‘Feline Philosophy,’ out November 24 in US and Canada
 
“Epidemiology and microbiology are better guides to our future than any of our hopes or plans,” the philosopher John Gray wrote nearly 20 years ago in Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Anyone who entered 2020 with hopes and plans has seen these words vividly illustrated.

Gray’s work makes a strong case that our species is incorrigibly irrational, and it raises questions about humanist beliefs that should be particularly important for those of us on the political left to consider. Among his books are False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths, and Seven Types of Atheism.

In his latest, Feline Philosophy, Gray pursues the deep interest in the nonhuman world that makes his critique of humanism so sharp in fang and claw. Through his reading of Montaigne, Pascal, the Stoics and Epicureans, and Spinoza, as well as literary writers from Dr. Johnson to Mary Gaitskill, Gray considers what cats have to teach us about philosophy and the good life. As I write this, the hardcover edition of the book is #15 on Amazon’s “New Releases in Philosophy” list and #1 in “New Releases in Cat Care.”

John Gray answered a few of my questions about cats by email in October.
 

John Gray (photo by Justine Stoddart)
 
While Feline Philosophy returns to questions that will be familiar to readers of your work, it seems different in some ways from anything else you have published. How did you come to write this book?

I’ve been thinking of writing a book on cats for many years. I’ve always wondered what philosophy would be like if it wasn’t so human-centred. Among all the animals that have cohabited with humans cats resemble us least, so it seemed natural to ask what a feline philosophy would be like. My book is an attempt at answering this question, and tries to imagine how a feline creature equipped with powers of abstraction would think about death, ethics, the nature of love and the meaning of life.

The book is also an ode to cats, expressing my admiration for their life-affirming capacity for happiness and their courage in living their lives without distractions or consolations.

Do you live with cats? Have you always? Can you tell us about a particular cat you have known?

My wife and I lived with four cats over the past thirty years, two Burmese sisters and two Birman brothers. For some years they all lived contentedly together, until mortality began to take its toll on them. The last of them, Julian, died on Xmas Eve 2019 in his 23rd year. He was perhaps the most tranquil of all four, and even when old and a little frail seemed to enjoy every hour of his life.

The most companionable was Sophie, who passed away at the age of 13 around seventeen years ago. She was extraordinarily intelligent and extremely subtle in her insight into the human mind, and very loving.

Why don’t cats share humans’ concern with making the world a better place?

Because they are happy. Wanting to improve the world is a displacement of the impulse to improve yourself. But cats are not inwardly divided as humans tend to be, and don’t want to be anything other than what they already are, so the idea of improving the world doesn’t occur to them. If it did, I suspect they would dismiss it as an uninteresting fantasy.

Your writing often deals with distressing truths about human beings, such as their capacity for cruelty and self-delusion. It can be upsetting. But I read Feline Philosophy with a feeling of serenity, which I attribute to cats’ total incapacity for cruelty or self-delusion. Does contemplating cats provide you relief from thinking about human affairs?

Cats are a window looking out of the human world, so I suppose that’s one reason I love being with them. I think they also help me look at the human world as if from their eyes, with tranquil detachment and a certain incredulity.

Do you know of any works of art that plausibly represent the mental experience of cats, or any other nonhuman animals?

I don’t know of any art works that capture the mental experience of cats. Whether literary or visual, they would be very difficult to produce. There are some books that try to enter into the inner world of dogs, the best of which seems to me to be Sirius (1944) by the British science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon. Perhaps the most brilliant book I know that tries to enter into a nonhuman mind is the Polish writer Andrzej Zaniewski’s Rat (1994).

You suggest that cats’ independence arouses envy and hatred in the people who torture them. Is this a culturally specific diagnosis, or do you think all cat torturers share these motives?

By no means all unhappy people hate and envy cats, but I think pretty well all of those who do are unhappy. That seems to be a universal truth.

I was surprised to learn recently that one of my closest friends, who is a committed vegan and supporter of animal rights, is a cat-hater. When I asked him why, he talked about his love of birds. Can there be meaningful ethical standards for nonhuman animals’ behavior?

I can’t speculate as to why your friend feels as he does, but it may be the innocence with which cats kill and devour other living things that offends him. Perhaps he’d like the natural world to conform to human values, which for me would be a kind of Hell.

