Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rockers” (1994)

in Music | December 3rd, 2014

advicetoChrissie Hyn­de knows a few things about being a female rock­er. When at the ten­der age of 14 she saw Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels play at a fair­ground in her home­town of Akron, Ohio, the band got into a fist­fight with each oth­er dur­ing the per­for­mance. She was hooked. “I thought,” she said to The Guardian ‘That’s got to be the life!’ ”

Not long after col­lege at Kent State, where she was in a band with Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh, she end­ed up in Lon­don. There she worked at Mal­colm McLaren’s noto­ri­ous store SEX along­side the future mem­bers of The Sex Pis­tols. She even asked Sid Vicious and John­ny Rot­ten to mar­ry her for the work visa. She tried to start a band with Mick Jones of The Clash, but that didn’t take. She was kicked out of the band Mas­ters of the Back­side before they changed their name to The Damned and became famous. Then in 1978, she formed the band The Pre­tenders and quick­ly became a rock icon with hit tunes like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Mes­sage of Love.”

In short, Hyn­de has been rock­ing for over 40 years now and she has some advice for aspir­ing lady rock­ers, which was orig­i­nal­ly print­ed as a pro­mo for her 1994 release “Night in my Veins.”

1. Don’t moan about being a chick, refer to fem­i­nism or com­plain about sex­ist dis­crim­i­na­tion. We’ve all been thrown down the stairs, and f—ed about, but no one wants to hear a whin­ing female. Write a loose­ly dis­guised song about it instead and clean up. ($)

2. Nev­er pre­tend to know more than you do. If you don’t know chord names, refer to the dots. Don’t go near the desk unless you plan on becom­ing an engi­neer.

3. Make the oth­er band mem­bers look and sound good. Bring out the best in them; that’s your job. Oh, and you bet­ter sound good too.

4. Do not insist in [sic] work­ing with “females.” That’s just more b.s. Get the best man for the job. If it hap­pens to a woman, great – you’ll have some­one to go to depart­ment stores with on tour instead of mak­ing one of the road crew go with you.

5. Try not to have a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with the band. It always ends in tears.

6. Don’t think that stick­ing your boobs out and try­ing to look f—able will help. Remem­ber you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not “f—me,” it’s “f—you”!

7. Don’t try to com­pete with the guys; it won’t impress any­body. Remem­ber, one of the rea­sons they like you is because you don’t offer yet more com­pe­ti­tion to the already exist­ing male egos.

8. If you sing, don’t “belt” or “screech.” No one wants to hear that sh–; it sounds “hys­ter­i­cal.”

9. Shave your legs, for chris­sakes!

10. Don’t take advice from peo­ple like me. Do your own thing always.

A lot of this is just sound advice for get­ting along at the work­place – don’t act like you know more than you do, don’t com­plain, make your work­mates look good but don’t doink them. But prob­a­bly the key points for Hyn­de is num­ber one and num­ber sev­en.

In that inter­view with the Guardian, she indeed proved to be reluc­tant to “moan” about sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in the rock­dom. “There’s always been women doing this, just not that many,” she said. “I don’t know what the fem­i­nists have to say about it. Over the years, you’d hear, ‘We weren’t encour­aged.’ Well, I don’t think Jeff Beck­’s moth­er was say­ing, ‘Jef­frey! What are you doing up in your room? Are you rehears­ing up there?’ No one was ever encour­aged to play gui­tar in a band. But I nev­er found it hard­er because I’m a woman. If any­thing I’ve been treat­ed bet­ter. Guys will car­ry my gui­tars and stuff – who’s going to say no? Guys always tune my gui­tars, too.”

