* (restored)

 

‘Dirk Bogarde was the biggest British star of fifties cinema: a heart-throb whose protestations of being a “serious actor” was seen as just another pretty boy’s whinge. He made several films which stretched his range but it was with Victim that he really broke out of his straightjacket. In it he played a married homosexual fearful of blackmail. The Servant consolidated his position as a great actor and got him a BFA award. He got a second one for Darling. By now he was in demand by great European directors. He worked with Resnais, Fassbinder and Visconti for whom he did The Damned and Death in Venice (which contains possibly his greatest performance). As his career ran out of steam he began a remarkable series of autobiographies and then moved into writing novels. He had lived in Provence since the seventies, only returning to England to live fulltime when Forwood needed medical treatment during his final illness. He continued to live in England after his longtime lover Anthony Forwood’s death for the last ten years of his life. After his death his body was buried in Provence. As an actor he was never easy to like. There was reserve about him that bordered on contempt and yet, in the right role, he could suggest limitless suffering behind his austere facade.’ — Britishpictures.com

 

17 films and 16 missives

from ‘Cast a Dark Shadow’ (1955)

 

‘Dirk Bogarde digressed from his usual lightweight image to portray a smarmy murderer in Cast a Dark Shadow. He kills his first wife (Mona Washbourne), hoping to claim her inheritance. Surprise! The inheritance is a myth. Thus Bogarde sets his sights on barkeeper Margaret Lockwood, whom he knows to be heavily insured. But Lockwood is possessed of a naturally suspicious nature, making Bogarde’s second murder plot a bit more delicate than his first. Cast a Dark Shadow is a too-literal adaptation of Janet Green’s stage play Murder Mistaken.’ — Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

‘Cinema is just a form of masturbation. Sexual relief for disappointed people. Women write and say, “I let my husband do it because I think it`s you lying on top of me”. The local police were always having to come and remove girls from their nesting places under the bushes by my home. Like an orphan girl who twice escaped from a home at Birmingham. We only discovered her because she used the potting shed as a lavatory which seemed to indicate an alien presence. I had my flies ripped so often that eventually, in public, I had to have a side zip… can you imagine anything more humiliating than that?’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

‘Doctor at Sea’ (1955)

 

‘I’ve got a good left profile and a very bad right profile. I was the Loretta Young of my day. I was only ever photographed on the left-hand profile. But I simply love the camera and it loves me. But the amount of concentration you have to use to feed the camera is so enormous that you’re absolutely ragged at the end of a day after doing something simple – like a look.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘Libel’ (1959)

 

‘Everyone wants to get into movies, but there aren’t any movies left.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘Song Without End’ (1960)

 

‘In 1959, Bogarde went to Hollywood to play Franz Liszt in Song Without End (1960) and to appear in Nunnally Johnson’s Spanish Civil War drama The Angel Wore Red (1960) with Ava Gardner. Both were big-budgeted films, but hampered by poor scripts, and after both films failed, Bogarde avoided Hollywood from then on. He was reportedly quite smitten with his French Song Without End co-star Capucine, and wanted to marry her. Capucine, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, was bisexual with an admitted preference for women. The relationship did not lead to marriage, but did result in a long-term friendship. It apparently was his only serious relationship with a woman.’ — Imdb

‘The kind of acting I used to do no longer exists because your prime consideration is the budget, running time, the cost – and whether they’ll understand it in Milwaukee.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

‘Victim’ (1961)

 

‘For Victim, Dirk Bogarde, Britain’s revered matinee idol, risked his career to portray Melville Farr, a closeted gay lawyer at a time when homosexual acts were a crime. When his former lover Jack (Peter McEnery) is blackmailed, Farr — who is married — agrees to investigate. The case is complicated by his fear of exposure and a sudden mysterious death.’ — Phase9

‘It is extraordinary, in this over-permissive age, to believe that this modest film could ever have been considered courageous, daring or dangerous to make. It was, in its time, all three.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘HMS Defiant’ (1962)

