THE MIND EXPANDING UNIVERSE OF BIG LEZ

A couple of months ago, my friend Scott asked if I'd ever watched Big Lez. I confirmed that not only had I not seen it, I had absolutely no awareness of it whatsoever. He didn't give too much away, other than to say that I should watch it because I'd like it. He was absolutely right.

Big Lez is Australian in origin, an animated web show launched in 2012. The majority of the work is credited to Jarrard Wright, who conceived and scripts the show, draws and animates it, provides most of the voices and does the music. An initially crude but brilliantly DIY affair, Wright drew and coloured the show in (of all things) Microsoft Paint and then animated the frames using stop-motion. At the beginning, he even used a free laptop provided by the Australian government when they were trying to promote greater computer literacy. Refinements in technology have progressively made the presentation smoother and more sophisticated, but it remains rambunctiously rough and ready in a slick and seamless world. Indeed, that quality is an important part of its appeal.

The Big Lez Show (and the Big Lez Universe - there have been five spin off series so far) centres around Brown Town, a quintessentially rural coastal place that is home not only to hard living Aussie blokes (there are virtually no women in the series) but also to aliens and ancient interdimensional beings, mainly Anthropoidipes Ameriborealis, i.e. Sasquatches. They all live together in raucous and mutually supportive harmony. A massive amount of drugs are consumed. I mean, all of the time. Side quests include an ongoing war with crazed invasive mutants, skateboarding, surfing and sugar gliding tournaments, and lots of gun play. It's preposterous, surreal, violent, foul mouthed - but also good-natured and extremely funny.

If you want a gentle wade into the warm waters of Big Lez, try Donny & Clarence. It will surprise you how quickly you stop wondering why a balding Sasquatch and a green guy with a head like a jacket potato are doing in the Outback, let alone running a convenience store. Just go with it, it will more than repay your suspension of disbelief.

If you want to just dive in at the deep end, start with Sassy The Sasquatch. This series provides an origin story to one of the Big Lez Universes best loved characters, an immortal, permanently stoned Big Foot who moves aimlessly through time and space for millions of years before finding a home in Brown Town. This series is both hilarious and genuinely profound - like all great mythologies, it says something important about the human condition. 

I've been totally converted, and now I'm obsessed enough to start tapping on doors and spreading the word. Next chance you get, investigate further, you'll be doing yourself a big favour, mate.

IT ANTICS

From the 1975 demonstrational film Finite Elements, made by the Atlas Computer Library with graphic and music by the ANTICS computer system. 

JAZZ BLOWS

 

American jazz flautist and saxophonist Paul Horn had a long and interesting career in music, beginning in various West Coast cool jazz combos in the 1950s. After becoming a convert to Transcendental Meditation in 1968 (he was at the Maharishis Indian ashram with The Beatles) he became a proponent of New Age Music, and travelled the world playing with interesting people and in interesting places, including inside the Taj Mahal and The Great Pyramid. 

In 1972, he was in Sealand of the Pacific, an aquarium in British Colombia, Canada, where he recorded a jam session with a young male Killer Whale called Haida. The results are interesting, even moving, although it should be noted that Haida was a prisoner and unable to consent to being recorded. The contention in the sleeve notes that 'Haida loved Paul's music and became his biggest fan' should also be treated with an element of scepticism.

THREE RECENT EXAMPLES OF ABSTRACT GUITAR MUSIC

I'm not in love with the guitar as a thing, but it has done a lot of heavy lifting in much of the music I've been listening to for the last fifty years. I recently came across a trio of guitar releases on Bandcamp with enough analogous elements that, if I worked for the NME in the 1990s I'd probably stick a flag in them and call it a microgenre. 

Cyrus Pireh has been described as 'the best guitarist in the world (not by me, I don't believe in those sort of absolutes). On Thank You Guitar, he ably demonstrates his virtuosity with a set that provides a series of complex, delicate insectoid structures. My favourite track? Infinite Shred, the heaviest offering, which is only marred by not being several billion minutes longer*.

From Portland, where a disproportionate amount of the music I buy now seems to originate from, Guitar For Deaf Dumb and Blind provide what, under other circumstances, could be a suite of pleasant, ambient noodling. However, it's all off-kilter: too loud, too sharp, too distorted, too much - so it is absolutely impossible to relax to. This is not a problem for me, as I haven't really had any downtime since 1980. Favourite Track? Guitar One, an experiment in slowly and deliberately pushing something into the red.

On the same label (Bud Tapes) and also based in Portand, Elli Ott is, by day, a member of  semi-psychedelic drone experimentalists, Skunk Ape. When it gets dark, he apparently sits on his porch (all Americans have sittable porches, right?) and strums, thumps, scrapes, thrashes and generally mistreats his guitar to fascinating and disorienting effect. My favourite track? Meditation On Little Black Cat: alien muzak for a haunted house.

So, what would I call this microgenre, and what are its antecedents? Doesn't matter, does it? I find that just liking something is enough these days, there's no need to over-complicate it.

* Update: at the time of writing this blog entry, I hadn't received my vinyl copy of the Cyrus Pireh album. I am pleased to report that, on the actual record, 'Infinite Shred' ends in a locked groove, so it could, technically, go on forever - or at least until the next power cut or when my family smash my record player up and then set fire to the bits.

YOGA MOODS

IN A HOLE

The Challenge, d. John Frankenheimer (USA, 1982)

I was going to write that The Challenge is under-rated but it's actually unrated, i.e. nobody really cares about it.

Wiry Scott Glenn plays a down on his luck American boxer adrift in Japan who infiltrates a Bushido training school led by the formidable Toshiro Mifune in order to steal a valuable historic sword. He soon realises that the discipline of the dojo is what he needs in his unhappy life and, to show his new found commitment, he is buried up to his neck in the blazing sun and left without food and water for several days. 

Once he starts screaming, he is considered ready to be re-made and re-modelled, just in time for a massive scrap with machine guns and throwing stars and all that in which he acquits himself very well.  

VILLAINS OF WORLD CINEMA

001: Doctor Satan, a fairly obvious wrong 'un.

From The Deathless Devil (1972), a Turkish espionage / superhero mash up with some appalling comic relief, very little continuity and stolen soundtrack music (including liberal use of The Pink Panther theme). 

LIFE GOALS

 

Between 1983 and 1986, Idaho resident Al Fry ran a company called Incredible Inquiries, which produced instructional videos and self-help manuals.

Usually little more than slide-shows with a quite banal narration, they are, nevertheless, fascinating artefacts. Other titles include Hidden Bible Knowledge, Triple Your Intellect and Memory, and Lock Up Dangers & Freedom Techniques. In an incredible act of benevolence, someone calling themselves Mentaltapes has uploaded them all onto Youtube.  Cheers, MT, thank you for your service.

POWER UP

 

Our hero / nemesis enjoys a much needed burst of cosmic energy in the excellent Heisei Era Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla 2 (1993). Spoiler: Mechagodzilla gets his metal arse kicked (eventually).

JAPANESE CINEMA 101

 

From Terrifying Girls Highschool: Lynch Law Classroom (1973)