GROTESQUE ROCK FORMATIONS

 

My eleven year old self was absolutely obsessed with Alien in 1979, although I wasn't able to see it until 1981, when it finally came out on VHS. I did, however, have the novelisation, and The Book Of Alien, a fantastic compendium of stills, sketches and extracts from the script. I have no idea where either of those went. I also had a small collection of bubblegum cards of which this is the only known survivor and is, therefore, my favourite in the series.

MAGNIFICENT RUIN

 

Tony Sinden / Alan Baker & The Insects: Magnificent Cactus Trees... (Piano Records, 1979)

One of the scuzziest sounding records I have, in one of the scruffiest and most badly designed sleeves. A scratchy, repetitive, minimal guitar motif is complemented by tinny bongos and the intermittent and intrusive hiss of machine noise. 

A price sticker affixed to the label shows that the record passed through the Record & Tape Exchange in Notting Hill, and was gradually reduced in price from 40 to 20 to 10. I'm assuming pence. 

I don't really know what this record is for, but I like it, and listen to it whenever I want music that sounds like a faulty clock in an empty factory with a hole in the roof.

FILE UNDER POST PUNK

Everybody has a record in them. It may not be a double album, it may not be any good, but it's there, waiting to be pulled out. The post punk era facilitated many such extractions, from eager and energetic boys and girls who spent a couple of hours and a few quid in a cheap local studio and committed the results to black plastic for future generations to blog about. 

File Under Pop (full irony to be revealed) released a solitary 45, a three track effort where two of the tracks were recorded live at London Heathrow Airport. These tracks are not musical in any conventional sense, consisting of nothing but snatches of ambience, tinny tannoy announcements, overheard conversations and a series of unnerving inorganic noises including at least one electronic arcade game and what sounds like a witch being electrocuted. They are  jarring, badly recorded and compressed to hell, and sound like a space age migraine. I went to Heathrow for the first time in 1978, and its escalators and beige and yellow modernity pretty much blew my ten year old mind, so I completely understand the appeal. 

There is a non-Heathrow track which is the only one where they sound like a 'band'. It consists of a spiky one minute guitar and bass riff over which someone reads quotes from newspapers about Mary Bell (a child who murdered another child) in a Lord Haw Haw voice. How was this not a hit?  

The sleeve features a single light bulb in an otherwise darkened room, a common trope of the era, not least because it looked impressive in monochrome, the colour scheme de l'epoque being predominantly black, white and grey. The lonely light has an undeniably sinister feel, and speaks of tunnels, disused factories, musty cellars, torture chambers, nightmares. It is a light that accentuates the darkness around it rather than illuminating it. 

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

The Telidon System (1979-1985 approximately) was a Canadian telephone communication process which enabled the exchange of visual information, a forerunner of Videotex / Teletext and a precursor to advanced computer and game graphics. Developed at a cost of several hundred million dollars, Telidon didn't fulfil its potential and, ultimately, faded away as new developments surged ahead of it.

Pierre Moretti's film Graphic Variations On Telidon, despite sounding like the title of a brainy sci fi parable, showcases the system's ground-breaking capabilities. The visuals are (by current standards) limited, but very charming, with a mid-century feel that reminds me of an etch-a-sketch or the tin plate tube kaleidoscopes which served as entertainment before more spectacular things for kids to look at came along. 

Made in 1980, when hopes for the Telidon were still high, this eight minute film was a product of the National Film Board Of Canada, the greatest of all state run cultural organisations. 

THE SOUND OF FEELING

Michael Jackson was a preternaturally, supernaturally talented person. He did a lot of weird things, and was clearly a very troubled individual but, in his pomp (a period of about twenty five years) he did amazing stuff in music and dance that has left an indelible mark on popular culture. 

Case in point: Can You Feel It.

Yes, it’s a fantastic pop record, but its accompanying film (conceived by Michael, and realised in conjunction with computer graphics pioneer, Robert Abel) takes it to an entirely new dimension. In this universe, The Jacksons unexpectedly arrive in a troubled world in a blaze of golden light and glitter. The brothers appear as gigantic, glowing figures towering over the world, but despite being quite able to trash Tokyo, they are smiling, beneficent titans, here to heal the world rather than harm it. Their presence, which is accompanied by whooshing noises and bursts of synth and guitar, brings peace to the world, and a new understanding. By the end of the song, the people of Earth stand hand in hand, their petty differences forgotten, in a scene reminiscent of the idealised pictures found in Jehovah’s Witness leaflets*. All that's missing is a tame lion and some big bowls of fruit.

With any other band, this might seem like preposterous hubris: the brothers as Gods visiting Earth and making it better with their awesomeness. In this film, however, the brothers don’t seem to be imperious, or omniscient, or omni-anything. Rather, their powers seem to be a delight to them, as if they have been suddenly suffused with a divine light, as if they are vessels of a higher power rather than the power itself. There is a lot of pointing in the film – people pointing at the Jacksons and the incredible things they do, and the Jacksons pointing at each other, ecstatically surprised at how divine they have suddenly become.

It’s worth noting the nifty orchestral additions to the track, also written by Michael in a modern classical style reminiscent of the music to Logan's Run. They are mainly buried in the mix of the (otherwise wonderful) version released as a single, and that’s something of a shame. In an ideal world, the sort of world where five cool siblings regularly appear to magically make things better, there is a ten, no, a twenty minute Can You Feel It filled with sound effects and strings and horns and hope and groove which would become a world anthem that every single person and animal on earth could get behind. 

As a final note, it’s worth remembering that the Jacksons went into the studio to record this track (and the album Destiny) in the same month that Michael finished recording Off The Wall, the album that would cement his solo superstar status. Oh, and Michael was still only 20 years old. Incredible.

* The Jacksons were all Jehovah's Witnesses. Imagine opening your door to them.

COME BACK AS A FLOWER

The Secret Life Of Plants, d. Walon Green (1979)

A well-meaning semi-documentary, The Secret Life of Plants provides a successful and often startling mix of time lapse photography, travelogue and montage to support the concept of plants as living, thinking, feeling entities, and to help us understand their pain and consternation at being treated like rubbish. Ironically, a mild criticism would be that there are just too many people in the film, although the presence of Stevie Wonder (responsible for the somewhat hit and miss soundtrack) is very welcome.

The lovely closing scenes, in which Stevie wanders barefoot (and without his dark glasses) around a number of attractive botanical landscapes, ending up in an enormous field of sunflowers, remind you that it’s a transcendently beautiful world, and we should really stop trying to kill it, right now.