 

‘My views were formulated as a 24-year-old officer in Normandy … On one occasion the Jeep ahead hit a mine … Next thing I knew, there was this chap in the long grass beside me. A bloody bundle, shrapnel-ripped, legless, one arm only. The one arm reached out to me, white eyeballs wide, unseeing, in the bloody mask that had been a face. A gurgling voice said, ‘Help. Kill me.’ With shaking hands I reached for my small pouch to load my revolver … I had to look for my bullets — by which time somebody else had already taken care of him. I heard the shot. I still remember that gurgling sound. A voice pleading for death …That hardens you: You get used to the fact that it can happen. And that it is the only sensible thing to do.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘The Servant’ (1963)

 

from a letter to Joseph Losey: ‘Of course you WOULD be distressed by the vicious reviews of ‘The Servant’, your baby and mine … Well, I loved it… and approved it, and was terribly pleased to get the coverage…. things on which you did not comment.. like us both trying to work for English Films and make them go… seem to have passed over your huge head…. the fact that I did NOT say you were pissed out of your mind, and disgusting, the night I walked off the set… and took ALL the blame; you choose to ignore… correctly, I suppose…. If one thinks one is God one must behave as God… but I dont, honestly, see how we could work together again….. we have said all there is to say as actor-director…… and you decided, a while ago, to take another path my dear.. the one with the lolly and the lushness…. I have kept to my rather wobbley one; it has been a bit of a wrench… but, after all, I had the lush one before Our Time, with Rank, I suppose…. so now it is refreshing to be free…. and to choose. It is frightning like shit…. but it is honour regained.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from “I Could Go On Singing’ (1963)

 

This is the infamous “Hospital Scene” from the film I Could Go On Singing starring Judy Garland and Dirk Bogarde. The scene is a tour de force of acting skill from Garland, proving that not only was she one of our greatest singers, she was one of the finest actresses of her time. The scene is one continuous take as the director saw the raw emotion behind Garland’s performance and did not want to interrupt it. You can actually see the key lighting around Garland’s eyes move and try to reposition several times as she performs this scene.

‘It was said of me recently that I suffered from an Obsessional Privacy. I can only suppose it must be true. It’s a very good thing that the camera can photograph thought. It’s so much better than a paragraph of sweet polemic.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘Hot Enough for June’ (1964)

 

‘The earliest of the Bond spoofs and still one of the best, this bright comedy has a reluctant Bogarde drafted into service in the British Secret Service for a dangerous mission in Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia, where he finds himself seduced, pursued, and never quite sure what he is doing there.’ — David Vineyard, Mystery File

 

from ‘Modesty Blaise’ (1966)

 

‘In Modesty Blaise, Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) is an effete master criminal who’s successfully convinced Interpol of his death. His headquarters are on a private Mediterranean island, in an abandoned monastery equipped with electronic equipment and adorned with modern art. His first lieutenant is a fussy accountant, McWhirter (Clive Revill, in another role) and the place is well-stocked with gourmet food and hunky henchmen. Modesty Blaise came at the height of Joseph Losey’s intense, moody string of dramatic hits in the ’60s. A light comedy SuperSpy thriller without aspirations to deeper meanings, it garnered a lot of anticipation. What would the director of the sexy sofa scene in The Servant do with sexy Antonioni star Monica Vitti? When the film was shown at Cannes, it was booed, and from then on the question was, ‘Why did you make Modesty Blaise?” It was if they were saying, “Why did you bother doing subject matter for which you were totally inappropriate?”‘ — DVD Savant

 

from ‘Sebastian’ (1968)

 

‘Sebastian (Dirk Bogarde) is an undisciplined mathematics genius who works in the ‘cipher bureau’ of the British government. While cracking enemy codes, Sebastian finds time to romance co-worker Susannah York. The film dwells upon Sebastian’s rather lax morals (even by 1968 standards), culminating in his refusal to commit himself to York once he’s rendered her pregnant, and, frankly, this aspect of the story is more fascinating than the main espionage plotline.’ — Movies&television;

