and human sacrifices are real, motives are incidental.

This largely fanciful fear manifested itself into a more gruesome reality when soon-to-be-disgraced Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his wife Michelle Smith published the now thoroughly debunked Michelle Remembers in 1980. As a discredited memoir by a doctor and patient who later married, the book became a bestseller with its sensationalistic and lurid tales derived from Smith’s “memories” attained via controversial Recovered Memory Therapy (hypnosis).

In the book, Smith and her doctor/husband claimed that while in a trance she remembered her mother was secretly a member of the Church of Satan. However, this wasn’t the glorified far-left contrarian organization founded by LaVey in 1966. According to Michelle Remembers, the Church of Satan actually predates the founding of the Roman Catholic Church 2,000 years ago, and it’s acted for centuries as a secret organization trading in the blood of slaughtered infants (QAnon followers would love it).

Smith claimed that in the 1950s, when she was between the ages of five and six, she was kept in cages, tortured, sexually abused, and participated in rituals that included orgies, human sacrifices, and on one occasion summoning Satan himself from the bowels of Hell. Smith also claimed she was saved and had her physical scars erased by no less than a returned Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. The book was a publishing sensation, and even by 1989, Smith was still showing up on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show to chat about the danger of Satanic cults. Winfrey booked her alongside Laurel Rose Willson, a woman who falsely claimed she was raised by Satanists to be a “breeder,” pumping out infants for human sacrifice and dismemberment.

Two years after Michelle Remembers was published, social workers in Bakersfield, California, who had read the book, became concerned when two children (who were coached by their step-grandmother) claimed they were sexually abused by their parents—claiming their family was part of a secret cult. No evidence was found, but faster than you can say Salem, more children were encouraged to come forward and offer similar tales of abuse and Satanic activity. Ed Jagels, the district attorney and local conservative culture warrior, had his office tell jurors that more than 30 people participated in a Satanic cult that drank blood, murdered infants, and participated in incest.

Twenty-six people were convicted of sexual abuse without corroborating evidence. Twenty-five of those cases were overturned by Californian appellate courts, although not before one innocent man served 20 years out of his 40-year sentence. Children later admitted they made up incidents and were guided by concerned interviewers, and Kern County was forced to settle $9.56 million in lawsuits from those wrongfully accused and convicted.

This was only the first in a string of high-profile 1980s cases dubbed by the press to be “daycare sex abuse hysteria.” They also acted as a grotesque subgenre of a then thriving Satanic Panic. Just a year after the Bakersfield accusations began, a mother who was later diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia accused the staff of the McMartin preschool in 1983 of conspiring with her estranged husband in the rape of her son. The child then told investigators that he witnessed a sex cult in his preschool, which included witchcraft and a teacher levitating before flying around the room.

Local police investigators welcomed the help of an unlicensed psychotherapist to examine 400 children in the school. The results led to seven daycare staff members being accused by 41 children of 321 counts of child abuse, which included stories of hidden underground tunnels, sex orgies, and at least one baby being sacrificed to Satan. The resulting five-year trial and legal proceedings remains the most expensive in California’s history, in which no physical evidence was presented and there were no convictions. But Winfrey guest Laurel Rose Willson testified as a witness, claiming she saw the abuse firsthand during her time as a Satanist.

These were just a handful of cases, and the first of at least a half-dozen daycare centers accused of Satanic activity and abuse. Several led to wrongful convictions of preschool owners and teachers. The convictions were overturned years later. However, the terror of baby-sacrificing Satanists walking among us persisted.

In 1982, Patricia Pulling began a well-publicized campaign against Dungeons & Dragons after her son died by suicide. Pulling, and soon many sympathetic evangelicals, became convinced the roleplaying game drove him to suicide due to cursed cards with demonic power. Future Fox News mainstay Geraldo Rivera hosted Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground on NBC in 1988, which became the highest-rated television documentary up to that point. In 1992, the Justice Department was forced to publish a monograph thoroughly explaining why American law enforcement needed to stop considering “Satanic cults” as a threat to society.

And as late as 1994, three teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas were famously convicted of murdering three boys the year before based largely on hearsay evidence and the prosecution accepting rumors that these goth teenagers worshipped the Devil. Therefore the 1993 murders were part of a “Satanic ritual.” In 2007, forensic evidence revealed the only DNA found at the crime scene belonged to the victims and unknown killers who were not the West Memphis Three. They were released after serving 18 years in prison, although to this day Arkansas has failed to expunge their convictions.

Movies

How The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Secretly Ties Into Annabelle

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Ending Explained

By David Crow

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is (very) loosely based on a court case during this era of mass Satanic hysteria. A cynic might even wonder if the real Ed and Lorraine Warren pitched the “Devil made me do it” defense to tap into the then prevalent fear of little possessed Regan MacNeils spider-walking down the stairs at any moment. While the real Ed and Lorraine were never asked to participate in the investigation of a missing person who turned out to have died by demon-induced suicide (as seen in the movie), there were plenty of police detectives in the ‘80s ready to embrace a fear of the occult as both motive and Exhibit A evidence.

Perhaps that’s why there is a slightly ickier feeling about The Conjuring 3 than its predecessors. The new movie plays into a cultural fantasy that ruined lives and sent innocent people to prison. There’s a scene in The Devil Made Me Do It where the saintly onscreen versions of Ed and Lorraine Warren take text written by medieval Catholic Church witch hunters as gospel—which is a disquieting notion when one pauses to consider the likely superstitious and misogynistic motivations of those torch-happy holy men.

It also would be too easy to smirk now at the madness of heartland Christians convinced their neighbors were baby-eaters 40 years ago. That type of paranoia still exists in modern conspiracy theories, even if it is slightly less tied to fears of demons and exorcisms. Ask the owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C., which right-leaning conspiracy theorists were convinced housed a child sex ring, resulting in a man storming into the restaurant with a gun.