I’m not persuaded that it is the well-being of birds that he cares about. Birds are also innocent killers, after all. The British writer J.A. Baker, who in his shamanistic masterpiece The Peregrine (1967), described ten years of his life attempting to inhabit the life of a falcon, loved the bird partly because it lived according to its nature as a predator.

The Cynics took their name from Diogenes’ epithet, “the dog.” Why haven’t any philosophers styled themselves after cats?

That’s a very good question. I don’t know a good answer, but possibly philosophers suspect that cats don’t need them.

As a reader of your work, I am very happy to have finally gotten a list of tips for living well from you. Are there any prescriptive philosophies that have helped you conduct your own life?

No, I can’t think of any prescriptive philosophies that have influenced me. In the early Seventies I met Isaiah Berlin, and talked with him regularly until his death in 1997. His value-pluralist philosophy of competing and often incommensurable values strengthened my suspicion of any strongly prescriptive ethics. In recent years I’ve been more and more influenced by Montaigne, whose scepticism about philosophy as a guide to life appeals to me greatly.

My ten feline hints for living well are of course meant playfully, as examples of feline philosophy. But they might not do much harm if taken seriously.

Feline Philosophy, already out in the UK, will be published in the US and Canada on November 24.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
DM talks ‘Godless Mysticism’ with John Gray, the world’s Greatest Living Philosopher

 
The legendary Jad Fair blesses us with a new album in 2020. Here’s “Undisputed Champions,” a preview of the upcoming Half Japanese album Crazy Hearts, due out on December 4th.

The video was animated by Jad himself who says:

“Undefeated, undisputed, undeniable, unstoppable,
Untoppable, unflappable and unquestionably great.
Take a pen and underline the word great. To quote
The Beatles ‘All you need is love.’ To quote me
‘Damn straight.’ Celebrate the celebration. Bravo
The undisputed champions.”

The album will be available on see-through turquoise vinyl and CD. Preorder Crazy Hearts here.
 

 
Just one listen and after that, Jane Weaver’s latest, a funky, catchy-as-hell song called “The Revolution of Super Visions” was playing on a loop in my head. Happily so. It’s from her forthcoming album, Flock, which comes out next year.

Jane says:

“The revolution accidentally happens because so many people visualise the same ideals and something supernatural occurs. Everyone is exhausted with social media, inequality and the toxic masculinity of world leaders contributing to a dying planet.”

Lee Mann, the video’s director, tells us:

Our protagonist (played by Matt Raikes aka rapper Burgundy Blood) is blissfully unaware that he has been lured into a trap at the opening party of an art exhibition. He is the only male in the gallery and he arrives as a player, a self made playboy, confident and weighing up his options but he slowly realises his perceived power is diminishing as he starts to experience psychic attacks from the women gathered at the gallery. The idea of psychic attack is based on occultist and writer Dion Fortune’s book Psychic Self-Defense, first published in 1930. Fortune’s classic book teaches the art of protecting yourself against paranormal attack, something our protagonist clearly knows nothing about.

 
The world-famous, household names behind this don’t want their identities revealed just yet, but it shouldn’t be all that difficult to guess who they might be!
 

 
Happy 63rd birthday to the Arch Drude!

I have loved and revered Julian Cope since I was a teenager with a keen interest in LSD listening to the Teardrop Explodes. He’s one of my biggest heroes. The guy’s as cool as anyone’s ever been, he doesn’t care what you think about him and he has the best guitar riffs since the Kinks. I’ve seen him in concert four times, read all of his books and I interviewed him once around the time Peggy Suicide was released, in 1991. He was a fascinating person to talk to, full of energy, his mind wandering off in every direction at once. My guess is also that he was probably pretty stoned that day!