‘I don’t lose my temper often; about once every twenty years perhaps, and when I do, it is normally with my fellow actors, the majority of whom are dreadfully dull and boring and eccentric and full of something called valium.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

‘The Damned’ trailer (1969)

 

‘We went to the Cannes Film Festival for ‘The Damned’ premiere. Cannes is my idea of hell. You see all the people you thought were dead and all the people who deserve to be dead. After a while, you start to think you might be dead, too. People were so surprised by my interest in being in The Damned. They wondered why I made the turn in my career that I did, working with Visconti, Resnais, Tavernier, Fassbinder after all the matinee idol nonsense. But I decided at a certain point that I`ll only work with new people. If you stick with your contemporaries, you’re dead.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘Death in Venice’ (1971)

 

from a letter to Joseph Losey: ‘And remember about Death in Venice …. I know that you have long wanted to make it. You told me until I was blue in the face…. but you never asked me to do it…. or offered me the chance, or remotely thought that I even could! Visconti, in May last year, did…. I was amazed and thrilled to my marrow…. he gave no reasons, except to say, in a rather grudging way, that I was ‘like a dead pheasant… hanging by the neck, and almost ready to drop.’ the reference being, I hope, that I was RIPE. And also, that I do look like Mahler, and that I was ‘one of the most perfect actors in the world today on the screen.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

from ‘The Night Porter’ (1973; 4:14)

 

‘By the early 1970s, Bogarde, who was himself gay, had appeared in a series of dark and sexually explicit films which explored subjects as diverse as homosexual lust and the rise of the Nazis. The actor’s letters, which were published in 2006, reveal, however, that he was tired of such subjects. In 1975, he wrote: “I simply will not engage in any more films where people piss into chamber pots, bugger little boys in railway lavatories or indulge in threesome sex situations. I am not shocked by any of this. God knows. But bored rigid. I HATE the work now. Honestly … during my fifth simulated orgasm on the film with [Liliana] Cavani in The Night Porter I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing at 53 with my back on the floor, my flies undone, being straddled by beloved Miss Charlotte Rampling.”‘ — The Telegraph

 

from ‘Providence’ (1977)

 

‘In 1978, Bogarde wrote a letter to his friend and regular correspondent Dilys Powell, a well known film critic of the era, about working with Sir John Gielgud on Providence, the first English-language film by Alain Resnais, the French director. “Actually John Gielgud and I were fully hard put to understand much of what we said! ‘Can’t understand a word dear!’ he used to cry…’It really doesn’t make sense Alain… I’ll say it, but I haven’t the foggiest notion of what it means.’ Mind you, he claims that he doesn’t understand half of Shakespeare.”‘ — The Telegraph

 

‘A Bridge Too Far’ trailer (1977)

 

‘Bogarde and Attenborough are known to have fallen out over their collaboration on the 1977 war epic, A Bridge Too Far. But the frequency and viciousness with which he attacks Attenborough will surprise many. In a letter dated September 27, 1988, Bogarde tells the film critic Dilys Powell that he is dreading an approaching Bafta celebration where he is to be honoured by “that idiot Attenborough“. A month later, Bogarde rejoices in the fact that he managed to keep “Sir R.A. off stage” for the entire course of the evening. In 1989, Bogarde apologised to Powell for staying away from an event being held in her honour, but explains that he was afraid of meeting “Attenborough and all that beaming falsity“.’ — The Telegraph

 

from ‘Despair’ (1978)

 