Meanwhile, a poll in 2020 found that as many as 53 percent of self-identified Republicans believed the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims Democratic leaders and Hollywood celebrities drink the blood of children to stay young. Witches, vampires, and even the Devil can be the source for fascinating stories and fictions. But when folks believe in this stuff, it’s far too easy to become possessed by a more human evil.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[RF] Co-op

Some part of me knew I was a relic of my time, a time that seemed just yesterday but had been swept away by a society’s constant need for change.

I looked at the calendar on the wall behind the cash register. It was early December, 1988, and I 1989 was lurking around the corner.

I still remembered August 1969 with such clarity. The sights, the smells, the thronging masses in the mud. My wife holding my daughter’s hand so she wouldn’t get lost, but April had been quite content to shyly stay at our side, a sharp contrast to the go-getter she had become.

I sighed as I cashed out and locked the door, closing the food co-op for the day. It had been slow today, and the bills just kept coming in. I was thankful for the patronage of other aging hippies like me, the ones buying big containers of natural peanut butter, tofu, and loose-leaf tea.

Where did the carelessness of youth go? I remembered running wild, a joyful kid barely out of his teens, my wife with our newborn in a sling at her breast, making up silly little songs to lull her to sleep, the tires of our old Clipper singing harmony as we rolled across the country.

Back then, making friends was easy. I met John Tsu in San Francisco (stereotypical, I know), a young Chinese-American guy, eager to get out of the back room of his parents’ little clothing shop and join the counterculture.

He was the only one who’d ended up sticking around our commune, playing handyman and cook to the huge, sagging building.

I sling my tote bag of vegetables in the passenger seat of my little hatchback, cranking the key, coaxing the car into reluctant life.

I wandered my way into the ever-expanding suburbs, finally driving down that hidden, bumpy little dirt road, where the trees flanking the path were still old-growth.

Pulling into the driveway, I surveyed the old farmhouse. Gads, there were so many little repairs to be done. The paint was peeling, the side screen door hanging ajar, dead weeds growing around the remains of the Clipper.

“Hey man.” Johnny was out on the front porch, having a smoke break “I got that cabinet door to close properly”

“Groovy, thanks.” I gave Johnny a brief hug. I always believed friendly touch kept us just a little healthier, not that August wanted to stand within five feet of me these days.

Spilling my veggies out on the kitchen counter, I walked into our huge living room, our one-time community center. I could still hear the ideas, the laughter.

My wife’s photo rested on the mantel of the fireplace, a smiling girl in a flowing skirt and fringed blouse. It had been three years since she died of breast cancer, and my heart still hurt every day.

August was sprawled out on the couch, reading a Rolling Stone, a bag of chips on the floor. I grabbed his sneaked foot and shook it lightly. “No shoes on the couch, flower child.”

August looked at me over the top of his magazine, the weary look of every teenager just barely tolerating their parent.

“God, I hate it when you call me that. The sixties are way over, dad.”, he grumped.

“The sixties are never over, kid. How was school today?”

“Fine”. One of the expected mono-syllable replies.

“Do your homework.” I called as I left the living room to go help Johnny with dinner. In reality, I didn’t care too much about academics, though April had excelled in school. I let my kids find their own paths.

April had the natural charm that her mother possessed. She was a witty but studious child, earning scholarships to the most acclaimed university in our state. Having majored in business, she was now interning at a huge real estate firm.

I admit that sometimes I felt alienated from her. She had embraced the bright, plastic, fast moving attitude of the eighties. She listened to Madonna, whereas I still preferred The Who.

August, Johnny and I sat at the rustic dining room table eating dinner, with nothing much to say to each other. August was about to bolt to his room when the crunch of tires in the drive interrupted our internal monologues.

I looked out the window and saw April getting out of her car, clad in a smart business suit and heels. I got up and eagerly went to the front door, throwing it open. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise!” I called.

“Hi dad.” April gave me a pat on the shoulder.

“Long time no see! Can you stay for dinner?” I asked.

“Thanks, but I already ate.” April smiled. “Hey Johnny.”

“Good to see ya, kid.” Johnny nodded amicably. “Dig the shoulder pads.”

“Thanks.” for the first time I noticed the briefcase in April’s hand and it gave me an uneasy feeling. There had been a lot of recent development in the area, the city growing like cancer.

“Dad, I’d like to stay and visit, but I’m on assignment from my boss.” Suddenly she looked nervous and defeated, her shoulders slumping slightly, her eyes telling me bad news.

“As you know, my company sees a lot of potential in this area, which has become vibrant and chic in the last few years. To accommodate the needs of our clients, we simply need more land that can be used to it’s full potential.”

She looked around at the interior of the farm house, the place that she’d been raised with joyful memories.

“I’ll get to the point, how would you like to sell the commune? You could retire in comfort.”

My jaw dropped, I didn’t know what to say.

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#Blogger #Story

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riffrelevant · 5 years

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Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway, Owner/Chief Editor

The year is 1969, the place is Toronto, Canada, more specifically, the hippie infested Spandina and Sussex Avenues, not far from the University Of Toronto campus.

Needless to say, the times… they are a’changing. While The 5th Dimension sing about “The Age Of Aquarius“, there is an altogether different age looming: The Seventies. Yet, before this particular year ends, a darkness will descend and eventually envelop the Flower Power children. A horrific, crystalline clear image of this change is relayed through a series of murders that takes place in Los Angeles between August 8th – 9th, claiming the lives of four people, including actress Sharon Tate.

Four months later, the “peace and love” mantra of the counterculture is effectively stamped out at the Altamont Speedway in northern Cali on December 6th. While bands like The Rolling Stones, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have played, The Grateful Dead refused to go on and for good reason. A considerable amount of violence had already occurred, much of it at the hands of Hell’s Angels hired as security, and it included the stabbing death of a concert goer, along with three other “accidental” deaths.

Yes, it was a completely different vibe that was growing everywhere, including Toronto where a cast of musicians soon assembled themselves as BENT WIND. Before this happened, rhythm guitarist and vocalist Marty Roth was running a head shop where on occasion, if the door was open and things were just right, he heard faint wafts of live music played somewhere close. That turned out to be the basement of 57 Sussex Avenue where guitarist and vocalist Gerry Gibas (who Roth had previously been a bandmate of in The Roads To Ruin) was jamming with bassist Sebastian “Sudsy” Pelaia and drummer Eddie Thomas.

