Nothing But The Night (1973)

This weekend that's just gone was a bit like buses in the end as it was also the occasion of the tenth annual "Fantastic Films Weekend" at The Media Museum in Bradford which is always a highlight of the year. They showed loads of brilliant films, as well: "Hands of the Ripper", "Countess Dracula", "The Plague of the Zombies", "Horror Express", "The Beast Must Die", "Twins of Evil", "The Stone Tape" and the delectable Regan MacNeil in a midnight showing. What with Ladytron and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, though, I didn't manage to get over there one fraction of as much as I would have liked. However, I did catch a rather colour drained print of one of my favourite films of all-time "Nothing But The Night" on their big Pictureville screen last night.

Now, for anyone who doesn't know, "Nothing But The Night", which has a stellar cast including Diana Dors, Peter Cushing, Georgia Brown, Keith Barron (David from the sitcom "Duty Free"), Fulton Mackay (Mackay from "Porridge") and a pubescent Gwyneth Strong (Cassandra from "Only Fools and Horses") was the first release from Charlemagne Productions, the company set up by Christopher Lee who also stars. Apparently, it was so named because his family could trace their lineage back to this eighth century French king, would you believe?

In spite of all of who appear, though, I'm afraid that, whenever I watch this film, I only have eyes for Ms. Dors who is stupendous in the role of Anna Harb, an ex-prostitute who has done time in Broadmoor for a triple murder, now earns a living as a fortune teller and drives around in a blue and white car with astrological symbols on the side and a sinister black cat, a bit like the one on the firework boxes, on her bonnet and rear end. She storms around in what seems like a permanent rage for the first half of the film, barging her way past people in hospital corridors and snapping at everyone she meets and, in the latter half, crawls helplessly but valiantly like a wounded animal (dressed in a red leather coat and auburn wig) through rough terrain as she tries to evade capture by Tracy Truncheon in what seems to be a prefiguration of Dawn Davenport in "Female Trouble". I've often wondered if John Waters caught a showing of "Nothing But The Night" (a.k.a. "The Devil's Undead", a.k.a. "The Resurrection Syndicate") when dreaming up scenes for Divine a year later.

       

Anyway, to the plot - unsurprisingly, given her mother's track record, the Harb child (Strong) has had her name changed -  to Mary Valley - and has been taken into the care of the charitable Van Treylan Trust with whom she lives an idyllic and privileged life in a huge cliff top mansion on the Scottish isle of Bala. However, as the film progresses, it emerges that the wealthy benefactors who take in such children don't have the altrusitic motives one might at first have expected and, as they begin to get bumped off in freak accidents or what appear to be suicides, the plot thickens.

In one such "accident", Mary, who was leading what looks like an amphetamine-fuelled chorus of "Ten Green Bottles" in the aisle of a coach when it crashes, lands up in hospital and starts to babble about being trapped in a fire which no-one can fathom out when she could have experienced. To cut a long story short, the Van Treylan lot, in a bid to achieve immortality of a sort, have been experimenting on the children in their care, using their remote hideaway as a place to implant parts of their brains, and therefore memories and personalities, into their wards. This achieved, they are ready to shuffle off and let the youngsters take over.

However, as the dastardly goings on start to be detected, first by Mary's doctor (Keith Barron), who gets a hat pin skewered into the side of his head for his troubles, and, later, by the more scientific Sir Mark Ashley (Peter Cushing), who seems to slice up pieces of liver and rump steak and squeeze them into test tubes to reach his conclusions, Dors is brought onto the scene by a meddling and gutsy journalist played by Georgia Brown. Then, in an attempt to regain "the kid", and now chief suspect in the hunt for the murderer of Dr. Haynes (see above), she heads up to Scotland and the Van Treylan mansion in the aforementioned car which she, unfortunately, has to abandon on a ferry so we never get to see it again.

In the meantime, her daugher is preparing her birthday party, a cliff-top bonfire with fireworks and this is where the film reaches its denouement with the children, now dressed in the scaled-down, antiquated attire of their elderly predecesors, gleefully watching the innocent Anna Harb, who they had earlier captured and turned into their guy, become engulfed by the flames. Christopher Lee almost suffers a similar fate, too, being tied up by the children and dragged towards the fire in a sinister variation on tug-of-war and, as this goes on, the soul of Helen Van Treylan speaks through Mary Valley, explaining all that's gone before in the belief that he'll take his knowledge of her machinations to the grave. However, just in the nick of time, Cushing arrives and, as the precociously dressed Mary laughs, "You're going to burn! Ha, ha, ha! You're going to burn!", his helicopter fans the flames and up goes her frock, causing her to dash to the cliff edge and jump to her death, her plan now foiled. Then, in a scene which would never be filmed in today's climate, like lemmings, the other children follow suit, toppling over one by one, and we watch their body's spiral down towards the rocks and water below just before the credits begin to roll.