‘Rainier Werner Fassbinder’s Despair is primarily a star vehicle rather than a Fassbinder, Ballhaus or Nabakov film. Bogarde takes over the film displacing the director, making the film flowing, believable, charming, unpretentious, but in so doing looses all of the crazed innocence present the earlier films. In a sense Despair could be grouped with other Dirk Bogarde films about the Third Reich, such as Visconti’s The Damned or Cavani’s The Night Porter. For Bogarde had become typecast in the mid-70s as a German bourgeois or industrialist suffering or being made to suffer at the time of the beginning of the Third Reich. Bogarde´s performance is the film. He makes wealth believable, emotions palpable, sexuality intriguing, even heterosexuality for Bogarde was not heterosexual. In other words he takes a Faßbinder film and forges it into an entirely convincing filmic experience. But it may also be true that Dirk Bogarde was the wrong actor for Fassbinder.’ — Paul Murphy, Perameter Magazine

‘I was very good in Despair … This is not conceit, merely a statement of fact. Had to appear at nasty Cannes Festival … I do detest Americans and Australians … but it is luvvly to know one is ADORED. Tote’s tests are costing me a fortune … I fear we’ll have to move back to London. It will feel like an amputation … But as long as its not Kentish Town.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

 

1979: ‘I have decided to give the Movies a rest. I DETEST the work … and most of the time I detest the people. The fact that I have been chosen by Alain Resnais, or Visconti, or Fassbinder helps tremendously … but really, when all is said and done, it is what my Father always said, ‘No job for a man.’ — Dirk Bogarde

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. That Cuddly Toys video is cool. I didn’t know it/them. Thanks, bud. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yeah, the extreme hype around Jobriath was somebody’s really bad idea. I remember reading all the press about how he was going to have a million dollar-plus stage act with a giant animatronic King Kong and holograms and so on and so forth. I saw what I think was his first concert at the Troubadour, and, inevitably, as interesting and odd as he was, you couldn’t help but feel like … that’s it?! I love ‘Velvet Goldmine’ too. My fave Todd Haynes film. Well, it and ‘Superstar’. ** Sypha, Hi. I’ll get to it for sure. And sooner than later. Judging things that one has no or very minimal understanding of and making vehement public pronouncements about them is the new black. Almost makes one long for the days when people just said ‘groovy’ about everything. Almost. As usual, you feel you aren’t busy writing and meanwhile you’re busier writing than most writers out there. But that works for you, and that’s the only thing that matters. ** Steve Erickson, I like Brett Smiley. There’s a tad amount of guilty pleasure there, but still. He was another Jobriath thing on a smaller scale. As or more interesting as/than his fey pretty gay boy persona and tunes is the transparency of Andre Loog Oldham’s huge infatuation with him, to the point where Oldham really seemed to believe Brett Smiley could be a giant star. I would start with the Chinn/Chapman era of Suzi Quatro for sure. Her stuff outride that perimeter can be a bit standard fare. I pretty much agree with everything you said about online political discussion. ‘Bad faith’ is an excellent way to corral it, I think. Great that the Q&A went so well, and wonderful news about his new film. Yes, do not underestimate the value of your support for his work with that series. I think you shared your Penny Lane review the other day? No, no, excuse me, that was the interview. (Insufficient coffee). Anyway … Everyone, If you haven’t read Steve Erickson’s review of Penny Lane’s new documentary ‘Hail Satan?’, you can and even maybe should, and doing so only requires a light tap on these words. ** Corey Heiferman, Big luck re: your test today if you need extra-added luck at all, though it sounds like you don’t. But still, one can’t overdose on luck as far as I know. So take mine. Please. Yes, I do hope we’ll have better luck than Wilde did in that instance. Nice. That’s the Israeli Eurovision entry? Wow. He looks like an escort/slave. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Hebrew — assuming that’s Hebrew? — being utilised by a mouth employed in singing an emo-ish power ballad before. That was interesting. It sounds so textural that way. Thanks. Good luck winning Eurovision with that entry, though. Wow. ** liquoredgoat, Hi, man. I chose a fair number of fairly obscure Glam acts and deliberately avoided the obvious one unless it was obvious but loveable to me. I haven’t read ‘Pisces’ yet, no. Thank you for the alert. I like her work. And … I can’t remember if I’ve read that Megan Boyle. I think so? I’ll have to go check. Let me know what you think or either or both. ** Misanthrope, Hey. My guess is that Suede was fully aware of the Sweet cross-reference and working it a bit for the knowing. If someone in my FB feed becomes too obnoxious to me, I channel my ‘you’re an idiot’ comment into unfollowing them. But even then only after repeated, relentless obnoxiousness. I did just unfollow a person who literally does nothing but post worship of Bernie Sanders and vitriol against every other Democratic candidate but that was out of total boredom. Mark writing a love story, ha ha. But, hey, you never do know. I wouldn’t  hold the old breath though. Or not for too long. ** Right. I decided to restore this old informative and yet saucy Dirk Bogarde post today. Maybe you’ll understand why. In any case, see you tomorrow.