Check out the video for “Night in my Veins” below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

The Art of Punk Presents a New Doc­u­men­tary on The Dead Kennedys and Their Grit­ty Aes­thet­ics

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

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Theodor Adorno’s Radical Critique of Joan Baez and the Music of the Vietnam War Protest Movement

in Music, Philosophy, Politics | December 3rd, 2014

The Marx­ist Frank­furt School’s prac­tice of neg­a­tive dialec­tics put the “crit­i­cal” in crit­i­cal the­o­ry, and none of its loose band of philoso­pher-crit­ics was as inci­sive as the dour, depres­sive Theodor Adorno. Against both mys­ti­cal and mate­ri­al­ist notions of his­to­ry as progress, Adorno argued in his trea­tise Neg­a­tive Dialec­tics that, writes Peter Thomp­son, “his­to­ry is not the sim­ple unfold­ing of some pre­or­dained noume­nal realm,” but rather an open sys­tem. In oth­er words, we can nev­er know in advance where we are going, or should go, only that we live enmeshed in con­tra­dic­tions. And in the thick of late-moder­ni­ty, these are engen­dered by the log­ic of con­sumer cap­i­tal­ism. For Adorno, the ulti­mate prod­uct of this sys­tem is what he termed the “Cul­ture Indus­try”—the mono­lith­ic com­plex of Hol­ly­wood film, TV, radio, adver­tis­ing, mag­a­zines, etc.—engineered to lull the mass­es into docil­i­ty so that they pas­sive­ly accept the dic­tates of an author­i­tar­i­an state.

The anti­dote to this cul­tur­al drug­ging, Adorno argued, was to be found in the avant-garde, in dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing works of art that appeal pri­mar­i­ly to the intel­lect. In demon­stra­tion of the kind of art he meant, he even com­posed his own music, inspired by the work of Arnold Schoen­berg. It’s very tempt­ing to read Adorno’s attacks on jazz and rock ‘n’ roll as the belly­ach­ing of a can­tan­ker­ous snob, but there is sub­stance to these cri­tiques, and they deserve to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, even if in the end to be refut­ed.

Take, for exam­ple, Adorno’s take on the protest music of the six­ties. We tend to assume the impor­tance of artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (at the top, singing the spir­i­tu­al “Oh Free­dom”) to the anti-war movement—their songs, after all, pro­vide the sound­track for our doc­u­men­taries and fic­tion­al­ized films of the peri­od. But Adorno felt that pop­u­lar “protest music” was a con­tra­dic­tion in terms, giv­en its rela­tion­ship to the same Cul­ture Indus­try that man­u­fac­tured and dis­sem­i­nat­ed adver­tis­ing and pro­pa­gan­da. It’s obvi­ous­ly a prob­lem many artists, includ­ing Dylan, have grap­pled with. In the short clip above, Adorno deliv­ers his ver­dict on Baez:

I believe, in fact, that attempts to bring polit­i­cal protest togeth­er with “pop­u­lar music”—that is, with enter­tain­ment music—are for the fol­low­ing rea­son doomed from the start.  The entire sphere of pop­u­lar music, even there where it dress­es itself up in mod­ernist guise, is to such a degree insep­a­ra­ble from past tem­pera­ment, from con­sump­tion, from the cross-eyed trans­fix­ion with amuse­ment, that attempts to out­fit it with a new func­tion remain entire­ly super­fi­cial…

Put anoth­er way—whatever else protest music is, it is also inevitably a com­mod­i­ty, mar­ket­ed, like the most vac­u­ous bub­blegum pop, as enter­tain­ment for the mass­es. But it isn’t only the com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of music that gets under Adorno’s skin, but also the standardization—the very thing that makes pop music pop­u­lar. Its forms are instant­ly rec­og­niz­able and easy to hum along to while per­form­ing mind­less repet­i­tive tasks. As he wrote in his essay “On Pop­u­lar Music”: “The whole struc­ture of pop­u­lar music is stan­dard­ized, even where the attempt is made to cir­cum­vent stan­dard­iza­tion, [guar­an­tee­ing] the same famil­iar expe­ri­ence.” Such for­mal stag­na­tion pre­cludes for Adorno the emer­gence of any­thing “nov­el,” and, there­fore, any­thing tru­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary. He goes on to say specif­i­cal­ly of anti-Viet­nam protest music:

And I have to say that when some­body sets him­self up, and for what­ev­er rea­son sings maudlin music about Viet­nam being unbear­able, I find that real­ly it is this song that is in fact unbear­able, in that by tak­ing the hor­ren­dous and mak­ing it some­how con­sum­able, it ends up wring­ing some­thing like con­sump­tion-qual­i­ties out of it.