My friend Wm. Ferguson (now a longtime editor at the NY Times) and I met the Arch Drude at the Island Records offices near Tower Records in lower Manhattan. During the interview Cope told us about the mystical experience he had that led to his vision of the earth dying that inspired Peggy Suicide’s somewhat bleak environmentalist message. I recall that we discussed Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon which he and I had both read and he compared the physical sensation of his mystic moment to the first time a pubescent boy masturbates, not quite pleasurable and very confusing, a sort of mental orgasm felt in the brain. I asked him if he felt conflicted about bringing a child into a world—his wife Dorian was then pregnant with their first daughter—that he so obviously thought was in its terminal stages. He paused and said, “Well, yeah the world is fucked, but it’s not THAT fucked that it can’t be saved, certainly. We’ve got to try.” I then voiced my own skepticism about bring new life into the world—I was 25 at the time—and he said something that I will never forget and have repeated to friends who are expecting children several times:

“If people like you and I stop having children, we’ve ceded our world to the idiots. All intelligent people should have as many babies as possible to prevent all the thick, ungroovy Christians from taking over.”

When we were leaving, I mentioned in passing that I’d seen the infamous Hammersmith Palais show of his first UK solo tour in 1984, a concert that saw Cope performing a bloody act of self-mutilation. During the encore of “Reynard the Fox,” Cope snapped his mike-stand in half and proceeded to rake the jagged edge across his chest, back and stomach drawing lots of blood and generally freaking out the entire audience! Up until the very end it had been a slick, professional rock show. A girl standing near me puked when she saw what he had done. It cemented Cope’s reputation as a Syd Barrett-like acid casualty.

Cope laughed sheepishly and pulled out his wallet. “Well, you’ll appreciate this: Whenever I’m feeling like I am fucked in the head, I pull out this picture—” it was of a bloodied Cope from the concert I’d seen “—and I remind myself that however fucked up I think I am I am still not THAT fucked!”

And with that he was off. It’s often said of Cope that he’s the last of a dying breed or something to that effect. Not true. This implies that there were more like him, but Julian Cope’s a one off. All hail the Arch Drude!
 

Above, Julian Cope, tripping on LSD during a ‘Top of the Pops’ performance of “Passionate Friend.” Read about this experience in Cope’s own words here.

The great Roy Smeck surrounded by his instruments.
 
One of the many rumors passed around the Internet (imagine that!) concerns musician and ukulele player Roy Smeck, known as “The Wizard of the Strings.” It turns out that a lot of people seemed convinced that Smeck was actually Eddie Van Halen’s father and an innovator of “two-hand-tapping,” a method of playing a stringed instrument by tapping the strings with an object or your fingers. The technique has been traced back to the late 1700s, but as far as the popularization of two-hand-tapping, that honor belongs to Roy Smeck – a visionary ukulele player who rose to fame as one of vaudeville’s premier attractions. Smeck’s popularity was such that he was invited to play at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration celebration in 1933. Getting back to the popular notion Smeck was EVH’s dad…after the devastating loss of Eddie earlier this month, keyboard warriors started sharing videos of Smeck tapping away on his uke with lightning speed, with the caption “this is Eddie Van Halen’s father.” I suppose it was an easy mistake to make, given the skill level Smeck possessed, and its eerie similarity to one of Eddie’s calling cards, his blink-and-you-missed-it guitar tapping wizardry.

Ed’s real father, Jan Van Halen, was, of course, a great musician in his own right and mentor to both Eddie and Alex Van Halen. He was also born twenty years after Smeck in 1920. To my knowledge, Eddie has never credited Smeck as a source of inspiration for his style. Though he has given the nod to another musician known for his finger-tapping innovations, Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. In a 2012 interview with Ultimate Guitar, Hackett credited himself as being the “inventor of tapping on record,” which isn’t really true as guitarist Jimmie Webster was known for his tapping (or the sexy-sounding “touching”) technique, which you can hear on at least one recording, Webster’s Unabridged, from 1959.

But let’s get back to the talented Mr. Smeck, whose first 78 rpm recording came out in 1928, shall we?