 

NEO
Milk ‘N’ Cookies
Blackfoot Sue
Jobriath
Jet
Mick Ronson
Hello
Brett Smiley
New York Dolls
Space Waltz
Mott the Hoople
Iron Virgin
Suzi Quatro
Smokey
Silverhead
Sparks
Cockney Rebel
Alice Cooper
Supernaut
Sweet

 

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NEO Tran-sister (1976)
Neo’s first proper release was their “Trans-sister” single, released on Jet Records in November 1976, but Jet ultimately decided to drop the band from their roster before releasing their debut album. Then, Martin Gordon left to form the Radio Stars, and to complicate things further, North had to return to the States because his work visa had expired. Neo’s album ultimately did get issued on the UK’s Aura imprint in 1979 — as a North solo album titled Neo — but by that point North was already back in NYC, releasing music on his Neo Records imprint.

 

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Milk ‘N’ Cookies (Dee, Dee You’re) Stuck On A Star (1975)
Milk ‘N’ Cookies were a band in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they’d shown up a few years later, they could have been part of the poppy end of the late-’70s/early-’80s punk/new wave explosion. If they’d made their name a year or two earlier, they could have been part of the glam explosion that inspired them. And if they’d been from Los Angeles or the U.K., they’d probably have found friendlier press. But it was their fate to emerge in Long Island, New York in 1974, where they didn’t fit in with the sound of the day. They had to settle for being an influential and revered cult item instead of achieving genuine rock stardom.

 

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Blackfoot Sue Sing, Don’t Speak (1972)
Blackfoot Sue was a British pop/rock band, formed in 1970 by the twin brothers Tom and David Farmer and Eddie Golga. A single released in August 1972, “Standing in the Road” on the Jam label No. JAM 13, reached number 4 on the UK Singles Chart. Lack of further tangible success left them labelled as one-hit wonders. However, they did have another record enter the UK Singles Chart. “Sing Don’t Speak” reached number 36 in December 1972. Further unsuccessful singles appeared on the DJM and MCA labels. According to Allmusic, “they were written off as a teen sensation and broke up in 1977”.

 

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Jobriath Ecubyan (1973)
Bruce Wayne Campbell (December 14, 1946 – August 4, 1983), known by his stage name Jobriath, was an American rock musician and actor. He was the first openly gay rock musician to be signed to a major record label, and one of the first internationally famous musicians to die of AIDS.

 

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Jet Nothing To Do With Us (1975)
Jet were a glam rock band from London formed in 1974. They released one album in 1975 before splitting up, with the bulk of the band going on to become the punk/new wave band Radio Stars.

 

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Mick Ronson Only After Dark (1974)
For inspiration, Ronson relied on Annette Peacock’s 1972 album I’m the One; he used the title track and her arrangement of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”. Two songs were co-written by Ronson with Scott Richardson, who had been involved in the Ann Arbor music scene since the mid-’60s and came to prominence as lead singer of the SRC. Richardson was brought into the Bowie camp by Angie Bowie, who met him through Ron Asheton of the Stooges. During the recording of the album, Ronson considered putting together a new band with Richardson, Aynsley Dunbar, and Trevor Bolder, to be called the Fallen Angels, but plans fell through.