What a film!! They showed it on the Friday, too, and its director, Peter Sasdy, was on hand to introduce it and to answer questions. If I'd been there, I'd have shaken his hand.

     

"The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye"

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine who reads newspapers and cuts out articles and photographs for me noticed that Marie Losier's film "The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye" was to get its UK premiere at the Sheffield Doc/Fest this weekend. So, on-line we went to buy tickets and then, yesterday, we made the journey down the M1 to catch a teatime showing and, as with moreorless anything connected with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, it proved to be very interesting and stimulating viewing.

Although largely about P-Orridge's relationship with h/er wife Lady Jaye, who died suddenly in October 2007, just twenty days after Psychic TV played a memorable but, sadly, poorly attended gig in Leeds, the main focus is on the former Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV front person and, to some extent, the film acts as a kind of impressionistic biopic as snippets from h/er illustrious/notorious career pepper the proceedings. 

Archive footage, therefore, features quite a bit so we get to see TG performing "Discipline" at their "final" show in San Francisco in 1981, as well as GPO's daughters being filmed on a Brighton funfair and at Derek Jarman's Dungeness cottage back in the late eighties for the video of PTV's "Are You Experienced?" - s/he tells us that the record got to number one in Italy and was used there as the theme for a top TV pop show for a while. Most interestingly for me, though, as I didn't know such a thing existed, we get to see black and white footage of h/er from the COUM Transmissions days, long-haired, sitting on the floor and naked from the waist down urinating copiously into a milk bottle and nonchalantly imbibing the contents of a used condom. S/he also takes us through her personal archive, showing us the infamous "Wreckers of Civilisation" newspaper clipping, complete with accompanying photo of Siouxsie and Steve Severin, a newspaper hoarding reading "Sex Show Man's Amazing Free Tour" - "that's me", s/he grinningly declares - and a selection of 12" records spanning a recording career which dates back to the 1968 "Early Worm" album, from the back sleeve of which she reads proudly, "We have nothing to say and we are saying it."

As narrator of the tale, aspects of h/er philosophies and what shaped these also surface as, for example, we hear about a master brutally humiliating h/er in front of the entire school  on h/er first day there, this ironically occuring in chapel below a giant painting of Jesus Christ. Although not stated overtly, h/er hatred of the British establishment and its conventions seems partly to stem from this moment which led to a prolonged period of violent bullying and misery at school. This anger seems still to be present, too, as evidenced when, dressed in a black leather mini skirt, matching shirt and stuck on Hitler moustache, and accompanied by Lady Jaye in similarly themed garb, s/he goes into a kind of Mel Brooks parody diatribe about refusing to be told what to wear, how to act and how to think. S/he also tells us about h/er father being a jazz drummer and this being the kind of music to which s/he was exposed prior to becoming enthusiastic about the likes of early Pink Floyd, The Doors and The Velvet Underground. An improvisational approach to music, we're told, was essential to Throbbing Gristle and extends to h/er present day violin duets with Tony Conrad which we see them performing in a bubble filled room. H/er friendships with William Burroughs and, later, Brion Gysin - who, s/he says always kept at least one packet of Cadbury's Chocolate Fingers in his Paris flat in case GPO hopped across The Channel to pay a call - also figure strongly and it is made clear how influential their cut-up technique and philosophy have been throughout h/er life.

At one point, though, s/he says that s/he doesn't want to be ultimately remembered as "The Tampax Man" or for being exiled from Britain for being a destructive influence on society but, instead, for being part of an all-consuming, passionate love affair and this is the over-riding theme of the film. As GPO remembers, it was love at first sight as, after a night out at New York's Jackie 60 club in the 1990s, s/he crashed out in the dungeon of a dominatrix friend and woke to see a beautiful young woman passing repeatedly across a doorway, dressed firstly in sixties attire and then fetish gear - "my two favourites" s/he recalls with relish - this being Lady Jaye Breyer dressing for the work she undertook alongside her involvement in performance art at the time.

