CULT MOVIES: BOX SETS/WENDERS & HERZOG

Having extolled the budget-conscious delights of the VHS in my previous post, the price of some great boxed sets are now
becoming more affordable. So for the last two months its been New German Cinema season at chez nous in the company of Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog.

[I just discovered, the British Film Institute in London are halfway through a major Wenders season at present. It runs until the end of Feb: details here.]

As a result, some interesting assessments of Wenders ouevre
have appeared: Nick Roddick's essay - 'The Road Goes on Forever' - in Sight and Sound and 'King of the Road' by Chris Petit in The Guardian. James Mottram in The Independent takes what seems to be a widely-held view that Wenders recent output is weak. Hopes are high that his new collaboration with Dennis Hopper may see a return to form.

Chris Petit, incidentally, does not rate 'Wings of Desire ' (which he calls 'a triumph of location over content') or 'Paris, Texas' ('on the evidence of websites, many are willing to subscribe to Paris, Texas as a profound statement on emptiness, rather than an empty film...'

Petit is an interesting and innovative filmmaker in his own right. According to a profile in Screenonline, he 'interested Wim Wenders in backing his first feature, Radio On (1979). In spite - or perhaps because - of having no previous film-making experience, Petit pulled off an extraordinary debut, a highly 'European' road movie which, greatly aided by the cinematography of Wenders regular Martin Schafer, presented the British landscape, both rural and urban, in a manner quite unparalleled before or since. Moody and angst-ridden, it announced a singular talent - but also one that was clearly not destined to find a niche easily; as Geoffrey Nowell-Smith aptly put it, Radio On was "a film without a cinema"'

The box set of Wenders contains 10 films - a mix of features and documentaries. Alongside 'Wings' and 'Paris' are two early works - 'Wrong Move' and 'The Scarlet Letter' (the first, a strange, wordy saga in which annnoying writer called Wilhelm sets out on a random journey and meets strange wierdos along the way; the second, a weird costume drama set in the Puritanical village of Salem, Massachusetts in the 18th century, drawn from the book by Nathaniel Hawthorne). Curios both.

Original film still and paperback (The Generalist Archive)

'The American Friend', on the other hand is, in my view, Wenders at his best. Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper star in this brilliant, edgy film based on the novel 'Ripley's Game' by Patricia Highsmith. Saw it on its first release back in the 1970s and found it happily still as great on a re-look. One of Hopper's best roles, combining cool and menace.

Jean-Luc Godard in 'Room 666'. (1982) Now President of the European Film Academy, Wenders was to present Godard with the Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. Godard, writes Petit, 'was a no-show, saying afterwards that his absence was in protest against a prize "imposed" on his entire career. Godard's snub (at Wender's expense) was done as a point of principle, but it generated far more publicity than if he had accepted. Godard and Wenders are both expert manipulators, curators of their own legends...'

The documentaries are really interesting. 'Room 666' was shot at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Wenders invited a number of film directors to talk directly to camera about the future of film in a hotel room set-up with a camera and tape. They come in, switch them both on, and start talking. The question was:"Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" It begins with Jean Luc-Godard then, in no particular order, Antonioni, Herzog, Fassbinder, Spielberg, Monte Hellman and other younger voices. Superb and fascinating. Antonioni looks into the future and correctly predicts large-screen tv in the home. Herzog takes his shoes and socks of before answering such an important question Godard is a brilliant thinker and showman, Spielberg views are fascinating too in the light of the subsequent development of his career in particular and Hollywood in general.

Two documentaries on Japan - 'Tokyo Ga' and 'Notebooks on Cities and Clothes'. The first is a portrait of the city using the films of Ozu as a framing device; Herzog appears also in this. The second I first saw on Arena many years ago, a portrait of the Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto as he prepares a new collection. Video was relatively new at this time and Wenders enjoys playing around with a whole range of new gadgets. Watching Yohji at work is fascinating. Funniest scenes: Yohji and Wim talking whilst playing pool; Wim is very tall and Yohji is very small.

'A Trick of the Light' is a real discovery. A documentary about the Skladanowsky Brothers, the German-born duo responsible for inventing the 'bioskop', an early version of the film projector. Eclipsed by the fame of the Lumiere brothers, the S Brothers experimented with silent film and slapstick comedy. Wenders uses some wonderful inventive trick shots, animations and fictionalised episodes, built around the incredibly vivid testimony of 95-year-old Lucie Skladanowsky, the surviving daughter of Max, one of the brothers. [See IMDB for a more detailed account of this film]

'Lightning Over Water' is a documentary Wenders made of Nicholas Ray, the legendary director of such classics as 'Rebel Without A Cause' and 'Johnny Guitar', as he lay dying of terminal cancer. I haven't had the heart to watch it all through yet.

Ray and the late Samuel Fuller (read Wender's eulogy to him here) were Wender's mentors and icons - two rough, tough battle-hardened vets of the movie business, outsiders of great charisma. They both also acted in Wender's films: Ray played an art forger in 'The American Friend', Fuller a camerman in 'The State of Things', my other great favourite. (This black and white movie was shot in Portugal in a break during the long nightmare that was the filming of 'Hammett', Wenders tribute to the don of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett, at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in California.

In conclusion: A valuable set. Shortcomings: No extras.
Wim Wenders official web site

Whilst I love Wenders work, find it fascinating and cool, I am in awe of Werner Herzog.

His global search for what he calls the 'ecstatic truth' has produced both legendary features and a back catalog of extraordinary documentaries - more than 50 films in all. These two box sets are a good place to start getting to grips with this inspiring figure.

Herzog/Kinski is dynamite. Here collected together are the are the five features that Herzog made with the legendary madman Klaus Kinski. Kinski made scores of films, in most of which he only appears in cameos. This was because he was absolutely impossible to work with. Only Herzog was able to control, cajole and threaten this monstrous man, corral his ferocious spirit, and capture performances that have a power unequalled in cinema.

'Aguirre Wrath of God' and 'Fitzcarraldo' are rightly Herzog's best known films. Shot in the Amazon, they are not only terrifying to watch, you also know that there is no special effects trickery here. To make these films hundreds of people actually lived and worked under hazrdous condiitions to achieve movies that noone could now emulate. They wouldn't find the financing and the risk factors would be too high for any sane person to handle. The sheer determination it must have taken to realise these stunning films is almost beyond imagining.

'Cobra Verde', based on the Bruce Chatwin book 'The Viceroy of Ouidah', sees Kinski leading an extraordinary army of black women warriors. In 'Nosferatu', he becomes a ghastly creature of the night, the scariest vampire ever put on screen. In 'Woyzeck' a hapless soldier, bullied and torturted beyond his limits. The set is completed with 'My Best Fiend', Herzog's documentary tribute to his deranged comrade.