The flat­ten­ing effect of mass cul­ture, Adorno sug­gests, ren­ders every ges­ture per­formed with­in it—whether of protest or acquiescence—as fun­da­men­tal­ly triv­ial… and mar­ketable. His posi­tion is irritating–it tips one of our cul­tur­al sacred cows–and it’s cer­tain­ly debat­able; Lisa Whitak­er, author of the blog Con­tex­tu­al Stud­ies takes issue with it. Oth­er writ­ers have explained his cri­tique in more nuanced terms. But what­ev­er you think of them, his argu­ments do give us a use­ful frame­work for dis­cussing the ways in which cul­tur­al move­ments seem to get instant­ly co-opt­ed and turned into prod­ucts: Every rad­i­cal ends up on a t‑shirt; every rev­o­lu­tion­ary gets reduced to pithy quota­bles on cof­fee mugs; every move­ment seems reducible to hand­fuls of quirky memes.

For an inter­est­ing engage­ment with Adorno’s pop cul­ture cri­tique vis-à-vis the work of Dylan, see this entry in the Madame Pick­wick Art Blog. And for much more of Adorno’s cranky but enlight­en­ing state­ments on pop­u­lar cul­ture, see this list of read­ings of work he pro­duced in the for­ties with Max Horkheimer, as well as a lat­er recon­sid­er­a­tion of the “Cul­ture Indus­try.” We live in an age dom­i­nat­ed by mass pop­u­lar cul­ture, and sat­u­rat­ed with protest. Adorno asks us to think crit­i­cal­ly about the rela­tion­ships between the two, and about the effi­ca­cy of using the media and mes­sag­ing of cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism as a means of resist­ing the oppres­sive struc­tures cre­at­ed by cor­po­rate cap­i­tal­ism. But rather than Adorno’s wet blan­ket the­o­riz­ing, I’ll leave you with Joan Baez. What­ev­er the use­ful­ness of her so-called protest music, any­one who denies the beau­ty of her voice has sure­ly got tin ears.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

Theodor Adorno’s Phi­los­o­phy of Punc­tu­a­tion

Wal­ter Benjamin’s Mys­ti­cal Thought Pre­sent­ed by Two Exper­i­men­tal Films

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Pink Floyd’s The Wall: The Original Live Show & Behind-the-Scenes Footage of the 1980 Tour and 1982 Film

in Music | December 2nd, 2014

Open­ing with max­i­mum fan­fare and pomp, and clos­ing with the sound of dive bombers, “In the Flesh?,” the first track on Pink Floyd’s mag­num opus The Wall announces that the two-disc con­cept album will be big, bom­bas­tic, and impor­tant. All that it is, but it’s also somber, groovy, even some­times del­i­cate, har­ness­ing the band’s full range of strengths—David Gilmour’s min­i­mal­ist funk rhythms and soar­ing, com­plex blues leads, Nick Mason’s tim­pani-like drum fills and thump­ing dis­co beats, and Richard Wright’s moody key­board sound­scapes. Under it all, the propul­sive throb of Roger Waters’ bass—and pre­sid­ing over it his jad­ed, nos­tal­gic vision of per­son­al and social alien­ation.

Expert­ly blend­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tive with tren­chant, if at times not par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­tle, social cri­tique, Waters’ rock opera—and it is, pri­mar­i­ly, his—debuted just over 35 years ago on Novem­ber 30, 1979. The project grew out of a col­lec­tion of demos Waters wrote and record­ed on his own. He pre­sent­ed the almost-ful­ly formed album (minus the few col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gilmour like “Com­fort­ably Numb”) to the band and pro­duc­er Bob Ezrin, who described it as “Roger’s own project and not a group effort.” That may be so in its com­po­si­tion, but the final record­ing is a glo­ri­ous group effort indeed, show­cas­ing each member’s par­tic­u­lar musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty, as well as those of a host of guest musi­cians. The leg­endary stage show drew togeth­er an even larg­er pool of tal­ent, such as polit­i­cal car­toon­ist Ger­ald Scarfe, whose ani­ma­tions were pro­ject­ed on a giant card­board wall that slow­ly came down over the course of the con­cert.