The quartet were soon jamming together, eventually taking the name decided on by Gibas, BENT WIND, as they ironed out original songs written mostly by Gibas. While other local acts were playing Simon & Garfunkel covers, BENT WIND were channeling their musical and external societal influences into songs they felt were “something special.” Plus, they vowed to never play cover songs, only original music that they themselves had created… and what creations they are.

Soon BENT WIND were performing live at a local 12-hour music festival – advertised as 12 bands over the span of 12 hours. It was only their fourth time playing live and due to the usual behind-the-scenes delays and issues, BENT WIND only played for 15 minutes – but it was the right 15 minutes, in front of the right person. That person was Merv Buchanan, owner of Trend Records, who approached the band as they were loading up and enticed them to record an album. A week later, they recorded their first single, “Sacred Cows”, with the b-side “Castles Made Of Men”.

The music of BENT WIND is quite heavy, undercurrents laden with acid rock and blues bearing the weight of massively thick, psych-fuzz guitar riffs. That is anchored down by steely rhythms, hammered into place by concussive drumming while hazy vocals float across it all. It is not happy-go-lucky music in the least, it is dark and sometimes frenzied, ominous even, and crafted with experimental qualities. Those include, for example, use of bird calls during the guitar break of a song about and inspired by a guy that murdered his girlfriend, as detailed in the 12-minute track “Riverside“.

All of this took place in 1969, over the span of a few months, and it culminated with BENT WIND releasing their début full-length album, ‘Sussex‘, before the new decade arrived. The album is adorned with a hand drawn sketch of a bird, unicorn, mushrooms, etc., by Gibas with a magic marker. It was pressed in very limited quantity, though how many exist exactly is still disputed, but today there is believed to be less than 500 copies circulating worldwide. When it was released, local Toronto music retailers priced the LP at $2.89, and what copies they had did not sell, most just sitting and gathering dust.

The album’s songs were all inspired by the real life existence and denizens of the Sussex Avenue vicinity. In the years since its release, ‘Sussex‘ has gone on to become a highly sought piece of Canadian music. The album is now considered one of the more rare, highly collectible albums in the world of music, with original pressings fetching thousands of dollars on the collectors market. Recent retail transactions of the album have sold for upwards of $5,000 USD; not bad for an LP that radio refused to play and was recorded over a period of two days, with most of the songs recorded in one take.

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BENT WIND played another four or five shows after the album was released and returned to Trend Studios in early 1970 to record a 45 single, “Leroy Goes West” and “The Leper.” However, before the recording can be released, BENT WIND called it a day and folded, with the master tapes of that single being lost along the way. They remain in limbo to this day, though a live rehearsal version of “Leroy Goes West” can be found on a collection of songs issued in 1970, ‘The Lost Ryerson Tapes‘.

The members of the band went on to do a variety of musical things separately until 1989, when after nearly twenty years defunct, Marty Roth believed the time was right to reform BENT WIND. Hopes of doing so with the original line up were soon dashed, when he discovered Eddie Thomas just no longer possessed the same drumming chops of his past. Then bassist “Sudsy” Pelaia had immediately laughed off the idea altogether when Roth pitched it to him, but Gerry Gibas was open to the return… at first. Roth wanted Gibas to move from lead guitar to bass, and then brought in a new guitarist, Robbie California (Robert Brockie), and drummer John Butt.

The renewed BENT WIND had a sound radically different than that of the past band, something determined after one practice and then Gerry Gibas promptly quit. The biggest difference was the guitar sound and playing, the results of moving Gibas to bass. Robbie’s method is clean and structured, inspired by blues and reggae, the exact opposite of Gerry’s original approach of fuzzed-out, incessant noodling. New bassist Bill Miller was then brought in and before the end of 1989, BENT WIND release a second album, ‘The Fourth Line Is… You Will‘. The title was a reference to people’s reactions anytime Marty Roth told them he was in a band, playing out in conversation as: The first line is… (Them) “What’s the name of the band?” The second line is… (Marty) “Bent Wind.” The third line is… (Them) “Never heard of ‘em“. The Fourth Line Is… “You Will” (Marty).

While the sophomore record was a respectable effort, its music is a far different cry than the ‘Sussex‘ era, as is the band’s third album that arrived in 1996, ‘Shadows On The Wall‘. Unable to recapture the band’s “glorious” past, BENT WIND gradually dissipated like dust in the wind, not coming to an official end, but an end nonetheless.

In a 2011 interview with It’s Psychedelic Baby magazine, Marty Roth told interviewer Klemen Breznikar the following:

“My whole intention in music was to write songs that people would like. It really never was about the money or the fame. If it was, I would have chosen a different route. Bent Wind’s ‘Sussex’ has been bootlegged and pirated numerous times around the world and although many people have capitalized on ‘Sussex’, the band itself, never made a cent. I just want to say, Thank you to all those who supported us over the years and I smoke a joint in your honor! As a matter of fact, make that two….“

#gallery-0-3 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-3 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-3 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-3 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The Lost Ryerson Tapes

The Fourth Line Is… “You Will”

Shadows On The Wall

Oldschool Sunday: BENT WIND Article By: Pat 'Riot' Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway, Owner/Chief Editor The year is 1969, the place is Toronto, Canada, more specifically, the hippie infested Spandina and Sussex Avenues, not far from the University Of Toronto campus.

#2019 #Album Art #Audio Stream #Bent Wind #Eddie Thomas #Gerry Gibas #Heavy Rock #Marty Roth #Oldschool Sunday #Psychedelia #Sebastian "Sudsy" Pelaia #Streaming #Trend Records #Video #YouTube

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gigglesndimples · 5 years

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Book Review: Jorma Kaukonen’s ‘Been So Life: My Life in Music’

Jefferson Airplane, circa 1968, from left: Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Spencer Dryden, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady

With Woodstock 50 four months away, 1969 festival alum and former Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen is in the news with a his autobiography, Been So Long: My Life in Music.