Many of the films have versions with commentary by Herzog and others. Never less than fascinating.

Box 2 I'm still absorbing: It contains four features - 'Heart of Glass', 'The Enigma of Kasper Hauser', 'Stroszek', 'Even Dwafs Started Small' - and 'Fata Morgana', Herzog's strange documentary on desert mirages.

A third box set is exclsuively available from the Werner Herzog Archive

'Werner Herzog – The Documentary And Shorts Collection', they say, 'is a collection of twenty-five films which run the gamut from his first experimental short ('Herkales' from 1962) through to longer documentaries such as 'God's Angry Man' and 'How Much Wood Would A Woodchuck Chuck', making all sorts of quirky little cinematic stops along the way. Most of this work is new to DVD.'

Much to my suprise, two weeks after I started watching these films, a brand new Herzog movie was released - 'Rescue Dawn' starring Christian Bale, who plays Dieter Dengler, a German-born American pilot, shot down in Laos duing the Vietnam War and tortured by his captors. He led a prison break-out and escaped, battling his way through the jungles to safety in Thailand.

Obsessed by this real-life story and despairing at ever raising funding to make a feature, in 1997 Herzog made a documentary instead - 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly'.

A good account of Herzog and this new project is Christopher Goodwin's 'Dangerous Waters' which appeared in the Sunday Times.

Useful Wikipedia entry

CULT MOVIES: COEN BROS & VHS ADVENTURES

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men."

Photo: Richard Foreman/Miramax

There are few things better than sitting down to watch a brand new movie in the comfy armchairs of the Duke of York's art cinema in Brighton, particularly when its made by the Coen brothers. The new film - 'No Country for Old Men' - is perplexing, mysterious and haunting. visceral, technically superior. Certainly up there with 'Miller's Crossing'.

From left, author Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Cohen.

Eric Ogden for Time.

Read the excellent interview with the three of them here.

Probably like you I go to the cinema less than I used to; now generally only for big sfx pictures which need to be watched on the largest screen available or art house classics as above. Apart from that, its home viewing which is what this post is about. Now is the time to buy VHS.

Nasturally everyone's getting rid of their VHS collections. Why bother to hang onto those clunky boxes and dodgy tapes when you can get slimline DVDs. Answer: they're cheap as chips. As somone who needs a constant supply of movies fodder and as a social experiment, for the last couple of months I have been haunting the charity shops and boot sales and picked up about 50 movies for an average price of £1.50 - a cult library of stuff such as 'Salvador', 'Deliverance', One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 'Hudsucker Proxy', 'Five Easy Pieces', 'American X' - classics all.

Three particularly excellent discoveries:

'Wild Side' by Donald Cammell (of 'Performance' fame) starring Christopher Walken, one of the great actors and certainly one of the strangest. Never less than intriguing to watch. All Cammell's film are fascinating. More of that anon.
'The Basketball Diaries' featuring a young Leonardo di Caprio, with an intriguing cameo by Jim Carroll, author of the book on which the film is based. Most of di Caprios early films are great: 'Glibert Grape' and 'A Boy's Life' in particular.
'Fritz the Cat', the cult animated film by Ralph Bakshi based on the Robert Crumb characters. Strange to relate, I found a rare VHS of this at the boot sale, took it home, to find its unplayable; the following week, found another copy that worked at the same boot sale. What are the odds of that, I wonder?
It was Bakshi who made a rotoscoped version of 'Lord of The Rings' back in the 1970s. For more on rotoscoping see previous post: PHILIP K. DICK: A SCANNER DARKLY


Most important, one great rediscovery, and this gem I urge you to watch. The second film by Jane Campion, 'An Angel at My Table' is a long and very moving saga about the life of Janet Frame, now regarded as New Zealand's greatest writer.

[Left: Janet Frame stands behind the three actresses who play her at different ages in the film. From left: Kerry Fox, Alexia Cox and Karen Ferguson. They are all brilliant.]

The film, based on Frame's autobiographical trilogy, follows the story of her poor childhood in the Depression, her fascination with literature, her shy student days and her long and painful incarceration in mental hospitals after being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and subject to repeated ECT treatment. Miraculously she survives, travels to Europe and experiences the bohemian life and finally achieves fame as a writer.

Coincidentally or not, the week after rewatching this powerful and very emotional film, The Guardian ran a feature by Campion which relates how she was almost born to make the 'Angel' film.

Her life changed when, at the age of 13, she read 'Owls do Cry', Frame's first novel, and later drove past the mental home 'Sunnyside' i n which Frame had been incarcerated. Whilst studying film, her mother sent her 'To the Island', the first volume of Frame's autobiographical trilogy and Campion determined to make a tv series on Frame's life, finally getting to meet her on December 24th 1982. Frame suggested she wait until she had published the next two volumes of the trilogy and she promised not to sell the film rights to anyone else in the meantime. The tv series was made successfully and became this superb film; its is to Campion's eternal credit that the film's success revived Frame's reputation and helped her financially in the last years of her life. Campion records that in 2003, when Frame was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, she was reported to have said that her death was an adventure, and "I've always enjoyed adventures." She died on 27 January 2004.

[Campion of course went on to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1993 for 'The Piano', which also earnt her the Palme D'Or at Cannes, the first female director to be awarded that honour]

See: 'In Search of Janet Frame' (The Guardian 19.01.08) The essay forms the introduction to a new edition of the book of 'An Angel at my Table' just republished by Virago.

Excellent Wikipedia entry on Janet Frame

UPDATE: See 'Instant Nostalgia? Let's Go to the Videotape' in the New York Times

“Be Kind Rewind,” Michel Gondry’s latest adventure in high-concept whimsy, appears to take place in a parallel universe without Netflix, TiVo or iTunes. When the entire VHS inventory of an old-school video store is demagnetized, the clerks respond to the disaster not by upgrading to DVD, but by enlisting the customers to remake the films with a VHS camcorder. Not far beneath the slapstick humor and communitarian spirit of Mr. Gondry’s movie (which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last week and is set to open Feb. 22) lies a strong nostalgia for a technology that revolutionized home viewing but now seems destined for the dustbin of history.'

IS THERE A CONNECTION ?

MUSIC BUSINESS TODAY

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (left) and David Byrne.
Photo: James Day

Two of the best and most interesting articles on the subject of the modern music
business are two excellent pieces in Wired magazine.
(thanks to bigfug for the tip off)

'David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music'
[bigfug advises the audio is better than the article]
Also links to:

David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

Coincidentally, the following e-mail message arrived from the founder of
Pandora, one of the most innovative music sites on the internet.
Self-explanatory and indicative of the current state of play

hi, it's Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

-Tim Westergren (Pandora founder)

wwww.pandora.com

REWRITING MUSIC HISTORY

I am trying to get my head round what appears to be, on the face of it, some kind of Buddhist lesson.