At the top of the page, see the band play the entire­ty of the album at Earl’s Court in Lon­don, and just above, watch a “lost” doc­u­men­tary com­piled from behind-the-scenes footage of that show, the last of thir­ty the band per­formed on The Wall tour, which began in Los Ange­les. We get inter­views with the band and crew, Waters at sound check, and “the fre­net­ic oper­a­tion of the entire load-in process.” Archi­tect Mark Fish­er describes the plan­ning and cre­ation of the stage show—a year in the making—from the wall itself to the huge inflat­able char­ac­ters made from Scarfe’s ani­ma­tions. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the very first show of its kind, a huge mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­za that blew audi­ences away and raised the bar for every are­na rock tour that fol­lowed.


The film ver­sion of The Wall, which debuted almost three years lat­er in 1982, was also decid­ed­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tive affair. Just above, a doc­u­men­tary called “The Oth­er Side of The Wall” intro­duces us to “four very dif­fer­ent tal­ents”: Waters, Scarfe, direc­tor Alan Park­er, and star Bob Geld­of. (Album pro­duc­er Ezrin doesn’t get a men­tion, though he claims to have writ­ten the film’s script.) Giv­ing us a look at “how the final brick in The Wall fell into place,” the short film begins with Waters’ inspi­ra­tion for the con­cept album; he tells us in his own words how it grew from his frus­tra­tions with the sta­di­um tour­ing for Ani­mals. Park­er dis­cuss­es his artis­tic inten­tion to not make “a con­cept movie” (though the movie seems to be exact­ly that), and Scarfe talks about his designs for the album and film, which Park­er describes as “weird” and “psy­cho­path­ic.”

The final piece of behind-the-scenes mak­ing of The Wall we bring you is the BBC Radio inter­view, above, that Waters’ gave in 1979. He talks about the album’s gen­e­sis, and breaks down the mean­ing of each song at length. Waters’ rela­tion­ship with The Wall defined the rest of his career after he left Pink Floyd in 1986. In fact, since 2010, he’s been tour­ing his ver­sion of the stage show, and has pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary of its revival. But long before the cur­rent incar­na­tion of the endur­ing­ly clas­sic album and live spec­ta­cle, he brought a revival of The Wall to Berlin in 1990 to com­mem­o­rate the fall of that city’s lit­er­al wall eight months ear­li­er. See the full con­cert video of that show below. Fea­tur­ing an array of guest musi­cians, the show approx­i­mates the musi­cal inten­si­ty of the orig­i­nal 1980 tour—but noth­ing, of course, can sub­sti­tute for the incred­i­ble ener­gy of the orig­i­nal four mem­bers of the band play­ing togeth­er. The vision may have been all Waters, but the exe­cu­tion of The Wall need­ed Pink Floyd for its suc­cess.


Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Roger Waters’ Ear­ly, Work-in-Progress Record­ings of Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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George Harrison’s Mystical, Fisheye Self-Portraits Taken in India (1966)

in Music, Photography, Religion | December 1st, 2014

Harrison Fisheye1

The Bea­t­les’ sojourn in India can seem like a bit of a stunt, as much a rock n’ roll cliché as Led Zeppelin’s trashed hotel rooms or Fleet­wood Mac’s coke binges. Eas­i­ly par­o­died in, for exam­ple, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Sto­ry, the band’s turn East­ward looks in hind­sight like fad­dish spir­i­tu­al tourism. That impres­sion may not be so far off. As one writer puts it:

By the late 1960s, The Bea­t­les had engi­neered anoth­er pop cul­ture rev­o­lu­tion (at least in Europe and North Amer­i­ca) by wear­ing Indi­an-style cloth­ing, spout­ing reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal apho­risms that seemed to bor­row from ‘East­ern’ thought, and lat­er even vis­it­ing India for a high­ly-pub­li­cized train­ing ses­sion to learn Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion with the fraud­u­lent ‘mys­tic’ Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi.

But while for John, Paul, and Ringo, “inter­est in Indian/Hindu cul­ture was rather fleet­ing and tem­po­ral […] for George, India com­plete­ly over­hauled and changed his life per­ma­nent­ly.” As Har­ri­son him­self would lat­er recount of his first jour­ney in 1966, “it was the first feel­ing I’d ever had of being lib­er­at­ed from being a Bea­t­le or a num­ber.” The rest of the band wouldn’t make the trip until two years lat­er.