Roy Smeck was born in 1900 in Pennsylvania. Starting at a young age, the future virtuoso would teach himself to play the guitar, steel guitar, banjo, octo-chorda (or “octachorda,” an eight-string steel guitar), jaw harp, harmonica, and his weapon of choice, the ukulele. While still in his early 20s, Smeck would become one of vaudeville’s most successful stars without uttering a single word during his energetic performances. Smeck preferred to dance for his fans while he frantically tapped on his uke. He’d also play it upside down with the same alarming speed and precision. His early exposure in vaudeville would lead to a myriad of incredible opportunities. His music would be featured along with the 1926 film Don Juan—the very first film to use Vitaphone sound-on-disc, which allowed both music and other sounds to be played in sync with the moving picture. His Pastimes, a short preceding Don Juan, featured an electrifying uke performance by Smeck would send his star soaring. The following year, he was approached by Jay Krause, the president of the largest string instrument manufacturer in the U.S. (at the time), the Harmony Company of Chicago. In a 1984 interview with an 84-year-old Smeck, he recalled Krause’s proposal that Smeck “produce” a Hawaiian guitar, uke, banjo, and guitar exclusively for Harmony. Smeck’s bosses at Warner objected to the use of the word Vitaphone for the line. Smeck and Kraus changed directions slightly by naming the various instruments as “The Roy Smeck Vita-Uke,” The Roy Smeck Vita-Guitar,” etc.
 

 
None of the instruments in Smeck’s Vita line of instruments were crafted by the musician, though they contained some of the master uke player’s preferred modifications, such as the graceful sound holes at the base of the Vita-Uke neck. Though it’s important to note, the shape of the holes, which Krause would describe as “seal-shaped,” also were not designed by Smeck. In fact, it’s unclear whose idea it was. What is known is that when Harmony presented Smeck with the array of instruments they were creating for his namesake gear, he would choose the one he felt had the best “action.” Amen to that, Mr. Smeck. Harmony’s Smeck line was so successful, it gave birth to a sister line—Supertone—for Sears and Roebuck. During this time, Smeck was traveling around the country promoting the Vita line performing live at record shops, theaters as well as showing up to local uke contests where he would razzle-dazzle onlookers with his remarkable dexterity. During his long career, Smeck would release 500 recordings, a huge collection of instructional manuals, song books and more. In 1976, the sadly now defunct record label Yazoo released a vinyl retrospective of Smeck’s work, Roy Smeck-Plays Hawaiian Guitar, Banjo, Ukulele, And Guitar 1926-1949 with cover artwork by Robert Crumb. There is also a wonderful Academy Award-nominated documentary short on Roy Smeck, Wizard of the Strings (1985), that is well worth your time if this is the kind of history you like learning about. At the very least, you can now politely shut down the next person who tries to pass Smeck off as Eddie Van Halen’s dad. Lastly, but certainly not least, the legendary Leonard Cohen was a huge fan of Roy Smeck and met the Wizard of the Strings when he was just ten and an aspiring, enthusiastic ukulele-player himself.

More after the jump…

Cover by John Coulthart

1975 was a watershed year for Hawkwind – it marked the release of what for many fans is the band’s finest album, but also saw them lose their most famous member… In an edited extract from Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground – Radical Escapism In The Age Of Paranoia, Joe Banks revisits its tumultuous first few months.

In the first week of January, Hawkwind enter Olympic Studios to record two songs for their next single: ‘Kings Of Speed’, a co-write with Michael Moorcock, and ‘Motorhead’, a Lemmy-penned paean to amphetamine abuse. The Drum Empire are pleased, particularly with the first of these. Alan Powell tells Sounds: “It’s very powerful – it’s got two drums on it and it sounds fucking great. It’s like a Phil Spector thing.” Simon King more accurately says, “It’s the same as ‘Silver Machine’. Well, near enough, anyway”.

Amid a flurry of music press front covers, Hawkwind get back on the road again. In February, they play four shows in London in quick succession: the East Ham Granada Cinema, twice at the Hammersmith Odeon, and of course the Roundhouse. Melody Maker editor Ray Coleman’s Hammersmith review contains an eye-catching assertion: “Their music sounds like good, solid punk rock to me.” And the headline is ‘Hawkwind: Punk Masculinity’.

‘Punk’ is a term initially popularised by US writers such as Lester Bangs to describe a stripped-down, no frills approach to rock – and it’s telling that Hawkwind are now being tagged this way. Coleman describes audience and band as “creating an intensely private event”, and being “members of a secret society.” In other words, the UK’s biggest cult band, a gathering point for those still committed to the values of the underground, but also the crucible of a new type of anti-establishment feeling, as some in the audience prepare to cut their hair and embrace anarchy.