It has been one of my principal working practices to follow my enthusiasms and investigations wherever they may lead. Sometimes you strike gold; other times, the outcome is downright failure. You never know for sure; either way you learn a lot on the journey.

For the past twelve months my leading obsession has been the musical history of Britain in the 40s and 50s which led me to try and map all the clubs and music venues in Soho - the junction box of British music during that period - from 1942 to 1964. It was a fascinating study. I drew up a large pencil-sketch map and read a bookshelf load of books - keeping both Amazon and Abebooks well fed with orders in the process.

Twelve months in, I happened to mention my project to Mr Jeff Dexter, best known to most as a leading dj during the 60s and 70s, at clubs like UFO and at most major festivals including the Isle of Wight. He tipped me off to these two titles, they arrived within a few days of each other, and I was somewhat taken aback to discover that - to all intents and purposes - the work had been done. A very strange feeling.

'London Live' by Tony Bacon may not be the definitive work on the subject but I can categorically tell you its the most comprehensive to date. Full of maps, posters, handouts, photos, it runs from the 50s to the punk period and includes an astonishing and totally comprehensive database of everyone who played at the Marquee Club, arranged both in date order and by artist. Its obviously a labour of love and it will be enjoyed by many. What was really galling was to discover it was published in 1999 - how the hell could I have missed it!

Pete Frame's book is brand new. He is well known to most as founder of Zigzag magazine and as the author of the Rock Family Trees, now available in one volune from Omnibus Press, which formed the basis of a tv series on the BBC sometime back. One of his hallmarks is an almost obsessive attention to detail.

Thus this mammoth memoir reeks with authenticity, with a feeling that what you are reading is a wholly accurate account of what went down - a feeling bolstered by the fact that the book is built around scores of interviews with key people of the time, many of whom I suspect have never been interviewed before or since. Its a brilliant work and immediately stands head and shoulders above all but a few works on the decade. I can say this with some certainty because I've read scores of them. Most provide genuine insights and useful information but none are anywhere near as comprehensive, level-headed and carefully constructed as this masterwork. We are all in his debt for the thousands and thousands of hours he has spent since 1989, doing interviews and thinking about this project.

It starts, correctly, with several chapters on the marvelous Ken Colyer - the Joe Strummer of his time - a difficult man who had a major impact on his musical times. News of his death was marked by two minutes silence in the House of Commons. Yet today his name has been forgotten except by afficionados.

Then comes Chris Barber - another man whose huge contribution to British music still remains underplayed, and a marvelous pen portrait of Lonnie Donegan. These three characters along with the likes of Cyril Davies and Alexis Korner lie at the roots of so much of British music.

Frame then takes us to Soho of the time, to clubs like the 2I's, The Roudhouse, the Gyre and Gimble, and the Nucleus and gives us a full blast of the characters, action and ambience. He charts the birth of skiffle and the growth of the folk clubs and coffee bars (inventions of the period), the impact of Elvis.

If you think all this stuff is dusty old material of no relevance to today, then you'll be much mistaken. We have up to now been fed a kind of 'official history' of British music which is not only woefully manipulated and partial, but also excludes the many and celebrates the few - most often the wrong ones. 'The Restless Generation' is a huge contribution towards setting this picture straight. Its a big work in every sense of the word, packed with meticulous detail and telling incidents, driven along by a strong narrative style. It comes complete with a detailed chronology and index thus increasing its usefulness as a research tool.

Interestingly, both books are published by independent publishers. In the first instance, the author is also the publisher. Tony Bacon co-founded Balafon in 1992, which he claims on the flyleaf is now 'the leading independent publisher of fine books about music, musicians and musical instruments.'

In the second case, Pete Frame explains in the introduction how he had begun on the process of self-publishing, rightly assuming that no commercial publisher was likely to fund such a detailed work on this subject, when ' who should come tripping back into my life but Johnny Rogan.'

'Since I first got to know him in the golden age of Zigzag, he had not only become the acclaimed author of more than 20 books but had also unlocked the secret codes of publishding. A man with a keen interest in political and social history as well as rock music, he was eager to read the manuscript and, even though he winced at some of my rampant self-indulgence and schoolboy enthusiasm, he offered a deal and a distribution network which I could not refuse.'

See: www.roganhouse.co.uk

As a final PS, many of the comments above could be equally applied to another recently published huge tome - Peter Doggett's 'There's A Riot Going On' [Canongate] - which, in brief, puts the politics back into the history of '60s music - too long portrayed in an emasculated manner as one long LSD party with a big comedown.

The book's thesis: 'That between 1965 and 1972 political activists around the globe prepared to mount a revolution. While the Vietnam War raged, calls for black power grew louder, and liberation movements erupted. Demonstrators took to the streets, fought gun battles with police, planted bombs in public buildings and attempted to overthrow the world's most powerful governments. Rock and soul music fuelled the revolutionary movement with anthems and iconic imagery.'

Like Frame's work, this book has been in gestation for decades, and contains material from scores of original interviews. Veterans of the period may remember the highlights but will have forgotten a great deal of the detail, much of which has only emerged in the decades since.

For those not around at the time, this book will be an instructive education into a period, forty years distant, when it did seem possible for a brief time that youth movements could change the world and how this movement was dissipated and destroyed, repressed and swallowed by the forces of Control and Mammon helped by cynicism and celebrity stupidity .

Whilst not totally agreeing with Chuck V writing in The Skinny (Edinburgh and Glasgow's free entertainment, culture and listings magazine) I think his reaction is an interesting one:

Doggett details the drama of the aborted American revolution

'There’s A Riot Going On traces the rapid decline of 1960s counter-culture from naïve radicalism to uncommitted self-obsession. Psychedelic musicians are exposed as ignorant or hypocritical, movements slip from dynamic idealism to drug-addled cynicism while radical politicians are confused and exhausted.

In breathless prose, Doggett details the drama of the aborted American revolution, expressing disappointment while retaining a tremulous hope in music’s potential. Although Doggett obviously admires the musicians of the late 1960s, he clear-sightedly deconstructs the bizarre mixture of psychobabble and empty rhetoric that characterised the period. John Lennon comes across as a distracted junkie who switches between support for terrorists to flaccid pacifism; Dylan abdicates responsibility for any political stance while artists from Mick Jagger to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young climb on the revolutionary band-wagon without actually offering anything.

Without denying the power of the state - guns, spies and the courts were routinely used to undermine the counter-culture - Doggett reveals how easily capitalism could co-opt the wild energy of the times. Since much subsequent radicalism has taken its cue from the 1960s - adopted the Panthers, Rave took its utopianism from the first summer of love and even the SSP follows the inclusive spirit of 1968 - There’s A Riot Going On is a quietly depressing read. It shows how the energy of youth can be mistaken for commitment, and catalogues some of the stupidest statements made by public figures (on both sides of the conflict). Of course, these days nobody would mistake a concert performed by millionaires as a substitute for meaningful political protest, would they?'