From this point onwards, the aforementioned love affair and identification of each as being the other's second half developed to the point where, instead of having children, they decided to cement their relationship by undertaking their pandrogyne journey which involved combining their features in an attempt to become, as much as possible, a third entity. So, we see footage of them having their faces prepared for surgery and hear an account of them waking side-by-side after both simultaneously having breast implants. "Look. It's our angelic body", s/he recalls saying when first emerging from the anaesthetic. We also get to see snippets of their seemingly inseparable lives together, riding the subway, attending a birthday barbecue, preparing food in their tiny kitchen, stepping out identically dressed, either for an afternoon in the park or a night on the town clad in matching dresses, tights, fur coats and facial bandages.

Their dual roles in the latter incarnation of Psychic TV also feature heavily, as Lady Jaye, whose worst nightmare was, apparently, to ever be part of a band, was eventually coaxed into becoming a member through her part-time provision of samples and ultimate inability to conceive being spearated from GPO during long periods of touring. So, we see them soundchecking at London's Astoria, walking around the streets of Amsterdam and eating collectively with other band members backstage and it is the accumulation of all this detail, the fondness with which Lady Jaye is spoken and the obvious pleasure the footage shows of them sharing in each other's company that makes it so tragic when it comes to the relating of her death, Lady Jaye breathing her last breaths into GPO's mouth as s/he tried to resuscitate her on their bathroom floor. Interestingly, from this point in the story onwards GPO refers to h/erself using the collective pronoun "we" which obviously provides some comfort.

"The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye" is an outstanding film for many reasons, not least because of the story it tells and the incredible relationship detailed therein but also because it affords a seemingly honest insight into the day-to-day life of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge about whom so much mystery and myth has been created over the decades, also showing how much s/he has changed since those days of Industrial Music and Culture. What we see in h/er relationship with Lady Jaye is a playful, very loving and, actually, at times quite comically twee personality who does a Swedish chef impression whilst preparing ravioli at the stove and a sitting down charlston with h/er knees on the metro, talks on several occasions in baby speak, plays peepo between the shelving of h/er archive, makes tunes with h/er arse on the keyboard and seems to like being referred to as Genny in intimate surroundings. S/he also comes across as someone incredibly likeable and who is doing impressively well in remaining creative and productive whilst dealing with h/er profound grief.

I guess the film will get a more general release shortly and, ultimately, come out on DVD and it comes recommended by me to absolutely everybody in the world, even if only for the closing scene over which "The Orchids" from 1983's album "Dreams Less Sweet" finds a suitable home. Here are a couple of trailers I found knocking about.

Ladytron-St. George's Hall, Liverpool : 10th June 2011

Ladytron played what was apparently a special gig last night in order to mark the occasion of it being ten years since the release of their debut album "604" and I was so pleased that I made the treck across The Pennines to be there as it was a totally fantastic occasion. Going to Liverpool is always a treat, anyway, because it's one of my favourite places and arriving early and, therefore, managing to fit in a quick drink at The Lisbon, a semi-subterranean pub on Victoria Street with a superbly preserved and impressive interior - busy stuccoed ceiling, wood-panelled walls and Art Nouveau sign - certainly set the tone for what was to come when we arrived at the venue.

Even from the outside, St. George's Hall is magnificant, elevated grandly above the traffic on Lime Street like a giant temple preserved from Classical times. In fact, this Grade 1 listed building, dating from the mid-Victorian period, was described by the expert on all such matters Nikolaus Pevsner as the greatest Neo-Grecian building in the world. It provided the perfect setting for what was to come, too, as the inside is equally impressive, giving off a sense of the bygone grandeur I'm sure we've all at times romantically associated with cities like Berlin and Vienna. Add a bit of dry ice and one could easily imagine a pompous Midge Ure striding seriously and purposefully from between a potted palm and a Doric column and out across a Byzantine-style tiled floor before stopping to turn meaningfully to look into the camera. The band played in what was once called The Golden Concert Room and, Wilton's Music Hall in London aside, it is easily the best place I've ever seen a gig, with its columned and mirror-backed stage, ornamental balcony supported by caryatids and lavish decorative detail wherever the eye might land. Compared to the hangar-like venues where I've seen Ladytron play previously, it provided quite an intimate setting, too, almost like being at a party or, without wanting to cheapen things here, on the set of "The Roxy", ITV's short-lived attempt to rival "Top of the Pops" in the mid-eighties, for those that don't remember.