For Dave Brock, it’s like a war. After a show at the Birmingham Odeon, Melody Maker’s Allan Jones describes him as shell-shocked, “an exhausted counterfeit of his dramatic space warrior stage persona.” Touring has become a ceaseless military campaign – he’s conflicted by their level of success, but also worries that they might have peaked. Like Nik Turner before him, he’s concerned about losing contact with the community that spawned them. Unlike Pink Floyd’s middle class audience, who “sit there comfortably”, Brock says, “ours is a predominantly working class audience, and we want to keep tickets as cheap as we possibly can. We want to get close to the audience.”

It’s not a complete surprise then when the final British dates are cancelled. A spokesman explains that after two UK and three US tours in 12 months, everyone is physically and mentally shattered: “Matters came to a head at London Roundhouse last Sunday when about a thousand people who had been unable to get in tried to burn down the side entrances, and the police had to be called.” Even Turner accepts there is no alternative. He apologises for the cancellation, but “there was no way the band could continue without time for a rest.”
 

 
After time out to recuperate, they return to Rockfield Studios to record their next album. While they’re away, the ‘Kings Of Speed’ single is released, but it fails to set the charts alight. Speaking in April, King seems sanguine enough – “I didn’t like the number anyway” – but gives an insight into how Hawkwind are becoming increasingly alienated by the mechanics of the music business: “We had to do a single to fulfil our record contract… People kept on saying to us that it had to have this, had to have that. In the end, the band didn’t want to know.” He’s more satisfied with the album though, despite only having three and a half days to record at Rockfield, and three days to overdub and mix at Olympic. Why the rush? “We’re soon to tour America. Atlantic, our recording company over there, needed an album to coincide with our visit”.

Peaking at number 13 in the UK charts, Warrior On The Edge Of Time is the highest placed of Hawkwind’s studio albums, and the last to feature on the US Billboard chart, at 150. Not only does it confirm Hawkwind’s ongoing popularity, it also consolidates and reinforces their position as musical flag bearers of a thriving science fantasy subculture. Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings became required reading for heads everywhere, the counterculture has been drawn to both the imagery and philosophy of fantasy literature – its portrayal of alternative societies locked in battle with the forces of darkness chimes with a new generation banging its head against the strictures of the straight world. The likes of Led Zeppelin may have amped up Tolkien’s romantic, ‘mystic macho’ vibe, but Hawkwind are drawn to Michael Moorcock’s more nuanced treatment of order and chaos.

Predictably, certain critics can’t wait to put the boot in. Melody Maker’s Allan Jones, a man seemingly condemned to write about a group he has little time for, makes concessions about the album being their most professional yet. But the main thrust of his antipathy is that he simply doesn’t like the idea of Hawkwind – they’re not what he thinks a rock band should be. The partisan Geoff Barton at Sounds is more positive – but concludes, “Even the band’s publicist admits that you can’t really expect too many people to enjoy the band’s albums.” Presumably said publicist was given their marching orders soon after.
 

 
While UK fans dig into Warrior, a drama is unfolding overseas. On 11 May, crossing from the US into Canada, the band are stopped and searched. As a long-haired rock band with a reputation for narcotic indulgence, this is an entirely common occurrence and they’re used to ensuring that all vehicles and personnel are drug-free. But this time, their luck runs out: Lemmy is found in possession of two grams of white powder. Believing it’s cocaine, the border police arrest him and cart him off to jail. The rest of the band make it into Canada and apply for Lemmy’s bail. But they have a gig in Toronto scheduled the next day, and Brock instructs band manager Doug Smith back in London to put ex-Pink Fairies guitarist Paul Rudolph on the first plane over.

The charges against Lemmy are dropped when the powder proves to be speed rather than coke, and he arrives in time to play the show. But at a band meeting afterwards, Lemmy is sacked. His arrest is the final straw, grievances having built against him due to his constant lateness and continued enthusiasm for amphetamines. “They must have wanted me out,” Lemmy surmises glumly. He claims that Turner declared he’d leave if Lemmy returned, though Brock does ask him back – but by then, Rudolph has taken his place, and Lemmy has decided to form his own band instead.

Lemmy’s departure is arguably the most significant personnel change to occur within the band so far. A firm favourite with both fans and media, and a defining presence during Hawkwind’s rapid ascent from the underground, his playing has had a profound effect on the group’s sound, injecting both rhythmic drive and unexpected melody. If not the heart and soul of Hawkwind, he’s certainly been their guts, the low-end throb that Brock has relied upon to provide a flexible backbone during passages of improvisation. And of course, he’s forever the guy who sang ‘Silver Machine’ and encapsulates the band’s anarchic outlaw spirit.