PICTURE FOR GRACE

Sometimes - not often - life throws up perfect conjunctions. This picture is the result of one such. Just over a year ago my mum died (see THE 200TH POST for poetic tribute) and over the course of those twelve months much time has been spent sorting out her effects - a difficult and emotional task as many of you will know.

Throughout her life, she was passionately fond of greetings cards - she ran a card department in a big branch of W.H.Smith's for many years - and amassed a large collection of her personal favourites. Until her sight got too bad, she became fascinated by the Victorian pastime of 'decoupage' [see definition below] and used many of the cards as material for a whole string of pictures and objects, most of which she gave away to friends.

[Left]: Here is one of the pictures, faded over time. A centrally- placed window featured in many of her works.




She was very concerned about what would happen to these cards - and the bags of tiny little bits she had cut out of them - and that worry stayed with me. I just didn't feel I could throw them away but knew noone who would want them. Then fate took a hand.

I was invited to an exhibition locally by Maria Rivans - a collage artist par excellence. See examples of her work here

As soon as I saw them I knew I had found the answer to my problem. I explained my story to Maria and, the long and the short of it is I gave Maria a large proportion of the cards and cut-out pieces and commissioned here to produce a collage picture, with a photo of Grace in the centre, in celebration of her art and life. I think you will agree she has done a beautiful job.

Decoupage (or découpage): the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cut outs onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf, etc. Commonly an object like a small box or an item of furniture is covered by cutouts from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers. Each layer is sealed with varnishes (often multiple coats) until the "stuck on" appearance disappears and the result looks like painting or inlay work. The traditional technique used 30-40 layers of varnish which were then sanded to a polished finish. This was known in 18th century England as The Art of Japanning after its presumed origins. [Wikipedia]

CELEBRATING JEFF NUTTALL

(Above): The front-line of Brenda's Boyfriends, with Jeff Nuttall on cornet, playing live in 1980. (Photo by George Perkin)

(Below): A 1990 photo of Jeff in his beloved Volvo ('Celia') with one his hand-made friends ('Auntie') in the passenger seat. Photo taken in Nelson, Lancashire By Claire McNamee.
Purchase 'Jeff Nuttall's Wake on Paper' and 'Jeff Nuttall's Wake on CD'

My 1985 audio interview with Jeff Nuttall is now available for download at the Audio Generalist. Please check it out. The full back story to the interview can be found at this previous post: Jeff Nuttall: Bomb Culture and Beyond

By way of introduction to Mr Nuttall (what a great name for a prankster and animateur), here is the obituary written for The Guardian (12 Jan 2004) by Michael Horovitz and used with his permission. Hear MH on the Audio Generalist

'Jeff Nuttall, who has died aged 70 was a catalyst, perpetrator and champion of rebellion and experiment in the arts and society. Bomb Culture, his 1968 chronicle of the emergence of internationalist counter-culture in Britain, remains a primary source and manifesto for the post-Hiroshima generation.

The vision of Jeff's youth was grounded in "a faith that, given liberation, the human spirit would predominate. I imagined some kind of stone age village. People would build their own houses imaginatively and live there sophisticatedly and in a literate way and they would live with their hands and their minds and they would not be dictated to by anybody selling them anything. People would have the opportunity of coming into their true self, which was generous and creative and permissive".

He was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, but most of his childhood and teens were spent in Orcop near Herefordshire's Welsh border. His father was the village headmaster but the most formative years of Jeff's education were at Hereford and Bath art schools (1949-53). In 1954 he married Jane Louch, the painter who had taught him at Hereford, with whom he reared a daughter and three sons. They stayed more or less together for the next two decades.

From the late 1970s to 1984 Jeff drove around Britain, Australia and Portugal with Amanda Porter, as svelte as he was chubby, with whom he had another two boys. The rest of his life was shared with Jill Richards, a diminutive Welsh actor as hard-drinking and sharp-witted as himself.

From 1956-68 Jeff was a secondary school art master, and for the following 16 years he worked at art colleges, in Bradford, Leeds, and then as Liverpool polytechnic's head of fine art. But while bringing a transformative zest to those jobs, he was also getting on with his mission.

From 1964-67 he edited and circulated My Own Mag, a bran tub of anarchic texts and images, with William Burroughs lavishly featured in most issues. In 1966 International Times, the first London-based "underground" newspaper, was set up. Jeff contributed articles and cartoons to IT and other underground publications which emerged in its wake.

Central to the burgeoning oral verse, jazz poetry, happenings and performance art movements, he also played effervescent jazz piano and scalding cornet in the Red Allen-Roy Eldridge idioms, and sang infectiously genial vocals. The humours of Fats Waller were recreated in Jeff's persona, yet he struck some on a brief encounter as a show-off. For many more he was an outstandingly original artist also possessed of a gift for helping others appreciate their own potential.

Other precursors whose legacies he extended were the dadaists, surrealists and beats, Dylan Thomas, John Bratby and kitchen sink painting, McGill postcards, bebop and northern music hall. In 1967 he co-founded the People Show, an improvising theatre troupe with which Jeff travelled, wrote and acted for five years.

From the mid-1980s he took cameo roles in films and television. Throughout his days he made and exhibited hundreds of lyrical-threatful-polemical artworks.

He was the Guardian's incisive poetry critic (1979-81) and during the last 40 years he published some 40 books. There were poetry, plays, fiction, memoirs, essays, and verbal portraits of kindred spirits like Blackpool's star mid-20th century comedian Frank Randle (King Twist, 1978) and the free jazz virtuoso Lol Coxhill (The Bald Soprano, 1989). Jeff's Selected Poems has just appeared (Salt Publications).

In 1990 Jeff summarised his artistic approach: "I make a line out of a rhythmic figure. The previous figure suggests the subsequent one. The rhythmic figures owe much to Charlie Parker's saxophone phrasing." Thus a characteristic Nuttall poem opens:

So brightly blisters the great regurgitating ribbon of the Thames .
Sculls skim through like springtime swallows.
Keels kiss tidal scum, lancing the stolen sun-boils
or bops to a stop, as in
The bee on wheels has laments on a stick
Wags weepy banners with gypsy ribbons ...
The tiny wheeled bee has the sky on a stick
Idly waves as she buzzes through the afternoon
Kicking the tears around like bean tins.

Two defining moments for Jeff - and for the future he considered crucial for human survival - were the beginnings of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1950s, with its anti-H-bomb marches and the first grand scale cosmopolitan poet-meet that filled the Albert Hall in June 1965. Jeff felt confirmed in that "all our separate audiences came to one place at the same time, a frisson for us all to savour as there had been at the first Aldermaston, and the underground was suddenly there on the surface, in open ground with a following of thousands".