Hardcore Airplane and Hot Tuna fans already know the basic outline of Kaukonen’s life: An authenticity-obsessed student of traditional, finger-picking country blues in the folk revival of the early ’60s (Harlem legend Blind Gary Davis was his special inspiration), Kaukonen catapulted to stardom when he went electric as the lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane, the flagship band of the psychedelic San Francisco sound.

Together with Airplane bassist and childhood friend Jack Casady, they formed Hot Tuna as a side group in 1969 that returned to Kaukonen’s country-blues roots before again going electric, this time as a heavy blues-rock power trio in the style of Cream. After Tuna split up in the late ’70s, he briefly experimented with the punk-blues band Vital Parts, but this didn’t go over well with his fans. In the ’80s, Kaukonen spiraled downhill; by the time he was called back for an Airplane reunion album in 1989 his career was at a nadir.

Kaukonen subsequently revived Tuna as a country-blues group. In the 21st century, he went back to the land on a farm in rural Ohio where he now teaches guitar to kids from across the country, passing that old-school blues method to a new generation.

In Been So Long, the real geeks get the details on every model of guitar Kaukonen ever played, as well as every make of car and motorcycle he ever rode. Fanatics get an inside look at his Finnish-Jewish ethnic roots, his boyhood as a globe-trotting Foreign Service brat, his early gigging on the Washington, DC bar scene and his recruitment into the Airplane.

It’s hardly surprising that tales of drug use devour many pages. Cannabis was a “sacrament” for these early San Francisco musical pioneers, a rite of cultural bonding as well as enhancement to creativity. LSD trips followed. Kaukonen seems a little self-conscious about this, even denying that the Airplane, quintessential icon of the countercultural explosion, was a “hippie band.” He claims to have never actually lived in Haight-Ashbury, but in fact the Airplane’s communal house at 2400 Fulton Street was just a few blocks north of the Haight.

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Kaukonen’s reticence about identifying with the hippies may have to do with acute awareness of his own self-destructive streak. For him, speed was a “work drug” used habitually to keep going through shows. His decline in the ’80s was, in large part, due to alcoholism and heroin use. The psychological toll of the related nightmare—financial woes, deeply dysfunctional relationships, rusting musical chops—is depicted unsparingly.

But Kaukonen lands on his feet in the end, emerging from his trial by fire chastened but wiser. He establishes a new stable and happy family life and wins less glittery, but more meaningful acclaim as one of the nation’s foremost preservationists of intangible Americana. The embryonic journey he embarked on in the heady ’60s has brought him a hard-won fulfillment.

More Book Reviews

Let’s Go (So We Can Go Back) by Jeff Tweedy

Gold Dust Woman: A Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis

Fare The Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long, Strange Trip by Joel Selvin

This article appears in Issue 35. Subscribe to the magazine here.

The post Book Review: Jorma Kaukonen’s ‘Been So Life: My Life in Music’ appeared first on Freedom Leaf.

Source: https://www.freedomleaf.com/jorma-kaukonen-autobiography-been-so-long/

The blog article Book Review: Jorma Kaukonen’s ‘Been So Life: My Life in Music’ is republished from The Giggles N Dimples Blog

from Giggles N Dimples - Feed https://gigglesndimples.com/2019/04/18/book-review-jorma-kaukonens-been-so-life-my-life-in-music/

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dstrachan · 6 years

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FREAK MYTHOLOGY – ‘FREAK MYTHOLOGY’

According to the bio on Freak Mythology's FaceBook page, the band were voted "Cincinnati's Next Big Band 2017" having formed in late 2012; they blend together a mixture of funk and blues rock with psychedelia to create a sound that can quite rightly be considered as "modern classic rock". Pete's Rock News and Views (UK) has selected this eponymous release as 'album of the year 2017'. They are currently located in West Chester, Cincinnati, and thanks to the wonders of social media I was directed towards this album by Mark Winder aka 'TheRetweeter' – further proof that if you can filter out the reams of negativity, insults and 'Fake News' Twitter does have many positive benefits!

I must start by drilling down into that “modern classic rock” designation as quoted in the aforementioned bio, surely an oxymoron as only the passage of time can qualify the use of the term 'classic'? Certainly that may be true but I do feel that the use of the designation is justified – even if it is only a couple of days since I first heard of the band. They are barely 5 years old and clearly appear to be active now so that counts as 'modern' and having listened to them there is no dispute that they produce 'rock' music that doesn't require any additional sub-genre endorsement; so that just leaves the 'classic' word! Right from hearing the first bars and phrases of 'Where Does The Time Go' my mind was immediately seeking to identify the numerous echoes that had begun to reverberate in my mind; the love scene from 'Zabriskie Point' as provided by Jerry García (1970) infused with David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' (1971) and cranked up in pace with the likes of Spin Doctors' 'Two Princes' (1993), add in a touch of solo Tom Petty as on 'Full Moon Fever' (1989), Steve Miller Band 'Your Saving Grace' era minus the organ (1969) , and I could go on – it all sounded so wonderfully familiar and timeless yet absolutely fresh, and not in any way a lame attempt to simply replicate the sounds from years gone by; so 100% yes to the application of 'modern classic rock'! Most definitely I was hooked.

So, enough of my reminiscing and creating a check list of music to re-visit, what about this Freak Mythology album? At the present time I find it quite difficult to view anything without it passing through a 'Brexit' / '#POTUS45' filter, particularly when confronted with lyrics such as this from 'House Arrest'; “Stuck here, I gotta find some work / Stuck here, I gotta pay my dues / Stuck here, my thoughts they lurk / But to them, I’m just another jerk / Stuck here, I just want the world back”, I am immediately drawn in to want to hear more.

Gilbert Shelton's marvellous cartoons featuring 'The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' could be said to be very much part of the mythology of my youth, presenting a critique of the establishment, while simultaneously satirizing counterculture – as I waited for the album to unfold I wondered if this band might adopt a similar philosophy.