For many fans, this marks the point where Hawkwind’s ‘classic era’ ends…

Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground – Radical Escapism In The Age Of Paranoia by Joe Banks is published by Strange Attractor Press
 

The incredible promo film made for the “Silver Machine” single.

A Japanese movie poster prominently featuring Sally (played by actress Marilyn Burns) for ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ 1974.
 
As we’re all in need of a good distraction right now, let’s momentarily escape into the cinematic world of hillbilly cannibals, as told by Tobe Hooper in 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. First of all, it’s that time of year again if you’re still keeping track of the current date or happen to remember what we used to use calendars for. For myself, a year-long dedicated horror film fanatic, I make it a point to re-watch my favorite horror films during October’s 31 days, and TCM ‘74 is always one of them. Like so many great movies, it was filmed under remarkably difficult circumstances—yielding agonizingly authentic performances from its cast. To say nothing of the athletic screaming and real injuries suffered by one of Leatherface’s targets, Sally, played by actress Marilyn Burns (RIP). Let’s begin this dusty, blood-filled journey through Texas with some of the things Burns was subjected to on the film’s set.

Marilyn Burns is one of cinema’s best known scream queens and was in her early 20s when she won the role of Sally in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Burns had appeared in a few films before TCM, but, according to the actress, her scenes ended up on the “cutting room floor.” Shot in extremely isolated areas around Texas, Hooper’s goal of creating the isolation necessary for a killing ground to thrive was immersive. Filming began during the summer heat of 1973, where temperatures in the famous Texas Chain Saw house would reach 120 degrees. Actors would need to take a break from filming to vomit due to the heat enhancing the smell of rotting animal bones and carcasses. Outdoor temperatures were boiling into the 100-110 degrees region every day. Enter Burns, in one of the film’s many chase scenes, being pursued by 300lb, 6’4 Icelandic actor Gunnar Hansen (RIP) in full Leatherface gear, rumbling chainsaw in hand. To increase your blood pressure for this story, Hansen had never used a chainsaw in his life before he appeared in the film. The story of one of Sally’s more serious injuries on set while being relentlessly chased through the thicket by Leatherface, was revealed by Hooper in the Toronto-based newspaper Excalibur in 1974:

“She (Burns) had a few accidents on the set. After running through the thicket, she had to go to a plastic surgeon to have thorns removed from her breasts.”

 

An image of Hooper’s interview in Toronto newspaper Excalibur, March 27th, 1974.
 
So, as it pertains to Burns’ famous screaming in TCM, in this particular instance (and others in the thicket), Burns’ screams are all too real, and the blood on her shirt is largely her own. Talk about taking one for the team. Here’s another recollection from Burns about how she and the rest of the kids in the doomed van almost met their maker by messing around with gunpowder:

“It was real hot and miserable, especially when Ed [actor Ed Neal who plays the hitchhiker] came on and gunpowder had to explode, and we didn’t know what we were doing. They just put gunpowder on his hand and lit a match. We almost killed ourselves!”

Moving on to Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen probably suffered more than anyone else in the cast except for Burns. If you’re a horror nerd like myself, you probably know that Tobe Hooper required that Hansen’s Leatherface costume never be washed to ensure continuity. His smell would become intolerable to Hansen and the entire cast, adding to the oppressive feeling of decay and demise. Additionally, in nearly every case in the film (with the notable exception of Mary Church, Marilyn Burns’ stuntwoman), no stunt doubles were used. Hooper would film chainsaw segments in three stages—once with the real blade, another with just the chain “roaring” and a third with the clutch out (noted in the Excalibur article). So, let’s imagine the horror of being Gunnar Hansen, running through the dark, with a real, running chainsaw in his “Killing Mask” (one of three different masks worn by Leatherface depending on his mood). I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Lots, it turns out, including a one-take shot in the darkness with Burns and Leatherface where Hansen fucking tripped, sending the running chainsaw flying through the air. NO BIG DEAL.