 

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Hello New York Groove (1975)
The band’s biggest success came in the UK and Germany in 1974. Their Top 10 hits in the UK Singles Chart were “Tell Him” (a cover of The Exciters 1963 hit) and “New York Groove”, the latter of which was written by Argent band member Russ Ballard. “New York Groove” was later covered to provide a solo Billboard Hot 100 chart hit in the U.S., for the rock guitarist Ace Frehley of the band Kiss. In Germany, their subsequent singles “Star Studded Sham” and “Love Stealer” reached the Top 20, but failed to chart in the UK where glam had fallen out of favour.

 

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Brett Smiley Space Ace (1974)
Smiley began his career as a child actor, playing Oliver on Broadway. In 1974, Smiley—who, at the time, was managed and produced by Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham—recorded an album, Breathlessly Brett. The album, which included the songs “Va Va Va Voom” and “Space Ace”, remained unreleased until 2004, when RPM Records included it as part of its Lipsmackin’ 70s collection. In 2004, rock biographer Nina Antonia published a book about Smiley, The Prettiest Star: Whatever Happened to Brett Smiley. Smiley still performed occasionally until 2015 in New York City, and was recording songs for a new CD. He died on January 8, 2016, after a lengthy battle with HIV and hepatitis.

 

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New York Dolls Jet Boy (1973)
The New York Dolls created punk rock before there was a term for it. Building on the Rolling Stones’ dirty rock & roll, Mick Jagger’s androgyny, girl group pop, the Stooges’ anarchic noise, and the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex, the New York Dolls created a new form of hard rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal. Their drug-fueled, shambolic performances influenced a generation of musicians in New York and London, who all went on to form punk bands. And although they self-destructed quickly, the band’s first two albums remain among the most popular cult records in rock & roll history.

 

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Space Waltz Fraulein Love (1974)
Space Waltz was a New Zealand glam rock band fronted by Alastair Riddell. In 1974, they had a no 1 hit in New Zealand with “Out on the Street”. In 1974, the group’s image created a bit of a stir when they appeared on Studio One’s New Faces. They went into the finals but were unsuccessful. However they were a hit with the rock fans. They were noticed by EMI and the label promptly signed up.

 

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Mott The Hoople Marionette (1974)
David Bowie had long been a fan of the band. After learning from Watts that they were about to split, he persuaded them to stay together and offered them “Suffragette City” from his then yet-to-be-released Ziggy Stardust album. They turned it down. Bowie also penned “All the Young Dudes” for them and it became their biggest hit.

 

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Iron Virgin Rebels Rule (1974)
Iron Virgin were a Scottish glam rock band. Their early stage garb has been compared to A Clockwork Orange, with their later stage costumes similar to American football uniforms, but with added iron chastity belts. The band formed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1972 where they were discovered by Decca Records producer Nick Tauber and signed to the label’s “progressive” offshoot, Deram. Their first single was “Jet”, a cover from Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run album. Recorded in December 1973, the song was released in February 1974. It was getting exposure until McCartney himself issued his version as a single, effectively smothering Iron Virgin’s recording.

 

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Suzi Quatro 48 Crash (1973)
In 1972, Quatro embarked as a support act on a UK tour with Thin Lizzy and headliners Slade. Rak arranged for her to use Thin Lizzy’s newly acquired PA system during this, incurring a charge of £300 per week that enabled the Irish band to effectively purchase it at no cost to themselves. In May 1973, her second single “Can the Can” (1973) – which Philip Auslander describes as having “seemingly nonsensical and virtually unintelligible lyrics” – was a No. 1 hit in parts of Europe and in Australia. “Can the Can” was followed by three further hits: “48 Crash” (1973), “Daytona Demon” (1973) and “Devil Gate Drive” (1974). “Can the Can”, “48 Crash” and “Devil Gate Drive” each sold over one million copies and were awarded gold discs, although they met with little success in her native United States, where she had toured as a support act for Alice Cooper.