Anyway, I digress so onto the music. Support group, Outfit, who were fronted by dual vocalists, one mainly providing synth and the other guitar, keyboard and hip wiggles, may or may not have been local and provided quite an interesting proposition. As my co-star in this adventure pointed out, they were a bit all over the place but, this and one terrible Rock School-style reggaefied number aside, I found them to be quite appealing in a number of ways, not least that, for me, they had the years 1982/1983 stamped across them. Maybe it was the setting but, as their short set unfolded, a number of Liverpool bands from this era passed across my mind, not least The Pale Fountains, The Wild Swans and Care in their foppishness and seeming attempts to craft a kind of intelligent, dramatic and slightly sophisticated pop which goes against the grain in the current climate. Apart from the final stand-out number, which also had me thinking of Aztec Camera and the poppier moments of Postcard Records, they're still a bit embarrassingly clunky at present but definitely a name I'll keep an eye out for in the future.

Ladytron took the stage, as scheduled, at quarter past nine, the last remnants of daylight, therefore, still creeping in above them and were absolutely superb, playing a set which stretched across their entire career and seemingly tied in with their recently released "Best Of 00-10" album. Opening in tried and tested, but highly effective, style with "Black Cat", "Runaway" and "Ghosts" it was one favourite after another for an hour and a half and hearing so many brilliant, luscious and memorable pop songs which such an enormous number of people, based on the evidence here and the other occasions I've seen them live, clearly love so much, it beggars belief that they've never had even a medium-sized hit. In an ideal world they'd have had a string of number ones that would make ABBA blush and would currently be giving the likes of Ms. Gaga and Rihanna a run for their money. I blame it on distribution myself. Has anyone else noticed how poorly stocked even high street shops in Britain are with Ladytron product, maybe one of two copies of the odd album tucked away in the Dance Music section rather than stuffed invitingly into the mainstream area where most people browse? "Discotraxx", "Seventeen" (which had one elegantly dressed lady dancing like royalty in private reverie up on the balcony - an image I'll have cemented in my mind for a long time to come, I hope), "International Dateline",  "Season of Illusions" - it was a continuous string of gems, leading to a euphoric encore of perennial crowd-pleasers "Playgirl" and "Destroy Everything You Touch". 

The fact that some of my own personal favourites like "Sugar", "Burning Up", "I'm Not Scared" and "Evil" could not be squeezed into the set serves as further evidence as to why they have become such an essential and cherished band, at least in these quarters, over the last decade. It's far from over yet, too, by the looks of things as they played three new songs - their danced -up cover version of Death in June's "Little Black Angel" and two fantastic tasters from their forthcoming album "Gravity The Seducer" which is due in September. One of these, "White Elephant", is available already as a download (personally I prefer a nice 7" single but you can't have everything) and here it is for your delectation.

As always, some kind souls were on hand filming it and, although the histrionic, rockist drum finale in this clip probably represents the gig's nadir, it does provide a better sense of the setting than my comparatively weedy photos. The one afterwards is more better for the music.

Mute : Short Circuit - 13th/14th May 2011

As expected, the Mute Short Circuit festival at London's Roundhouse last weekend was something really special, although a little busy in places, meaning quite a lot of people wouldn't have got to see artists they'd perhaps wished if they were performing in the smaller of the rooms being used. Due to a bit of advance planning, though, we weren't struck by this too badly, although we couldn't get into a talk being given by Gareth Jones on the Saturday morning in  an 80 capacity boardroom(!!!) and missed the first few minutes of Komputer's set as the room was already full and we had to wait for people to come out. The area around where Daniel Miller and later Gudrun Gut were djing was unbearably packed on the Friday night, too, so we decided to go home before she came on.

Overall, though, it was brilliant and I reckon I certainly got my money's worth, seeing complete sets by Carter Tutti with Nik Void, NON, Richard H. Kirk, Simon Fisher Turner, The Residents, Yazoo/Erasure/The Assembly and Laibach and partial sets by Komputer, Balanescu Quartet, Nitzer Ebb, Liars, Maps/Polly Scattergood and SCUM, as well as experiencing bits of various other people dj-ing (Daniel Miller, Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher from Depeche Mode, members of Renegade Soundwave and Kumo playing selections from Can with Irmin Schmidt on hand to discuss what he'd just selected). I think, for me, Carter Tutti with Nik Void were the absolute highlight but I also really enjoyed Simon Fisher Turner's "Dead Men Can't Run" piece (complete with its own dead man running, not running, crawling across the floor and climbing up the walls), Yazoo/Erasure and Laibach, especially their version of "Warm Leatherette". Hearing Andrew Fletcher filling the main hall with "Empire State Human" and "Lady Shave" was a bit of a thrill, too.