Nuttall and John Latham had planned a happening for that gig which encaked them both top-to-toe in blue paint, but this blocked their pores, and Latham passed out. A hot bath was needed fast but the only bath in the building was in Sir Malcolm Sargent's dressing-room. The dazed duo tumbled gratefully in, to be discovered, reviving, by a caretaker, who assumed that unimaginable beatnik outrages were being enacted beneath his eyes.

In Jonathon Green's Days In The Life: Voices From The English Underground (1988), Jeff recalled "a shift between 1966 and 1967 from poetry and art and jazz and anti-nuclear politics to just sex and drugs, the arrival of capitalism. The market saw that these revolutionaries could be put in a safe pen and given their consumer goods. What we misjudged was the power and complexity of the media, which dismantled the whole thing. It bought it up. And this happened in 67, just as it seemed that we'd won".

Nuttall lived to see that spirit rekindled 35 years later, with wise children again marching, speaking, and acting out their hearts and minds against the philistines, profiteers, and warmongers who go on ruling the west.

He died on a Sunday, leaving the Hen and Chicks pub in Abergavenny, where his trad band's lunchtime gig had been the highspot of his week for 10 years. At his soul's incarnation in Elysium it will surely come to pass, as Jeff once dreamed, that "Spifflicate water-buffalo drunk on rainbow fish will snore beside the oval father where he basks". For the rest of us, as long as "global politics" fester in lies and pea-brained Hollywooden mega-violence, it is bollocks to them, and long live Jeff Nuttall.'

· Jeffrey Nuttall, polymath, born July 8 1933; died January 4 2004

JEFF NUTTALL 2 : BOMB CULTURE

(Left): The excellent cover for the 1970 Paladin edition (UK) of 'Bomb Culture', credited to 'Head Office'. Any clues as to who they were ?

The most well-known of Jeff Nuttall's works (and with good reason), 'Bomb Culture' is a fascinating and vivid insight into
the mindset and mores of the alternative/underground scenes of the 50s and 60s told by a man who was in the thicket of it. But it is much more than that.

Here is the back cover pull quote from Peter Fryer, writing in New Society: 'Fragments of autobiography? Anarchist manifesto? Slice of contemporary cultural history? Manual for young guerillas in the generation war? The Underground's epitaph by one who was in at its birth? Jeff Nuttall's book is all these and more...his book is a letter from a man who deaperately wants to share his terrible healing vision in the hope that we may profitably pool our madness and our sanities. He is a man I should like as a friend.'

Even more interesting is this extract from Dennis Potter's review in The Times: 'BOMB CULTURE is an abcess that lances itself. An extreme book, unreasonable but not irrational. Abrasive, contemoptuous, attitudinising, ignorant and yet brilliant...a book which you must read, as soon as possible.'

Here is a short but key extract from the book that goes to the heart of the book's theme:

‘What way we made in 1945 and in the following years depended largely on our age, for right at that point, at the point of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the generations became divided in a very crucial way.

‘The people who had passed puberty at the time of the bomb found that they were incapable of conceiving of life without a future. Their patterns of habit had formed, the steady job, the pension, the mortgage, the insurance policy, personal savings, support and respect for the protection of the law, all the paraphernalia of constructive, secure family life. They had learned their game and it was the only game they knew. To acknowledge the truth of their predicament would be to abandon the whole pattern of their lives. They would therefore have to pretend, much as they had pretended about ecstasy not being there, and they proceeded to pretend as cheerfully as ever. In any case, to look the danger in the eye might wreck the chances of that ultimate total security their deepest selves had contrived, death by H-bomb.

‘The people who had not yet reached puberty at the time of the bomb were incapable of conceiving of life with a future. They might not have had any direct preoccupation with the bomb. This depended largely on their sophistication. But they never knew a sense of future.

‘The hipster was there. Charlie Parker's records began to be distributed. The hipster became increasingly present in popular music and young people moved in his direction. They pretended too, but they did not enter the pretence at all cheerfully. In fact they entered the pretence reluctantly, in pain and confusion, in hostility which they increasingly showed. Dad was a liar. He lied about the war and he lied about sex. He lied about the bomb and he lied about the future. He lived his life on an elaborate system of pretence that had been going on for hun­dreds of years. The so-called 'generation gap' started then and has been increasing ever since.’

THE GENERALIST AUDIENCE

This is a snapshot of The Generalist's global audience, courtesy of Stat Counter, a wonderful service for all bloggers. Stories being accessed in this view of my blog's global traffic (16th December 2007) include stories on the Bering Bridge, on Arthur Brown, Tony Tyler, Mike Horowitz, Truman Capote, Al Gore, Johnny Depp, Joy Division etc etc

In case people wonder why anyone would spend 2 1/2 years writing hundreds of thousands of words - for free - the answer is in this image. After decades of working for mainstream newspapers and magazines, my blog gives me complete freedom to write about what I think is important, in a way of my own choosing. Equally important is the oppotunity to reach out to a genuinely global audience, of all cultures, backgrounds and thoughts.

Imagine if there was some global system whereby, when you wrote a book, you could log on to the internet and get a map of everyone who had taken your book to bed that night and was reading it. This blog gives me a feeling of real connection with an incredibly diverse global world.

I have written stuff every month since June 2005 - except for three months surrounding my mum's death - and the possibilities keep opening up before me.

Thanks to you all - past and present readers. Output is variable but consistently so. The plan is to keep this baby going until I run out of road. Hope you will join me for the ride.

Check out the Audio Generalist here

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: MEMORABILIA

Some of the first fruits of the extensive
archaeological dig into the HQ INFO archive,
currently undergoing an extensive cataloguing operation
From Top Left:

1. Band sticker for Chilli Willi and The Red Hot Pepper's
first album - 'Kings of the Robot Rhythm' -
released on Revelation Records in 1972.

2. Membership card for Radio Geronimo

3. Business card for Joint Enterprises, who sold
smoking paraphernalia of all kinds and imported
very cool US skins from the States

4. Sticker produced as part of the protest
movement connected with the 1971 Oz Obscenity Trial
at the Old Bailey - the longest obscenity trial in British legal history.