 

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Smokey DTNA (1976)
John “Smokey” Condon was a bewitchingly beautiful Baltimore transplant, himself no angel after spending his teenage years partying with the John Waters crowd. EJ Emmons was a budding record producer from New Jersey, already starting to work in small studios around Hollywood. Condon had marched in New York the night after the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and so by the time he and EJ created Smokey, they weren’t about to hold back. Released in 1974, first single Leather b/w Miss Ray wasn’t just openly gay, it was exultantly, unapologetically gay, examining front-on the newly-liberated leather and drag scenes thriving in America’s urban centres.

 

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Silverhead Hello New York (1973)
They recorded two studio albums, Silverhead (1972) and 16 and Savaged (1973), and were a part of the glam rock music scene of the 1970s. Though they had no real commercial success, Silverhead were serious role models for many sleaze bands in the 1980s. In the UK they played support to bands such as Nazareth at Finsbury Park and Osibisa at the Brixton Sundown, and were the lead band in the Dagenham Roundhouse. Work on a third studio album (working title ‘Brutiful’) started in 1974, but the group disbanded in July 1974 before it was finished.

 

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Sparks In The Future (1975)
Sparks’ Indiscreet was released in October 1975, nearly a year after their previous album. It was not as successful as Kimono My House or Propaganda; reaching #18 on the UK Album Chart and #169 in the US. The group’s next two albums were even less successful in Europe and the US. They would not garner significant attention until 1979’s No. 1 In Heaven. “Get In The Swing” and “Looks, Looks, Looks” were released as singles. Like the parent album they were only moderately successful reaching #27 and #26 in the UK.

 

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Zolar X Space Age Love (1974)
From 1973 to 1981 Zolar X became legendary on the west coast USA for dressing and acting like space-aliens 24 hours a day. They spoke ceaselessly in an “alien language” of their own invention, which would amuse, but often infuriate the public at large. They are referred to as “Los Angeles’ first glam rock band” in the 1998 book Glam by Barney Hoskyns.

 

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Cockney Rebel Cavaliers (1974)
Steve Harley managed to irritate a significant segment of the music press with his self-aggrandisement, even as their music was getting rave reviews and gaining a wide audience. It was becoming clear that Harley regarded the band as little more than accompaniment to his own agenda, and already there were signs that things would not last, despite their having a big hit with their second single, “Judy Teen”. In May 1974, the British music magazine, NME reported that Cockney Rebel were to undertake their first British tour, with the highlight of the itinerary being a gig at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre on 23 June. There then followed the album The Psychomodo. Following the European single “Psychomodo”, a second single from the album, “Mr. Soft”, was also a hit. “Tumbling Down” was also issued in America as a promotional single. By this time the problems within the band had already reached a head, and all the musicians, with the exception of Elliott, quit at the end of a successful UK tour.

 

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Alice Cooper Reflected (1970)
Pretties for You is the debut studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper. The group had yet to develop the more concise hard rock sound that they would become famous for. Most of the tracks feature unusual time signatures and arrangements, jarring syncopation, expressive dynamics, sound effects, proto-glam attitude and flamboyance, and an eclectic range of music influences.

 

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Supernaut I Like It Both Ways (1976)
This Perth, Australian band’s self-titled debut album was released in mid-November 1976 and peaked at No. 13, achieving double gold certification. By November they had supported gigs by “Lou Reed, Suzie Quatro and Sweet and wherever they play there is raging hysteria.” Julie Meldrum of The Canberra Times described their performance in Narrabundah, “trouble began when Perth rock group Supernaut, which thrives on ‘bopper’ appeal, came on stage. The crowd made a rush for the group and many had to be forcibly removed. Alter the group finished its set organisers had to appeal for the crowd to move back from the stage ‘or else someone will get hurt’.”