In light of the fact that there's far too much to write about, here's a few photographs I took. There seem to be rather a lot of Boyd Rice, though. I hope people don't start to talk!

Komputer

Carter Tutti

NON

The Residents

Frühstuck im Frühling

Billie Davis

Here's a song for the newly-weds.

Boyd Rice-Iconoclast

Somebody else I'm very much looking forward to seeing on 13th May at the Mute Short Circuit event is NON(Boyd Rice) as his music and ideas have been a pretty constant companion over the last two and a half decades or more and he's someone whose activities never cease to be of enormous interest. It's also over fifteen years since the only other time I've seen him live, when he played at Club Disobey at The Hacienda in Manchester on a bill that also featured Pan Sonic (then called Panasonic) and DJ Beekeeper (aka Bruce Gilbert from Wire). I feel that I'm in need of a top-up.

Boyd Rice is also the subject of one of the best things that has come my way for a very, very long time, "Iconoclast", a four hour documentary spread across three discs, in which director Larry Wessel interviews him extensively about his life, career and personal obsessions, as well as many of the people with whom he has associated or collaborated over the years, all this being interspersed with music from across this period, as well as archive footage and images. Here's a trailer for it.

On the first disc, titled "Lemon Grove" after the town in California where he grew up, we find out about his background - how his grandmother was born at midnight on Halloween in a graveyard and how his father, Beverley, chose the most male sounding name possible for his son following the trouble he had had with his own - as well as his childhood wherein he realised early on that things were going to be different compared to other people and that joining the rat race would never be an option. School seems to have been rather a bore for Rice - he says at one point that he only started to learn once he had left - and his childhood and adolescent years were spent dreaming up pranks, visiting tiki bars with his parents and absorbing choice aspects of pop culture such as the music of Bobby Sherman (the lyrical content of which which he likens to Charles Manson's "Cease to Exist"), the fashion designs of Rudi Gernreich and Martin Denny records bought in thrift stores. A strong enthusiasm for occult television series such as "Dark Shadows" and "Strange Paradise" and reading a magazine called "Man, Myth and Magic" all added to the coalescing aesthetic, as well as sending him running to the local library to read everything he could on black magic, the tarot and gnosticism.

In 1969, aged 13, he claims to have truly come alive in a year when, aside from the pilot for "The Partridge Family" being broadcast, Anton LaVey's "Satanic Bible" was first published, Tiny Tim was still popular and in the charts and Charles Manson and his Family committed the Tate/La Bianca murders. He says that to understand anything about Boyd Rice you must first truly understand the importance of the year 1969.

Next came Glam Rock which led to enthusiasms for the likes of The New York Dolls, Gary Glitter and The Sweet, as well as visits to Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on Sunset Strip, a place he describes as Fellini-esque in its decadence. More importantly, though, around this time, Rice discovered Dada, this combining powerfully with his playful wish to destabilise the status quo and a growing belief that nothing need ever be viewed from a fixed point or limited to singular interpretations. As well as providing a philosophical foundation for his pranks – in 1976 he was arrested and made the national news for attempting to present America’s first lady Betty Ford with the skinned sheep’s head that he’d been using as a prop at an anti-abortion demonstration that he’d infiltrated – Dada ideas also largely shaped the form of his early artistic experimentation. As well as producing photographs of things that don’t exist and paintings which can be hung in whatever manner suits their owner, he also hooked up with a group of San Francisco Dadaists and began regularly performing sound pieces live, such as having half a dozen music boxes playing simultaneously (a trick he’d learnt off Unity Mitford, I think) or pushing a television set out of a third floor window so that it smashed on the pavement below. Then, at the suggestion of percussionist Z’ev, he self-released his “Black Album” of 1977 which presented an early example of ambient music before such a term existed. Brian Eno, apparently, was nervous when he found out he had some competition. Although it was a very limited pressing and came housed in a plain black sleeve, the record was a success in that copies found their way into the hands of influential people such as journalist Jon Savage, Mute Records’ Daniel Miller, who reissued the album in 1981, and Genesis P-Orridge, as well as Rice’s favourite artist at the time, Arman.