For all his efforts, and after waiting nine months for his paycheck, Hansen, who wrote a book about his experience in the film, received a whopping $47.50 for his performance in TCM. The final insult would come from the media in his homeland of Iceland who were completely unaware of Gunnar’s participation in the film and gave the film a two-star rating. And since we were just discussing chainsaws, let’s find out more about how they contributed to Wayne Bell’s infamous “score.” And who better to talk about what that was like than the man himself:

“Pretty much my job was finding all the sound effects we needed, which often meant inventing ways to make them. You have to ask yourself, what does chainsaw teeth hitting a wheelchair sound like? How do you capture it? What we would now have a few effects editors, a background editor, and a Foley team do, I did it all myself back then. We didn’t do any post chainsaw. We made a point to capture what we needed while we were on set. Gunnar, the actor that played Leatherface, was a real team player – most of the production chainsaw you hear in the film was operated by Leatherface himself.”

Of course, there are other sounds throughout TCM, including noise made by kids’ toys—specifically of the musical variety such as cymbals, maracas, and the ever-popular xylophone. Bell also amusingly recalls “torturing” his Kay stand-up five-string bass doing anything they could to cultivate other creepy sounds to enhance the film. According to Bell, these additional sounds were recorded in a room in Hooper’s house, filled with all kinds of instruments. Any animal sounds heard in the film are credited to Bell’s father, a very talented animal sound imitator. Who knew? Fun fact! Any chicken sounds you hear are from actual chickens, not Bell’s pet-imitating Dad. Though no actual “soundtrack” exists for TCM, the original quarter-inch tapes do, and Bell has mused about the possibility of putting out a “LoFi, distorted, noisy and dirty” version of it someday. One final thing regarding the sounds you hear in TCM concerns the uneasy noise you hear during the opening and again after the film. Bell is very protective of the sound, which he describes as a “stinger” that he created that has become synonymous with TCM ‘74, and to date, he has never revealed how it was conceived or made. Kind of like the secret ingredient in a certain barbeque sauce.
 

Put on a happy face! Three of Leatherface’s masks. Image source for this and the following three images.
 

A candid shot of Burns traipsing through the thicket in the dark.
 

Another image of Leatherface pursuing Sally through the brambles.
 
Much more after the jump…

Photo credit Maryann Morris  

Far be it for me to say that Penny Rimbaud—novelist, poet, painter and co-founder of the mythical anarcho punk band Crass—missed his calling in life, but whenever I listen to him speak, I’m immediately put in mind of such great actors as Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris. My word does this fellow have a mellow bellow! And even if performing Shakespeare onstage wasn’t in the cards for this most radical of radicals, what about doing voice-overs for TV ads? He could’ve been rich!

But I don’t think it’s ever been money that motives our Penny, is it? But still… THAT VOICE.

Recently Rimbaud announced his new album Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun, out November 20th via One Little Independent Records, a series of poems set to music about his namesake, Arthur Rimbaud, witnessing the carnage of the battle of Verdun, where over 700,000 casualties were sustained by the French and German armies, with over 300,000 slaughtered and nine villages destroyed.

The work is described as: “a fiction constructed by Penny, out of interest as to the possible outcome, places the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (who died in 1891) at the historic and tragic battle of Verdun in 1916. The idea being that Penny found something to be explored in the possibilities of the young vagabond and his perception of such drastic events. Dark and vivid jazz-infused ambience is punctured by Penny’s spoken word lyricism painting pictures of the chaotic experience of World War 1.”

Rimbaud is joined on the recording by Evan Parker, Louise Elliott, and Ingrid Laubrock, all on tenor sax. You can preview “Part 6” below.

 
*Or something like that.

Whether or not you rank the Nicolas Cage starrer Mandy highly on your list of cinematic treasures, if you’ve seen the film, you must at least have a grudging respect for the absolute conviction the actors had for their roles, none more so than Linus Roache, who played crazy cult leader Jeremiah Sand. But Roache’s identification with Sand has gone beyond the confines of the film itself. In 2018 the actor assumed the character again for the release of two songs “by Jeremiah Sand” on Bandcamp, as part of the marketing effort for Mandy.

And now, the Sacred Bones imprint has announced an entire album “by Jeremiah Sand.” Lift It Down with liner notes by the late Genesis Breyer P-Orridge—someone who knew the ins and outs of being a cult leader—will be released on October 30th. It’s even coming out on 8-track tape? Yes, it’s even coming out on 8-track tape.
 