The album starts with a builder, 'Where Does The Time Go', a phrase that frequently circulates in my head as the years progress!

“There’s people around me, and they don’t know / Where does the time go? / Nobody knows ….... I’m a little bit crazy, well can’t you tell, / From the smile on my face / I’m feelin’ pretty well”. This track sees the various elements build to a crescendo of instrumental virtuosity. Track two is 'Haunting Me' and it invites you in with the introductory lyrics “All these questions, they’re haunting me / It’s all chaos, madness, and creeds / There’s footsteps above me, I’m locked inside / I’ve gotta get out of this place, and see what I can find.” The third track 'House Arrest' sets off at a jaunty pace with an catchy riff to accompany yet more engaging lyrics and is followed by an absolutely stunning instrumental, 'Surge' follows; this evoked so many memories of great live gigs back in the mid 1970s! 'Headed Out' brings things to a close with a mellower and more acoustic vibe and more intelligent lyrics which offer an insightful commentary on the conflict between hopes and wishes for a better life, and the daily grind. If these excellent five tracks aren't enough then there are others to treat your ears on the band's Spotify page!

Brad Wehlitz - Guitar, Vocals Ryan Shephard - Guitar, Vocals Caroline Joseph - Bass, Vocals Travis Hanna - Percussion

1/ Where Does The Time Go?

2/ Haunting Me

3/ House Arrest

4/ Surge

5/ Headed Out

#freakmythology #modernclassicrock #theretweeter

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topmixtrends · 6 years

Link

“Hours dreadful and things strange” is as apt a description of the post-Brexit climate as folk horror itself, with its normalisation and spiked increase in xenophobic attacks, a gestalt mentality, any questioning of the result labelled as a heresy by pro-Brexit tabloids, and a wide-scale embracing of political fantasy and inwardness. We have burnt our Sgt Howie in the wicker man, and now wait naively for our apples to grow once more, confident that we have “taken back control.”

— Adam Scovell, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange

“I believe,” Paul said, “that if we don’t believe in demons, they won’t believe in us. Do the demons believe in us? That’s the question. The day the demons believe in us, we’re in real trouble.”

— Conor O’Callaghan, Nothing on Earth

IN HIS new book on the landscape and folkloric tradition as it relates to British horror cinema, Adam Scovell returns again and again to the question of what constitutes “folk horror.” Is it a resurgence of interest in occultism and New Age philosophies born out of the counterculture of the late 1960s? Or could it be the inevitable tragedy that occurs when modern metropolitan man — for it has generally been men who have claimed the starring roles in folk horror’s touchstone texts as Scovell identifies them — becomes alienated from the landscape and culture of his rural forefathers? Perhaps it expresses a thwarted desire for authenticity in an increasingly artificial environment, or articulates a political tirade against the continuing inequalities of the British class system?

I would argue that Scovell’s hesitation in assigning a precise definition — his tendency toward a “you’ll know it when you see it” approach — arises from the fact that all horror and especially British horror is, in a sense, folk horror. Horror fiction and film has always explored the myriad ways that fundamental wrongness — dis-ease — is found in those places where we traditionally seek refuge. Of all the speculative genres, horror is particularly obsessed with place. Those who argue for science fiction as the most overtly political form of the fantastic often point to horror’s putative conservatism, its preference for isolated settings — old houses, bleak moorland, remote villages, that dodgy patch of wasteland on the edge of town — and its seeming indifference to the wider world. Yet one can also see horror’s obsession with place as, by extension, an obsession with history, with the past as it meets the present and offers warnings about the future. In this regard, horror is the most subversively political of literatures, mired in causality up to its armpits.

Scovell’s touchstone texts — films like Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) or Peter Plummer’s TV adaptation of Alan Garner’s 1967 novel The Owl Service (1969–’70) — are characterized above all by the myth of a return to the land that many would claim as folk horror’s most characteristic attribute. Yet we need only look to works like Alan Clarke’s film Penda’s Fen (1974) or Peter Dickinson’s “Changes” trilogy (1968–’70) to see that Cold War cosmopolitanism has proved every bit as significant in terms of its influence on British horror as hippie rusticism. If the two core ingredients of strange fiction are iconoclasm and anxiety, it is easy to see why the 1970s were such a fertile soil for artists with a creative leaning toward the uncanny. Weird narratives of the ’70s were obsessed with reconnecting us with our sense of place, even if such belonging turned out to include the suppression of dissent, Satan worship, or human sacrifice. There is a “better the devil you know” undercurrent to ’70s horror that could be seen as a natural corollary to the anxiety and sense of powerlessness that comes from living in a world teetering on the brink of Armageddon.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 saw a lessening of these anxieties and a corresponding shift in horror narratives out of the countryside and into the newly encroaching realities of global capitalism. As horror went mainstream during the 1990s, it became more extroverted, less intimate. Yet over the past decade, folk horror has been experiencing a resurgence that parallels if not surpasses that of the 1970s, and it is not hard to see why. The swaggering confidence of the ’90s has evaporated. Global terrorism, climate change, corporate disenfranchisement, and forced migrations have all impacted our sense of self as well as our relationship to our surroundings. In British horror literature especially, these shifts have produced the sense of a void at the heart of things, a defamiliarized landscape rife with political extremism and mass psychosis. If ’70s folk horror was all about embracing our pagan past, contemporary British weird fiction seems to suggest that we have no past, that our mendacity as a nation has rendered it forfeit. As writers and citizens, we are adrift in a landscape that is being steadily, inexorably erased in front of our eyes.

English author Sarah Hall would probably not refer to herself as a horror writer, yet those elements that best characterize folk horror — a rootedness in landscape and a bone-deep, anxious awareness of dis-ease — recur in her work to such an extent that her relevance to this discussion cannot be in doubt. Hall’s first novel, Haweswater (2002), is the story of a rural community facing extermination at the hands of corporate greed. Her Tiptree Award–winning and Clarke Award–shortlisted The Carhullan Army (2007) explores a dystopian near-future England through the eyes of a band of female resistance fighters, while her more recent novel The Wolf Border (2015) imagines a newly independent Scotland on the cusp of re-wilding. In her latest collection of stories, Madame Zero (2017), Hall returns to the themes of anxiety and transformation that formed the backbone of her earlier collection, The Beautiful Indifference (2011), but with an increase in both bleakness and urgency.