     

Working under the name NON, initially in collaboration with Robert Turman, the next release was a 7” single, “Knife Ladder”/”Mode of Infection”, which could be played at any speed and using either the conventional hole in the middle or an off-centre second hole to offer maximum playback possibilities. Then came “Pagan Muzak”, a 7” single housed in a 12” sleeve, which took the idea further as, in addition to the aforementioned features, it consisted of seventeen locked grooves, like the closing grooves on a record, which will play continually in a loop until the needle is lifted or pushed on. As Rice says in the film, punk rock music was of no interest to him as it seemed only to offer a harder-edged, faster rehash of what had gone before rather than a radical, ripping apart of all prior conceptions as he was now attempting to do. The first disc ends with NON regularly playing live on the West Coast alternative scene, on bills featuring the likes of The Zeros, Monitor and 45 Grave, Rice playing his roto-guitar which he had built himself. The sound of the electric fan brushing against the strings is described as having been like a bomber taking off in the immediate vicinity.

Disc Two focuses on the decade or so Boyd Rice spent living in San Francisco after relocating in 1978. Working as an alarm agent, he would drive around the city at night dressed in a uniform and carrying a gun and would respond to any security alarms which had been activated, in most cases by rats, he tells us. In addition to this, he made a number of important connections during his time in the city, the first one of these being Ray Dennis Steckler whose 1964 film “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies”, he says, changed his life. Eager to find out some background on the star of a number of Steckler films, Cash Flagg, whom he admired so much, Rice tells us how delighted he was to find out that director and actor were, in fact, one and the same. Not only this, though, Steckler also turned out to be the director behind a number of the scopitone jukebox music videos, like those for the Kessler Sisters, which he’d recently seen for the first time and which had blown his mind, too.

He also became involved with the team behind the RESearch books and proved to be a lively and inspirational contributor to their “Incredibly Strange Films” and “Incredibly Strange Music” publications, as well as others on “Industrial Culture” and “Pranks”.

           

One enthusiastic reader of the “Incredibly Strange Films” book was Anton LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan, who contacted RESearch to find out who these people were who shared his taste in films, this leading, in turn, to a meeting with Boyd Rice and the two developing a close and long-lasting friendship. Not only did LaVey share Rice’s interest in obscure cinema and “the dark side” but it appears he, too, was quite a prankster, this all being an integral part of the Satanic archetype we're told, who would adopt different personas such as the U-Boat Captain, the Chinaman and a gangster character for prolonged periods, as well setting off an electronic whoopee cushion device to disorient his visitors. He even programmed his synthesizers to produce a range of classified fart sounds, as well as playing the instruments, along with his collection of organs, more seriously for Rice and friends on weekly all-night visits. Rice went on to encourage LaVey to record some of his music at home and this was released during the mid-1990s.

       

Another person he met during this period and seemingly helped to release music was Charles Manson and Rice gives some details of his eight hour visits to San Quentin which continued upto the day he inadvertently turned up with a bullet still in his trouser pocket from the firearm training he’d recently received for his job, this causing Manson to spend two weeks in solitary confinement and a parting of their ways.

The final section of the disc deals with Rice’s appropriation of the Wolfsangel and Cross of Lorraine as symbols for NON, as well as his interest in Nazi and totalitarian aesthetics which led to his collaboration with Adam Parfrey on the “Apocalypse Culture” publications. This, combined with some jealousies he perceives on the part of the RESearch team, then led to a section of the San Francisco scene branding him a fascist and the city being sprayed with slogans such as “Boyd Rice go home to Europe”. One can't help thinking that posing for a photograph with Amercian Front leader Bob Heick, both holding knives and wearing the group's insignia, didn't really help his cause, although this isn't mentioned in the film. At the disc's close, he has relocated to Denver, Colorado, lured by its anachronistic feel and then being pleased to find “Carnival of Souls” playing at a local cinema on his first night in town.