 
Here’s the elaborate backstory “bio” of Jeremiah Sand:

In 1974, Jeremiah Sand and his nascent cult The Children Of The New Dawn decamp LA for the Shasta Mountain region and Redding, CA. They set up shop, begin printing leaflets, hold gatherings and start growing their ranks through recruitment. Jeremiah and the Children are not necessarily an odd addition to Redding in 1974. Since the 1930s, psychonauts and spiritual seekers have been drawn to this area in Northern California under the shadow of the dormant volcanic cone of Shasta. By 1974, urban California hippies worn down by direct political engagement with state security forces have started drifting North and the towns along the border with Oregon state are filled with ad-hoc spiritual organizations, commune builders and lost souls. Jeremiah and the Children fit right in. A few years prior to assembling his flock, Sand had self produced and released an album of psych-folk that was unremarkable in almost every way, save for the unrelenting vanity and egoism on display in the lyrics. This early album is one of the only existing documents of Sand. The commercial failure of the album became the catalyst for Sand to leave Southern California and settle in a place where his “truth” would be “received by pure and open hearts”.  

By mid 1974, the Children have grown in rank and Jeremiah becomes obsessed with recording “his masterpiece”...a musical message to the world, communicating a “Truth” that only he has been given spiritual access to. This project becomes the central focus of the Children. His lieutenant Brother Swann overhears that there is a small recording studio just North of the city. He arrives one day at the reception with a large gym bag full of cash and instructs the owner to cancel all sessions on the books. The studio will now focus on one thing and one thing only: helping Jeremiah realize his vision. Tents and rough structures appear on the surrounding property as the Children make the studio and its grounds their new home. They hold recruitment meetings where Jeremiah evangelizes in between endless recording sessions. The owner and his staff begin to feel as though they’re being held hostage but the money is good and the Children keep paying. Overpaying.

This goes on for years. New members drift into the sessions. A disgraced professor from the Electro Acoustic Music program at Evergreen State arrives with a full Buchla system he’s “liberated” from the university, Jeremiah is entranced by it and for a few weeks the only sounds coming from the studio are blasts of atonal, corroded noise underpinned by ominous chanting. The mood changes. The town begins to turn against the Children. A few people have gone missing. Some teenagers. A studio engineer.

By the Spring of 1977, the entire session has broken down into hallucinogen and cocaine fueled chaos. Bad vibrations. One night in early March, after a particularly grueling mixing session, the producer and owner of the studio is startled awake by by an extremely agitated looking Brother Swann. Swann is sweating and wild eyed, casually holding a gun, explaining to the producer that “plans have changed” and that Jeremiah has “heard a calling and a Great Summons”. They are leaving. All of them. That night. Swann directs the producer to put the existing reels in a lock box along with a short 16mm film, lyrics, album art and scribbled notes. Swann tells the producer Jeremiah will be back to finish his masterpiece. It all goes in the box and it’s not to be opened until the Children return. They never do.

In 2018, wildfires rip through Redding, CA and burns it to the ground. Over a thousand of homes are incinerated. One rough structure north of the city is partially saved. There’s a massive concrete basement filled with smoke and water damaged recording equipment and in the back…a lockbox.  

No one knows who originally took the tapes out of the charred ruin of the studio but in a few months, a very strange album is making the rounds in the more esoteric circles of the underground. A long and confusing chain of custody ensues. A lost artifact of the transitional period between the late 60s and late 70s. A flawed and malignant sounding unfinished thing, clearly the product of a psychotically inflated ego and hubris. The album is by turns: amateurish, haunting, deranged, ridiculous and (for those attuned to these things) filled with crackling negative psychic energies. So much so that Light In The Attic flat out refuses to reissue it. Eventually, it lands in Caleb’s lap and Sacred Bones decides to restore the audio and give it a general release all in the name of preserving a historical document of a very weird place and a very weird time.

Like I said, you have to admire the courage of their conviction!

But they didn’t stop there. Recently they’ve “discovered” some “unearthed footage” of Sand that purports to have been “filmed by a cult member at Purple Mountain studios in the late ‘70s.”

Red’s not going to like this.

“Message From the Mountain”