Harrison Fisheye 2

Har­ri­son had prin­ci­pal­ly embarked to study sitar under Ravi Shankar and learn yoga, but this was also a peri­od of self-dis­cov­ery and escape from, as he says, the “mania.” Trav­el­ing, as he always did, with a cam­era, he doc­u­ment­ed his jour­ney. His pic­tures are far from ordi­nary tourist images.

While he describes in writ­ing the “mix­ture of unbe­liev­able things” he saw, he just as often turned the cam­era on him­self, his pho­to­graph­ic intro­spec­tion made even more pro­nounced by his use of a fish­eye lens.

Harrison Fisheye 3

Inter­est­ing­ly, in his rec­ol­lec­tion of the trip, Har­ri­son ref­er­ences the sur­re­al cult, sci-fi show The Pris­on­er as a prime illus­tra­tion of life as “a num­ber.” One of the show’s most mem­o­rable devices involves a huge, mys­te­ri­ous white bub­ble that cap­tures or kills any­one try­ing to escape the sin­is­ter orga­ni­za­tion that holds the main char­ac­ter cap­tive. In Harrison’s pho­tos, the bub­ble becomes a para­dox­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his way out of fame’s fish­bowl, of the prison of Beat­le­ma­nia and an iden­ti­ty that felt con­trived and alien­at­ing.

Harrison Fisheye 4

Behind his steady, seri­ous gaze open up vis­tas that presage the breadth and depth of his immer­sion in Indi­an spir­i­tu­al prac­tices. What­ev­er one thinks of his con­ver­sion, there’s no doubt it was sin­cere, and life­long. Not long after this first trip, at the age of 24, he wrote to his moth­er, “I want to be self-real­ized. I want to find God. I’m not inter­est­ed in mate­r­i­al things, this world, fame.” Har­ri­son expressed the very same mys­ti­cal aspi­ra­tions in his final, 1997 inter­view, still play­ing and singing with his men­tor Ravi Shankar.

Harrison Fisheye 5

via Shoot­ing Film/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Bob Dylan’s Thanksgiving Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delectable Songs

in Music | November 26th, 2014

640px-joan_baez_and_bob_dylan

Image by Row­land Scher­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’re look­ing for a sound­track for Thanks­giv­ing, you could do worse than to let Bob Dylan cre­ate it for you.

From May 2006 until April 2009, Dylan host­ed the Theme Time Radio Hour, a week­ly radio show on XM Satel­lite Radio. Each show revolved around a dif­fer­ent theme (e.g., “Weath­er,” “Drink­ing” or “Base­ball”). But the episodes all had one thing in com­mon — they pre­sent­ed lis­ten­ers with an eclec­tic mix of music, every­thing from LL Cool J and Chuck Berry, to They Might Be Giants, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, and John­ny Cash. Try­ing to describe the radio show, the­ater crit­ic Ter­ry Tea­chout wrote in The Wall Street Jour­nal: “To lis­ten to Theme Time Radio Hour is to redis­cov­er the sense of musi­cal adven­ture that old-fash­ioned disc jock­eys with strong­ly indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties offered in the days before big-mon­ey sta­tions pinned their fis­cal hopes to the rigid Top 40-style playlists that took the fun out of radio.”

Today we bring you Episode 30 of Sea­son 1, “Thanks­giv­ing Left­overs,” which orig­i­nal­ly aired on Novem­ber 22, 2006. The show fea­tures 18 songs, select­ed and intro­duced by Dylan. The songs (find a list below) aren’t dish­es cooked fresh. No, they’re “left­overs” — tunes that Dylan had hoped to squeeze into pre­vi­ous radio shows but nev­er quite man­aged to do. Yet, togeth­er, they make for a pret­ty good meal. You can stream them all above. And if you like what you hear, head over to the Theme Time Radio Hour Archive, where they’ve appar­ent­ly archived all 100 episodes, audio includ­ed.