5. A dollar-bill sized handout advertising a
Spring Offensive to End the Vietnam War,
which was staged on Wednesday April 15th 1970.
Organised by the Vietnam Peace Parade Committee,
17 E 17th Street, New York

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: FEEDBACK

(Left to right) Nick Saunders and Nicholas Albery
(Photo by Mark Edwards/Still Pictures)






Back in August 2006 I published three posts (below) about Nicholas Albery, Nick Saunders the BIT Travel guide to India and Australia and the Arts Lab movement.
Previous postings from THE GENERALIST Archives (August 2006)
ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: BIT by bit

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: BIT Travel Guide

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: Arts Labs

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: Nicholas Albery

ALTERNATIVE SOCIETY 1970s: Nicholas Saunders

Regular readers will be interested in the following valuable feedback - one message which arrived almost a year ago, the second which came today.
Hi!
I am Josefine Speyer, the widow of Nicholas Albery and have just discovered your website, six and a half years after Nicholas' death. It gave me great pleasure to read about Nicholas and his doings in such detail. You must have known him or interviewed him? I wonder.

I have just been at a Christmas gathering yesterday organised by the Saturday Walkers Club which is going strong 10 years after Nicholas first published his 'Time Out Book of Country Walks.' There are now about 200 people who are doing various country walks every week. They have built up a tribe of walkers, many of them used to walk with Nicholas. They have published the 'Time Out Book of Country Walks 2'. Apart from getting exercise and keeping fit, the groups are a wonderful opportinity for networking and wideing ones social circle. They also organise theatre outings and other events, and several couples who first met on the walks are now happily married.

When Nicholas first came up with the idea of a self oganising walking group, I could not believe this kind of thing would work, but it did! And wonderfully so.

The Nicholas Albery Foundation is now The Natural Death Centre, which also runs the annual Poetry Challenge in October every year.

Nicholas died before his time. Had he been alive today he would be deeply involved in getting projects off the ground that create sustainable community, helping create discussion and ideas to stop the destruction of the environment, the issue of terrorism and thinking about a future that would allow for 'nature to be at ease'.

As he had written on a piece of paper, which he kept stuck on his bedroom mirror:
"My purpose in life is to use my imagination, humour and perseverance, through my writing, my projects and my helping people fulfil their potential, so as to help create a world in which people are warm, tolerant and kind to each other, nature is at ease and magic is alive."

Dear John

Just before he died in a car accident, I telephoned Nicholas Albery, who was then the leading light in the Natural Death Centre, and we were delighted to discover, during the ensuing conversation, that we had (unknowingly) collaborated to produce the first overland guide to India.

In 1970. I walked into the BIT offices in Notting Hill (founded by Lennon, as a kind of wild Underground advice centre) with a piece of paper. On it was written the details of how to get from Istanbul to Delhi overland using public transport (buses and trains) for £9.70.  This information had been given to me in Athens, at the then well-known YHA Hostel no.2, by an American deserter – a sergeant, I recall - from the Vietnam war.  Anyway, Albery was then attempting to compile the first overland to India guide for hippies, and was delighted to receive this information, which was duly incorporated into the guide (and the route worked, I discovered afterwards, though I never used it myself).  The guide itself began life as a few mimeographed sheets stapled together, but soon swelled from the ensuing feedback from the freaks who used it.  According to Nick, he then gave/sold it to Richard Branson (who then ran a seedy organic restaurant in Westbourne Park Road) who in turn gave/sold it on to Tony Wheeler, and the rest is history, save for the fact that Wheeler made a mint and we didn’t !

Terry Phelps   

JOY DIVISION: THE DOCUMENTARY

Source: http://members.aol.com/vmelo1/raw/joyd.html

The word of mouth starts here.

Last Friday night at the Duke of York's in Brighton - a night of torrential rain and strange encounters - The Generalist was fortunate enough to attend a special screening - as part of Brighton's excellent Cinecity film festival - of 'Joy Division', a new documentary.

Due for release in the UK next March, 'Joy Division' is a remarkable portrait of the key band behind the explosive and remarkable Manchester scene that transformed a decaying industrial city into a world-renowned centre of new style and culture.

Shot and directed by Grant Gee and scripted and researched by Jon Savage, 'Joy Division' is a work of great beauty and artistry, a powerful and emotional experience that will leave no viewer untouched.

I have no doubt that it will come to be seen as the definitive telling of the story of one of the truly great bands of the 20th century and of the city from whose streets they emerged.

What this curiously unsettling film makes you feel is that you’re been given some very deep insights into something huge, important and glorious, a feeling enhanced by the eyewitness accounts of those who witnessed the birth of Joy Division. They describe the impact it had on them in almost spiritual terms, in a way strangely reminiscent of the accounts of the scientists who witnessed the early nuclear tests.

The surviving band members recount that the strange chemistry that ran between them was so strong that the music just flowed out easily and that it was only after the songs were written that it became difficult.

The figure and fate of Ian Curtis is central to the film’s power. We witness his transformation from mild-mannered married man to otherworldly shamanic priest, dogged by epilepsy, racked by emotional confusion. He commands our attention, even in his absence.

Joy Division’s music is not comfortable listening. It is mysterious and profound. Like Stravinsky’s The Rites of Spring, time has only deepened its force. It seems to be eternally contemporary but also eternally challenging and disturbing on levels that other music just cannot reach.

The film plunges into their strange world, into a story which we know has a dark ending, with great force and artistry. Its scrupulous, innovative and stylish collage of sound and vision always adds dramatic and powerful forward motion to the story. Everything fits so beautifully, seems so exactly right at every moment, that you are just carried along, as if by a deep ocean current, towards events that you suddenly realise you’re not entirely comfortable about.

Joy Division were young lads in the early 20s, lads who admit they never saw a tree until they were 12 and who rode pigs round the street for amusement, beer boys with no prospects and a lot of onboard anger. This fuelled their twice-weekly rehearsals - held in artic conditions inside wrecked warehouses – where they forged a sound of resistance powerful enough to challenge the prevailing atmosphere of the city, governed at the time by a near-fascist Bible-reading police chief, in a Britain ruled by the grim forces of Dame Thatcher and all her minions.

There is some very dark territory here but - in another curious paradox - the film is both inspiring and life-affirming. It awakens your senses and your intellect in equal measure. It is a window into a world in which magic can happen, a strange parallel universe where one small gang of street kids can create a music that now stands alongside the greatest of its time and beyond.

THE AUDIO GENERALIST: NEW POSTINGS

Four important interviews have been added to the Audio Generalist in the last couple of months
for your listening pleasure.

First the two interviews I conducted in 1984 and 1986 with the famous foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski, who I have written about extensively here.

Second, the interview I conducted with Al Gore in 1992 on the eve of the Rio Earth Summit.
Read more abour Gore here

Thirdly, a brand new interview with the poet Michael Horovitz about his major new work 'A New Waste Land.' See previous posting here.

NORMAN MAILER NO MORE (1923-2007)

[Left: Norman Mailer outside the Roundhouse in London. Photo copyright ©Phil Franks. All rights Reserved. Used with permission. From the archives of the underground newspaper Frendz.)