 

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Sweet Sweet F.A. (1974)
The band was formed in London in 1968 and achieved their first hit, “Funny Funny”, in 1971 after teaming up with songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman and record producer Phil Wainman. During 1971 and 1972, their musical style followed a marked progression from the Archies-like bubblegum style of “Funny Funny” to a Who-influenced hard rock style supplemented by a striking use of high-pitched backing vocals.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** h, Hi! Yeah, ‘Happenings’ were interesting work. Well, some of them. And artists still make what are technically ‘happenings’, but they’re tagged interactive performance and things like that. Oh, I don’t know what I learned from Shimamoto. I haven’t thought about it that way. Something, surely. I’m good. Right now the script of the new film is being translated into French, so we’re on hold until that’s finished. Then we’ll need to go over the translation meticulously and get the detailing and nuance-shifting right. Thanks about the gif work. And thank you so much again for the links you sent me. I’m excited, and that’s so thoughtful of you. Take care. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I didn’t find them devastating. They had their POVs and they carried through on those. Chotiner’s agenda was that Bret wrote a book about politics, and he was looking for ‘gotchas’, and Bret’s point was that he was writing about the response to politics. That’s what I saw. And until I read the book itself, it would be presumptuous to take a side. I hope the Kamran Heidari Q&A managed to circumvent the technical issues. ** David Ehrenstein, Really glad you enjoyed it. ** KeatonDeer, Me either. I live right next to Madeleine, and I still forget it’s a church all the time. I never find churches evil. They’re like overblown travel agencies to me. I’m immune to their poetry. Most of the Notre Dame glass is okay. Weirdly enough. Paris is already in the ‘pull up your bootstraps’ phase. Its okay. Thank you. ** Damien Ark, Hi. Oh, right, I need to overhear that new Beth Gibbons thing. It has been a pretty sweet music year so far, I’m down with that idea. I’ m gonna check out the things you’re into that I don’t know. Thanks, man. Yes, in fact Mr. Nulick’s book has a ‘welcome to the world’ post all to itself that’s coming up here on this coming Saturday. ** Sypha, Yeah, I guess The Matrix was a phenom, you’re right. I haven’t watched ‘Twin Peaks’ 3 yet because I’ve had non-stop work outputting to do, and I fear that it will sweep me in so deeply that that will fuck with the writing, much of which is ‘assigned’ and has no room to go astray. That’s basically why. That’s also why I still haven’t played the latest ‘Zelda’. Painful. Very cool about getting your own new hardcover in your very mitts. which reminds me I still need to order a copy. ** Corey Heiferman, Oh, what nice timing. I love when that happens with posts. It’s such a gamble on this end. Art can contextualise basically anything, it’s so cool. I have the second part of the 80s/90s LA performance artists posts coming up, and one of the artists in the post’s most famous work is an audio recording of him fucking a corpse in a morgue. So there you go. ** Misanthrope, Hi. All interesting art is fun. Or my idea of fun to quote that author you like. I guess me too about differences in opinion being an opportunity for thoughtfulness. I’m just not interested in getting in arguments, which are inevitably majority emotion-based, with people with whom I have no emotional relationship otherwise, i.e. people on social media or in comments sections. I find that, by which I guess I mean the adrenaline or whatever rush of getting emotionally overwrought, really unproductive. In that case, I prefer to read the angry comments of people I disagree with and think about where their passion is coming from and speculate as to why. Mark’s book, so good, right? ** Okay. I was in whatever mood I was, and that mood made me want to make a gig post featuring selective examples of Glam Rock from the genre’s center and more outer reaches, and that’s your meat and potatoes and dessert and beverage for today. See you tomorrow.