  1. “Turkey In The Straw” — Lib­er­ace (1952)
  2. “Hal­lelu­jah, I’m A Bum” — Har­ry McClin­tock (1926)
  3. “Let Me Play With Your Poo­dle” — Tam­pa Red & Big Maceo (1942)
  4. “Yard Dog” — Al Fer­ri­er (1972)
  5. “The Turkey Hop” — The Robins with John­ny Otis Orches­tra (1950)
  6. “Hon­ey­suck­le Rose” — Fats Waller (1934)
  7. “Twelve Red Ros­es” — Bet­ty Har­ris (1966)
  8. “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes” — Skeets McDon­ald (1952)
  9. “Them There Eyes” — Bil­lie Hol­i­day (1939)
  10. “Angel Eyes” — Jesse Belvin (1959)
  11. “Gun­slingers” — Mighty Spar­row (1963)
  12. “Let’s Be Friends” — Bil­ly Wright (1955)
  13. “Whiskey Is The Dev­il (In Liq­uid Form)” — The Bailes Broth­ers (1947)
  14. “Teach Me Tonight” — Dinah Wash­ing­ton (1954)
  15. “Teacher Teacher” — Rock­pile (1980)
  16. “Iodine In My Cof­fee” — Mud­dy Waters (1952)
  17. “You Eat Too Much” — Harold Bur­rage (1956)
  18. “Pie In The Sky” — Cis­co Hous­ton (1960)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

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The Crazy, Iconic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Velvet Underground Vocalist, Enigma in Amber

in Film, Music | November 24th, 2014

There’s no deny­ing that train wrecks make great doc­u­men­tary sub­jects.

Not that Abra­ham Lin­coln doesn’t, but watch­ing some­one come unglued is a whole ‘nother sort of com­pelling. Upset­ting, even.

Docs in this genre usu­al­ly require the sub­ject to have left the build­ing in order to reach a sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. The final word belongs to an assort­ment of friends, col­leagues, admir­ers, enemies…some of whom may be har­bor­ing ulte­ri­or motives.

Sure­ly Ger­man chanteuse Nico’s appear­ance fac­tored into Andy Warhol’s deci­sion to ele­vate her to Fac­to­ry super­star sta­tus. (See his video of her imme­di­ate­ly above.) She was a mod­el after all, arrest­ing enough to have appeared as her­self in La Dolce Vita. She romanced rock gods, film direc­tors, and movie stars, many of whom have their say in Susanne Ofteringer’s doc­u­men­tary Nico-Icon, view­able in its entire­ty up top.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing, cau­tion­ary por­trait, but as the back­seat psy­cho­analy­sis mount­ed, I found myself want­i­ng to hear from the sub­ject more.  With apolo­gies to Neil Dia­mond fans, we decid­ed  it was only fit­ting to show you Nico hav­ing her own say.

Maybe she was a night­mare. For­mer key­boardist, James Young, wrote a book about his time on tour with her. He’s in the doc­u­men­tary, of course. Aspir­ing icons, you’ve been fore­warned:

When I worked with her her looks were gone and she wasn’t this Chelsea Girl crea­ture, this per­ox­ide blonde Mar­lene Diet­rich moon god­dess vamp. She was a mid­dle aged junkie.

Nice. You reck­on he might have gone eas­i­er on her, had she been one of John Waters’ super­stars, the late Edith Massey or the still-thriv­ing Mink Stole?

For­get sticks and stones. It takes a lot more hero­in and hard liv­ing to kill the looks of any­one with her bone struc­ture.

Did Nico real­ly have such lit­tle use for anyone’s approval but her own? The art she made after her icon­ic work with the Vel­vet Under­ground con­vinces me that her embrace of ugly–what Chelsea Girls direc­tor referred to as her “stu­pid Ger­man perversity”–was sin­cere.

She’s still an enig­ma trapped in amber. She’ll be your mir­ror.