In “Mrs Fox,” the story that opens Madame Zero and that won the 2013 BBC National Short Story Award, a comfortably well-off middle-class couple are forced into an entirely new set of circumstances when the woman, Sophia, experiences a literal return to the land and transforms into a vixen. There is nothing allegorical or airy-fairy about this metamorphosis — Sophia literally becomes a wild fox, living in the woods and eating her meat raw. She makes messes on the kitchen floor. She offers her husband no indication that she is anything other than entirely satisfied with her new life. Eventually she gives birth, a development the husband watches with a thrill of recognition and acceptance:

Privy to this, no man could be ready. Not at home, skulling the delivery within the bloody sheets, nor in the theatre gown, standing behind a screen as the surgeon extracts the child. The lovely sting in him! They are, they must be, his.

There is a sense of rightness here that is unfamiliar and unexpected. The man does not try to prevent or deny Sophia’s changing. He recognizes instinctively that “he has no role, except as guest.” As a result, “Mrs Fox” feels very different from other, similarly themed stories — such as Angela Carter’s “Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest” (1974) — in which a woman’s metamorphosis acts as a trigger for her male partner’s desire to control. We sense Sophia’s dissatisfaction with the life she has been accustomed to lead, yet we also sense her mate’s willingness to continue his life alongside her insofar as that remains possible given the circumstances. Against all odds, they remain together: “Mrs Fox” is a story not only of the distance between people but also of the fierceness of personal attachment, the unbreakable connections that are bound to endure.

Similar themes are explored in “Case Study 2,” though with a less happy outcome. A young child, Christopher, has been placed in the care of social services after being expelled from the commune where he grew up. Christopher has no understanding of individual identity — he invariably refers to himself in the first-person plural. This chronic dissociation is a major concern to Christopher’s psychotherapist, who confesses in private transcripts that her involvement in the case may have been compromised by her own inability to become pregnant. Shortly after referring to himself as “I” for the first time, Christopher dies, leaving us to ask if the individualism we deem so desirable might not also be toxic. Stripped of communal structures, the intimate bond with the landscape that had defined his existence, little Christopher quite literally ceases to be.

Themes of unbelonging and separation from one’s personal context are again explored in “Wilderness.” As in Hall’s earlier, thematically related story “She Murdered Mortal He,” the protagonist finds herself isolated in a foreign country, unsure of the rules that silently govern the behavior and relationships of the people around her. When her husband and his childhood friend Zach hatch a plan to walk across the rusted railway viaduct that spans a scenic river estuary, Becca’s fear of heights is waved breezily aside. As Becca’s terror mounts, we learn that her acrophobia may have its roots in a past that comes to her only seldom, and in dreams. “Wilderness” is a masterful story in which the surrounding landscape not only reflects the personal anxieties of the characters but also radically alters the relationships between them.

A more overtly speculative vision is at work in “Later, His Ghost,” a terrifyingly bleak climate change story set in a near-future Norwich. Britain is more or less permanently ravaged by monster storms; whole communities have been swept away, with thousands of casualties and irreparable damage to much of the country’s infrastructure. The protagonist is holed up in a barn on the outskirts of town, his life reduced to two primary concerns: taking care of a traumatized pregnant woman and locating a complete copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. His vision of himself, as he briefly catches sight of his reflection in a broken window, speaks poignantly for all who have survived and struggle on:

He looked like some sort of demon. Maybe that’s what he was, maybe that’s what he’d become. But he felt human, he remembered feeling human. His ankle hurt, which was good. He could use a can opener. And he liked Christmas. He turned away from the mirror and climbed back out the window. Snow was flying past.

The claustrophobia that pervades this story is so powerful that we continue to feel suspicious of the more recognizable environment depicted in the piece that follows. “Goodnight Nobody” is told from the point of view of young Jemima, or Jem, as she delivers a packet of sandwiches to her mother, who works as a mortician at the local hospital. The outward simplicity of the narrative belies the tensions and dangers lurking beneath: not just the stark choice Jem’s mother faces in trying to care and provide for her daughter, but also the ways in which Jem herself must learn to survive in this seemingly banal world of corner shops and busy A-roads, where death is always closer than you think. “One in Four,” a vignette in the form of a suicide note, pushes the world of “Goodnight Nobody” to its logical conclusion, with vested interests and corporate penny-pinching sending our globalized economy spiraling toward a disastrous endgame.

In all these stories, Hall’s personal concerns — new parenthood, separation and abandonment, individuality and the loss of it — are the foreground for a more general sense of disquiet, a concern with the decomposing landscapes of our contemporary lives. This is folk horror at its most intimate, its most precarious. Hall obsessively shows the undermining of social reality through a doctored political consensus, the potential for imminent destruction that hovers on the margins of everyday life. The pieces that make up Madame Zero are shorter, more impressionistic than the stories in Hall’s earlier collection, but in terms of their intensity and political weight they are every bit as substantial, a perfect balance of language and content, poised at the magical midway point between the distillation of poetry and the vicariousness of prose. Hall’s alternation of mimetic with more overtly speculative texts conveys a queasily jolting effect, leading us to question the apparent normality of our lived environments.