The final disc then, moreorless, picks up where the last one ended, focussing on the controversy aroused as a result of Rice's growing reputation as a neo-Nazi. In one scene, we see a group of people picketing one of his gigs, objecting rather single-mindedly to lyrics in one of his songs requesting that Benito Mussolini and Emperor Nero "come back", whilst elsewhere one of his friends explains that he is simply somebody engaged in an empirical study of evil, implying that he is prepared to publicly explore areas of taboo that others are squeamish about touching. In one of a series of conversations we see between Rice and Christian talk show host Bob Larson, a man he seems to get along with quite happily, he explains that a totalitarian aesthetic appeals to him because it offers a degree of order which most people lack in their lives and that it calls upon people to apply strategies to achieve their goals, this again being something not undertaken by most people. In amongst this and an excerpt from a radio show where Rice argues rather uncomfortably live on air with the mother of Sharon Tate, Larson asks him, at one point, if he has ever felt like he's in need of an exorcism. Rice explains, "Bob's been working away at me for the last fourteen years or so. He never gives up." Larson is later delighted to hear Rice explain his approach to social interaction, finding that it echoes the sentiments to be found in The Sermon on the Mount.

More stories of visits to Anton LaVey also appear on the disc, as well as details of Rice's involvement with people like Rozz Williams, formerly of Christian Death, his girlfriend Margaret Radnick and The Partridge Family Temple whose member Sean Partridge spends quite a while explaining their background and philosophy. We also see him working on one of his Unpop paintings, hear tales of further pranks, see him and Death in June performing a live version of "People" from the "Music, Martinis and Misanthropy" with improvised lyrics and take a visit to Tiki Boyd's, the bar he designed in Denver.

       

However, the Boyd Rice I struggle to get along with and which seemed most to come to the fore in the mid-1990s is also present at times on the disc. For example, fired by his experiences at a place called The Lion's Lair in Denver where young girls would, we're told, walk around naked and seemingly sit at his feet, we hear of him sending the younger Gidget Gein a painting of a skull which he'd articulated using the menstrual blood of a thirteen year old girl who we're told he bragged to have deflowered. He also tells us of late night telephone conversations he used to have with Tiny Tim wherein the latter fantasised about Heaven being a place where he could have sex with young girls and of the two of them competing for the attentions of the same girl. He speaks quite admiringly, too, about Tiny Tim's atittude that women are like horses who need steering in the direction their rider wishes rather than being allowed their free will, echoing this with Charles Manson's views that they are like dogs who must be selected and trained from a young age if they are to be truly obedient. Although not mentioned in the film, this is the Boyd Rice who wears a t-shirt with rape boldly printed on it one photograph, who released the single "I'm Just Like You" which skits at the mentally ill under the name of The Tards and who talked of wanting to retreat to a place devoid of "unruly niggers" on his "Hatesville" album of 1995. We do get to see him performing his piece "How God Makes Little Girls" live, though, and much to the delight of a whooping audience but the whole thing comes across as being a bit like something from a school playground and a bit sad. It's one thing wanting to confront taboos and double standards and trying to  get up the noses of hypocritical liberals but it's another acting like an arsehole in doing so.

So, by the end of "Iconoclast", Boyd Rice sems to come across as truly representing all that he says he stands for, a manifestation of both the good and evil natures living concurrently in human beings and also someone with a profound love of popular culture from previous decades and an admirable thirst to explore all areas that interest him in great depth, his frustrations that others do not share his loves and enthusiasms in the same way, perhaps, leading to his misanthropic tinges.

This is an amazingly detailed and fascinating set of discs for which Larry Wessel must be congratulated unreservedly and the fact that so much of Boyd Rice still remains left uncovered, such as details of collaborations with people like Rose McDowall on the brilliant Spell album, Frank Tovey on "Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing" and Coil on the Sickness of Snakes project, his leading role in the 1999 film "Pearls Before Swine", the part he played in releasing records by Johanna Went, Ralph Gean and Little Fyodor, as well as his enthusiasm for sixties girl singers ("The Black Album" apparently features every recorded instance of Lesley Gore singing the word cry and his single "Solitude" sounds suspiciously like it was constructed out of Tammy St. John's "Dark Shadows and Empty Hallways") and people like Abba says more about Rice's achievements and multi-facetedness than oversight on the part of the director. I can't recommend this enough to anyone and it's a snip at $30. Contact him today and buy one.

http://www.iconoclastmovie.com/

Whilst you're at it, I strongly recommend trying to find a link to Boyd Rice's appearance on Howie Pyro's Intoxica Radio show from April last year when he went along armed with a selection of his favourite sixties girl records, playing some brilliant stuff like Dusty Springfield's "The Corrupt Ones", Anita Harris' "Upside Down" and one of Peggy March's fantastic German records.