Find 200 free doc­u­men­taries in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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French Couple Sings an Achingly Charming Version of VU’s “Femme Fatale”

in Music | November 23rd, 2014

Day in, day out, we rum­mage around the inter­net, look­ing for new mate­r­i­al to bring your way. I start search­ing, and I nev­er quite know where the search will take me. Some paths lead to dead ends, oth­ers to inter­est­ing side streets. Speak­ing of inter­est­ing side streets.… Yes­ter­day a trip through some old Vel­vet Under­ground mate­r­i­al (more on that tomor­row) led me to this small, unex­pect­ed delight. Above, we have Math­ieu and Pauline, two young French musi­cians, singing an aching­ly charm­ing ver­sion of VU’s “Femme Fatale”. There’s so much beau­ty and youth in it, it kin­da hurts. Below, see them sing a cov­er of Serge Gains­bourg’s “Elisa.”

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots the Only Col­or Film of The Vel­vet Under­ground Play­ing Live in Con­cert (1967)

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

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The Jimi Hendrix Experience Plays “Hey Joe” & “Wild Thing” on The Band’s Very First Tour: Paris, 1966

in Music | November 21st, 2014

Jimi Hen­drix lived fast, and I don’t just mean to evoke a rock star cliché, but to get at the speed at which his career moved. He arrived in Eng­land near the end of Sep­tem­ber, 1966, at the ten­der age of 23. In less than a month, he and his man­ag­er Chas Chan­dler had recruit­ed Noel Red­ding and Mitch Mitchell into the Expe­ri­ence and booked the band’s first gig on Octo­ber 13 across the chan­nel in Évreux, France, one of four French book­ings as a sup­port­ing act for The Black­birds and John­ny Hal­ly­day. They played most­ly cov­ers, includ­ing Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Don Covay’s “Mer­cy, Mer­cy,” and Chris Kenner’s “Land of a Thou­sand Dances,” and tra­di­tion­al song “Hey Joe,” soon to become the band’s first sin­gle. It’s unclear whether any­one record­ed that first gig, but we do have some audio of the fourth, on Octo­ber 18 at the Olympia in Paris. Just above hear them play “Hey Joe” from that night, and below, they do The Trog­gs’ “Wild Thing.”

Hen­drix was already a high­ly sea­soned per­former by this time, hav­ing blown minds all over the South while tour­ing with, among oth­ers, the Isley Broth­ers, Lit­tle Richard, and King Cur­tis in the ear­ly six­ties. He had been high­ly in demand as a back­ing and ses­sion play­er, but he grew tired of stand­ing in the back and want­ed to go solo. He met man­ag­er Chan­dler, then bassist for the Ani­mals, while fronting his own band in New York. Chan­dler, writes PRI, “knew just what to do with the young gui­tarist” upon their arrival in Eng­land.

Six days after the short tour through France, the band played its first offi­cial show in the UK, at the Scotch of St. James, where the Bea­t­les had a pri­vate booth. Hen­drix pro­ceed­ed to blow minds all over Eng­land, includ­ing, of course, those of all the British gui­tar greats: “Everyone’s eyes were glued to him,” remem­bers then girl­friend Kathy Etch­ing­ham, “He looked dif­fer­ent. His gui­tar play­ing was superb. Peo­ple in Eng­land hadn’t seen any­thing like it before. It was quite… out of this world.”

Peo­ple in the U.S. hadn’t seen any­thing like it either. While Hen­drix had honed many of his sig­na­ture stage tricks on the soul cir­cuit, by the time he appeared at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967, he had ful­ly come into his own as a charis­mat­ic singer as well as a “near mirac­u­lous” gui­tarist. But in his move from R&B to rock and roll, he nev­er lost his blues roots. “Hen­drix wasn’t a typ­i­cal pop or rock musi­cian,” says Hen­drix schol­ar and Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Joel Brat­tin. He “was an impro­vis­er. So, if there are 100 dif­fer­ent record­ed ver­sions of Pur­ple Haze, it’s real­ly worth lis­ten­ing to all 100 because he does some­thing dif­fer­ent each time.” The same can be said of the songs he cov­ered, and made his own. Just above, see them play “Hey Joe” at The Mar­quee for Ger­man TV show Beat Club just months before the release of their 1967 debut album. And below, Hen­drix exhorts the crowd to sing along before launch­ing into “Wild Thing,” in a Paris appear­ance one full year after the record­ing above at the Olympia. Com­pare, con­trast, get your mind blown.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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