In Conor O’Callaghan’s brief but powerfully haunting debut novel Nothing on Earth, published in 2016 in the United Kingdom and recently reprinted in the United States by Transworld Publishers, an environment that should be prosaic in the extreme — a nondescript close on an anonymous housing estate — is rendered as a landscape so uncertain that it gradually becomes invisible, particularly to those who would rather not be reminded of its existence. The events of the novel are narrated by an elderly priest who, during one memorably hot Dublin summer, becomes caught up in a series of incidents that affect his life and plague his memories. Paul, his wife Helen, and her twin sister Martina come to live on the estate because it is cheap, one of the numerous “ghost” building projects that were abandoned in the wake of the Irish recession. One night toward the end of August, the priest answers his front door to find Paul and Helen’s 12-year-old daughter seeking refuge following her mother’s disappearance earlier in the summer. The girl tells him that not only has Helen disappeared, but that her father and aunt have as well, the house reverting to an empty shell: “The things of a show house belonged to lives that should have happened but never did. They gave off no noise at all, and that was more deafening than anything.”

The priest feels uncomfortable about being alone in the house with the child, and there are hints of a dark shadow cloaking his past. He calls in a neighbor to act as chaperone, though he is later forced to admit that she did not stay in the house with them overnight. As the priest looks back over the events of that summer, we are confronted with one disquieting question after another: What happened to Martina and Helen’s parents, a tragedy so terrible it sent the sisters overseas for many years? Does the estate — the postmodern stand-in for the quintessential Bad Place of classic horror literature — possess the uncanny ability to literally eat people, or is it simply a metaphor for the social and economic deprivation that stalks the land? What of the Slatterys, as doomed and desperate as the rest of the estate’s shrinking populace in spite of their middle-class pretentions? Above all, it is the weather that leaves its mark on this novel: the days feel endless, taking on a dreamlike quality, the stealthily encroaching madness of a long hot summer.

The water rationing intensified. The taps ran dry from eight every evening. It hadn’t rained for almost two months. The mounds of muck up at the townhouses had dried to a fine orange sand that blew off in plumes whenever a warm wind came swirling around. The sand got everywhere: into the house, their clothes, everything. It got on the scraps of furniture they had, on the fruit in the picnic salad bowl. Every mug of tea or coffee seemed to have a film on its surface. You took a shower and the shower basin was coated with it, as if you had been at the beach all day. There was no point in cleaning the windows: within twenty-four hours they were gauzed with sand again.

The narrative teems with uncanny acts of duplication and mistaken identity — twin sisters who cannot be told apart, an elderly couple who appear to have walked out of a photograph, a confusion over names. At one point the estate, so new it is still partly a building site, is tellingly referred to as “historic ruins.” We shiver with apprehension of ghosts come to life:

It was mid-afternoon and they felt like aliens. It was, Paul said, like a coach tour of the Balkans, where you take a pit-stop in one of those dying hamlets that had been the centre of some medieval empire.

This is horror of the most resonant kind, because it is real and because it is happening now. There is a feeling of stasis twinned with impermanence, a halt to progress combined with a pell-mell stampede toward the new. Into the disappearance of this fractured family we read the disappearance of entire communities, thrust out of their own lives by an economic imperative to strip away the social provision we have spent so long in building. The priest’s shock as he is confronted by the reality of the failed housing estate — an environment that increasingly resembles a war zone — reminds us that, in a sense, O’Callaghan’s book is itself a ghost, the kind of narrative some people would prefer not to come into contact with at all.

Most of all, Nothing on Earth serves as an antidote to that fraction of horror fiction that is still mostly concerned with reassurance: Gothic melodramas in which the ghosts are safely confined to the past, sets of familiar tropes that suggest it is only those who wander off the path who will fall afoul of fate. O’Callaghan shows us that horror is now, and we are the demons.

As a society, we often feel more comfortable collecting press cuttings about tragedy than asking meaningful questions about its genesis. Nothing on Earth is less than two hundred pages long, yet its implications and reverberations carry more weight than many novels three times its length. Like Hall, O’Callaghan achieves his effect not through elaborate metaphors or densely styled “literary” writing, but through a declarative, pared-down prose and the gradual accumulation of significant detail.

While both Hall and O’Callaghan could be cited as authors of the literary mainstream with folk-horror sympathies (Hall has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and O’Callaghan is a prize-winning poet), Malcolm Devlin’s work feels as if it sprung directly from the compost of ’70s folk horror, finding inspiration — and a renewed vigor — in the tropes and assumptions of authors such as Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Holdstock, and Joan Aiken. His debut collection, You Will Grow Into Them (2017), thus perfectly embodies the shifting emphases and new grounding imageries of folk horror in the 21st century.

The collection opens conventionally enough, with a classic piece of English weird fiction, “Passion Play,” in which a teenage girl subsumes the anxieties of her troubled family into an obsession with a “stick man” who she believes haunts the icons in her local church. In its conflation of landscape elements with a lingering social unease, the tale has a strong taste of 1990s miserablism about it (think: Nicholas Royle, Joel Lane) and is exactly the kind of well-made, literary horror story one has come to expect from the British magazine Black Static, where “Passion Play” was originally published.

In the next story, “Two Brothers,” we begin to see You Will Grow Into Them move away from ’70s folk horror and toward a more modern and personal aesthetic. When his older brother Stephen is sent off to school, William remains behind at the family home. Standing at the station awaiting his brother’s return for the Christmas holidays, William finds himself devastated by the gulf that has opened between them:

He smiled when he saw them waiting for him, but it was not the lopsided grin which William remembered but a thin smile he didn’t recognise, and it was not directed at him personally. When William turned, he saw the same smile reflected on his father’s face. It was a cold expression, colder than the snow and the wind, and it was then William understood that while his brother had come home, he would remain alone.

“Two Brothers” is replete with elements of the uncanny we might recognize from Robert Aickman’s strange stories, yet there is something more too: a hyper-modern awareness of social divisiveness. We understand it is the father’s insistence upon tradition that poisons the boys’ future, rather than anything specific that happened at school. As in Sarah Hall’s “Case Study 2,” the enforced destruction of personal bonds leads inexorably to mental torment and eventually, breakdown.