A large tree has fallen in the forest. The seemingly indestructible force that was Norman Mailer has left the planet for adventures in other dimensions. Mailer has been part of my life since reading 'The Naked and the Dead' in my teens (reread a chunk of it recently and it still works). Remember seeing him being patronised by Michael Parkinson on British tv many years later and getting really angry. Mailer to me was an astounding writer and journalist whether it was the crackling reportage of 'Armies of the Night', 'Miami and the Siege of Chicago' and 'The Fight' or the epic retellings in fictional form of the life and death of Gary Gilmore ('An Executioner's Song') and life inside the CIA ('Harlot's Ghost')

[This is a giant slab of a book of which I read 566 pages - roughly halfway through. Its great but I ran out time. The hardback I bought is signed. For some reason I can't really convince myself that the signature is real - see below. Maybe someone out there can confirm.]




Left: A further interesting digression on 'Harlot's Ghost', found in The Generalist Archive.]

Mailer wrote a great book on the moon missions ('Of a Fire on the Moon'), an entertaining and wacky emotional essay on Marilyn Monroe ('Monroe') and a great overheated crime novel 'Tough Guys Don't Dance', which he also directed the film of. His final novel was 'The Castle in the Forest' (2007), an account of the youth of Adolf Hitler, narrated by a devil.

My single favourite piece of writing of his, which I have read time and again and which is a touchstone to me, is a short essay in 'Advertisments for Myself', first published in the UK in 1961.

Written in 1957, entitled 'The White Negro' and subtitled 'Superficial reflections on the hipster', it is a key text for getting an understanding of the feel and mood of those times. Its words ring
out about the psychic effect of the discovery of the concentration camps and the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This short extract will give you a strong taste:

A man knew that when he dissented, he gave a note upon his life which could be called in any year of overt crisis. No wonder then that these have been the years of conformity and depression. A stench of fear has come out of every pore of American life, and we suffer from a collective failure of nerve. The only courage, with rare exceptions, that we have been witness to, has been the isolated courage of isolated people.

It is on this bleak scene that a phenomenon has appeared: the American existentialist - the hipster, the man who knows that if our collective condition is to live with instant death by atomic war, relatively quick death by the State as /'univers concentrationnaire, or with a slow death by conformity with every creative and rebellious instinct stifled (at what damage to the mind and the heart and the liver and the nerves no research foundation for cancer will discover in a hurry), if the fate of twentieth-century man is to live with death from adolescence to premature senescence, why then the only life-giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self. In short, whether the life is criminal or not, the decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness, and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention, the life where a man must go until he is beat, where he must gamble with his energies through all those small or large crises of courage and unforeseen situations which beset his day, where he must be with it or doomed not to swing....'

AL GORE NOBEL NEWS

Hot on the heeels of the Nobel Peace Prize, the call is on for Gore to run for President in 2008. Naturally he has categorically denied that he will. Nowhere is this call stronger than at www.draftgore.com where you can buy a signed copy of this poster by Nashville artist J. William Myers








Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' was the subject of a recent court case in the UK, which tried to prevent the film's distribution to secondary schools throughout England and Wales, on the grounds that the film was politically biased and contained a number of significant errors of fact.

The full legal account of the case can be found here

The best overview of the case and the significant points it raised is Convenient Untruths on the Real Climate site. [Posted 15th October 2007]

It begins: 'Last week, a UK High Court judge rejected a call to restrict the showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (AIT) in British schools. The judge, Justice Burton found that "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" (which accords with our original assessment). There has been a lot of comment and controversy over this decision because of the judges commentary on 9 alleged "errors" (note the quotation marks!) in the movie's description of the science. The judge referred to these as 'errors' in quotations precisely to emphasize that, while these were points that could be contested, it was not clear that they were actually errors (see Deltoid for more on that).'

Who brought the case against the film?

Revealed: The Man Behind Court Attack on Gore Film
[Observer Oct 14th 2007]
Stewart Dimmock, who brought the case against 'An Inconvenient Truth' admitted he had recieved support from the Scottish-based New Party of which he is a member. The party has been funded to the tune of £1m by Robert Durward, a 'quarry magnate' who has also established a controversial lobbying group, The Scientific Alliance with political consultant Mark Adams of the public relations firm, Foresight Communications to promote biotechnology, genetically modified food, and climate change skepticism. [Wikipedia]

Three articles from 2003 in The Scotsman about the New Party and Durward:

New Party's paymaster: I'm no fascist : THE man bankrolling the launch of a new political party branded as fascist by the Scottish Tories yesterday broke his silence to reassure potential supporters: "I'm not a dictator - I just sound off a bit about things that annoy me."

Doubts grow over validity of new party: THE future of what was proclaimed to be Britain's newest political party appeared to be in serious doubt last night, with its plans to contest the Scottish parliamentary elections in May in disarray.

The rich recluse masterminding Britain's new party: WEALTHY, opinionated and with an axe to grind, the man bankrolling the launch of what is billed as Britain's newest political party is hardly the sort of person to keep his views to himself.

Similar efforts and groups are common in North America. The film and Al Gore have been the subject of sustained lobbying and disinformation campaigns by people who wish to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming. This extract from an article on a Canadian website and its accompanying sensitive graphic, is a prime example of the genre, in which the writer proceeds to riddle himself with errors.

Gore Nobel prize a travesty after court finds his film error-riddled

Canada Free Press website on October 17th 2007

'The dust is settling and much cynicism about the Nobel Peace awards has appeared throughout the media. A majority are not very complimentary, particularly about Al Gore who won the prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In taking this action, the Nobel committee have set at least two new precedents.

'Al Gore’s Prize is probably the first in history where the recipient’s work was found seriously deficient and misleading in a courtroom a week before the award. [Ed: Emphasis added: This is patently untrue]

'Some media articles made reference to this coincidence, but missed the more important point. It’s likely the committee had already made their decision when the court decision was made, but the deficiencies and problems were already well documented.

'This suggests either very poor research by the committee, lack of knowledge of climate science, or a purely political purpose to the award. Ironically, this underlines the problems of climate science. Most people don’t understand the science. It is so politicized that the proper scientific method of disproving the hypothesis is thwarted. Gore’s levels of appeal to emotionalism and fear have successfully overcome the facts. The Nobel committee has endorsed this approach.'

The author is Dr. Tim Ball who is Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project.
His bio reads: 'Dr. Ball is a renowned environmental consultant and former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Ball’s extensive science background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition, make him the ideal head of NRSP as we move into our first campaign, Understanding Climate Change.'

Copy on the NRSP website reads in part: 'Impractical and exorbitantly expensive policies directed towards ‘global climate control’, unrealistic emission standards and so-called ‘green energy’, promoted by ideologically-driven ‘environmentalists’, are being widely accepted and vigorously promoted by mass media and politicians at all levels of government. Rational debate on these issues is virtually non-existent and alternative points of view are not given a proper hearing. Many Canadians have never heard ‘the other side’ of issues such as climate change and alternative energy and they have been conditioned to believe the other side is always suspect.'