The bonds of community are further explored in Devlin’s longer story, “The End of Hope Street,” in which the residents of a single street — parallels here with the estate in Nothing on Earth — are forced to abandon their homes when they mysteriously start becoming “unliveable.” We never learn the source of the power that transforms the residents’ houses into shadowy death-boxes. What we see instead is the impact of these events on the families of Hope Street, who respond to the crisis in differing ways. For a significant majority, the enforced return to values of good-neighborliness and closer personal proximity comes as an unexpected pleasure. They realize they do not, after all, need so many things, so much personal space. There are no grand confessions or personal epiphanies — one of the charms of this extraordinary story is how British it is — just a tacit redrawing of boundaries, a mutual understanding that they will stay together:

There would be a Christmas that year in Hope Street, no matter what happened, no matter what it represented. It would be both spiritual and secular and in its own peculiar way it would be an act of rebellion. Because even joy and companionship could be subversive, under the right conditions.

Extreme societal change is likewise the subject of “Breadcrumbs,” a deliciously twisted variant on the Grimms’ “Rapunzel.” Ellie lives in a tower block on an inner-city estate. Far from finding her circumstances restrictive, she simply reimagines her world as she wishes it to be:

She’s always preferred the view at night. The estate looks so bleak in the daytime, but now, the grey concrete of the surrounding tower blocks is consumed by the encroaching dark and only the lights remain. Dot-to-dot clues which her imagination mis-draws to denote superstructures coiling up into the night. The lights of the traffic on the distant bypass? Those aren’t cars grounded on the road, they’re flying machines on an express route, looping the loop at the intersection. She cocks her head and watches them fly.

Then her dreams, in a way, come true. Left alone in the flat when her parents and brother go to visit an aunt in hospital, Ellie awakes to find quotidian reality entirely gone, replaced by a startling fairy-tale landscape of forest and trees:

The city is barely a city any more. The estate has a beauty to it now. Where it had once been coloured in shades of concrete and steel, it is now a rich and wide expanse of browns and greens. The tower blocks are wrapped in roots and vines. They grow branches that stretch high. The tarmac at street level has been shattered into jigsaw pieces by the growth from beneath.

As in “The End of Hope Street,” these radical changes to the built environment are eventually accepted as a positive development. The characters — like Sophia in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox” — embrace their new animal natures while the remaining “hu-mans” are seen as cave-dwellers, conservative primitives to be pitied for their old-fashioned insistence on staggering around on two legs.

The obverse of such tolerance is seen in “Dogsbody,” a darkly satiric fable in which a seemingly random swath of society encounters prejudice and social exclusion after becoming affected with “Lunar Proximity Syndrome” — in other words, they turn into werewolves. This is a story that pulls no punches in detailing the dozens of tiny ways in which minority groups routinely find themselves bullied, exploited, disadvantaged, and set apart:

A little superscript asterisk pointed to a lengthy paragraph of small print at the foot of the page. A promise that an affirmative answer would not invalidate the chances of employment, a warning that a dishonest one would lead to disqualification.

Equally incisive in its social comment is the novella-length story that forms the centerpiece of this collection. The protagonist of “Songs Like They Used to Play” is famous for having once been “little Tommy Kavanagh” from the hit reality-TV show Family Time. The program ran for years and, in spite of its deleterious effects on the real Kavanagh family, attracted a devoted following:

During the live shows, the public were invited to dress up and serve as background extras, a proposition so popular that security was increased. To Tom, the set took on the aspect of a bizarre prison. One where people from the future were happy to queue for hours in the rain for a chance to get in, while he peered through the fences at the modern world beyond, and wondered if he might find the opportunity to escape.

Now an adult, Tom reconnects with an old boyfriend, Bobby, who secretly harbors more nostalgia for the show than Tom himself:

“We get a lot of stag parties in York,” he said. “I’ve got double glazing, but you can still hear them out there screaming at each other. You know what I hear most? ‘Two world wars and one world cup.’ And they’re still talking about the fucking Empire, like that was ever a good idea. But that’s all we’ve got in the world now. We’re this little island rotting into itself, feeding off our sordid little past, lying to ourselves that it was something to be proud of. […] But then you hear something like this and somehow … Somehow it all makes more sense. Like it’s an anchor, a safety line. Something beautiful to hold on to. A promise that if the world could have been this good once, there’s hope for us yet.”

“Songs Like They Used to Play” is an original and persuasive story that riffs on our current obsession with “frock and bonnet” shows like Downton Abbey, with royalty and celebrity, with the sanitized heroism of historical romances and World War II movies. Brexit may be the most recent and significant demonstration of the power of such falsified narratives — the fairy tales of our own time — to affect the trajectory of our political present, but it is far from being the only one. Devlin’s insights into modern Britain are rendered all the more potent by his clear grasp of the cultural preoccupations of the recent past, a past many of us will remember first hand, those ghosts we happily recall on Christmas Eve, or Hallowe’en.

As Malcolm Devlin adds himself to the ranks of those writers — Paul Kingsnorth, Benjamin Myers, Aliya Whiteley, Wyl Menmuir, Jess Kidd, Helen Oyeyemi, Cynan Jones, Caitriona Lally, Andrew Michael Hurley — who are currently leading the new folk-horror revival, we are reminded that what unites these very different artists is their commitment to using the gestures and imagery of folk horror as a means of expressing highly contemporary political concerns. Disenfranchised through false histories and bigoted ideologies, the characters that people their stories are no longer able to find comfort and strength in the deep truths of their surrounding landscapes because the very origins of those landscapes are rooted in slavery and oppression.

No matter how twisted, the folk horror of earlier decades was created from a sense of continuity and, above all, nostalgia. Now we find stories increasingly powered by the engine of change. The new folk horror — metamorphic and disjunctive — is in part a voicing of our personal distress in the face of that change, but it is also an acknowledgment that change is necessary. We can no longer avoid the knowledge that entire classes and races of people have been systematically excluded from any sense of ownership of our landscape and history, and have consequently found the familiar environments of folk horror defunct and irrelevant. In order to escape our sense of statelessness, it is necessary for us to examine the state we are in.

Nina Allan is an English writer of weird and fantastic fiction. Her novella Spin won a British Science Fiction Award in 2014.

The post The New Folk Horror: Recent Work by Sarah Hall, Conor O’Callaghan, and Malcolm Devlin appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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