Meanwhile, the success of 'An Inconvenient Truth' has turned Gore into a media player of substance whose major connections are itemised below.

Al Gore has become a major presence in the Bay Area

San Francisco Chronicle (13th Oct 2007)

'From the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton Hotel room where he was persuaded to make his slide show into the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" to the Palo Alto environmental think tank [Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP)], that will receive his Nobel Prize cash award, part-time San Francisco resident Al Gore has become a major presence in the Bay Area.

'And that's not even mentioning Current TV, the Emmy Award-winning TV network he co-founded that's across the street from AT&T Park; his senior advisory role at Google; or the seat on the board of directors he has held at Apple Corp. since 2003. Or the stock options from both tech companies that have made him wealthy.'

Gore is Chairman of the Board of the ACP and 'has contributed some $5 million in residuals and profits from 'An Inconvenient Truth' to the organisation. He says he will contribute his Nobel share - $750,000 - to them also.

2006 posting on News Hounds
whose slogan is 'We Watch Fox So You Don't Have To':

John Gibson had Susan Estrich on Big Story today (19^th May 2006):
'Gibson brought up Gore's "huge fortune" from his early investment in Google, speculating that he could write a check to pay for the campaign and woudn't need to raise funds. He prodded Estrich for some estimates of Gore's wealth and she at first said "10's of millions" and then speculated that it could be 100 million adding that he has some strong ties in Silicon Valley.'

Read our extensive Previous Postings

I Bought Al Gore Lunch
click on this then scroll down again to this point
- article string will be attached below

Al Gore 2: An Inconvenient Truth

direct link

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: GERARD PIEL'S HISTORY

Scientific American has always been one of my favourite magazines so was delighted to discover in the Generalist Archives - currently undergoing a major overhaul, of which more anon - an interesting correspondence with Gerard Piel, the former publisher and chairman of the magazine, who



sadly died on September 5th 2004, at the age of 89. A true ambassador of science, he traveled widely and was much loved and honoured for his pioneering role in the development of popular science journalism and for his global citizenship.

Read the magazine's own obituary on this important and gracious man.

I say gracious because in 1975, when I was 25 years old and he was 60, I wrote to him regarding our book 'An Index of Possibilities' to ask him whether he could possibly write something for us on the history of the magazine. To my astonishment (bear in mind he did not know me from Adam) he sent me a long three page letter on 29th May 1975, published here for the first time:The reference to the 'boys in the back room' was a suggestion that we might have ideas to contribute to the mag. A number were submitted (at present cannot find copies of the letters I wrote to him - the other half of the conversation). Again Gerard Piel was kind enough to respond as follows:

Links:

What Gerard Piel Knows

Obituary: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Obituary: Global Policy Forum

There is a fairly substantial entry for Scientific American in Wikipedia but just a poor eight-line stub on Gerard Piel. Hopefully someone out there will take this on.

Wikipedia says: The partners - publisher Gerard Piel, editor Dennis Flanagan, and general manager Donald H. Miller, Jr. - created ...the Scientific American magazine of the second half of the twentieth century. Miller retired in 1979, Flanagan and Piel in 1984, when Gerard Piel's son Jonathan became president and editor. In 1986 it was sold to the Holtzbrinck group of Germany, who have owned it since. Donald Miller died in December, 1998. Gerard Piel in September 2004 and Dennis Flanagan in January 2005.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS

Above: X-ray portrait of a healthy young woman wearing a necklace. The 'density slicing' is not electronic in this case. The colours were produced by a new kind of photographic paper. A normal x-ray was printed on a special emulsion, using several exposures of different lengths, and gradually building up the various colours according to the shades of grey in the original negative. [Credit: Agfa Gevaert]

Gerard Piel was back in touch on the 26 January 1978 in connection with our newly-published book 'Worlds Within Worlds'.

He wrote: 'You put together a fantastic collection of pictures. It will make a great swipe file for generations of editors yet to come. Will the book have a publisher over here? We cannot tantalise our readers with reviews of books they cannot lay hands on. Especially this one.'

In fact the book was published by Secker & Warburg in London in 1977 and by Holt Rinehart Winston in the States (with a different cover) the following year.

The book was reviewed in the December 1978 Scientific American by the eminent Philip Morrison in his annual Christmas round up of science books for younger readers, alongside a book of Victorian science illustrations called 'Album of Science: The Nineteenth Century.'

I think I can rightly claim 'Worlds Within Worlds' was my original idea, inspired as I remember it, by an advert that appeared in an issue of Sci Am, which showed an early brain scan image. I thought a collection of scientific imagery would make a good book - and so it turned out. The book was produced by four of us - myself, John Chesterman, John Trux and Michael Marten and was designed by Richard Adams.

I believe this book was the first popular survey of the whole range of scientific imagery - heat, x-ray, satellite, hi-speed. micro - to be published. Certainly most of the scientists we contacted were surprised that anyone outside of their field would be interested in their work. What we saw was the beauty and artistry behind many of these images. In the early 1970s the popularisation of science was still in its infancy and such images were not widely seen at the time.

Our book was won an honourable mention at the Eighth Annual Children's Science Book Award presented by the New York Academy of Sciences at a ceremony on April 17th 1979 which we were unable to attend. Philip Morrison was one of the judges.

The book was serialised over six pages in the Sunday Times magazine. New Scientist described it as 'a large, colourful, eyecatching picture book and could be appreciated as a work of art alone on the strength of its pictures. It is supplemented however with a delightful and carefully thought out text which lifts it well out of the coffee-table league. The Observer called it 'one of the most enlightening pieces of pop science publishing in a long time.' Nature reviewed it under the title 'A Talent to Amuse' and concluded: 'An intelligent choice of pictures and words makes this a volume that will fascinate and inspire.'

British Book News (March 1978) said: 'This is a book in which the beauty of the normally unseen world is fascinatingly revealed. Until comparatively recently that world was unseen because our eyes are sensitive only to a very narrow range of wavelengths. However, recent developments in the use of radiations other than visible light for the recording of the world about (and inside) us have vastly extended our knowledge of this world. Within the last ten years, techniques have been perfected which have made visible things about which we could previously only theorise...This is truly a book which demonstrates that science need not be dull but is an excitging 'journey into the unknown' as the book's sub-title so rightly claims.'

One of the legacies of the book was the Science Photo Library, created in the mid-1970s by Michael Marten, which has grown to become one of the premier photo agencies of its kind in the world

Right: Coloured magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan of the brain from the side, combined with a coloured neck and skull X-ray.
Credit: SOVEREIGN, ISM / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY