...with 2 strutting Music Players!



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now brings you the actual, all-inclusive history of Rock'n'Soul music each week.
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Today, the jaunty Jimmy Reed, the groover of Rock!
Hear 2 extensive music players, one of Reed and one of all his disciples from the 1950's to today!

Music Player quick-links:
Jimmy Reed
Jimmy Reed's disciples: 1950's-2010's

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The "Sesame Street" theme and many other famous songs we love all exist because of one Blues man.

Sometimes you can tell a history of Rock'n'Soul through the influence of one guitarist, or one voice, or one beat, or one song, or a groove. Jimmy Reed trademarked a groove that defined generations of music afterward.



Part 1: Rockin' With Reed!



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Jimmy Reed was an unassuming gentle soul who raised up a lot of noise and ripples.

A Mississippi blues man, a peer in the new 1950's electric wave of John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy regularly galloped hits and standards into the pop charts alongside upstart colts like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Catchy, no frills, all thrills. Jimmy bridged the worlds of Rock and Blues exactly as the first youth of Rock'n'Roll were learning to play.

Jimmy had a sweet disposition, like a cherished uncle talking loose, that felt like casual confessionals of hidden depth. He was a whisper and a smile, a gas and a groove. You could catch the melody, dance to it, and play it. Many many did and do.

He rolled out classics like printing money. "Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby?", "Baby, What You Want Me To Do?", "Bright Lights Big City", "Big Boss Man", "I Ain't Got You", "Shame, Shame, Shame". Each one pinballs the skull, tickles the tongue, taps the feet.

He was a good soul with a fine run and some bad breaks. And in the long run he was great.

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Part 2: Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby!
The disciples of Jimmy Reed



Spotify playlist title=
JIMMY REED: DisciplesThis is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

*(The Player is limited to the first 200 songs.
Hear the unlimited Playlist here.)
All songs in order from the 1950's to today.



Jimmy Reed is the mover and the groover. His easy-to-learn chords, earworm tunes, and amiable candor cut the baby teeth of Blues, Rock, and Soul folks for the long stroke.

His classic songs have been routinely covered from the late 50's up to this day, including:

Link Wray, Etta James, Barbara Lynn, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Sly & The Family Stone, Elvis Presley, Steve Miller, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, ZZ Top, John Cale, Bryan Ferry, The Blues Brothers, Elvis Costello, The Lyres, Thee Mighty Caesars, Meat Puppets, Oasis, Willie Nelson, Branford Marsalis, Jimmy Vaughan, Rosie Flores, and Black Joe Lewis.

You'll even hear the young Jackson 5 (1967) learning how to play to Jimmy Reed!


Link Wray; Barbara Lynn; The Doors; The Blues Brothers


The Jimmy Reed groove is a boogie shuffle that was becoming standard in Blues and the emerging Rock in the mid '50's. He stamped it with his stark directness, catchy simplicity, and leisurely ease. He took such sonic possession of it, or it him, that it became hard to believe it ever existed without him.

After his first strutting hits, it started to diverge into two tempos, each of which launched many covers and imitations: e.g., the slow stroll of "Bright Lights Big City", and the sunny jaunt of "Big Boss Man".



The BRIGHT LIGHTS BIG CITY Groove

The Rolling Stones; The Yardbirds; Bob Dylan; ZZ Top

Jimmy Reed turned the standard slow blues shuffle into a stripped, insular, smokey mood. It's the sound of shack backrooms, creaking floors and bones, raspy regrets, and woozy funk. It can be wandering midnight city cement, lost and glazed, on the wrong side of downhill. Or it can be sinuous and sultry, or lazed and content, or drunk and drained. It starts in rough Rockin' form on "I Found My Baby", simmers down on "Baby, What You Want Me To Do" and "Take Out Some Insurance", and reaches pure slow burn with "Bright Lights Big City". The groove and the mood becomes his through the spare atmosphere, languid vocal, and bleak harp.

You can hear this groove and mood play out in other classics like The Yardbirds'"Like Jimmy Reed Again", The Rolling Stones'"The Spider And The Fly", Ray Hoff and The Offbeats'"My Good Friend Mary Jane" (Australia), Chicago's "Anyway You Want", and in mutant spirit in Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and ZZ Top's "Tush", or Half-Japanese splicing their cover with The Ventures'"Walk Don't Run".



The BIG BOSS MAN Groove
(or, "Can You Tell Me How To Get Some Respect For Jimmy Reed?")

Tommy Tucker; Marvin Gaye; Solomon Burke; The Ad Libs

But it's the jaunty groove that everyone loves, even if they don't realize it's origin.

It's especially odd that songs influenced by 'the Bo Diddley' beat' are named, noted, and archived routinely, but no one seems to do the same for the upbeat Jimmy Reed groove. Yet it's often as ubiquitous.

It is paralleled early by similar groovers like Little Walter's "My Babe", Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" and "Memphis, Tennesse"*, and Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone". But Jimmy distills the blues jaunt into a classic rhythm with "Big Boss Man" (1960). He refines it with "Baby What's Wrong" (1961) and perfects it on "Shame, Shame, Shame" (1963).

* (One critic contends that all of the songs I will ascribe as the Jimmy Reed jaunt are just variations of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee". But I would respectfully disagree. Chuck's original was a 1959 b-side that sounds proto, more of a straight jog than a jaunt, and was rarely heard. Only after Lonnie Mack (1963) and Johnnie Rivers (1964) had hit covers with it that skewed closer to Jimmy's rhythm did the song become famous, and even Chuck then changed how he played it after their lead. Note that Lonnie covered Jimmy's "Baby, What's Wrong" with the signature jaunt on the same album, and how much of Reed he brought into his very loose cover of "Memphis". So I contend that Jimmy Reed, though perhaps initially influenced by his peer Chuck, defined the rhythm that everyone will expand on. But I've included all on the player for your own estimation.)

As Jimmy furrows the major groove, it mirrors in minor sides like The Esquires'"The Sight Of You", Cheryl and Pam John's "That's My Guy", and The Crickets'"All Over You". Even as Jimmy lay tread with "Shame, Shame, Shame", Tommy Tucker was on his heels with "Hi-Heel Sneakers".

It bops into the popstream with Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get A Witness?", laces loose in The Velvelettes'"Needle In A Haystack", and parties up Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love".


The Pretty Things; The Standells; Bobbi Gentry; Black Joe Lewis

But it probably reaches critical mass with The Ad Libs'"The Boy From New York City" (1965). By then it's a standard rhythm underscoring acolytes like Jean Wells'"Put The Best On The Outside" and answer songs like The Beach Boys'"The Girl From New York City". By now it's international, like Roy Head's "Apple Of My Eye" (England) and Los Johnny Jets' cover "El Leon" (Mexico), The Times'"Glad Not Sad" (Australia), and Datar's "Alveg ær" (Iceland).

This is the juncture in creative interchange when covers become clones become cousins. It goes from covers like The Pretty Things' or Bobbi Gentry's "Big Boss Man"; to clones like The Olympics'"We Go Together (Pretty Baby)" and The Arthur Brown Set's "The Green Ball"; to cousins like Booker T & The MGs'"Outrage", The Standells'"Dirty Water", The Ad Libs'"He's No Angel", The NightRiders'"Love Me Right Now", and Black Joe Lewis'"Black Snake".

Just as Jimmy echoed the blues shuffle in his own way, others reverbed his way into their way, and then all of them started to ricochet with each other. The Stones channel the Jimmy jaunt via Marvin Gaye with their response "Now, I've Got A Witness". Sugar Pie DeSanto gets there by answering "Hi-Heel Sneakers" with "Soulful Dress", as do Oasis with "(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady". The young Sly & The Family Stone strut Willie Mabon's "Seventh Son" sidelong into the Jimmy jaunt. Shirley & Company cross Jimmy with Bo Diddley in their "Shame, Shame, Shame". Elvis Costello gets there in "Tokyo Storm Warning" by way of The Stones'"Satisfaction". Thee Mighty Caesars broadcast "Signals Of Love" on waves of Link Wray.

Cross-fertilization is how creativity (and culture, and the human lineage) works.


The original Sesame Street cast

The universality of the groove paved the way for the TV theme, "Can You Tell Me How To Get To SESAME STREET?" (1969), by Joe Raposo. The series began as a counterculture response to MISTER ROGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD, with an urban slant emphasizing diversity in the cast, film mediums, and especially music styles. Raposo was excellent at underscoring all of the segments with folk, jazz, blues, soul, rock, and more, a subtle music education for budding minds. Having the pulse of the times, he would have been aware of the Jimmy Reed jaunt in some form. So there it shines in a sunny tune that beamed itself into the cultural DNA of five decades of children.

Today is brought to you by the letter G, for Groove!



© Tym Stevens

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See Also:

The Real History of Rock and Soul!: A Manifesto, A Handy Checklist

Revolution 1950's: The Big Damn Bang of Rock'n'Roll!

1950's PUNK: Sex, Thugs, and Rock'n'Roll!

CHUCK BERRY: The Guitar God and His Disciples

BO DIDDLEY: The Rhythm King and His Disciples

BUDDY HOLLY: Rock's Everyman and His Disciples

LITTLE RICHARD: The Voice of Rock and His Disciples

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How the original 1950's Rock styles remained strong through each decade!
(#1 of 6 parts)

...with enormous, world-spanning Music Player!


The Blue Diamonds

RockSex
now brings you the actual, all-inclusive history of Rock'n'Soul music each week.
▶ History Checklist


Today, the story of how Rock'n'Roll first conquers the world, mutates into new forms, and comes back refreshed!!
Hear an exhaustive music player, with worldwide artists maintaining the 50's styles from 1960 through 1969!


Spotify playlist title=
50's Rock disciples: '60-69This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

*(The Player is limited to the first 200 songs.
Hear the unlimited Playlist here.)
All songs in order from 1960 through 1969.

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The upshot:

50's Rock continued into the 60's.
Rock became permanent: borderless, fluid, and adaptive.
Styles evolved.
All movements were underscored by the original Rock'n'Roll.
And so it came back again.




Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The March on Washington, 1963
50's Rock continued into the 60's.
Rock'n'Roll is a shared dream based on rebel instincts: to dance, to make love, to join together, to expand out, to be liberated.

The Beats were rewriting the Word, Civil Rights was rescuing the future, Rock rolled over Beethoven. The new decade was a renewed world, mod ideas, a cosmopolitain outlook, inclusive, progressive. The youth saw themselves in JFK, the Peace Corp, Dr. King, jukeboxes and paperbacks, and a new possible world where there were no borders to constrain anyone. The tidal wave of the rebel Fifties surged into the early 60's and became the undercurrent of all its subsequent waves.

The Beatles were the cumulation of all the styles before them combined and renewed. Everything was starting over, enhanced. If Rock'n'Roll was a Big Bang of culture, then Beatlemania is the second Big Bang of Rock. But the rote narrative that consigns everyone previous as a precursor is myopic. It's a revisionism without vision.

It's all of a piece and everyone is still there. Many of the 50's artists were not much older than the British Invasion, and ofttimes were their peers, like Brenda Lee, the Collins Kids, Ricky Nelson, and Frankie Lymon. Elvis was still a presence through his movies, Buddy Holly still rode the charts from the vaults while The Crickets ticked on, The Everly Brothers were evergreen, and Roy Orbison, Sam Cooke, and Del Shannon had their biggest hits in the early 60's.


Chuck Berry; Elvis Presley; Bo Diddley

"Oldies" schmoldies. Record bins and radio hacks segregate Rock (counterculture 60's artists who kept having hits, plus) from Oldies, the elders and also-rans. Another false border to be ignored. A generation gap? No, more fairly, society and culture were like an extended family with growing pains.

To on-air DJ's, songs were disposable; Hits today, "Oldies" tomorrow played as filler and requests. There were no compilations yet, no record chains with catalog albums, no archivists or critics, no belief in Rock as more than a fad. To jaundiced eyes in 1964, The Beatles were just a new fad to replace Elvis.

But to sharper ears, they were proof that Rock was truly worldwide and now permanent. And that repression was losing.



Eros magazine, Summer 1962, photo essay by Richard Hattersley
Rock became permanent: borderless, fluid, and adaptive.

Meanwhile acolytes in every nation sawed through covers into clones into originals to find themselves. This is how the creative cycle always works: walking in previous shoes to find your own tread. Parents, child. Two cool things make a new cool thing. Tradition can become a calcified ritual that excludes, but true creativity thrives in fluid combinations that birth new options.

Rock may have seemed to explode spontaneously from the United States, but it was inherently a world artform. The USA isn't really a singular nation, it is the notion of all nations in one place. At its best it is a dialogue of all voices. American Rock'n'Roll was thus made of many sounds that had come from many places: its source musics can be traced back to Ireland, England, Africa, Arabia, Mexico, the Caribbean, etc.


"Beat Girl" (1960) by John Barry; "Ek Phool Char Kante" (Bollywood 1960); Los Llopis

"People have divergent life histories, different shared experiences with distinctive ways of relating to these differences. We all have a worldview, and we all share our worldview with others with similar experiences. We have culture." -Robert Wald Sussman, author "The Myth of Race" (2014)


It's sometimes said we get our sense of the beat from remembering our mother's heart in the womb. It is the primal link on the subliminal level for all of us. Creativity itself is about communal resonance and response. Pssst! The big secret is... there are no borders between people, there is only common experience and recognition. And true hearts will always hear connection and respond unhindered by any false divisions.

You see, the robo-narrative about Rock'n'Roll is wrong.

It's wrong in its limited scope and false conflicts. Rock'n'Roll isn't just Country and Blues, it sources myriad other musics, as well. Rock'n'Roll isn't two alien races of 'white' versus 'black', but instead is just unique persons feeling the same feeling and sharing it.

(The short: humans are one race >>, there are no races >, it all comes down to your character and actions, adult up and sort it, let's go forward together, next.)

Now that that's solved, here's the core truth: you're an individual, and you respond strongly to something because you are that thing. That sound, that concept, that lover, that outlook, that feeling that moves you... it's not something you just imitate, it's recognition of something you already are, and it's giving you the permission to come forward and join in. While dummies cause real harm over false differences, sharp souls are working together to make a better day.

You start by singing each other's songs.


Nicole Paquin; Los Locos del Ritmo; Roy Orbison

The original Rock'n'Roll is a spiritual alphabet, a sonic Rosetta Stone regardless of the tongue.

So no more borders, no exclusion, no segregation, no gender, no skin, no more constraints. Which is why pompadours and suede shoes quickly swiveled in Sweden (Sven-Ingvars, The Noise Men), Spain (Kurt Savoy, Los Pekenikes), France (Amy Anahid, Les Chats Sauvages, Nicole Paquin), Germany (Rene Kollo), Poland (Niebiesko-Czarni), Canada (Les Nautique, Les Shadols, Les Ingenues), New Zealand (Ivor Fisher), and Japan (Hibari Misora, Kikayo Moriyama, Yasushi Suzuki).


Indorock: The Javalins; The Tielman Brothers; The Twangies

Mexico was one of the quickest to lock onto Rock and roll it over with Los LLopis, Freddy Fender, Los Locos del Ritmo, Rosie and The Originals, and Los Apson. In the Netherlands, Indonesian immigrants embraced Rock and first popularized it with Indorock bands like The Tielman Brothers, The Rockin' Blacks, and The Blue Diamonds. On Bollywood's screens, actor Sunil Dutt pantomimed mock Rock sung by Mohammed Rafi or Iqbal Singh. In Jamaica, Laurel Aitken's attempts at island R'n'B rapidly morphed into the first Ska records.

And in England, John Barry, Johnny Kidd and The Pirates, and Helen Shapiro set the stage for some guys from Liverpool once called 'The Beat Brothers' who were about to beat all. (Ba-dump-bump.)


Little Richard meets The Beatles and the Liverpool doo wop group, The Chants



Sly & The Family Stone
Styles evolved.

Rock'n'Roll was already a broad palette to start with. But new artists mixed primary colors into secondaries, countered with complements, negated with neutrals, collaged it, painted over it, repurposed it.

The Gospel harmonies romping in Doo Wop rebomped in Girl Groups and Motown troupes, in The Beach Boys and The Mamas And The Papas, in The Chants (Liverpool) and Sly & The Family Stone.

Cajun and New Orleans songs led to the funkiness of The Meters and Dr. John, and the swampiness of Bobbie Gentry and Tony Joe White.

The string arrangements of Buddy Holly, The Platters, and torch standards led to the lush productions of Phil Spector, Charles Stepney, and David Axelrod, and to mature albums like "Pet Sounds", "Sgt. Pepper", "Days of Future Past", and "Forever Changes".

Bebop and Folk and world musics led to Psychedelia.

You can make a game (or playlists) out of all the Soul vocalists influenced directly by Little Richard, Mahalia Jackson, Hank Williams, Jackie Wilson, Ray Charles, or Sam Cooke.

And of course, as Dr. King knew, Thesis and Antithesis still always lead to Synthesis anyway. Dylan and others had first countered Rock with Folk for its austere rawness and adult depth. But anyone listening to multiple things will combine them, and so came The Byrds, The Chambers Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Band, and Fairport Convention.

So the Fifties wave naturally churned up new currents, but with all this turnover, the source undercurrent still remained. As the attached music player proves, the original styles -Rockabilly, Rhythm'n'Blues, Blues, Honky Tonk, Doo Wop, Cajun, Mambo, etc.- still echoed directly in set lists, albums, and transistors worldwide. Initially, as the hit style (early 60's), then as standards (mid-60's), then as spoof (latter 60's), and ultimately as a restart revival (1969).



Chuck Berry, Fillmore West, by Greg Irons (1969)
All movements were underscored by the original Rock'n'Roll.

An idea, a movement, a philosophy, a genre are perennials: they seed into a tree with branches. The leaves may shed but the tree always remains, growing. Rock is Yggdrasil.

As soon as Rock'n'Roll found its way, it was a Genre, a perennial like Classical and Jazz that would outlast fleeting seasons or flighty masses or lazy journos. It is an idea that will always trigger new ideas, eternal. Beyond borders, eras, trends, or ignorance.

This is why dismissive (and insecure) buzzwords like retro, outmoded, period, quaint, fossil, or Oldies are so essentially clueless and laughable. Quality is timeless and ever-present, regardless of whether shallow trendchasers, flits, and snarks miss this distinction.

The original 1950's Rock'n'Roll could never really go away. It was everywhere in the 60's from the start, reflected in every local cover set ("Louie Louie"), Surf solo (Chuck Berry), Brit harmony (Everly Brothers), danceclub beat (Bo Diddley), Garage shout (Little Richard), Boogie pound (Jerry Lee Lewis), Soul vamp (Ray Charles), Blues moan (Howlin' Wolf), or mic swagger (Elvis Presley). The first youth of Rock were weaned on it, first walked with it, made out to it, got in trouble over it, crowded together with it, expanded it.


Barbara Lynn; Takeshi Terauchi; Dean Carter

Rock'n'Roll divined musicians to dig its roots. While Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, and Barbara Lynn carried the Blues torch, new upstarts like Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Taj Majal, and Bonnie Raitt picked it up. In England, purists like Alexis Corner, John Mayall, and Judy Roderick presaged The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Animals, and The Bluesbreakers. Dylan responded to this cross-Atlantic ricochet by "Bringing It All Back Home" when he went electric.

Rock'n'Roll stretched music into new branches. The guitar instrumentals of Link Wray and Duane Eddy led to virtuosos like The Shadows, Lonnie Mack, Takeshi Terauchi, and Travis Wammick. The Ventures led to Dick Dale led to Surf and Drag songs. In Seattle, The Kingsmen and The Wailers' frat-party rock -like Little Richard belting with Chuck Berry blazing- led to The Sonics and Garage Rock. [More directly, listen to the ferocious Bunker Hill's "The Girl Can't Dance" (1962), backed by Link Wray.] Ray Charles led to Stax, "Money" led to Motown, Hank Williams led to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, Howlin' Wolf blues led to Captain Beefheart artnoize.

Like Altman, the dialogue began to overlap. By the latter 60's, Dean Carter had one shoe in Rockabilly and the other in Garage Rock. The Beatles'"Lady Madonna" homaged Fats Domino so well that he sang it back. Del Shannon went psychedelic. Dion and Bobby Darin went singer/songwriter. Chess Records paired Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf with acidheads and blues-rockers, to their initial chagrin but fatter wallets. Charlie Rich sang Soul. Miles Davis brewed Fusion. Elvis came back and got social. "HAIR" did everything all at once, on Broadway, no less.


The Sonics; The Outcast (Japan); The Flamin' Groovies

But no matter how far you get from home you always remember the hearth. The stellar Psychedelia by Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and Steve Miller was underscored by the Blues of all before them. The Blues Rock of The Who, Janis Joplin, Steppenwolf, and Mother Earth reflected kindreds Etta James, Koko Taylor, and Albert King, who they were on touring circuits with. The common experience of Rock between artists and between audiences was all-inclusive, a journey of mentors and heirs exploring tributaries off the same path.

A shared dream based on rebel instincts.


The first Toronto Rock'n'Roll Revival festival, 1969
And so it came back again.

Bill Graham insisted on seasoned pros headlining with new acts in his Fillmore concerts. This familial outlook helped inspire Rock Revival festivals that brought Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and Big Mama Thornton to counterculture crowds. By 1969, original-style Rock'n'Roll went from winking nostalgia ("Back In the U.S.S.R.", "Oh Darling", "Come Together") or muggy pastiche (Ruben and The Jets, Sha Na Na) to full-throttle revival (MC5, Flamin' Groovies).

Its 'return' would lead to Glam Rock, Pub Rock, Punk, movies, TV shows, Broadway, and more in the 1970's...


Next:
1950's Rock, B: The 70's Disciples




© Tym Stevens

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See Also:

The Real History of Rock and Soul!: A Manifesto, A Handy Checklist

Revolution 1950's: The Big Damn Bang of Rock'n'Roll!

1950's PUNK: Sex, Thugs, and Rock'n'Roll!

CHUCK BERRY: The Guitar God and His Disciples

BO DIDDLEY: The Rhythm King and His Disciples

BUDDY HOLLY: Rock's Everyman and His Disciples

LITTLE RICHARD: The Voice of Rock and His Disciples

JIMMY REED: The Groover of Rock, From Motown To Sesame Street

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---

How the original 1950's Rock styles remained strong through each decade!
(#2 of 6 parts)

...with enormous, world-spanning Music Player!




RockSex
now brings you the actual, all-inclusive holistic history of Rock'n'Soul music each week.
▶ History Checklist


Today, the story of how 50's Rock'n'Roll was revived in 1970's music and film!!
Hear an exhaustive music player, with worldwide artists maintaining the 50's styles from 1970 through 1979!


Spotify playlist title=
50's Rock disciples: '70-79This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

*(The Player is limited to the first 200 songs.
Hear the unlimited Playlist here.)
All songs in order from 1970 through 1979.


▶ 1950's Rock, A: The 60's Disciples

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The upshot:

The 1950's Rock styles returned in the early 70's in a full-on Revival.

a) I Rocked the Crowd (But FM Won)
b) Celluloid Graffiti
c) Revivals: Roots, Glam, Pubs, Punks, and Teds




a) I Rocked the Crowd (But FM Won)

Sha Na Na at Woodstock, 1969

Woodstock was the peak of the counterculture tsunami. The largest generation ever now had full presence and progress in its hands.

The festival personified a crux-point for the past and future of both music and society. Rock had started in the 50's by pushing back the margins and pushing forward the marginalized, and after 15 years it had become the universal language connecting an eclectic alternate society. Where would it all go next?

As dynamic as Rock had matured in the wake of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, it all was still an extension of the styles that had inspired it. The setlists at Woodstock were a catalog of all the roots musics that underlay it: folk, blues, country, jazz, gospel, bluegrass, salsa, soul, international musics. Rock was now like wild branches spreading rapidly from deep roots, all loose but twined tight to the communal trunk. This reflected the diverse creativity and backgrounds of the cosmopolitain audience.

So it was time for Money to get in there and mess that up. FM radio would reduce all of that promise and possibility to rigid style formats that would divide the listeners and conquer that progressive unity. Rock was the common tongue of the freespirits. But that's why the real Big Brother and its holding companies wanted to control what was expressed.


Chuck Berry at Toronto Pop Festival, 1969

The dominant AM radio in the 60's had played everyone together as long as they had hits. By 1967, the underused FM became a haven for the counterculture to play underground rock with extended lengths and no censorship. Ever quick to milk the movement, corporations started buying up all the indie labels to form mega-labels and co-opted FM as the new wavelenth. At exactly the moment Woodstock was freeing everyone to be inclusive and expansive, the labels and radio became excluding and constrictive in what people could hear. They sifted communal creativity and interaction into niche markets they could control and fleece for money. This divided and conquered the cultural future, and continues to.

(There's no better or sadder analogy of the conservative backlash slowly strangling the counterculture in the 70's than in watching the corporate label machine streamline, sterilize, and segregate music year by declining year. Easy proof: compare any act from the funky early 70's to their slick shadow in the late 70's.)

Fanny; NQB; The Persuasions

But how do you rock the party when you can't get in the door?

The most insidious and damaging fallout of FM is how it intensified the codifying of music by the same old false racial and gender divisions. The unspoken formula had distilled to Rock=Guitar=White(male), Soul=Dance=Black, and Female=Soft=Sex. People got so used to it that to this day they take this controlling propaganda for given truth. FM, like repressive society, operated on erase-ism: anyone who didn't fit the profiles got eliminated.

Women were (and are) stringently catalogued as pop singers or dance divas, so tough Rock acts like Fanny, Birtha, Cradle, Isis, Mother Trucker, Yoko Ono, NQB (Sweden), and The Runaways that negated the stereotype in the 70's weren't supported properly with marketing or airplay. If they weren't seen or heard, they didn't exist in history. But, like climate change, they existed anyway.

This segregation mentality from programmers had always been there since the 50's. The same music was called two different names -Rock'n'Roll or Rhythm'n'Blues- depending on the skin of the players. But it was the same music. FM worsened this. Even though modern Rock music (post-1967) was bestowed by Jimi Hendrix, hardcore rocker acts like Funkadelic, Black Merda, Death, and Mother's Finest never got played on Rock radio. But it was the same music.

The original Rock allowed for sounds from the post-Gospel Doo Wop groups; though these traditions still informed the harmonies of every current vocal combo like The Temptations, The Dramatics, The Pointer Sisters, Bloodstone, and The Chi-Lites, they were steadily consigned to another planet called Soul separate from Rock as tough guitar was cleansed from their mixes. (The Persuasions were so proud of the Doo Wop heritage that they always sang a capella, on records like "Street Corner Symphonies".)

So, although women and diverse faces were a huge portion of the original 50's Rock explosion, they were enforcedly absent from its 70's Revival, to everyone's great loss. (They contributed anyway, and this music player returns them properly.)


"There's so many people'll be there to love and cheer
some of the greatest guitar playing in the Western hemisphere
Got The Who, The Band from across the north border,
Canned Heat, The Fifth Dimension, Creedence Clearwater,
And oh, Brother Hendrix, Sister Joplin, we wish you were here."
-Chuck Berry, "Festival" (1971)


Rock only knew where to go from remembering where it came from.

As crazed and divergent as it was now becoming (Psychedelic, Funk, Fusion, Soul, Prog, Bubblegum, etc.), its young artists always hearkened back to the original styles -Rockabilly, Rhythm'n'Blues, Blues, Honky Tonk, Doo Wop, Cajun, Mambo- to keep their bearings. By 1970 this began to hit critical mass in cover versions, homage tunes, and tour mentors.

Many of the 50's elders -like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, The Everly Brothers, and Jerry Lee Lewis- enjoyed recurrent crests in the 60's because of each new wave that built on their work. Now in the dawning 70's they were touring the counterculture festivals as peers with their scion.

But FM heard them knocking and didn't let them in: radio only programmed them as oldies hits while ignoring their new albums. This slowly segregated them from youth festivals into Oldies tours and pegged them as nostalgia acts instead of being respected as thriving legacy artists.

Little Richard, early 70's

Young acts in Festivals were expected to metamorphisize, but elder stars found that Oldies package tours were sealing them in amber. Audiences expected them to be a strutting simulacrum of their past, while buyers went for albums of younger acts doing their styles. There was a major Rock Revival show at Madison Square Garden in 1971; when Ricky Nelson played a Stones song looking modern, reflexive booing drove him from the stage.

"But if memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck.
But it's alright now, I've learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone so you've got to please yourself."
-Ricky Nelson, "Garden Party" (1972)

Negative undertow like ageism and pop disposability continued dividing Rock. The Rolling Stones, the solo Beatles, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, T. Rex, David Bowie, Suzi Quatro, BTO, and Bruce Springsteen could burn rubber on Gold hubcaps while their heroes were just spinning wheels. The 50's pioneers were making money but without progress, while the times traded on everything they had invented.

It was hard to be a rock and not to roll.




b) Celluloid Graffiti

Wolfman Jack in 'American Graffiti'

The phenomenal success of 'HAIR' on Broadway (1968) ducktailed into the debut of the 'GREASE' musical in 1971. Owing to the times and the audience, the original production was much grittier, daring, and socially relevant. But, much like Rock'n'Roll hits in the 50's, it was tamed down from edgy rebellion to sock hop silliness for mainstream appeal. (And further for film and high school productions.)

George Lucas flipped a 180 from the glacial Kubrick futurism of his debut feature THX-1138 into the intimate warmth of his breakthrough follow-up AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973). The counterculture was beginning to reflect on the social upheaval that had formed their lives, as mirrored in New Hollywood films like THE LAST PICTURE SHOW and SUMMER OF '42. Lucas' coming-of-age homage about the summer of '62 hit a resonant chord with a generation looking back, as well as new youth coming up.

The original GREASE musical; Paul LeMat, Cindy Williams, and Ron Howard, 'American Graffiti'

A crucial factor in this was the double-album soundtrack of hits from the 50's and early 60's. This watershed event alone invented industries: the parallel rise of archival compilations like "Nuggets" and labels like Rhino Records and Bomp; the waves of Top 40 Oldies radio stations essentially templated by the album; and the amped merchandising of film soundtracks as pop hit machines instead of scores.

More importantly, GRAFFITI made the original Rock'n'Roll era cool again in the mainstream, as a chaser to the turbulent 60's, as an antidote to current Rock bloat and listlessness, and as fresh inspiration to new artists.

Through the decade similar films and shows rollicked and rolled, from edge to affect to kitsch.

The ascent of Glam nostalgia underwrote THAT'LL BE THE DAY (1973) featuring Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, and David Essex in a tale of an aspiring early rocker. The sequel STARDUST (1974), adding Dave Edmunds and Adam Faith, detailed the career of his band 'The Stray Cats'. (Hmmm.)

(L) 'Happy Days' in 1974; (R) 'Happy Days' in 1978

This hit critical mass through one show.

The TV-series 'Happy Days' traced over GRAFFITI, even down to tagging its star, Ron Howard. The first two seasons were like the film in style and period accuracy. But the third season became a live-audience flourescent sitcom with lazy catchphrases and hazy detail. Naturally, this feel-good cartoon/painful sell-out led to explosive success, and to spin-offs like 'Laverne and Shirley' (and perversely 'Mork and Mindy', along with three more best ignored). It was still an enjoyable show with occasional nods to civil rights issues and social conflicts. But 'Happy Days', with its massive audience, also unintentionally did the most to crystallize the generic stereotype of the era as diners, poodle skirts, and suburban oblivion (sappy daze), once again defanging the original Rock'n'Roll of all its edge and social power.

Thus by the time GREASE (1978) was finally filmed, it had inverted into corny cringe, goony stupidity, and disco anachronisms. And it was a massive hit, worsening the trite overwrite with waterfalls of dumb money.

'The Buddy Holly Story'; Chuck Berry in 'American Hot Wax'; Ken Wahl in 'The Wanderers'

Some films tried to offset this disturbing trend.

The solid drama THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1978), though factually blurry, restored Buddy firmly into the pantheon while inspiring new cover versions and much New Wave and Power Pop style. There was also the underrated AMERICAN HOT WAX (1978), a biography of seminal DJ Alan Freed, in which Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Screaming Jay Hawkins played themselves. To its credit, this film correctly posited 50's Rock as the catalyst for the age of social rebellion. And tough gang films like THE LORDS OF FLATBUSH (1974) and THE WANDERERS (1979) shook brass knuckles at an indifferent box office.

If the screen dreams were struggling between hawkeyed, cockeyed, and myopic, music was still revising new visions.








c) Revivals: Roots, Glam, Pubs, Punks, and Teds

It's sometimes said broadly that if Chuck Berry is the father of Rock'n'Roll (rollicking boogie), then Jimi Hendrix is the father of ROCK (godzilla marches). As Rawk in the wayward 1970's then became solos or symphonies or soft, many hungered again for brisk music to dance and roll and grind and shout to.

They wanted to feel like they did in the beginning, so they kept dropping the coin into the slot.


Roots = restart

The revivalists and the traditionalists opened the decade, followed by the memorialists.

Almost like an unapologetic manifesto, the Berry/Elvis echoplex of Dave Edmunds' cover "I Hear You Knocking" (1970) kicked the door down and the dominoes in motion. ("Keep A-Knockin'" and its answer song "I Hear You Knocking" are Blues standards that Little Richard and Huey 'Piano' Smith first adapted into Rock hits.)

Dave Edmunds; Nick Lowe; Barrabas

Revivalist acts like Sha Na Na and Frank Zappa's resuscitated Ruben and The Jets redressed the 50's like fun pantomimes of a bygone time. Showaddywaddy really went for it, pushing the range with some contemporary flair, and coiffing and draping in finest Teddy Boy fashion.

But traditionalists like Dave Edmunds, The Flamin' Groovies, Commander Cody And The Lost Planet Airmen, Nick Lowe, and Chris Spedding treated the 50's styles as living traditions to extend the spirit and range of. In this they were like contemporary Blues artists, picking up the relay and running further afield with it.

The pulse also choogled in Boogie Rock acts like Canned Heat, Savoy Brown, J.J. Gunne, Brownsville Station, Foghat, Barrabas (Spain), and Los Puntos (Mexico). And grandiose acts like The Move and their spinoffs, Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.

The common undercurrent was nostalgia and reflection.

The entire Rock era was memorialized in Don McLean's "American Pie" (1971), a symbolist exam on the promise and pitfalls of the paths taken. Other hits took the sentimental look back with doo wop daydreams like B. J. Thomas'"Rock and Roll Lullaby" and The Carpenters'"Yesterday Once More". Loggins and Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance" was a 70's anthem based on 50's themes.

And fond remembrance drove hit covers like Ringo Starr's "Sixteen", Johnny Rivers'"Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu", and Linda Ronstadt's glosses on Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers, and Buddy Holly.


Glam = theater

John Lennon is oft-quoted for cheekily calling Glam "Rock'n'Roll with lipstick on". It was really a malatov mix of the androgynous theater of Little Richard, the riffs of Chuck Berry, the sleaze of Times Square, the ironic camp of cabaret, and the bracing jolt of shock.

"Meanwhile I was still thinkin'
If it's a slow song, we'll omit it
If it's a rocker, that'll get it."
-Chuck Berry, "Little Queenie" (1959)

Glam Rock was the sassy stepchild of 50's Rock'n'Roll. It reduced Prog pomp to curt burlesque, and marathon jams back to tight riffs. T. Rex's breakout monster "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" builds on Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" and quotes its 'meanwhile' asides. And Chuck's plucks duckwalk amok in the New York Dolls, Suzi Quatro, Bonnie St. Claire, and Mud.

Slyly transgressive, the proudly low-culture cuisinart THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) was rampant with 50's odes, as wildly embodied by Meat Loaf.

Marc Bolan; Suzi Quatro; Meat Loaf in 'Rocky Horror'

All flash aside, Glam was vital to refocusing Rock'n'Roll back to core basics like three-minute-Pop, catchy verve, sexy sway, and fun dancing. It brought platforms stomping to the floor yelling more more more.


Pub = stripped down

But some acts just wanted to skin all the varnish off Rock'n'Roll down to the raw wood.

U.K. Pub Rock bands in 1975 dropped all the extended solos, strings, irony, camp, or platforms in favor of the unapologetic rawbone boogie. Where riffs were knuckles and guitars were bats, where gritty was good and greasy was better.

Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers; Dr. Feelgood; The Count Bishops

First Shakin' Stevens and then Crazy Cavan And The Rhythm Rockers galvanized the gin joints, followed by Dr. Feelgood, The Count Bishops, Ducks Deluxe, The 101ers (with Joe Strummer), and Kilburn And The High Roads (with Ian Dury). Stadium rockers had left the bar stages empty and these acts cleaned up doing the down and dirty. With their near gangland attitude and turf grabs, they were the petrol that sparked the UK Punk scene.

That spartan, speed-addled approach also resounded in artists like Sonic's Rendezvous Band (post-MC5), The Runaways, Modern Lovers, Eddie And The Hot Rods, Radio Stars, and The Ramones.


Punk = danger

If Rock had originally rebelled against the status quo, it seemed that with Punk in 1977 Rock was rebelling against itself. But in reality, Rock had started by fighting social complacency, and now it was fighting complacency in itself.

Backs to a brick wall in leather jackets and glaring, The Ramones were the poster boys of stark rebellion. They embraced looking like a biker gang because primal instinct drove them to kill frills and scorch through the thrills.

Punk declared 'Year Zero' to burn down the entire past and create their own future. But, like every child, they were just deconstructing the before to reconstruct an after. They selected the best parts that moved them and let passion guide them to next. This is normal, natural, and necessary. Punk was bringing the danger back to Rock'n'Roll.

Creative culture is a family affair. Elders give wisdom to youth, youth gives back vitality to elders. Ageist divides are a two-way deadend, mutual respect is the intersection. Under all the brief yelling still lies the common bond.

Elvis died in 1977 exactly as Punk was learning to walk. "The king is gone but he's not forgotten/ This is the story of Johnny Rotten," sang Neil Young. The flame before is the fire next time. The platitude that each decade was a lump generation turning against a previous is idiotic. Kids may yell at their parents but they still love them. The 60's was informed by the 50's, and the 70's was informed by both. Under all that posturing and smack talk, Punk had put the rebel back into the cause.

Buddy Holly Elvis Costello; Joan Jett; X-Ray Spex

There was 1950's Punk and there was 1960's Punk. This was just the latest reiteration.

The Ramones were The Stones and The Sonics, Elvis Costello was Buddy and Dylan, Suicide was Elvis and Orbison, Joan Jett was Chuck and Wanda, Billy Idol was Elvis and Morrison, The Jam were The Who and Small Faces. X-Ray Spex even rattled punkers by bringing back crazed saxophone solos again. Even the use of "The" for band names, short slicked hair, and tight clothes was a callback to early Rock. And older kin like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Genya Ravan, Crazy Horse, and The Rolling Stones were revitalized by the threat or thrill of Punk.

Many songs were written about the death of "the King of Rock'n'Roll" by the expected peers. But Generation X proudly punked Punk by rebel yelling "King Rocker". And when The Clash sang "No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones/ in 1977", they were actually lamenting the current loss of the vitality they had brought to music, not disparaging them. Stealthily, many punkers were traditionalists bringing new breath.


Teds = rebirth

If Pub rockers brought back the spirit, and Punks brought back the edge, the Teddy Boy Revival in the late 70's UK brought back original Rock'n'Roll style (almost) completely.

Acolytes always aggragate all. The Teds were Elvis echo, Berry bristle, Richard ripple, Burnette barnstorming, and Lewis lairyness.

(However they were too pale and male, unlike the diverse range of the original Rock. In fact, a wretched wave of bigots calling themselves Rockabillies tried to crash the movement's party, waving ludicrous Confederate flags and playing 'white-only' covers, but were thankfully driven out.)

Teddy Boys, 1965; Teddy Boys, late 70's

The fuel of the rocket was the Teddy Boy Revival bands.

New stages, tour circuits, and fanbases across Europe shook, rattled, and rolled to Crazy Cavan, Matchbox, Crepes And Drapes, Riot Rockers, The Jets, Danny Wild and The Wildcats, Rock Island Line, and Shotgun. Barked, battled, and balled to country cousins like Spider Murphy Gang (Germany), Les Alligators (France), and the fireball Hank C. Burnette (Sven-Ake Hogberg from Sweden). Flipped, flopped, and flew to Original School rockabillies like Sleepy LaBeef, Mac Curtis, and Ray Campi returning to show 'em how it's done.

These bands blazed a new batch of rockin' standards that would be covered as readily in decades to come as the original hits, especially Cavan's. They spit in fashionable turnover's face as they proudly made Rock'n'Roll an underground music again. They were the bedrock of a now permanent 1950's revival that has thrived across the world ever since, from Stray Cats and Barrence Whitfield, to The Meteors and El Vez, to TWIN PEAKS and Reverend Horton Heat, to Kay Lenz and King Salaami.


Interviewer: "Are you a mod or a rocker?"
Ringo Starr: "I'm a mocker."

-from A HARD DAYS NIGHT (1964)


The original Teddy Boys of England hadn't got on well with the emerging Mods in the early 60's. Minor scuffles led to hysterical headlines because false conflict sells news. (You may've noticed that.) Ringo was past it, loving both and more.

When the Teddy Boys returned, tabloids played up a new false war with the Punks. But they were both rooted through Pub Rock to original Rock, and admired each other's energy and style.

Sid Vicious; The Damned; The Clash

By 1978, inevitable synthesis brewed. Sid Vicious sang Gene Vincent songs in a leather jacket (and a bullet belt given to him by Joan Jett). The Rezillos growled like yob-abillies in "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite", a cover of an early Fleetwood Mac spoof. The Clash found their calling in a "Brand New Cadillac" looking like Gene Vincent And The Blue Caps. And Nikki And The Corvettes declared that "girls like me/ were born to Rock'n'Roll!"

Thesis > anthithesis > synthesis. In "One Piece At a Time" (1976), Johnny Cash scrapped together a "psychobilly cadillac". The collision of Ted style and Punk energy was of course inevitable. The birth pangs of Psychobilly thus wail through Robert Gordon's rumbles with the returned Link Wray, the kinky carnival of The Cramps, the noize of The Sting-Rays, the buzzsaws of The Rezillos, and particularly in Misfits'"American Nightmare".


"Rock and Roll is here to stay, it will never die
I don't care what people say, Rock and Roll is here to stay!"
-Danny And The Juniors (1958)


The original Rock'n'Roll had reemerged at the start of the 70's, and now it would stay -like a spiritual anchor, a looming threat, a palette-cleanser, a fond friend, a rebel faith, a refresh button- through the decades to come.



Next:
1950's Rock, C: The 1980's disciples



© Tym Stevens

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See Also:

The Real History of Rock and Soul!: A Manifesto, A Handy Checklist

Revolution 1950's: The Big Damn Bang of Rock'n'Roll!

1950's PUNK: Sex, Thugs, and Rock'n'Roll!

CHUCK BERRY: The Guitar God and His Disciples

BO DIDDLEY: The Rhythm King and His Disciples

BUDDY HOLLY: Rock's Everyman and His Disciples

LITTLE RICHARD: The Voice of Rock and His Disciples

JIMMY REED: The Groover of Rock, From Motown To Sesame Street



1950's Rock, A: The 60's Disciples

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The Man With No Name


SPAGHETTI WESTERNS branded much of your favorite music. Here are three music players to prove it.

Straddle your saddle and ride some of the coolest music ever made!

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WAR, ABBA, BLONDIE, THE CLASH, CHILI PEPPERS, PIXIES, BEASTIE BOYS, PORTISHEAD, MUSE, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, GNARLS BARKLEY, KILL BILL.

All of them and many more from every music style have paid loving tribute to Ennio Morricone's scores for these radical Western films.

In the mid-60's, a minor TV star named Clint Eastwood took the odd offer of making some Western films in Italy. The trilogy -"A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS", "FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE", and the epic "THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY"- made him an international star, revolutionized film technique, and unleashed scores of clones.

(The films got called "Spaghetti Westerns" because Americans thought it was novel to have their history retold by Italy. Since we don't call US films "Hamburger Movies", I'm going to skip that tired pejorative and call them what they are, Italian Westerns.)

Director Sergio Leone's use of hand camera, natural light, fast edits, severe close-ups, and panoramic vistas virtually invented modern cinema and videos. But just as important was that thunderous, edgy, bizarre, and brilliant music.

If you know, you're raring to go. And if you don't, it's time for a mind blow...


Here are three music players:

1-The roots of the sound
2-The Italian Western soundtracks
3-The galaxy of great songs that homage the sound

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1-The Roots Of The ITALIAN WESTERN Sound!






Many different strains of music all led to the classic Italian Western sound.


-Folk activist WOODY GUTHRIE was an unlikely catalyst. His song "Pastures Of Plenty" would be the trigger for the Spaghetti Western sound in a later remake arranged by Morricone. (More below.)

-Western soundtracks are the obvious main template: Film scores such as Dmitri Tiomkin's "HIGH NOON" and Elmer Bernstein's "THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN"; TV themes such as "RAWHIDE", covered later by THE BLUES BROTHERS and DEAD KENNEDYS.

-Country & Western was actually two different musics; Western was influenced by old Cowboy songs and later incorporated Swing Jazz horns. More importantly for our topic, the guitar took on a hard clanging sound played with deep bass notes in a new genre called HonkyTonk in the mid-50's. This hard clang galloped hits by JOHNNY HORTON, JOHNNY CASH, and guitarist BILL JUSTIS.

-Rock'n'Roll had strong Country roots, and the hard clang of HonkyTonk then inspired guitar virtuosos like DUANE EDDY and LINK WRAY. Eddy's sound of strong resonant bass chords earned him the name "the Twang Bar King". In their wake came all-guitar bands with instrumental hits like THE VENTURES and DAVIE ALLAN & THE ARROWS.

-English guitar bands, many produced by sonic wizard Joe Meek, followed in pursuit, like THE SHADOWS with hugely-influential hit "Apache", and THE OUTLAWS which included young Ritchie Blackmore (DEEP PURPLE, RAINBOW). A rival was THE JOHN BARRY SEVEN, whose leader went on to use the tough guitar sound with dynamic strings as legendary composer for the James Bond films.

-Surf music caught that sonic wave and rode it to new shores with DICK DALE and THE SENTINALS. Note the original version of "Cecilia Ann" by THE SURFTONES, later immortalized by PIXIES. And also JACK NITZSCHE's "The Lonely Surfer", an arranger for Phil Spector whose use of epic strings, hard clang, and triumphant horns foretells Morricone.

-Classical clearly paved the way with the use of symphonic scores for Western films. But, in its loose and instinctive structure, the spirit of freeform Jazz also haunts the trails. A good parallel course is MILES DAVIS and Gil Evan's atmospheric hybrid of both forms on the "Sketches Of Spain" album.

-Spanish flamenco guitar particularly is a key ingredient of many Italian Western scores. And while Opera ushered the theatrical vocals, another similar parallel for mood and majesty is the Portuguese blues of Fado music, ruled by AMALIA RODRIGUES.

-Mexican horns lift the triumphant anthems of the sound, which scored hits for HERB ALPERT like "The Lonely Bull".

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2-The Music Of ITALIAN WESTERNS!




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Why is this music so damn cool?


The "Punk Rock" Of Italian Western Cinema

Martin Scorsese makes the case that Westerns changed to reflect their times. In the 30's, America saw itself as morally good, and the Westerns coded that into simple good-versus-evil plots which starred White Hat paragons like John Wayne against swarthy Black Hats. By "THE SEARCHERS" (1957), America was undergoing much inner struggle as to the morality of its character, and John Wayne plays an ambivalent and strident crusader who's squarely on the wrong side.

Because their post-War affluence in the 50's seemed like the fruition of Manifest Destiny, Americans loved film and television Westerns that reaffirmed this in moral parables. But the Civil Rights movement and rising youth rebellion called this status quo into question. Now issues like Native American rights and an array of past injustices began to surface.

By the 60's, that reassessment of moral character and social injustice became a shared world struggle. The Italian Westerns are in a sense anti-Westerns. They use the conventions of Westerns, but they upend them in every way.

The contrived Hollywood theatricality and artifice disappeared. No more studio sets, slick grooming, and jingoistic robots. Italian Westerns, made in the wake of naturalistic films from Neorealist pioneers to Japanese auteurs to France's New Wave youngbloods, were shot verite-style, in the moment and location, with lens flares, gritty edges, and unadorned. The heroes were anti-heroes, with no stance but survival. In musical terms, if John Wayne was akin to Frank Sinatra, then Clint Eastwood was closer in spirit to Johnny Rotten.

Italian Westerns absorbed the style and substance of avant-garde film and succeeded with mainstream audiences. The raw style and maverick outlook helped trailblaze the counterculture's New Hollywood films of the early 70's.



©Billy Perkins, 2008.


Why all this yadda-yadda? Because that radical revamp extended to the music.

Western scores had always been triumphant anthems and romantic swirls that sloshed through every scene. Stirring at best, syrupy at worst. It was time for something else. Enter Ennio Morricone.

Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty" was covered by Italian crooner PETER TEVIS in 1962, with a dramatic arrangement by rising composer Morricone. Film director Sergio Leone was so taken by the style that he insisted it be used for his Western, "A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS" (1964). It became the signature sound of all Italian Westerns going forward.

A hard clanging guitar. Brutal chanting chorals. The rubbery twang of a Jaw Harp. Stampede rhythms. An eerie whistling. An ethereal wordless female aria. A corroded harmonica. Midnight Flamenco. The declarative horns of Mexican angels.

Gone were the amorphous symphonies tumbling, replaced now by silences, streamlined harshness, and textural sounds. In the moment, in the character, with emotional flares, gritty edge, and unadulterated. An anti-symphony for anti-heroes, something both brutal and glorious.

Some of the coolest music ever made.




The Players

"La Dolce Vita". Rome in the mid-60's was as much a pop renaissance scene as London, Paris, and San Francisco. The Cinecitta film scores by a pantheon of composer gods are holy scripts of hyper-hip.

The composers swung every style that came, from Rock to Bossa to Electronic to Lounge to Funk. Nowadays their soundtracks are coveted by rockers, cratediggers, and samplers of all countries and styles. (I'll do separate blogs profiling their varied sounds.)



ENNIO MORRICONE

The Prime Mover. The Italian Westerns launched his career and fame, but he was too vast and prolific to be hemmed in. He has made over 400 scores in every musical style and movie genre, most of them superior to the films they were for. Almost certainly the most diverse and formidable composer in film history.

Everyone in Rome followed his lead.



ALESSANDRO ALESSANDRONI

The clanging guitar and signature whistling was by his friend, Alessandroni. 'Sandro' also led the Cantori Moderni (Modern Singers) who did all the chorals and chanting. Besides playing, whistling, and singing on everyone's scores, he wrote great film soundtracks of his own.



BRUNO NICOLAI

Morricone's right-hand man, Nicolai arranged all of Ennio's compositions for recording, and wrote many excellent scores in his own right.



EDDA DELL'ORSO

Edda is the ethereal operatic voice that lifts so many of these themes. Morricone used her voice like an instrument, avoiding words for soundscapes. She enlivens countless Italian soundtracks with angel arias, jazzy scat, sensual cooing, edgy moaning, and lounge bliss.



PIERO UMILIANI

The hepcat, very jazzy and funky. As hip as anything going, whether Funk or Electronic or Psychedelic. He did the original "Mah Na Mah Na" that the Muppets covered.



LUIS BACALOV

The Argentinian, bringing in the Bossa Nova and Samba Jazz. Could also Rock like a brofo!



PIERO PICCIONI

Umiliani's contender in the Funk and Jazz stakes. Uber-cool, sexy swang, makes you wanna shake that thang!



ARMANDO TROVAIOLI (also, Trovajoli)

Another embarrassingly talented and well-rounded composer who hit it note perfect in every genre.



NORA ORLANDI

Thankfully breaking up the boys club, Nora was a choral leader (who discovered Alessandroni) and also wrote terrific scores.

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3-The Sound Of ITALIAN WESTERNS
in Rock, Pop, Electronic, Punk, Hiphop,
Reggae, Metal, Games, and TripHop!





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The sound of Italian Westerns raised generations. Whether at the movies, on TV, or video, that haunting and powerful sound was all-pervasive and seductive to musicians of all angles. It haunts many of our favorite songs, even when we don't realize it.




GHOST RIDERS

From 1966 on, bands were in love with the soundtracks of Morricone and his gang. Here's a walk through time that sheds light on many of your favorite songs...



-LOVE lived in L.A. when the Spaghetti Westerns hit critical mass in 1966. Their Spanish-inflected and cinematic "Alone Again Or" bears striking similarity to the Morricone sound. Later, THE DAMNED covered it with a video homaging the Leone films. Scout out also THE DOORS'"Spanish Caravan" and MOUNTAIN's "Theme From An Imaginary Western".

-That hard horse-galloping power, akin to "Riders In The Sky", is the drive underneath BLACK SABBATH'"Children Of The Grave", HEART's "Barracuda", and MELISSA AUF DER MAUR's "Skin Receiver".

-Bollywood gets in the act with a number from the classic "SHOLAY", the biggest film in Indian history.

-BLONDIE's "Atomic" is a fine homage; this is why the horse is riding around NYC in the video.



-Then there's THE CLASH connection. 'The Last Gang In Town' has a lot of that Morricone mood in "Straight To Hell". Mick Jones' BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE throw in samples from "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly" in their "Medicine Show". Paul Simonon's HAVANA 3AM really rides the range with "Hey, Amigo". Joe Strummer starred in the modern Leone homage film "STRAIGHT TO HELL", while fronting The Latino Rockabilly War with their b-side "Don't Tango With Django".

-Punk grabbed the reins in such songs as DEAD KENNEDYS'"Holiday In Cambodia" (listen to those guitar soars), and the opening of THE VANDALS'"Urban Struggle".

-In the PostPunk years, that hard clanging anthemic guitar rode roughshod through MAGAZINE's "Shot From Both Sides", BAUHAUS'"In The Flat Field", CRIME AND THE CITY SOLUTION's "Trouble Come This Morning", NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS'"The Weeping Song", THE PLUGZ'"Reel Ten", and TOM WAITS'"Yesterday Is Here".

-Atmospheric and cinematic bands like CALEXICO, GRAVENHURST, FRIENDS OF DEAN MARTINEZ, and SCENIC continued that tradition. And MUSE went for glory with "Knights Of Cydonia" and its epic Leone-esque video.



-New Wave guitarists loaded their arsenal with that sound. Particular stand-outs are THE GOGO's "This Town", Marco Pirroni's ringing guitar and the blasting horns of ADAM ANT's "Desperate But Not Serious", and WALL OF VOODOO's "Call Of The Wild".

-Dance bands knew a good riff and horn chart when they heard it. Check out the galloping synth and fanfare that opens ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" again. France's CASINO MUSIC extends that quest with "Faites Le Proton", foretelling the Jaw Harp and eerie vibe of AIR's "Wonder Milky Bitch". And after their song "Clint Eastwood", GORILLAZ really ride rawhide with "O Green World".

-HipHop had lots of lyrical shout-outs to Cowboy films from the beginning. Avant-Funkers MATERIAL enlist DJ DsT in their street take on "For A Few Dollars More"; KOOL MOE DEE chronicles the "Wild Wild West" with the classic "Good/Bad/Ugly" riff; and the trail is picked up lyrically by THE BEASTIE BOYS'"High Plains Drifter"; and lately, Columbian rapper ROCCA, and THE CYCLE OF TYRANTS.

-Surf helped unfurl the sound in the first place, and that came back around in PIXIES' Morricone-esque cover of The Surftones'"Cecilia Ann", and retro-wavers like SHADOWY MEN FROM A SHADOWY PLANET and THE AQUA VELVETS.



-Electronic Music was an early tool of the Italian film composers, so it should be no surprise that acolyte GEORGIO MORODER rides the moog through "Tears". Electronica continued the chase with THE ORB's "Little Fluffy Clouds", and THE PRODIGY's "The Big Gundown".

-Video Games flint the flame with themes in "SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2" (Masato Nakamura), and "WILD ARMS" (Michiko Naruke). Italian Westerns got their own game with "OUTLAWS", and this continues with current hits like "RED DEAD REVOLVER" and "RED DEAD REDEMPTION". Plus, their influence is clear in shooter games like "Fallout: Las Vegas" and "Bulletstorm".

-TripHop, with its cinematic moodiness, of course brushfired the plains with songs like PORTISHEAD's "Cowboys", HOOVERPHONIC's "Jackie Cane" and its video>, and Alison GOLDFRAPP channeling Edda Dell-Orso's arias and Alessandroni's whistle through "Lovely Head".

-GNARLS BARKLEY used a sample of the Italian Western theme for "Last Man Standing" (by Gianfranco Reverberi ) as the basis for their giant hit, "Crazy". Now DANGER MOUSE is doing an homage album to Italian Westerns called "Rome" with musician/ producer Daniele Luppi and the reunited studio players from the original soundtrack sessions!

-Metal thundered into town with METALLICA's take on "The Ecstasy Of Gold". Mike Patton (FAITH NO MORE, FANTOMAS) was so enamored of Morricone that he issued CD compilations on his own record label, and sang covers with the orchestral MONDO CANE.

-MORRISSEY enlisted Ennio Morricone himself to arrange the orchestra for "Dear God Please Help Me".

-The Italian Composers put the thrill into "KILL BILL, 1 and 2". The yin-yang films, an Eastern and a Western, continued the cultural-swap tradition: "Seven Samurai" had inspired "The Magnificent Seven", "Yojimbo' had inspired "A Fistful Of Dollars". (This rocksex continues with today's "Sukiyaki Western Django" and "The Good, The Bad, The Weird".) Quentin Tarantino and RZA deliberately picked songs in the Morricone tradition by fellow composers like Bacalov, Trovaioli, Ortolani, and Orlandi, and artists like ZAMFIR, TOMOYASU HOTEI, and NANCY SINATRA.

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Recent Films That Homage ITALIAN WESTERNS

-EL TOPO (Spain)
-WESTWORLD
-SHOLAY (India)
-ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
-MAD MAX II
-BACK TO THE FUTURE III
-STRAIGHT TO HELL
-SIX STRING SAMURAI
-THE QUICK AND THE DEAD
-DEAD MAN
-ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO
-GUN CRAZY: A WOMAN FROM NOWHERE (Japan)
-GANG OF ROSES
-KILL BILL, I and II
-SERENITY
-EXILED (Hong Kong)
-SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO (Japan)
-THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD (Korea)
-THE BOOK OF ELI
-RANGO
-COWBOYS AND ALIENS
-DJANGO UNCHAINED


TV:

-KUNG FU
-DEADWOOD
-FIREFLY


Animation:

-VAMPIRE HUNTER D
-COWBOY BEBOP
-SAMURAI JACK


Books:

-The DARK TOWER series by Stephen King


Comics:

-BLUEBERRY
-JONAH HEX
-SABRE
-PREACHER
-THE MAN WITH NO NAME
-THE DARK TOWER


Video Games:

-OUTLAWS
-RED DEAD REVOLVER
-RED DEAD REDEMPTION
-THE SHOWDOWN EFFECT
-SECRET PONCHOS




Holly and Karon buy a Morricone CD in Gotham City.
(CATWOMAN #50; Will Pfeiffer (w), Pete Woods (a), 2006.)





Ride the range!:
Morricone Rocks!






(This was originally posted 3/17/11, and updated.)

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All hail our cute overlords at the new Galactic Girl Guides website!




“A Girl Guide is wary, cunning, clever, assertive, flexible, patient, inventive and brave,
but not stupidly so.”
-Official Galactic Girl Guide Manual

"First, I was a girl scout. Sold cookies. Went camping. Got in trouble."
-Elaine Lee



L: Elaine Lee as Galatia 9;
R: Susan Norfleet as Brucilla the Muscle


Elaine Lee wanted to become a starship captain and she did.

Her day job was starring on the NBC soap opera THE DOCTORS, for which she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy award. Beyond that, she led a theatre troupe which in 1980 put on the off-Broadway play STARSTRUCK, an affectionate spoof of all tropes Sci-Fi.

Like most things, the blame can lay on Brucilla the Muscle. A molten piston ready to blow, this character in the play had a past that rebounded in a key plot revelation: she had been a Galactic Girl Guide, and now something terrible has happened to her old sorority.

The Guides weren't seen onstage, merely implied as innocent stellar scout troops caught up in the plan of the villainess Verloona. But the conceptual seed was planted.

From this abstract aside, creative worlds would collide.



Elaine Lee colluded with Michael Wm. Kaluta, the famous artist who had designed her sets, costumes, and show poster: Why not be like their hero Moebius, and turn all these complicated backstories into an illustrated series Heavy Metal-style?

The HM serial stories of STARSTRUCK then became a graphic novel and maxi-series from Epic Comics, an adult imprint of Marvel, in 1984. They plotted, Elaine wrote, Michael drew. Geared for mature readers, these hilarious and complex comics also unleashed the Galactic Girl Guides onto the world.

Wherever the heroes Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle careened in their space station escapades, the little GGG's were soon underfoot. They were everywhere and all aware. But where did they come from?



A coincidental image of stellar scouts
from 1952, included for fun.


NYC was a mess.

In 1980 it was a broke city with the fix against it. In the aftermath of the counterculture, caught between the punk uprising and the conservative clampdown, a liberating state of anarchy fermented within the entropy.

The STARSTRUCK stage set was cobbled from throwouts copped on the street, in tandem with the mercenary spirit of the music and film scene: Punk, No Wave, Mutant Disco, Hip Hop, and indie films.

Likewise, STARSTRUCK comics were set in AnarchEra, a universal free-for-all between regimes where everyone makes do pulling the screws without scruples.

But noone does it quite as well as the GGG.



“It’s a TOUGH GALAXY, but SOMEBODY’S gotta live in it. It might as well be YOU!”
– Galactic Girl Guide recruit poster

Art by Kaluta, color by Lee Moyer.

Readers first met actual Girl Guides toward the end of the Epic graphic novel. This same trio -Glynde, Scooter Jean, and Sneaker- dodged artfully through the following six Epic comics.

This is what we have to go on: the suspects are small, cute, and very devious. They are dressed in green, red, and black, with swirly-caps. They have six arms and are thus dangerous. Be on the look-out for jacked robots, stolen vehicles, missing moolah, and rigged gambling.

Galactic Girl Guides are the urchins -late of Dickens, Our Gang, and STAR TREK's "Miri"- with the art of street smarts. Pint-sized punks in skirts, they dance through anarchy in the AE. The GGG are girl scouts for an un-nurtured, denatured future.

They also traveled here from the past.




Kaluta loved ASTRO BOY, so he designed bladed hats for the stage wear of Verloona and Dwannyunn. These spun into the corkscrew hats of the Guides.

Lee loved Meddling Kids movies like OUR GANG (later shown on TV as "The Little Rascals"), THE PARENT TRAP, and THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS. Part slapstick, part subversion, all party.

Disney's HUEY DEWEY AND LOUIE comics were about the nature scouts earning their Junior Woodchucks badges with their wits, and to their uncle Donald Duck's apoplexy.

The GGG tipped the scales exponentially.






The GGG were wee girls, as in We Girls vs. The Galaxy.

They were Riot Grrrls before Kathleen was starting High School: feminine, fierce, networking, universal, active.

They had 'wings' in the millions, the savviest survival guide in the multiverse, and a filched satellite headquarters. They awarded medals for mischief to miscreant little missies. You kept an eye on the robots, clones, and soldiers, but the quick kid kept your wallet.

Never underestimate the power of cute. She's a doll, she's small, she'll sidle you seven sideways and let you take the fall. So long, sucker!

The adults in STARSTRUCK comics didn't stand a chance.





When the Epic series ended, the kids even stole the spotlight.

The GGG were a second stroke of genius for Lee and Kaluta. The disarming charm of the GGG gave that universe another chance at life.

A sharp cult of fans loved the sophisticated stories, intricate art, and perverse spirit of the adult STARSTRUCK comics. It was uniformly praised as an advance in comics and SF for female characters, complex storytelling, and satiric chaos. But the GGG had brought another dimension: kids and accessibility.

Usually a cameo in most SF fare, immature and fleeting, here children were a rippling undercurrent to the action that upended the cliches. They were more streetwise, crafty, and slippery than the adults, while endearing with their wits and cuteness.

Even straights who were baffled by all the subversive clamor in STARSTRUCK loved the Girl Guides.

Lee and Kaluta must have sensed this, and decided to do light-hearted, kid-friendly tales of the GGG independent from the main story.




In 1986, the Galactic Girl Guides made their solo debut as a back-up feature in Dave Stevens' THE ROCKETEER Adventure Magazine. If STARSTRUCK was Moebius, then the GGG stories were Eisner at his slapstick, sentimental best. These stories featured the sweet and madcap misadventures of the young Brucilla, with her accomplices Cookie and Puddy.

Would they get off the Kansas farm into the universe and earn their merit medals to become full-fledged GGG's? Could even mayhem, catastrophe, and spankings stop them?

It would take awhile to find out. A total of seven stories, all inked by Fantasy great and co-conspirator Charles Vess, were created, but THE ROCKETEER was grounded after only two issues.



STARSTRUCK started over in 1990 at Dark Horse Comics.

Lee and Kaluta reprinted the Epic stories expanded with oodles of new material. A Guide was seen on the first cover, adding one more for each issue of the series.

At the time, Dark Horse made its fortune franchising ALIEN and then STAR WARS as new stories. Publisher Mike Richardson then pitched their own properties for film, which led to eventual successes like THE MASK, HELLBOY, and SIN CITY.

Elaine Lee remembers Richardson pitching the idea for a Guide movie, retooled as "Maddie McPhee and the Galactic Girl Guides".

But the STARSTRUCK comics ended early at Dark Horse, for various reasons, and the expansions went on hold.


A never-before published Kaluta splash page for the Galactic Girl Guides movie pitch.
(© Lee and Kaluta)

Never count a good girl out.

The idea of an animated version of the GGG was then worked out in collaboration with Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, who wrote the screenplay for THE FLASH tv series (1990) and THE ROCKETEER film (1991).

Their Pet Fly Productions got an offer from the Nickelodeon cable network, who specialized in modern cartoon fare like DOUG, RUGRATS, and REN & STIMPY. The early 90's was also the era of rebooted smashes like DUCK TALES, ANIMANIACS, and Bruce Timm's BATMAN. When the offer didn't satisfy the production standard they had hoped to maintain, Pet Fly passed on it.

Elaine Lee remembers, "Bilson and DeMeo actually optioned the Guides twice, then Bilson optioned it for a potential video game, but the company wanted all the rights to the Guides and STARSTRUCK," a deal that co-creators/owners Lee and Kaluta declined as unwise.


Vector was a new friend for the Guides
in the unprinted stories.
Art by Linda Medley, color by Lee Moyer.
(© Lee and Kaluta)

But any Guide worth her plumb has her thumbs in multiple pies.

In the early 90's Tundra Publishing - flush with the success of their TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURLES comics, cartoons, and films - planned for a GGG comic: brand new stories co-plotted by Kaluta and Lee, scripted by Lee, and illustrated by Linda Medley.

Medley drew and inked 50 pages of new adventures of Bru, Cookie, and Puddy picking up where they had left off, now as scouts out and about in the 'verse, with new friends and calamity in tow.

Lee and Kaluta were friends with Phil Trumbo, who had won an Emmy directing the opening credits animation of PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE. They asked Trumbo to include his "Sky Pirates of the Stratosphere" strip as a chaser.

"They were going to print them as four books," Lee explains, "with Phil's 12-page stories as backup. Each book had a Guide story, a Science Project feature, an amazing mazes feature, and Phil's story." Although Trumbo's series was unconnected to the STARSTRUCK universe, she says, "We were going to do a page with the Guides saying that 'Sky Pirates' was their favorite comic."

But the company's collapse upended and suspended the girls again.


"Sky Pirates of the Stratosphere",
by Phil Trumbo.
(© Trumbo)

The Lee&Kaluta/Medley stories have yet to see print.

But in 2009, IDW Publishing remastered STARSTRUCK, and all seven of the initial Lee/Kaluta/Vess GGG stories were finally printed together with lush color by painter Lee Moyer. Featured as back-up stories to the main narrative, the GGG won over a new generation of fans. All of this was collected in the STARSTRUCK Deluxe Edition graphic novel.

Yes, I'm looking at you. That's your cue to click the link.

And it turns out that Scooter Jean, of the Guide trio seen in Epic Comics, grows up to become the historian behind the hilarious Glossary that defines all things STARSTRUCK.




Elaine Lee is now a Producer for AudioComics, who specialize in adapting comics into audioplays for CD and download. They adapted the original STARSTRUCK stage play into a critically-acclaimed audioplay, followed by plans for new Galactic Girl Guide audioplays in the future.

Recently a successful Kickstarter campaign helped fund Lee and Kaluta's second STARSTRUCK graphic novel. With this new option in publishing for indie creators, there is perhaps the possibility for a similar publishing of Linda Medley's as-yet-unprinted GGG stories in its wake.

And now the Galactic Girl Guides have infiltrated the world net with their own website.

Read the adventures online of our cute overlords!




“TRUTH AS FAR AS IT GOES.”



“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to the Mother and to my Universe, to help other Girl Guides, whenever doing so does not conflict with my own best interest, and to obey, if possible, the Galactic Girl Guide Law.”
– Galactic Girl Guide Pledge





★ A special thanks to Elaine Lee, Michael Wm. Kaluta, and Lee Moyer for their input and support for this article!

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See also:


STARSTRUCK website

Galactic Girl Guides website

The History of STARSTRUCK

The Roots and Influence of STARSTRUCK

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To honor JOHN LENNON's unending impact on music, here are two music players of famous artists imitating him. One playlist is his BEATLES styles and the other is his SOLO styles.


T H E
B E A T L E S
Tribute



Here are 200 artists from every era and genre, lovingly imitating John's styles with THE BEATLES. The songs are arranged in "sonic order", meaning each of John's Beatles styles in order sonically from 1962 to 1970; the early MerseyBeat, the Folk Pop, the Psychedelia and Baroque Pop, and finally the fuzzy Rawk and piano Anthem sounds.

There are favored guests and many surprises along the way.

You would expect THE RUTLES, BADFINGER, CHEAP TRICK, OASIS, LENNY KRAVITZ, and ELLIOTT SMITH.

But how about PIXIES, HUSKER DU, NIRVANA, YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, THE DAMNED, CIBO MATTO, and LUSH?

Because THE BEATLES' sounds and fashions were so fluid, they are a nexus point for every possible angle of Rock music. Without boundaries and only possibilities, they have influenced every kind of band in their wake. This takes us to the current wave of youth who wear Beatles T-shirts and listen to acolytes like RADIOHEAD, FIONA APPLE, LOCKSLEY, KAISER CHIEFS, NIC ARMSTRONG, FRANZ FERDINAND, SAM PHILLIPS, GURUS, BECK, and BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB, all here.

Welcome to an alternate universe of BEATLES music you've never heard!


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.




J O H N
L E N N O N
Tribute



Here are 200 artists from every era and genre, lovingly imitating John's solo styles. The songs are arranged in "sonic order', meaning each of John's styles and albums in order from 1970 to 1980; the primal Grunge Blues, the elegaic Piano hymns, some of his avant Collage, the stark Confessionals, the political Anthems, the Retrobilly, and finally the mature Pop comeback.

Again there are favored guests and many surprises along the way.

John's influence has no boundaries. His raw honesty, expressed though grungy blues, church piano, folk strumming, ethereal harmonies and abrasive noize, speaks to everyone.

Here are acolytes from every era and angle:
From the 70's and BIG STAR, THE MOVE, ELO, CHEAP TRICK, DAVID BOWIE, NILSSON, and OZZY OSBOURNE.

To the 80's and JOHNNY THUNDERS, ELVIS COSTELLO, GENERATION X, THE PRETENDERS, KEITH LEVENE, TACKHEAD, JESUS AND MARY CHAIN, and LOVE AND ROCKETS.

To the 90's and SOUNDGARDEN, NIRVANA, PEARL JAM, PJ HARVEY, TRACY BONHAM, LENNY KRAVITZ, WEEN, NEGATIVLAND, FASTBALL, and THE BREEDERS.

To now with COLDPLAY, JET, EARLIMART, DEVANDRA BANHART, GREEN DAY, MICHAEL FRANTI, SUPER FURRY ANIMALS, and LADY GAGA.


At the end are songs about John by his family, friends, and fans.

Welcome to an alternate universe of LENNON music you've never heard!


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.



You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll gasp, you'll remember how wonderful life is and how lucky we are. A splendid time is guaranteed for all!

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See Also:

BEATLE-esque: 200 Albums That Homage Specific BEATLES Albums, with 2 Music Players.

McCARTNEYesque: Artists imitating Paul McCartney's BEATLES and Solo styles.

WILSONesque: Artists imitating Brian Wilson's BEACH BOYS and Solo styles.

SLICE TONES: Artists imitating Sly Stone's SLY & THE FAMILY STONE styles.


TWIN PEAKS: Its influence on 20 years of Film, TV, and Music, with 5 Music Players.

MORRICONE-esque: The influence of the Spaghetti Western sound on 50 years of Rock and Soul, with 3 Music Players.

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Famed Pulp magazine artist ALLEN ANDERSON whipped up a great idea, and he kept swinging great strokes with it!


ACTION STORIES, Winter 1947



PLANET STORIES, Winter 1947



PLANET STORIES, Summer 1950



PLANET STORIES, January 1952

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Janelle Monae's new album, THE ELECTRIC LADY, expands her Sci-Fi opus about an android sent to save humanity. Besides continuing themes from the classic silent film "Metropolis" (1927), the title alludes to the album "Electric Ladyland" (1968) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.




The cover is a direct homage to a scene from the French film, "Who Are You, Polly Magoo?" (1966). This satirical film by esteemed photographer William Klein was a mock documentary about the fashion world ridiculing its excesses, our voyeurism that empowers it, and the loss of real identity in an exploitative media.

In the scene above, supermodel 'Polly' (Dorothy McGowan, third from left) is lost in a sea of clones of model Peggy Moffitt (far left).




Peggy Moffitt is the most radical fashion model of all time.

In the Mod 60's, she created an andryogyne character in futurist kabuki makeup who, wearing the abstract designs of Rudi Gernreich, came to us from a world and timeline all her own.

Working with her husband, photographer William Claxton, Peggy approached the fashion shoot as a forum of conceptual art, challenging the viewers' preconceptions about gender, identity, consumerism, and modernity.




It's a safe bet that her influence on Rock'n'Roll is incalculable.

From David Bowie and Siouxsie Sioux and Soo Catwoman, to Grace Jones and Annie Lennox and Boy George and Robert Smith (The Cure), to Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and Chicks On Speed and Janelle Monae, her revolutionary influence continues today.


1) David Bowie, 1972.
2) Lou Reed, 1974; Split Enz, 1976.
3) Siouxsie Sioux.
4) Adam Ant and Jordan, 1977;
Soo Catwoman, 1976 (Ray Stevenson).


Annie Lennox; Grace Jones; Boy George; Robert Smith.


Marilyn Manson; Peaches; Karen O;
Rooney Mara (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)

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And here's a video I made about her:

ENNIO MORRICONE / EDDA DELL'ORSO
-"Ma Non Troppo Erotico" (1971)

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See Also:

Peggy Moffitt on TUMBLR

Peggy Moffitt on PINTEREST

Mod Color: Peggy Moffitt

"Cultural Touchstone: Peggy Moffitt", LA TIMES

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Here's the paperback cover of Allen Ginsberg's poetic masterpiece, HOWL (1956).





And here's Elvis Costello and The Roots giving tribute (2013).





"angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night"

Allen Ginsberg, 1955

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Nevermind those suburban-angst
"Best Music" lists that taste like paste!

These tunes will rattle your brain
and shake your butt!

Shortcut to Music Players:
BEST ALBUMS: 2013
COOL SONGS: 2013
BEST RE-ISSUES: 2013

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FAVORITE NEW ALBUMS: 2013
This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

BEST ALBUMS 2013:
This music player has songs from the following albums,
in the same order.


-Octopus-E, "Rock Candy Funk Party"

-Paul McCartney, "NEW"

-Calibro 35, "Traditori di Tutti"

-Janelle Monae, "The Electric Lady"

-Colleen Green, "Sock It To Me"

-Charles Bradley, "Victim of Love"

-The Julie Ruin, "Oh Come On"

-Popecitelji, "Sijalica"

-Elvis Costello & The Roots, "Wise Up Ghost"

-Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, "Take Me To the Land of Hell"



-La Femme, "Psycho Tropical Berlin"

-The Liberators, "Power Struggle"

-White Fence, "Cyclops Reap"

-Unknown Mortal Orchestra, "II"

-The Delfonics, "Adrian Young presents The Delfonics"

-TECLA, "We Are the Lucky Ones"

-The Oh Sees, "Floating Coffin"

-Red Baraat, "Big Talk"

-Queens of the Stone Age, "...Like Clockwork"

-VV Brown, "Samson and Delilah"



-Franz Ferdinand, "Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action"

-Valerie June, "Pushin' Against a Stone"

-White Denim, "Corsica Lemonade"

-Jacco Gardner, "Cabinet of Curiosities"

-The Woggles, "The Big Beat"

-Willy Moon, "Here's Willy Moon"

-Wire, "Change Becomes Us"

-The Computers, "Love Triangles, Hate Squares"

-The Relatives, "The Electric Word"

-F#ck Buttons, "Slow Focus"



-The James Hunter Six, "Minute By Minute"

-Jagwar Ma, "Howlin"

-M.I.A., "Matangi"

-Savages, "Silence Yourself"

-David Bowie, "The Next Day"

-Mikal Cronin, "MCII"

-Bleached, "Ride Your Heart"

-Youth Lagoon, "Wondrous Bughouse"

-Pretty Lights, "A Color Map of the Sun"

-Yeah Yeah Yeah, "Mosquito"

-Black Joe Lewis, "Electric Shave"

-Har Mar Superstar, "Bye Bye 13"

-Alice Smith, "She"




-The Beatles, "On Air: Live At The BBC, Volume 2"

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COOL SONGS: 2013




Funk! Spaghetti Western! Psychedelic! PostPunk! Electro! Riot Grrrl! Insanity!


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.
COOL SONGS 2013

8 hours of kicking music, featuring:

Franz Ferdinand, Anna Calvi, Black Sabbath, Savages, David Lynch, The Delfonics, Colleen Green, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Goldfrapp, Os Mutantes, The Bots, Shannon & The Clams, Pigbag, Latasha Lee, Lucky Jim, and the impossibly cool Rodion G.A.!

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FAVORITE MUSIC RE-ISSUES: 2013




Quality is timeless.


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

BEST REISSUES 2013:
This music player has songs from the following albums,
in the same order.

1960's
-Dan Penn, "The Fame Recordings"

-Various Artists, "Los Nuggetz: 60's Peru Punk, Pop, and Psychedelic from Latin America"

-Honey Ltd., "The Complete LHI Recordings" (1968)

-Sly & The Family Stone, "Higher!" box set (1965-1975)


1970's
-Various Artists, "Music For Dancefloors: The KPM Music Library"

-Swamp Dogg, "Total Destruction of Your Mind" (1970)

-Stark Reality, "The Stark Reality Disc" (1970)

-Apple & The Three, "Free And Easy" (early 70's)

-Elvis Presley, "Elvis At Stax" (1973)

-Piero Umiliani: Digital reissues only, buy them at the iTunes links...
"The Disco Funk Sessions, vol. 1
"The Disco Funk Sessions, vol. 2" (70's)
"Synthi Time" (1973)

-Various Artists, "Cosmic Machine: French Cosmic & Electronic Avant Garde 1970-1980"

-Graham Central Station, "Ain't No 'Bout-A-Doubt-It" (1975)

-Fleetwood Mac, "Rumours" (1976)

-Alessandro Alessandroni: Digital reissue only, buy it at the iTunes link...
"Inchiesta" (1977)

-Ndalani 77 Brothers, "Kenya Special"

-The Clash, "Sound System" box set (1977-1982)

-Marianne Faithfull, "Broken English" (1979)



1980s
-John Carpenter, "The Fog" soundtrack (1980)

-Willam Onyeabor, "World Psychedelic Classics: Who Is William Onyeabor?" (1978-1983)

-Rodion G.A., "The Lost Tapes" (late 70's-early 80's)

-Various Artists, "Change the Beat: The Celluloid Records Story"

-Gunter Schickert, "Kinder in der Wildnis" (1983)

-Various Artists, "Mutazione: Italian Electronic & New Wave Underground 1980-1988"

-Thee Mighty Caesars, catalog reissues (1985-'86)

1990's
-The Breeders, "Last Splash" a.k.a., "LSXX" (1993)

-Nirvana, "In Utero: 20th Anniversary" (1993)

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"A splendid time is guaranteed for all!"

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See also:

BEST MOVIES & TV: 2013

BEST MOVIES & TV: 2012
BEST COMIX: 2012
BEST MUSIC: 2012

BEST MOVIES & TV: 2011
BEST COMIX: 2011
BEST MUSIC: 2011

BEST MOVIES: 2000-2010
BEST COMIX: 2000-2010
BEST MUSIC: 2000-2010

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"And...Action!"

FAVORITE MOVIES:



EROS



-BEFORE MIDNIGHT
✭✭✭✭✭
After the warm-up of BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) and BEFORE SUNSET (2004), this brave film bristles with a bold maturity that is wondrous, bruising, and deep.


-BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (France)
✭✭✭✭✭
One of the most resonant and engaging romance stories that I've ever seen.

-HER
I didn't think this would work, but it is excellent and inspired at every turn.

---

THINK



-12 YEARS A SLAVE
✭✭✭✭✭
THE movie, of any year.
Required viewing for anyone with a brain and soul.



-KILL YOUR DARLINGS
The true story of the murder that brought Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs together.



-THE EAST
Brit Marling scores again; the star/co-writer/co-producer (ANOTHER EARTH, SOUND OF MY VOICE) fights the power with this smart thriller.


-DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Harrowing true story of a man's battle against AIDS,
and the corrupt government and drug companies that let it run rampant for profit.

-THE FIFTH ESTATE
An interesting, generally well-rounded drama about Wikileaks.
Benedict Cumberbatch.
{see also documentary, "We Steal Secrets" (2013)}


-MANDELA: Long Walk To Freedom
Idris Elba and Naomie Harris.
A fast-paced highlight reel of an important life, with just enough character.


-THE BUTLER
Broad strokes overview of the Civil Rights struggle told through one man's family, with strong moments.

-MUHAMMAD ALI'S GREATEST FIGHT
The behind-the-scenes story of how The Greatest's conscientious objection to the Vietnam War nearly tore up the Supreme Court.


-FRUITVALE STATION
✭✭✭✭✭
An excellent film, devastating.
The true story of a struggling young man in Oakland and what the Law did to him.

-TO THE WONDER
No to defeatist existentialism.
Yes to epic visuals, a majestic score, and a truly wondrous Olga Kurylenko.

-MUD
A coming-of-age thriller in the Southern swamps. Great cast.


-CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Gripping, intense, multi-sided.

-A HIJACKING (Denmark)
A Danish parallel to CAPTAIN PHILLIPS;
Instead of action, this focuses on the Corporate nickel-and-diming of the hostages' lives, and its toll.

-ALL IS LOST
Redford; the elder man and the sea, or, The Naturalist vs. Nature.




-WADJDA (Saudi Arabian)
✭✭✭✭✭
A must-see. A young Saudi girl is determined to get a bike, even though only boys can have them.
Youthful hope vs. the stranglehold of religious sexism in Saudi Arabia, by female director Haifaa al-Mansour.


-THE GRANDMASTER (Hong Kong)
A Wong Kar-wai (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) epic with Tony Leung and goddess Zhang Ziyi.
Gorgeous martial arts epic interlaced with war, revenge, and heartbreak.

-MUSEUM HOURS (Austria)
Understated story of new friends bonding over discussions of life and culture in an art museum.

-THE SELFISH GIANT (U.K.)
Brutal dramedy about two hardscrabble boys doing all the wrong moves to survive.

-THE LAST MATCH, a.k.a., 'La Partida' (Cuba/Spain)
Two young Cuban men discover their attraction to each other, and the dangers of others' reactions.


-THE PAST, a.k.a., 'Le Passe' (France/Iran)
✭✭✭✭✭
The director of A SEPARATION scores again.
An effortlessly complex human drama more gripping and surprising than any suspense thriller.

---

SMILE



-IN A WORLD
Lake Bell (writer/director/star) wants to be the first great female Movie Trailer narrator.


-SAVING MR. BANKS
Emma Thompson, practically perfect in every way!

-INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
Coen Brothers; a shaggy dog story with left-field moments and stunning music by star Oscar Isaac.

-THE WORLD'S END (U.K.)
Never watching spoiling trailers has served me well again!
This seemed like a routine buddy comedy, until 30 minutes in when everything suddenly went... insane.

-THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Or, 'A$$hole Chic (A Satire)'.
The most fiercely absurdist Scorsese has been since his cult flick AFTER HOURS.

-GIMME THE LOOT
A couple of graffiti artists need money and manage to goof up everything they touch.
Interesting cast, odd turns, and zany moments.

---

DREAM



-GRAVITY
✭✭✭✭✭
A quantuum leap forward in cinema, as seismic as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and STAR WARS.
And a beautiful rebirth parable underneath.



-STAR TREK: Into Darkness
Excellent. I love this movie.
Naysayers are fools.

-THOR 2: The Dark World
The only Superman film done right this year.



-ELYSIUM
This is how most of us live right now; mass poverty with no healthcare, overlorded by The Rich on high.
This is real life.

-PIERCING BRIGHTNESS (UK)
Experimental indie; thin story with good craft.

-PACIFIC RIM
I haven't been a Kaiju movie afficianado, but this Del Toro film is magnificent!



-THE HOBBIT: The Desolation of Smuag
Tauriel!




Underrated, Dept.:

-OBLIVION
Like reading a good SciFi short story. I enjoyed all the homages to certain SF film classics.

-AFTER EARTH
Some wonkiness, but in general I enjoyed it well enough.

---

NIGHTMARE



-UPSTREAM COLOR
✭✭✭✭✭
The creator of PRIMER returns with a sharp film that demands every moment of your concentration and imagination.
Excellent craft, mindbending smarts, and the ever-versatile Amy Seimetz.


-EUROPA REPORT
"All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there."
-Arthur C. Clarke, "2010: ODYSSEY TWO"


-CARRIE
There are two films interpreting Stephen King's book; both are worth your time.
Director Kimberly Peirce (BOYS DON'T CRY) skips DePalma's Hitchcock stylings in favor of focusing new nuance to characters and actions in every scene.


-THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL
Thoughtful, twisty psychological Indie by writer/director Francesca Gregorini.


-SIDE EFFECTS
Soderbergh's quietly subversive homage to a particular Hitchcock film, with merit all its own.


-STRANGER BY THE LAKE (France)
At an isolated cruisers beach, a man sees the guy he cares for murder someone.

---

GRAPHIC IMAGES



-BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (France)
✭✭✭✭✭
This brilliant film is based on Julie Maroh's graphic novel, "Le Bleu est une Couleur Chaude (a.k.a., Blue Angel)".


-IRON MAN 3
Fun but uneven mix of IRON MAN and KISS KISS BANG BANG.
Shifting character time from Gwyneth to the kid was a stupid mistake.


-THOR 2: The Dark World
An antidote to MAN OF KILL.


-AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
The best DOLLHOUSE writers combine the better parts of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and ALIAS with the Marvel mythos.

---

ARTFLIX



-STEVEN UNIVERSE
Pop zaniness!

-TOY STORY HALLOWEEN (TV special)
Every time they sequel TOY STORY, it only improves!

-MONSTERS UNIVERSITY
Pixar makes films for adults who remember the wonder of being a kid.

-FROM UP ON POPPY HILL
Studio Ghibli. Nuff said.

-ERNEST AND CELESTINE (France)
Exquisite watercolor film that warms you like a splendid meal.

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FAVORITE DOCUMENTARIES:



-THE AFRICAN AMERICANS (PBS mini-series)
✭✭✭✭✭
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. gives an excellent and always timely overview of the crucial history and contributions of Africans in the United States.


-WE STEAL SECRETS: The Story of WikiLeaks
An admirable journalistic attempt to show all sides of the Julian Assange and Bradley Manning controversies.

-INEQUALITY FOR ALL



-ROOM 237
We bring our own meanings to everything;
revel in these unique interpretations of Kubrick's THE SHINING (1980).

-MUSCLE SHOALS
Rival to Motown and Stax, the Muscle Shoals studio made many of the greatest Rock and Soul songs ever.

-SOUND CITY
A seedy studio, a magic mixing board, and a history of great music.

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---

FAVORITE TV:



(The season number follows each title.)



DRAMA



-RECTIFY 1
✭✭✭✭✭
The Best.
Has a zen understanding of human joy and pain that is often breathtaking.



-MASTERS OF SEX 1
✭✭✭✭✭
How Masters & Johnson liberated the libido! Lizzy Caplan.


-BREAKING BAD 5
✭✭✭✭✭
A shattering and elegant close for one of Television's greatest shows.

-THE KILLING 3
Grim, ambitious, fearless performances, Amy Seimetz.

-LOW WINTER SUN 1
Mark Strong.

-THE BLACKLIST 1
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS meets ALIAS. James Spader.

-MAD MEN 6



-BATES MOTEL 1
The co-runner of LOST remakes PSYCHO as TWIN PEAKS. Works for me.

-TOP OF THE LAKE (mini-series)
Jane Campion does TWIN PEAKS in New Zealand.

-HANNIBAL 1
At last, the spotlight shifts from Hannibal Lecter to the game-changing and very first empathic investigator, Will Graham (RED DRAGON, 1981)!
Now Moriarty has the Holmes that disappeared from the subsequent books.

---

WONDER


-THE RETURNED(a.k.a., Les Revenents/ They Come Back) 1 (France)
Parallels the spirit of Stephen King in poetic depths that the bubble-dum UNDER THE DOME never will.

-GAME OF THRONES 3
Brutal.

-AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. 1
It'll never beat Kirby or Steranko, but I like it.

-ALMOST HUMAN 1
Formulaic, but good leads.

-SLEEPY HOLLOW 1
Crazed fun.
With more retcon backstory than Supergirl.

---

UK


-ORPHAN BLACK (Canada/BBC)
✭✭✭✭✭
Tatiana Maslaney.


-DOCTOR WHO 7
Matt Smith was a blast.

-MISFITS 5
Final season. The first two mattered most.

-THE FALL 1
Gillian Anderson.

-BROADCHURCH 1
David Tennant.

-RIPPER STREET 2
COPPER is good, but RIPPER STREET is great.




-BLACK MIRROR 2
The acidic anthology 'five minutes in the future' tops itself with another trio of brutal, cautionary speculative fictions.


-"DOCTOR WHO: An Adventure in Space and Time"
A splendid take on the making of the original First Doctor serials (1963-'66).
David Bradley is marvelous as Willam Hartnell.

---

COMEDY


-ENLIGHTENED 2
Destroy evil corporations. Save your soul.

-ELEMENTARY 2
The fine American parallel to SHERLOCK hits its stride, with more mythos and exponential depth.

-ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT 4
From wobble to stand to jog to sprint; an odd season that regains its original glory full-on by the end.

-STEVEN UNIVERSE 1
Always have fun!

---

THINGS TO CATCH UP ON, Dept.


Hey, who has time to see everything?


(Drama)

-NO (Chile)
-THE HUNT (Denmark)
-BIG BAD WOLVES (Israel)
-RENOIR (French)
-WAR WITCH (Canada/Congo)

-MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
-GREETINGS FROM TIM BUCKLEY


(Comedy)
-THE SEARCH FOR SIMON (U.K.)
-R100 (Japan)


(Documentary)
-PERVERT'S GUIDE TO THEOLOGY
-FIRE IN THE BLOOD
-FAR OUT ISN'T FAR ENOUGH
-STORIES WE TELL


(Animation)
-RIO 2096: A Story of Love and Fury (Brazil)
-A LETTER TO MOMO (Japan)


(TV)
-ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK 1
-AKTA MANNISKOR 2 (Sweden)

---

See also:

BEST MUSIC: 2013


BEST MOVIES & TV: 2012
BEST MUSIC: 2012
BEST COMIX: 2012

BEST MOVIES & TV: 2011
BEST MUSIC: 2011
BEST COMIX: 2011

BEST MOVIES: 2000-2010
BEST COMIX: 2000-2010
BEST MUSIC: 2000-2010




"Cut!

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...with Music Player!





2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and SOLARIS redefined modern cinematic Science Fiction, and their influence is as strong as ever.

The first decades of the 21st century are full of such films, helping to launch the phenomenal success of GRAVITY.

4-Intro
3-Films
2-Short Films
1-Music Player

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4- Commencing Countdown...

Early Golden Age sci-fi was rollicking space opera, from John Carter to the Gray Lensman. But in the Silver Age 50's and New Wave 60's, the challenges of modernity made sci-fi more reflective and philosophical.

The practical lessons learned in the first space flights (weight, design, expense, safety) ran parallel with the spiritual turmoil of the Space Age (humanism, politics, wars, existentialism). All of our dreams of the future now lay in a fragile space between hope and heartbreak.

Of course, from Odysseus to Robinson Crusoe>, all travel tales had explored the sea and the self; asking, what was our place in the natural world, and the natural order? But speculative writers of the rocket era expanded this to its widest, deepest possible range; what are we really, and what is our place in the universe?



2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968), by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, legitimized science fiction in the world mainstream by crafting speculative fiction into fine art; asking, our tools have led us to progress, but are we too flawed as a fledgling race to take our place in the cosmos?



SOLARIS (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky's adaption of Stanislaw Lem's book, explored the spiritual gulf between revelation and ruin; will we actually fail at comprehending the abstracts in alien life and in our own minds?


The concept of the existential explorer, at the mercy of environment and emotion, thus permeated culture: from STAR TREK (1966-'69, etc.), SILENT RUNNING (1972), DARK STAR (1974), and SPACE: 1999 (1975); to David Bowie's "Space Oddity", Harry Nilsson's "Spaceman", and Black Sabbath's Supernaut".

STAR WARS (1977) brought Golden Age fun back, and greenlit decades of action spectacles instead. (In truth, STAR WARS is subversively as deep as 2001 and SOLARIS, but with more swing.) But in recent years, film students and cinephiles are bringing back the elements of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and SOLARIS: spaceflight procedurals, vérité practicality, desert landscapes, Ron Cobb set designs and Trumball miniatures and Moebius messiness, along with social critique, solipsism and alienation, and the bold struggle between fruition and ruin.

Here's a shortlist of recent films, and then short films, that reflect the influence of 2001 and SOLARIS.

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3- Now It's Time To Leave the Capsule
If You Dare

Have substance, will travel.
Independent creators are countering the CG spectacles with bigger ideas on smaller budgets.


(Note: these are existential explorer/cosmic fruition films in the stylistic mode of 2001 and SOLARIS, as distinguished from general explorer/survival films like ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS or ENEMY MINE. Some listed are both, but the imprint of the former is too clear to disqualify them.)





STRANDED (2001)
A Spanish production, with some wooden acting but interesting ideas, about astronauts marooned on Mars; from star/director María Lidón, with Vincent Gallo.




SOLARIS (2002)
A streamlined remake by Steven Soderbergh, with George Clooney.




THE FOUNTAIN (2006)
Darren Aronofsky's subjective meditation on One Life vs. All Life, with Hugh Jackman.




SUNSHINE (2007)
Danny Boyle's moody thriller that plays like a far better version of EVENT HORIZON.




MOON (2009)
The full-blown return of the lonely astronaut with Sam Rockwell. Director Duncan Jones deliberately used the styles, techniques, and themes of Space Age-era films in homage.




UP IN THE AIR (2009)
Jason Reitman's indie comedy has an ambitious sequence, where George Clooney dreams of his alienation by drifting through Las Vegas in a spacesuit, that was unfortunately cut for time.




APOLLO 18 (2011)
A fictional moon flight and imminent disaster, told in found footage.




LOVE (2011)
A crowdfunded, impressionistic indie about the last man floating in his tin can far above the world.




THE EUROPA REPORT (2012)
As a sly riff on 2010: ODYSSEY TWO, this stunningly realized indie uses found footage to tell an ill-starred trip to Jupiter's moon, Europa.




THE COSMONAUT (2013)
A crowdfunded abstract indie about a lone cosmonaut roaming the world but cut off from everyone.

Watch it free here.




GRAVITY (2012)
The astronaut at the mercy of space and spirit becomes a worldwide smash, a rousing cinematic triumph, and a moving soul fable. By Alfonso Cauron, starring Sandra Bullock and the ubiquitous George Clooney.





* Though not Lonely Astronaut films specifically, these recent films also implicitly reference the themes, scope, and style of 2001:

-THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)
-PROMETHEUS (2012)
-OBLIVION (2013)

---

2- And I Think My Spaceship Knows
Which Way To Go

The Lonely Astronaut also wanders through a landscape of recent short films.

Space suit? Check. Desert? Check? Abstraction? Check.
Blast off!



"Eclipse" (2012)

Link



"Grounded" (2012)

Link



"Voice Over" (2013)

Link



"Expo" (2013)

Link



"You Only Live Twice" (2013)

Link



BROKEN BELLS -"After The Disco: Part 1" (2013)

BROKEN BELLS -"After The Disco: Part 2" (2013)

Link



"Reveille" (2012)
(A film by Grant Howard based on ANDREW OSENGA's concept album,"Leonard The Lonely Astronaut".)

Link



And, as an extra on the GRAVITY dvd, a short film showing the other side of a conversation.

GRAVITY Short Film: "Aningaaq" (2013)
That's a photo, Watch Here.




Orbiting full circle, here's the real thing.

Chris Hadfield- "SPACE ODDDITY" (2012)

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1- Can You Hear Me, Major Tom?
A LONELY ASTRONAUT Music Playlist



Surf the spacewaves with DAVID BOWIE, PINK FLOYD, BLACK SABBATH, THE B-52's, PIXIES, MARS VOLTA, and more! It's full of stars!


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

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Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do.

---

See Also:

BEST MOVIES & TV: 2013

How STAR WARS Is Changing Everything!

THE CANON: 50 Books That Created Modern Pop Culture

The Roots and Branches of Lee & Kaluta's STARSTRUCK

TWIN PEAKS: Its Influence on 20 Years of Film, TV, and Music!, with 5 Music Players!

How SPAGHETTI WESTERNS Revolutionized Rock Music, with 3 Music Players!

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---

... with Music Player!

Art by Gene Ha

THE CANON 2

(of Genre Fiction)
Alternate realities! Headless horsemen!
Subjective perception! Alien demons!
Abstract horror! Feminist utopias!
Evil dystopias! Afrofuturism!

Space Opera! Eugenics! Magic guides!
Private Eyes! Space amazons! Robot laws!
Narnia! Middle Earth! Psychic detectives!
Feral kids!

Pod people! Teleporting! Psycho killers!
Alien messiahs! Tesseracts! Ape planets!
Magic realism! New Wave SF! Starchild! Contagion!


In chronological order, here are key books where many of our modern legends come from...
1-9
10-19
20-29
30-39
40-49
50-55

Music Player!



*Caveat Dept.:
1) This is an entry primer for Speculative Fictions.
2) This is an Alternate Lit List for alternate minds.
3) This is about Fun, so have some!


The Canon 1 focused on 50 crucial genre classics from the 18th Century up to the Pulp era, circa 1940.

The Canon 2 focuses mainly on the 1940's to 1970, from the Golden Age to the New Wave of Science Fiction. It also spotlights female and multicultural authors who deserve more illumination.

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---

1)

THE BLAZING WORLD,
by Margaret Cavendish (1666)
The Other Realm.


The Grandmother of Science Fiction.
The Duchess of Newcastle, author and scientist, invents a parallel realm of talking animals who use submarines.



Leads to:

- ★ Actual submarines!

>>> Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"; Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"; Lewis'"Narnia" books; The Blazing World in Moore and O'Neill's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"; Mieville's "Un Lun Dun".

---

Additional Classics:
-LE MORTE D'ARTHUR, by Sir Thomas Malory (1485)

-THE INGENIOUS GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605)

-BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (La Belle et la Bête), by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1740)

-THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, by Ann Radcliffe (1794)

---

2) THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW,
by Washington Irving (1820)
The avenging spirit.
Cover by Arthur Rackham, 1920.
Irving invents American Gothic.



Leads to:

>>> The Green Goblin; Ghost Rider; the headless motorcyclist on 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker'; the village haunts of 'Twin Peaks'; Burton's 'SLEEPY HOLLOW' (1999); 'Sleepy Hollow' series (2013).


Also Read:

-"Rip Van Winkle", by Washington Irving (1819)

---

3) "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge",
by Ambrose Bierce (1890)
Subjective reality.
Still frame from "La Riviere du Hibou", (1964)

What is reality? What is perception? What is time?



Leads to:

- The French film adaption "La Riviere du Hibou" gained international fame when broadcast on 'The Twilight Zone' in 1964.

>>> Perception stories like: Kurosawa's 'RASHOMON' (1950); Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five"; Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Inner Light"; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Hard Time"; Lynch's 'LOST HIGHWAY' (1997); 'RUN LOLA RUN' (1998); 'THE SIXTH SENSE' (1999); Nolan's 'MEMENTO' (2000) and 'INCEPTION' (2010); 'INTO THE VOID' (2009).


Also Watch:
--'LA RIVIERE DU HIBOU' / An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1964)

---

4) CAN SUCH THINGS BE?,
by Ambrose Bierce(1893)
The horror story.


Bierce splices the horror of Poe with the wit of Twain to create the modern horror short story.



Leads to:

>>> Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; EC Comics'"Tales From the Crypt", "The Haunt of Fear", "The Vault of Horror", etc.; 'The Twilight Zone'; 'The Outer Limits'; 'One Step Beyond'; 'Night Gallery'; "Eerie", "Creepy", and "Vampirella" magazines; DC Comics'"House Of Mystery" and "House of Secrets"; 'Trilogy of Terror' (1975) with Karen Black; Dahl's 'Tales of the Unexpected' series; 'Tales From the Darkside'; 'Tales From the Crypt' series.

---

5) THE KING IN YELLOW,
by Robert W. Chambers(1895)
Demon gods.


Chambers expands on Bierce, presaging Lovecraft.

(Only the first four stories reference the King In Yellow mythos.)



Leads to:

-Chamber's use of short stories haunted by a peripheral extradimensional mad god impressed H.P. Lovecraft into developing his Cthulhu mythos.

- "The King In Yellow" stories have inspired mentions in the work of Raymond Chandler, Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, James Blish, Lin Carter, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Stephen King.

-"The King In Yellow" gained popular revitalization with the success of HBO's 'True Detective' (Season 1, 2014).

>>> Blue Oyster Cult's song "E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)" and Toyah Wilcox's "The Gift"; Metal songs by Anaal Nathrakh, Ancient Rites, and Root.


Also Watch:
--'True Detective', Season 1

---

6) THE TURN OF THE SCREW,
by Henry James(1898)
Subjective horror.
Cover painting, "Brother and Sister" by Abbot Handerson Thayer, 1889.

What lies beneath?



Leads to:

>>>'UGETSU' (1953); Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House"; 'Dark Shadows'; the prequel 'THE NIGHTCOMERS' (1971); 'DON'T LOOK NOW' (1973); 'THE CHANGELING' (1980); Kate Bush's "The Infant Kiss"; Crepax's "Giro di Vite" graphic novel; 'THE OTHERS' (2001).

Also Read:
-The inverted short story "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly", by Joyce Carol Oates


Also Watch:
--'THE INNOCENTS' (1961)
Clayton's film adaption.
--'THE OTHERS' (2001)

---

Additional Classics:
-A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT, by Mark Twain (1889)

-OF ONE BLOOD, by Pauline Hopkins (1902)

---

7) HERLAND,
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman(1915)
The feminist utopia.


Gilman, most famous for the feminist essay "The Yellow Wallpaper", imagines a secluded society of superwomen, self-sustained and ideologically progressive.



Leads to:

-Herland is an idyllic utopia hidden from men, forged and maintained by pacifist amazons. This is an exact template for Wonder Woman and Paradise Island.

-Gilman's parthenogenetic society anticipates Anderson's "Virgin Planet"; as well as genderless realms like Sturgeon's "Venus Plus X", Le Guin's "The Left Side of Darkness", Moto Hagio's "Marginal" manga, and Constantine's "Wraeththu" books.

>>> Moulton and Peter's "Wonder Woman"; Moore and Williams'"Promethea".

Also Read:
-"With Her In Ourland", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1916)
The even more crucial sequel.

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8) WITH HER IN OURLAND,
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman(1916)
Feminist ambassador.

Gilman prescribes feminist solutions for an equitable world that could still help us a century later.



Leads to:

- Feminist Utopias in the works of Elizabeth Mann Borghese, John Wyndham, Joanna Russ, Doris Lessing, and Suzy McKee Charnas.

-Gilman's heroine is an ambassador from matriarchal Herland offering ideas of equity to the patriarchal world. This prefigures Wonder Woman's similar mission, and the cosmic expansion of it by Promethea.

>>> Joanna Russ'"The Female Man"; Marge Piercy's "Woman On the Edge of Time"; Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness".

Also Read:
-"Herland", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)

---

9) THE HEADS OF CERBERUS,
by Francis Stevens(1919)
Dystopias, alternate realms and timelines.


Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) creates a future dystopia before Zamyatin, as well as an alternate realm based on Fantasy before Lewis, and alternate timelines that need reversing. Phew!



Leads to:

- Stevens was an early pioneer of women writing Science Fiction and Fantasy pulps, along with C.L. Moore, Clare Winger Harris, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Zenna Henderson. They ushered the way for Leigh Brackett, Katherine MacLean, Andre Norton, Margaret St. Clair, and more.

>>> Zamyatin's "We"; Huxley's "Brave New World"; Orwell's "1984"; C.S. Lewis'"Narnia" books; Star Trek's "The City On the Edge of Forever"; 'STARGATE' (1994); 'Quantuum Leap', 'Sliders', 'Fringe', and 'Continuum'; Fforde's "Tuesday Next" novels; 'X-MEN: Days of Future Past' (2014).

---

10)

A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS,
by David Lindsay(1920)
Subjective odyssey.


This surreal, symbolic, obtuse cross of "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Dante's Inferno" anticipates the New Wave of Science Fiction by over four decades.



Leads to:

-Though barely available, the rare book impressed both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

>>> Similarly subjective journeys like Fellini's '8 1/2' (1963); Lem's "Solaris"; '2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968); 'EL TOPO' (1970); 'FANTASTIC PLANET' (1973); 'ZARDOZ' (1974); Bloom's sequel "A Flight To Lucifer"; 'Twin Peaks'.

---

11) "The Comet",
by W.E.B. Dubois(1920)
The future of humanity.


Will we soar together into the future with progress, or sink separately in regress?

The great activist and historian caps his book "Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil" with this allegorical short story.




Leads to:

>>> Afrofuturism; Sun Ra; Parliament-Funkadelic; Earth, Wind, and Fire; Grace Jones; Afrika Bambaataa; Bishop of the X-Men; Mr. Terrific; Janelle Monae.

---

12) WE,
by Yevgeny Zamyatin(1920)
Dystopia.

Counter to utopias like those envisioned by H.G. Wells, Zamyatin defines the possible dystopia from his disillusionment with Communism.

Russia censored him and exported him abroad, where he died.



Leads to:

>>> All future dystopias, such as Huxley's "Brave New World"; Orwell's "1984"; Nolan and Johnson's "Logan's Run"; Collins'"The Hunger Games"; etc.

---

13) THE TRIAL,
by Franz Kafka(1925)
Bureaucratic dystopia.


You've done nothing wrong. Run.



Leads to:

>>> Nabokov's "Invitation To a Beheading"; McGoohan's 'The Prisoner'; 'DUEL' (1971); 'THE TENANT' (1976); Scorsese's 'AFTER HOURS' (1985); Gilliam's 'BRAZIL' (1985); the Coen's 'BARTON FINK' (1991); Lynch's 'INLAND EMPIRE' (2006); 'THE DOUBLE' (2013); 'ENEMY' (2014).

Also Watch:
--'THE TRIAL' (1962)
Orson Welles' unsung classic.

---

14) THE METAMORPHOSIS,
by Franz Kafka(1925)
Altered states.


Absurdist transmutation. What is self? Where is empathy?



Leads to:

>>>'THE FLY' (1958, 1986); Metamorpho the Element Man; 'ALTERED STATES' (1981); 'THE MACHINIST' (2004); 'BUG' (2006); Olsen's inverted version "Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka".

---

Additional Classics:
-LOLLY WILLOWES, by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

-AWAY FROM THE HERE AND NOW, by Clare Winger Harris (short stories, 1926-1930)

---

15) THE SKYLARK OF SPACE,
by E.E. "Doc" Smith(1930)
Space Opera.


In the same issue of "Amazing Stories" as the first Buck Rogers tale, Smith invents faster-than-light space travel and the basics of Pulp science fiction.

(Also all the colonial militarism that the Prime Directive would try to correct.)



Leads to:
Space Opera.


-Flash Gordon; Asimov's "Foundation" books; EC Comics; 'FORBIDDEN PLANET' (1956); Martian Manhunter; Captain Comet; Fox and Anderson's "Adam Strange"

-Broome and Kane's "Green Lantern"; Fox and Kubert's "Hawkman"; 'Doctor Who'; Perry Rhodan; Manning's "Magnus, Robot Fighter"; 'Star Trek'; Christen and Mezieres'"Valerian and Laureline"; Guardians of the Galaxy


-'Gatchaman' (a.k.a., Battle of the Planets) and 'Space Battleship Yamato' (a.k.a., Star Blazers); comics like Warlock, Monark Starstalker, Cody Starbuck, Killraven, Star-Lord, and Rocket Raccoon; Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal magazines; 'STAR WARS' (1977); 'Battlestar Galactica'; 'Blake's 7'

-Lee and Kaluta's "Starstruck", Golden's "Bucky O'Hare", 'Macross'; Starlin's "Dreadstar"; Jodorowsky and Moebius'"The Incal"; Rude's "Nexus"; 'Red Dwarf'


-Morioka's "Crest of the Stars" books; 'Andromeda'; 'Farscape'; 'Cowboy Bebop'; Wing Commander games; 'GALAXY QUEST' (1999)

-'TITAN A.E.' (2000); Halo and Mass Effect games; 'Firefly' and 'SERENITY' (2005); Vaughan and Staples'"Saga"; 'GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY' (2014).


Also Watch:
--'STAR WARS' (1977)

---

16) BRAVE NEW WORLD,
by Aldous Huxley(1932)
Eugenics dystopia.


Classist eugenics, designer drugs, zombie consumerism, the erasing of culture, a corporate fascism pretty and hollow.

Happening all around you now.



Leads to:

-Madison Avenue madmen, celebrity culture, mallrats, Cocaine and Ecstasy, press feeds, the end of book stores, Citizens United, the Koch brothers.

>>> Captain America, the supersoldier; George Orwell's "1984"; Heinlein's "Beyond This Horizon"; The X-Men; the Bene Gesserit and Kwisatz Haderach in Herbert's "Dune"; Star Trek's "Space Seed" and 'THE WRATH OF KHAN' (1982); Wilhelm's "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang"; 'GATTACA' (1997); 'CODE 46' (2003); 'CHILDREN OF MEN' (2006); 'Dark Angel'; 'Dollhouse'; 'NEVER LET ME GO' (2010); 'DIVERGENT' (2014).

---

17) MARY POPPINS,
by P.J. Travers(1934)
The magical guide.


Clearly inspired by the flights of Barry's "Peter Pan", Mary flies her on course. Spit spot.

The art for all eight books was by Mary Shepard.



Leads to:

>>> Lindgren's "Pippi Longstocking" books; Seuss'"The Cat In the Hat"; the "Nurse Matilda" books and 'NANNY McPHEE' films; 'CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG' (1968); Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and 'WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (1971); 'BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS' (1971); Ms. Frizzle on 'The Magic School Bus'; Rowling's "Harry Potter" books; 'SAVING MR. BANKS' (2013).

Also Watch:
--'MARY POPPINS' (1964)
--'SAVING MR. BANKS' (2013)

---

18) THE HOBBIT,
by J.R.R. Tolkien(1937)
Epic Fantasy for children.


Professor Tolkien redefines worldbuilding with conversational ease, lifting fairy tales into literature.



Leads to:

>>> C.S. Lewis'"Narnia" books; Beagle's "The Last Unicorn"; Gilliam's 'TIME BANDITS' (1981); 'DRAGONSLAYER' (1981); 'THE DARK CRYSTAL' (1982); 'LEGEND' (1985); 'LADYHAWKE' (1985); 'LABYRINTH' (1986); Jones'"Howl's Flying Castle"; 'WILLOW' (1988); 'DRAGONHEART' (1996); 'SPIRITED AWAY' (2001); DeCamillo's "The Tale of Despereaux"; 'PAN'S LABYRINTH' (2006); HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON' (2010); 'BRAVE' (2012); 'EPIC' (2013).


Also Watch:
Jackson's 'THE HOBBIT' trilogy:

--'AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY' (2012)
--'THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG' (2013)
--'THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES' (2014}

---

19) THE BIG SLEEP,
by Raymond Chandler(1939)
The Urban Detective.


Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" sketched the urban detective with Sam Spade.
But Chandler fully rendered him here as Phillip Marlowe.



Leads to:

>>> Welles'"TOUCH OF EVIL' (1958); Starke's "Parker" novels and 'POINT BLANK' (1967); 'ALPHAVILLE' (1965); Godot's 'MADE IN THE U.S.A.' (1966); 'HARPER' (1966) and 'THE DROWNING POOL' (1975); 'SOYLENT GREEN' (1973); 'CHINATOWN' (1974); 'BODY HEAT' (1981); 'BLADE RUNNER' (1982); 'DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID' (1982); Moore and Gibbon's "Watchmen"; 'DEVIL IN THE BLUE DRESS' (1995); 'L.A. CONFIDENTIAL' (1997); 'THE BIG LEWBOWSKI' (1998); 'DARK CITY' (1998); Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".

Also Watch:
--'THE BIG SLEEP' (1946)
Bogart. Becall. Because.

---

Additional Classics:
-JUDGMENT NIGHT, by C.L. Moore (1940's stories)

-THE LITTLE PRINCE, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943)

---

20)

ANIMAL FARM,
by George Orwell(1943)
Animal dystopia.


Anthropomorphic allegory.
This is a book for every adult, if there's to be any more children.



Leads to:

>>>'PLANET OF THE APES' (1968); Pink Floyd's "Animals" album; O'Brien's "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" and 'THE SECRET OF NIMH' (1982); Adams'"Watership Down"; Spiegelman's "Maus"; 'BABE: PIG IN THE CITY' (1998); 'CHICKEN RUN' (2000); Martel's "Beatrice and Virgil".

Also Watch:
--'ANIMAL FARM' animated (1954)

---

21) SHADOW OVER MARS,
by Leigh Brackett(1944)
The alternate Mars.
Cover by Earle K. Bergey, 1944.
The Queen of Space Opera.
Burroughs and Bradbury have their famed Mars stories, but Brackett matches them with her pulp adventures.



Leads to:

-Space Opera authors like Anne McCaffrey, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, C.J. Cherryh, Joan Vinge, Catherine Asaro, Marianne de Pierres, C.S. Friedman, Justina Robson, Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Tanya Huff, Sharon Lee, Linnea Sinclair, and Margaret Weis.

>>>'STAR WARS'; "Starstruck" and "Saga" comics.


Also Watch:
--'RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK' (1981)

---

22) BLACK AMAZON OF MARS,
by Leigh Brackett(1951)
Space amazon.
Cover by Earle K. Bergey, 1951.
Burroughs' Dejah Thoris was the template for all space amazons, but Brackett one-ups her with this fierce pirate.

Leigh Brackett also co-wrote the screenplays for 'THE BIG SLEEP', 'RIO BRAVO', and 'THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK'.



Leads to:
Space Amazon.

-"Badass Women of the Pulp Era"

>>> Sci-Fi amazons like Ripley in 'ALIEN'; Leia Organa, Padme Amidala, Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee, Ahsoka, and Assajj Ventress in 'STAR WARS'; Leeloo in 'THE FIFTH ELEMENT' (1997); Aeryn Sun and the women of 'Farscape'; Zoe Washburne and River Tam on 'Firefly' and 'SERENITY' (2005); River Song on 'Doctor Who'.

Also Watch:
--'THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK' (1980)

---

23) "The People of the Crater",
by Andre Norton(1947)
Female Fantasy strikes back.


The first published tale that launched her storied career.

Norton pioneered female authors in modern Fantasy.



Leads to:

-Norton's "Witch World" led to Sword-and-Sorceress, a balance against sexism in Sword-and-Sorcery.

>>> Ursula K. Le Guin's flipped response, the "Earthsea" books; Marion Zimmer Bradley's 28 volume "Sword and Sorceress" anthologies; Jessica Amanda Salmonson's "Amazon" anthologies; 'Xena: Warrior Princess'; Fantasy authors like Diana Wynn Jones, Vonda N. McIntyre, and J.K. Rowling.

---

24) 1984,
by George Orwell(1949)
The ultimate dystopia.


Orwell foretells how our worst regressions will destroy us.

Timeless, essential.



Leads to:
A reality near you.

-Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the World Bank, CCTV street cameras, data mining, phone tapping, Corporate personhood, 'Citizens United', Free Speech Zones, Voter IDs, anti-Net Neutrality, the corporate buyout of journalism, FOX News, etc.,...

-McGoohan's 'The Prisoner'; Gilliam's 'BRAZIL' (1985); 'EQUILIBRIUM' (2002); the 'reality' shows 'Big Brother' and 'Room 101'; the anime 'Code Geass'; 'EAGLE EYE' (2008).


-Stevie Wonder's song "Big Brother", Rare Earth's "Hey Big Brother", The Jam's "Standards", Cheap Trick's "Dream Police";// Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" album, Subhumans'"Day the Country Died" album, Eurythmics' soundtrack "1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)", Queensryche's "Operation Mindcrime" album, Radiohead's "Hail To the Thief" album.

-Burgess'"1985"; Dalos'"1985"; Postman's "Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse In the Age of Show Business"; Gardner's "Inventing Elliott"; Moore and O'Neill's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier"; "Superman: Red Son"; Doctorow's "Little Brother"; Murakami's "1Q84"; Barry's "Jennifer Government".

Also Watch:
--'1984' (1984)

---

25) I, ROBOT,
by Isaac Asimov(1950)
The Laws of Robotics.


Asimov invents the rules governing robots in these short stories... in order to break them.



Leads to:

- ★ The modem company, U.S. Robotics.

-Robby the Robot in 'FORBIDDEN PLANET' (1956); Roddenberry's 'The Questor Tapes' (1974); 'WESTWORLD' (1973) and 'FUTUREWORLD' (1976); Bishop in 'ALIENS' (1986); positronic brains, such as Data's on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'; the 4 Laws for 'ROBOCOP' (1987); the anime and film 'TIME OF EVE' (2009); Halo and Portal 2 games.

-Alan Parsons Project's "I Robot" album; Hawkwind's song "Robot".

-Wagner's "Three Laws of Robotic Sexuality"; the 4th Law in Dilov's "Icarus' Way"; the 5th Law in Kesarovski's "The Fifth Law"; Stross'"Saturn's Children"; Sladek's "Roderick".


Also Watch:
--'THE IRON GIANT' (1999)

---

Additional Classics:
-The FOUNDATION books, by Isaac Asimov (1951-onward)

-THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, by Ray Bradbury (1950)

---

26) THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE,
by C.S. Lewis(1950)
Narnia.


The gateway to a Fantasy realm for adventurous kids.



Leads to:

-Haggard's "She: A History of Adventure" (1887) inspired Lewis' The White Witch, and Tolkien's Galadriel.

>>> Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are"; Paterson's "The Bridge To Terabithia"; Platform 9 3/4 in Rowling's "Harry Potter"; Charlotte Staples Lewis on 'LOST'; Pullman's "The Golden Compass"; 'PAN'S LABYRINTH' (2006); DeTerlizzi and Black's "The Spiderwick Chronicles".

---

27) CHILDHOOD'S END,
by Arthur C. Clarke(1953)
Transcendence.


To every thing there is a season...



Leads to:

>>>'2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968); Pink Floyd's "Childhood's End"; 'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND' (1977); Brin's "Uplift" books; both series of 'V'; 'THE ABYSS' (1988); 'INDEPENDENCE DAY' (1995).

---

28) THE DEMOLISHED MAN,
by Alfred Bester(1953)
The Psychic Detective.


Don't even think about it.

"And if my thought dreams could be seen/
they'd probably put my head in a guillotine..." -Dylan



Leads to:

>>> Dick's short story "Minority Report"; the empathic detective Will Graham of "Red Dragon" and 'Hannibal'; the intuitive Agent Cooper on 'Twin Peaks'; the psi-cop Alfred Bester on 'Babylon 5'; 'MINORITY REPORT' (2002).

---

29) FAHRENHEIT 451,
by Ray Bradbury(1953)
The Library of Alexandria.


Killing culture = suicide.

This book proving the stupidity of banning, censoring, redacting, and burning culture has been banned, censored, redacted, and burned over the decades.



Leads to:

>>> Moore and Lloyd's "V For Vendetta"; Brin's "The Postman"; Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale"; 'FURIA' (1999); real life in Sartrapi's "Persepolis"; 'IDIOCRACY' (2006); Zusak's "The Book Thief"; 'THE BOOK OF ELI' (2010).

Also Read:
-"A Pleasure To Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories", by Ray Bradbury (2010)


Also Watch:
--'FAHRENHEIT 451' (1966)
Truffaut.

---

30)

THE LORD OF THE RINGS,
by J.R.R. Tolkien(1954)
Epic Fantasy for adults.


Modern mythos becomes Literature.
This is the second bestselling book of all time.



Leads to:

-Herbert's "Dune"; Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness"; Moorcock's "Elric of Melnibone" books; Brooks'"Shannara" books; Ende's "The Neverending Story"; George R.R. Martin's "Song Of Fire and Ice" books and 'Game of Thrones'; Riordan's "Percy Jackson" books; Lasky's "Guardians of Ga'Hoole" books and 'LEGENDS OF THE GUARDIANS' (2010).

-Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On", "Misty Mountain Hop", and "The Battle of Evermore".

-Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest"; 'EXCALIBUR' (1981); Dungeons And Dragons board games; "Magic: The Gathering" card games; World Of Warcraft games; 'ERAGON' (2006); 'HELLBOY 2: The Golden Army' (2008); 'THOR: THE DARK WORLD' (2013).


Also Watch:
Jackson's 'LORD OF THE RINGS' trilogy:

--'THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING' (2001)
--'THE TWO TOWERS' (2002)
--'THE RETURN OF THE KING' (2003)

---

31) LORD OF THE FLIES,
by William Golding(1954)
Nature vs. Nurture.


This is not a childrens' book.



Leads to:

>>> Burgess'"A Clockwork Orange"; Hinton's "The Outsiders"; Star Trek's "Miri"; 'IF...' (1968); 'STRAW DOGS' (1971); Ballard's "High-Rise"; 'ALKITRANG DUGO' (1975); 'ON THE EDGE' (1979); 'MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME' (1985); 'THE MOSQUITO COAST' (1986); The Simpsons'"Das Bus"; 'THE BEACH' (2000); 'THE KING IS ALIVE' (2001); the Others on 'LOST'; Collins'"The Hunger Games".

Also Watch:
--'LORD OF THE FLIES' (1963)

---

32) VERTIGO*,
by Boileau-Narcejac(1954)

Roles and identity.


* (first published as "D'entre Les Morts / The Living and the Dead")


Boileau-Narcejac was a pen name for Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud.

They also wrote the book that inspired Clouzat's 'DIABOLIQUE' (1955), and adapted the screenplay for Redon's 'EYES WITHOUT A FACE' (1960).



Leads to:

>>> Bobby Previte's unused soundtrack song "Vertigo"; Lem's "Solaris"; Brook's 'HIGH ANXIETY' (1976); De Palma's 'OBSESSION' (1976) and 'BODY DOUBLE' (1985); 'L'APPARTEMENT' (1996); Madeleine Ferguson on 'Twin Peaks'; 'NE LE DIS A PERSONNE (a.k.a., Tell No One)' (2006); Almodovar's 'THE SKIN I LIVE IN' (2011).

Also Watch:
--'VERTIGO' (1958)
Hitchcock takes the essence of the book and improves it.

---

33) INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS*,
by Jack Finney(1955)
You will be absorbed.

* (first published as "The Body Snatchers")


This veiled indictment of McCarthyism remains a relevant rebuke against conformity and repression.



Leads to:

>>> UK series 'Undermind'; 'The Invaders' (1967 series); Star Trek's "This Side of Paradise"; 'CONTAMINATION' (1980); 'STRANGE INVADERS' (1983); 'THE HIDDEN' (1987); 'THEY LIVE' (1988); the Borg on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'; 'The X-Files'; the third film version 'BODY SNATCHERS' (1993); 'THE FACULTY' (1998); 'Invasion' (2005 series); the fourth film version 'THE INVASION' (2007); 'THE WORLD'S END' (2013).


Also Read:
-"The Puppet Masters", by Robert A. Heinlein (1951)
-"It Came From Outer Space", short story by Ray Bradbury (1953)
-"The Father-Thing", short story by Philip K. Dick (1954)

Also Watch:
--'INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS' (1956)
--'INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS' (1978)

---

34) THE STARS MY DESTINATION,
by Alfred Bester(1956)
Teleportation.


Teleportation has existed in myth and folktales, but the 'jaunting' in Bester's novel epitomizes its use in modern Science Fiction.

Bester is on fire with a bold imagination and mature verve that bridges the Golden Age toward the New Wave.



Leads to:

>>>'THE FLY' (1958); the Transporter on 'Star Trek'; the Boom Tube in Kirby's "New Gods"; jaunting on 'The Tomorrow People'; Nightcrawler of the X-Men; 'BLAKE'S 7'; Dagger's partner, Cloak; King's "The Jaunt"; Simmons'"Hyperion"; Crichton's "Timeline"; 'JUMPER' (2008); "White Tulip" on 'Fringe'; Hiro on 'Heroes'; the Walk-On tech of "Starstruck: Harry Palmer".

---

35) ON THE BEACH,
by Nevil Shute(1957)
Post-apocalypse.


Our last days after a nuclear holocaust.

This was the first mainstream bestseller to convey the looming horrors of the nuclear age. Although rather sedately.



Leads to:

-Roshwald's "Level 7"; Frank's "Alas, Babylon"; Miller's "A Canticle For Leibowitz"; Anderson's "Maurai" books; Key's "The Incredible Tide" which becomes Miyazaki's 'FUTURE BOY CONAN' anime series; Brin's "The Postman"; DuPrau's "The City of Ember" books; obliquely, Cormac's "The Road".

-'DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' (1964); 'FAIL SAFE' (1964); BBC's 'The War Game' telemovie (1965, but withheld from public viewing for two decades); 'Ark II' series; 'DAMNATION ALLEY' (1977); 'MAD MAX' (1979); 'The Day After' telemovie (1983); 'THE LAST BATTLE' (1983); 'THE TERMINATOR' (1984); 'MIRACLE MILE' (1988); video games like Wasteland and Fallout; 'Electric City' web-series; 'Adventure Time'(!).

Also Watch:
--'ON THE BEACH' (1959)

---

Additional Classics:
-THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, by T.H. White (1958)

-"Flowers For Algernon", short story by Daniel Keyes (1959)

---

36) THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE,
by Shirley Jackson(1959)
Subjective terror.


The kingdom of hell is within.



Leads to:

>>>'ROSEMARY'S BABY' (1968); 'DON'T LOOK NOW' (1973); King's "The Shining"; Straub's "Ghost Story"; 'THE LADY IN WHITE' (1988); 'THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT' (1999); 'THE RING' (2002); 'THE WOMAN IN BLACK' (2012).

Also Read:
-"The Turn of the Screw", by Henry James (1898)
-"The Lottery", by Shirley Jackson (1948)

Also Watch:
--'THE HAUNTING' (1963)
Robert Wise's adaption of the book.

---

37) PSYCHO,
by Robert Bloch(1959)
Schism.


We all go a little mad sometimes.



Leads to:

-The 1957 murders by serial killer Ed Gein directly inspired Bloch's book "Psycho", and then later films like 'DERANGED' and 'THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE' (1974), as well as Harris'"The Silence of the Lambs".

-Polanski's 'REPULSION' (1965); Star Trek's "Wolf In the Fold" written by Robert Bloch; DePalma's 'SISTERS' (1973) and 'DRESSED TO KILL' (1980); Brooks''HIGH ANXIETY' (1976); Carpenter's 'HALLOWEEN' (1978); the underrated 'PSYCHO II' (1982); Russell's 'CRIMES OF PASSION' (1984); the underrated 'PSYCHO III' (1986); Jodorowsky's 'SANTA SANGRE' (1989); Ellis'"American Psycho"; Palahniuk's "Fight Club"; Aronofsky's 'BLACK SWAN' (2010); Soderberg's 'SIDE EFFECTS' (2012); the series 'Bates Motel' (2013).


Also Read:
-"Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of PSYCHO" by Stephen Rebello (1990)

Also Watch:
--'PSYCHO' (1960)

--'PEEPING TOM' (1960)

---

38) NAKED LUNCH,
by William S. Burroughs(1959)
Bop prosody.


"Now I, William Seward, will unlock my word horde..."

Absurdist collage junkie nightmare insect exorcism body dissolution scream dream.



Leads to:


-Burroughs and Paul McCartney made tape loops in 1966. Paul's sound loops were used in "Tomorrow Never Knows" on 'Revolver'. Burroughs is in the crowd on the 'Sgt. Pepper' cover.

-He also did music collaborations with Laurie Anderson, Material, Ministry, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Sonic Youth, and Kurt Cobain.



-Steppenwolf borrowed "born to be wild" and "heavy metal" from "Nova Express"; Dylan's book "Tarantula"; Bowie's cut-up lyrics, such as the "Diamond Dogs" album; band names like Soft Machine, Nova Express, Steely Dan, Thin White Rope, The Mugwumps, The Insect Trust, Clem Snide, and Nova Mob; Joy Division's "Interzone".

-In the wake of Joyce, Burroughs bridged experimental writing to authors like Vonnegut, Pynchon, and Acker.

-Delaney's "Hogg"; Reed's "Mumbo Jumbo"; the Nova Express magazine in Moore and Gibbon's "Watchmen"; Cronenberg films like 'VIDEODROME' (1983).


Also Watch:
--'NAKED LUNCH' (1991)

---

Additional Classics:
-A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1960)

-WITCH WORLD, by Andre Norton (1963)

---

39) STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND,
by Robert Heinlein(1961)
The kingdom of Heaven is within.


John Carter of Mars becomes Jesus of Nazereth, and sets you free to be yourself.



Leads to:

- ★ The invention of the waterbed!

>>> Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and their communal lifestyle and philosophy; Paul Atreides in Herbert's "Dune"; "I Grok Spock" buttons; songs by The Byrds, Blackburn and Snow, and U2; Dr. Manhattan in "Watchmen"; Miracleman in 'Book III'; Leeloo in 'THE FIFTH ELEMENT' (1997); Neo in 'THE MATRIX' (1999); 'SUPERMAN RETURNS' (2006).

---

40)

SOLARIS,
by Stanislaw Lem(1961)
Alien.
Film poster designed by Andrzej Bertrandt, 1972.

Are we even capable of understanding an alien universe, or the abstract within us?



Leads to:

>>>'2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968); 'STALKER' (1979); 'PI' (1998); 'ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND' (2004); 'THE FOUNTAIN' (2006); 'SUNSHINE' (2007); 'MOON' (2009); 'LOVE' (2011); 'THE TREE OF LIFE' (2011); 'UPSTREAM COLOR' (2013); 'Extant' (2014).

Also Watch:
--'SOLARIS' (1972)
--'SOLARIS' (2002)

---

41) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE,
by Anthony Burgess(1962)
The wounded and the wound-up.


If you're the disease, is the cure worse?



Leads to:

-Album's like Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust", Die Toten Hosen's "Ein Kleine Bisschen Horrorschau", Sepultura's "A-Lex", and Lana Del Ray's "Ultraviolence";// band names like Heaven 17, Ultraviolence, Moloko, and Devotchkas;// songs by New Order, Scars, Ramones, and U2.

-Carroll's memoir "The Basketball Diaries"; 'THE WARRIORS' (1979); inverted in Moore and Lloyd's "V For Vendetta"; 'ROMPER STOMPER' (1993); 'NATURAL BORN KILLERS' (1994); 'KIDS' (1995); 'LA HAINE' a.k.a., Hate (1996); 'AMERICAN HISTORY X' (1998); 'FIGHT CLUB' (1999); 'SCUM' (2006); 'TSOTSI' a.k.a., Thug (2006); 'THIS IS ENGLAND' (2007).


Also Watch:
--'A CLOCKWORK ORANGE' (1971)
Kubrick. McDowell.

---

42) A WRINKLE IN TIME,
by Madeleine L'Engle(1962)
Magic, Science, and adolescence.


Time, science, spirit. And Aunt Beast.



Leads to:

>>>'THE FLIGHT OF DRAGONS' (1982); Duane's "High Wizardry"; Farmer's "The Eye, The Ear, and The Arm"; Funke's "Inkheart"; Stead's "When You Reach Me"; Hope Larson's graphic novel "A Wrinkle In Time".

-Sawyer reads it on 'LOST'.

---

43) PLANET OF THE APES*,
by Pierre Bouelle(1963)
Damn it all to hell.

* (first published as "La Planete des Singes")


The author of "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" throws a future fastball.
All hail Caesar.



Leads to:

>>> Japanese series like 'Spectreman' and 'Time of the Apes'; Kirby's "Kamandi"; Roddenberry's "Genesis II/ Strange New World/ Planet Earth" pilots; 'GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA' (1974) and 'TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA' (1975); inverted in 'ALIEN NATION' (1988); Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 2 game; Hefner's "Gates" webcomic.

Also Watch:
--'PLANET OF THE APES' (1968)
Rod Serling refines and improves the book.
--'CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' (1972)
Revolution Ape Style Now.

--'RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' (2011)
A fine prequel to the 1968 film (and rethink of CONQUEST).
--'DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' (2014)
A finer, deeper follow-up to RISE.

---

44) DUNE,
by Frank Herbert(1965)
Epic.


Herbert crosses Asimov's "Foundation" scope with Tolkien's epic anthropology to redefine modern science fiction.
The bestselling SF book of all time.



Leads to:

-"Why I See DUNE In Everything"


-Tatooine, Spice mines of Kessal, Krayt Dragon, Sandpeople, Jawas, Jabba the Hut, the Jedi, and Luke in 'STAR WARS'; desert world and worms in 'STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan' (1982).

-Concept albums by Dave Matthews, Richard Pinhas, Klause Schulze, Zed, and Dun; Iron Maiden's "To Tame a Land".

-Niven's waterless "Known Space" stories; Jordan's "Eye of the World" books; Bakker's "The Prince of Nothing" books.



Also Watch:
--'Jodorowsky's DUNE' (2013)
Documentary about the aborted 70's film, which led to 'ALIEN' and 'BLADE RUNNER'.

---

45) LOGAN'S RUN,
by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson(1967)
Run.


The future belongs to the young. But tick-tick...



Leads to:

>>> Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"; Fassbinder's "WORLD ON A WIRE' (1973); 'ROLLERBALL' (1975); 'TRON' (1982); 'THE RUNNING MAN' (1987); 'EQUILIBRIUM' (2002); 'THE ISLAND' (2005); the band name Jessica 6; 'THE MAZE RUNNER' (2014).

Also Read:
-"The Most Dangerous Game", short story by Richard Connell (1924)

Also Watch:
--'LOGAN'S RUN' (1976)

---

46) DANGEROUS VISIONS,
edited by Harlan Ellison(1967)
The New Wave of Science Fiction.


Space Opera gives way to the literary, the experimental, and counterculture values.

Judith Merril and Harlan Ellison were among the first to champion and compile this speculative renaissance. This is a primer.



Leads to:

-New Wave authors like Norman Spinrad, Joanna Russ, Michael Moorcock, Judith Merril, Samuel R. Delaney, Carol Emshwiller, Phillip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas Disch, Sonya Dorman, and Phillip Jose Farmer.

-Paralleled by Speculative Fiction writers like J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon.

-The introspective, abstract, postmodern, anti-hero, sociopolitical outlook of the Counterculture and the New Wave influenced films like: 'PLANET OF THE APES' (1968), 'EL TOPO' (1970), 'THX-1138' (1971), 'THE OMEGA MAN' (1971), 'CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' (1972), 'SILENT RUNNING' (1973), 'FANTASTIC PLANET' (1973), 'SOYLENT GREEN' (1973), 'ZARDOZ' (1974), 'MAGIC MOUNTAIN' (1974), 'LOGAN'S RUN' (1976), 'STAR WARS' (1977), 'ALIEN' (1979), 'BLADE RUNNER' (1982), 'THE MATRIX' (1999), 'DISTRICT 9' (2009), 'OBLIVION' (2013), and 'ELYSIUM' (2013).

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47) THE THIRD POLICEMAN,
by Flann O'Brien(1967)

Postmodern mindfunk.


Absurdist humor, cyclical surrealism, and underlying edge.

Flann O'Brien (Brian O'Nolan) wrote the book in 1940, but timid publishers rejected it. Published posthumously in 1967, the academia forged from the counterculture embraced it.



Leads to:

-Written in 1940, it anticipates Beckett's "Waiting For Godot", and postmodern creators like Flannery O'Connor, William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanislaw Lem, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Monty Python and Terry Gilliam, Ishmael Reed, Thomas Pynchon, David Lynch, Moebius, Michel Foucault, Alan Moore, T. Coraghessan Boyle, the Coen brothers, Peter Greenaway, Kathy Acker, Darren Aronofsky, and Spike Jonze.

-The book began selling again when Ben Linus read it on 'LOST'.

>>>'HEAD' (1968); John Cooper Clark's rap "Ten Years In An Open Neck Shirt"; 'Monty Python's MEANING OF LIFE' (1983); 'THE HUDSUCKER PROXY' (1994); 'BEING JOHN MALKOVICH' (1999); 'AMERICAN BEAUTY' (1999); 'DONNIE DARKO' (2001); 'Life On Mars' (UK and US series); 'STRANGER THAN FICTION' (2006); 'ENTER THE VOID' (2009); 'WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE' (2009); Abrams' and Dorst's "Ship of Theseus".

Also Watch:
--'Monty Python's MEANING OF LIFE' (1983)

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48) ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE,
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez(1967)
Magic realism.


An allegory of Latin American history in the dreamlike epic of one family.

The influence of Marquez's use of poetic lyricism and magic realism is incalculable.



Leads to:

>>> Fuentes'"The Old Gringo"; David Lynch; Allen's 'PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO' (1985); 'THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR' (1988); Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses"; 'FIELD OF DREAMS' (1989); Esquivel's "Like Water For Chocolate"; 'THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN' (1995); King's "The Green Mile"; 'O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU' (2000); 'AMELIE' (2001); 'BIG FISH' (2003); Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude"; 'Pushing Daisies'; Martel's "Life of Pi"; 'BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD' (2012).

Also Watch:
--'AMELIE' (2001)
--'BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD' (2012)

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Additional Classics:
-THE LAST UNICORN, by Peter S. Beagle (1968)

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49) CAMP CONCENTRATION,
by Thomas Disch(1968)
Biochem dystopia.


Government experiments on conscientious objectors: a satire. Coming to a Gitmo near you.

Disch's fierce farce and acerbic intelligence is a timeless warning, with surprises and laughs.



Leads to:

>>>'THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR' (1975); 'JACOB'S LADDER' (1990); the true 'A BEAUTIFUL MIND' (2001); 'THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS' (2009); 'THE KILLING ROOM' (2009); 'SHUTTER ISLAND' (2010); 'BANSHEE CHAPTER' (2013).

Also Watch:
--'CHARLY' (1968)
Based on Keyes'"Flowers For Algernon".

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50)

NOVA,
by Samuel R. Delaney(1968)
Proto-Cyberpunk.


Dismissed as too retro-Space Opera during the New Wave, Delaney's book helped pioneer multiculturalism in Sci-Fi, neo-Space Opera, and Cyberpunk.



Leads to:

-Afrofuturist creators like Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, Tananarive Due, and Nisi Shawl.

-Openly gay SF creators like Joanna Russ, Elizabeth Lynn, Thomas Disch, David Gerrold, Nicola Griffith, and Geoff Ryman.

>>> MacGregor and Gulacy's "Sabre"; Gibson's "Neuromancer"; Sayles''THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET' (1984); LaForge and Worf on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'; Capt. Sisko on 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'; Bishop of the X-Men; Morpheus in 'THE MATRIX'; 'PUMZI' (Nigerian short film, 2010).

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51) DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP,
by Phillip K. Dick(1968)
Replicant.


Running the razor's edge between human and machine.



Leads to:

-William S. Burroughs adapted an unused screenplay of Rouse's SF novel "The Bladerunners" called "The Blade Runner", which Ridley Scott used as the title of his "Androids" adaption.

>>> Scott's 'BLADE RUNNER' (1982); Miller's "Sin City", and Miller and Darrow's "Hard Boiled"; Snatcher, Shadowrun, and Manhunter video games; 'THE GHOST IN THE SHELL' (1995); 'I.K.U.' (2000); 'EQUILIBRIUM' (2002); South Korea's 'NATURAL CITY' (2003); 'I, ROBOT' (2004); Nolan's 'DARK KNIGHT' trilogy; the animated 'RENAISSANCE' (2006); 'Almost Human'; Swedish series 'Akta Manniskor' (a.k.a., Real Humans).

Also Watch:
--'BLADE RUNNER' (1982)

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52) 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY,
by Arthur C. Clarke(1968)
Starchild.


"Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" -Gauguin



Leads to:

>>>'UFO'; 'SILENT RUNNING' (1973); 'DARK STAR' (1974); 'Space: 1999'; Jack Kirby's "2001", "Machine Man", and "Devil Dinosaur" comics; 'THE BLACK HOLE' (by way of "20,000 Leagues", 1979); 'Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey' (1980/ 2014); '2010: OYSSEY TWO' (1984); 'CONTACT' (1997); 'MOON' (2009); 'PROMETHEUS' (2012); 'THE EUROPA REPORT' (2013).



Also Watch:
--'2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968)
The greatest films should only be seen on the big screen.

--'THE FOUNTAIN' (2006)
--'THE TREE OF LIFE' (2011)
--'PROMETHEUS' (2012)

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53) SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE,
by Kurt Vonnegut(1969)
War is harmful to children
and other living things.


Life is a prism of moments.



Leads to:

-Vonnegut's cross-temperol narrative was considered 'unfilmable, and too confusing for the masses'. However...: 'SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE' (1972); 'THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY' (1974); 'ANNIE HALL' (1977); 'Pink Floyd THE WALL' (1982); 'SIESTA' (1987); 'SHORT CUTS' (1993); 'PULP FICTION' (1994); 'THE USUAL SUSPECTS' (1995); 'RUN LOLA RUN' (1998); '12 MONKEYS' (1995); 'MEMENTO' (2000); '21 GRAMS' (2003); the six seasons of 'LOST'; 'I'M NOT THERE' (2007); 'CLOUD ATLAS' (2012)...

-The fictional author Kilgore Trout is referenced in works by Philip Jose Farmer, Salman Rushdie, Larry Niven, and Alan Moore.

-Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven"; Dick's "A Scanner Darkly"; Irving's "The World According To Garp"; DeLillo's "White Noise"; Moore and Gibbon's "Watchmen"; Sacco's graphic novel "Safe Area Gorazde"; Atwood's "Oryx and Crake"; Egger's "What Is the What?".

Also Watch:
--'SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE' (1972)
The 'unfilmable' filmed.

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54) THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS,
by Ursula K. Le Guin(1969)
Fantastic literature.


Le Guin's celebrated award-winner builds a literate Fantasy world as deftly as Tolkien and Herbert, while opening the door to challenging gender assumptions.



Leads to:

-The concept of the Ansible, an instantaneous communicator across vast distances, was borrowed by many authors like McCaffrey, Card, Moon, Donaldson, and Simmons, as well as 'Doctor Who' and 'Stargate'.

-Le Guin's complex mix of anthropology, sociology, and literate Fantasy forecast works like Vonda N. McIntyre's "Dreamsnake" and Joan D. Vinge's "The Snow Queen".

-Le Guin's notion of the fluid Being beyond simple binary gender assumptions is also explored in: Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust"; Varley's "Eight Worlds" stories; Lynn's "Tornor" books; Dax on 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'; Captain Jack Harkness on 'Doctor Who' and 'Torchwood'; Robinson's "2312"; 'CLOUD ATLAS' (2012).

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55) THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN,
by Michael Crichton(1969)
Contagion.


Crichton's science procedural invents the standard: a morphing contagion, hazmat suits, advanced labs, forensic suspense, and viral apocalypse.



Leads to:

>>> King's "The Stand"; Cooke's "Outbreak"; the Black Oil on 'X-Files'; '12 MONKEYS' (1995); 'OUTBREAK' (1995); Vaughn and Guerra's "Y: The Last Man"; 'BLINDNESS' (2008); 'CONTAGION' (2011); 'Helix' series; Cuaron's 'The Strain' (by way of "I Am Legend", 2014); 'DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES' (2014).

Also Watch:
--'THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN' (1971)
--'The Andromeda Strain' miniseries (2008)

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The Golden Age and the New Wave of Science Fiction were paralleled by classic comic strips, genre films, and the Silver Age of comics.

Taken together, their ideas forged much of our pop culture today.



KEY FILMS:


--'FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE' (1940)
--'PINOCCHIO' (1940)
--'THE THIEF OF BAGDAD' (1940)
--'THE MALTESE FALCON' (1941)
--'HERE COMES MR. JORDAN' (1941)
--'THE WOLF MAN' (1941)
--'CAT PEOPLE' (1942)
--'THE JUNGLE BOOK' (1942)
--'THE BIG SLEEP' (1946)
--'IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE' (1946)
--'BEAUTY AND THE BEAST' (1946)
--'MIRACLE ON 34th STREET' (1947)



--'DESTINATION MOON' (1950)
--'THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD' (1951)
--'THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL' (1951)
--'UGETSU' (1953)
--'WAR OF THE WORLDS' (1953)
--'GOJIRA / Godzilla' (1954)
--'THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON' (1954)
--'SEVEN SAMURAI' (1954)
--'THIS ISLAND EARTH' (1955)
--'INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS' (1956)
--'FORBIDDEN PLANET' (1956)
--'THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN' (1957)
--'THE 7th SEAL' (1957)
--'THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD' (1958)
--'THE HIDDEN FORTRESS' (1958)
--'THE FLY' (1958)
--'VERTIGO' (1958)
--'PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE' (1959)



--'THE TIME MACHINE' (1960)
--'EYES WITHOUT A FACE' (1960)
--'PSYCHO' (1960)
--'THE INNOCENTS' (1961)
--'CARNIVAL OF SOULS' (1962)
--'LA JETEE' (short film, 1962)
--'THE BIRDS' (1963)
--'THE HAUNTING' (1963)
--'ALPHAVILLE' (1965)
--'LA DECIMA VITTIMA / The 10th Victim' (1965)
--'FAHRENHEIT 451' (1966)
--'THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY' (1966)
--'FANTASTIC VOYAGE' (1966)
--'YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE' (1967)
--'BARBARELLA' (1968)
--'NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD' (1968)
--'2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY' (1968)
--'CHARLY' (1968)
--'PLANET OF THE APES' (1968)
--'ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
--'THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN' (1971)

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KEY SHOWS:

-'Adventures of Superman' (1952-1958)
-'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (1955-1965)
-'The Twilight Zone' (1959-1963)



-'The Avengers' (1961)
-'The Jetsons' (1962)
-'The Outer Limits' (1963)
-'Doctor Who' (1963)
-'Astro Boy' (1963)
-'The Fugitive' (1963)
-'The Addams Family' (1964)
-'Jonny Quest' (1964)
-'Mission: Impossible' (1966-1973)
-'The Invaders' (1967)
-'The Prisoner' (1967)
-'Star Trek' (1966-1969)

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KEY COMICS:


"Flash Gordon" by Alex Raymond
"Prince Valiant" by Hal Foster
"Terry and the Pirates" by Milton Caniff
"Wonder Woman" by William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter
"Captain Marvel" by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck
"The Spirit" by Will Eisner
"Plastic Man" by Jack Cole
"Miss Fury" by Tarpe Mills
"Donald Duck" by Carl Barks



"Pogo" by Walt Kelly
"Tintin" by Herge
"The Flash" by John Broome and Carmine Infantino


EC Comics,
by William Gaines, Al Feldstein, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Roy Krenkel, Bernie Krigstein:
-"Weird Science"
-"Weird Fantasy"
-"Tales From the Crypt"
-MAD magazine



"Justice League of America" by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky
"Lt. Blueberry" by Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud
"Fantastic Four" by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
"Thor" by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
"Barbarella" by Jean-Claude Forest
"Magnus, Robot Fighter" by Russ Manning
"Batman" by John Broome and Carmine Infantino
"Dr. Strange" by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
"Corto Maltese" by Hugo Pratt
"Valerian and Laureline" by Pierre Christen and Jean-Claude Mezieres
"Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." by Jim Steranko
"Deadman" by Arnold Drake and Neal Adams

"Zap Comics",
by Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Stanley MOuse, Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Robert Williams

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Music Player!

100 songs inspired by the books above!
(in order according to the list)


This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.


Rockabilly! Psyche! Soul!
Jazz! Reggae! Soundtracks!
Punk! Funk! Surf!

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See you in the future for...

THE CANON 3!

The Canon 3 will expand from New Wave, Feminist SciFi, and Cyberpunk up to the present day, covering roughly 1965 to now.

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See also:

-The Canon 1: 50 Books That Created Modern Culture

How STAR WARS Is Changing Everything!

The Big Bang of STARSTRUCK: The Roots and Branches of Lee and Kaluta's Space Opera


Art by Alex Ross

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How the original 1950's Rock styles remained strong through each decade!
(#3 of 6 parts)

...with enormous, world-spanning Music Player!




RockSex
now brings you the actual, all-inclusive holistic history of Rock'n'Soul music each week.
▶ History Checklist


Today, the story of how 50's Rock'n'Roll was revived in 1980's music and film!!
Hear an exhaustive music player, with worldwide artists maintaining the 50's styles from 1980 through 1989!

Spotify playlist title=
50's Rock disciples: '80-89This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.

*(The Player is limited to the first 200 songs.
Hear the unlimited Playlist here.)
All songs in order from 1980 through 1989.


▶ Revolution 1950's: The Big Damn Bang of Rock'n'Roll!
▶ 1950's Rock, A: The 60's Disciples
▶ 1950's Rock, B: The 70's Disciples

▶ 1950's Rock, D: The 90's Disciples

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The upshot:

The 1950's Rock styles continued in the 80's, evolving radically.

a) Punk
b) Black is back
c) She's Gotta Have It
d) Teds
e) Psychobilly
f) Perennials
g) Offspring
h) Boogie
i) Traditionalists
j) Next Wave
k) Roots
l) Cowpunk
m) Iconoclasts
n) The Originals
o) Screen

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1980's: NEW WAVES

The original Rock'n'Roll styles of the 1950's -Rockabilly, electric Blues, Honky Tonk, Mambo, Cajun, and Doo Wop- became perennials that never stopped. Even with all the radical mutations of musics that followed, hardcore tribes still kept the original root sounds alive in the 60's and the 70's.

In the 80's, this roots underground became more rampant, propelling a spectrum of artists, from the traditional to the radical.



Punk

The Ramones; Pearl Harbor; The Clash

1950's Rock'n'Roll continued to undercurrent Punk music in the spillover to the 80's. Its reckless rhythms and delinquent sneer rumbles all through The Ramones, Subway Sect, Lydia Lunch, Pearl Harbor & The Explosions, X, The Clash, The Fall, and Dead Kennedys.

Since Ska had originally morphed out of Jamaican love of R&B, naturally the Ska Revival bands like The (English) Beat, The Specials, and Madness took it back to the roots at times.

It spread laterally through acolytes like Social Distortion, Husker Du, Joan Jett, The Smiths, The Delmonas, and Jesus & Mary Chain. The style of 50's Rock and the energy of Punk would lead to Psychobilly.



Black is back/ All In, we're gonna win

Barrence Whitfield; Howard Huntsberry; The Gories

FM radio formatting (and, initially, MTV) continued to resegregate people out of the music they helped create, with the robot mantra 'Rock=white, Dance=black'.
(Short truth: everybody creates everything.)

Despite this closed-loop ignorance, defiant artists still echoed the sonic heritage they had every right to, with 50's styles glimmering in songs by Donna Summer, Joan Armatrading, The Spinners, Gary U.S. Bonds, and The Neville Brothers, as well as Howard Huntsberry's note-perfect portrayal of Jackie Wilson in the film LA BAMBA (1987).

The BusBoys
If 1970 had been about cultural inclusion, a decade of enforced division by FM Radio formats had resifted everyone into separate niches. Thus The BusBoys arrived in 1980 into a music system and marketed audience more segregated than any time since 1954. They turned this challenge into a mission to subvert every stereotype from every angle, from their mock-servant persona to their gleeful tear through music styles. In "Johnny Soul'd Out" they channel Chuck Berry to parody all imposed limitations.

Buzz And The Flyers (photo by Mick Rock);
Colbert Hamilton
At the same time, Gig Wayne and his Rockabilly band, Buzz And The Flyers, sparked New York but lit up the Ted crowds best in the UK. (Gig went on to front the hit new wave/soul band, JoBoxers.>) London's own Colbert Hamilton And The Hell-Razors trysted the cats and kitties with their first single in 1984. By then, Barrence Whitfield And The Savages were rippin' it up and havin' a ball tonight going full-throttle Little Richard on their first album.

Little Richard himself would team with Fishbone and Living Colour; and Mick Collins of The Gories transmitted John Lee Hooker.



She's Gotta Have It

Cyndi Lauper; The Pretenders; The Ace Cats
Contrary to sexist narratives, women were a huge force in the original 1950's Rock'n'Roll. They continued on into all the various styles that evolved through the 60's and 70's in ever-exponential numbers, but were often thinned out from the herd of 50's revivalists.

But if someone is held out because of false limits, they will fight back by ignoring them.

In the 80's, rockin' women began reclaiming this aspect of their herstory. Heart and Girlshool had the boogie; The Cosmopolitans sassed from the garage; Cyndi Lauper first perfected her Buddy Holly hiccup fronting Blue Angel; The Pretenders never forgot to keep it real; and rockafillies finally infiltrated the Teds movement, and bands like The Ace Cats and The Dead Beats, or flew solo like Rosie Flores and Beverly Stauber.

This turf stake would expand in the 90's, and become a continent in the 2000's.



Teds

Shakin' Stevens; Jimmy Lee Maslon; Gina And The Rockin' Rebels
The late 70's Teddy Boy Revival train kept a-rollin' with Shakin' Stevens, Crazy Cavan, Bonneville, Jimmie Lee Maslon, and -at last- with women like Ravenna And The Magnetix and Gina And The Rockin' Rebels.



Psychobilly

The Cramps

"The Cramps weren't thinking of this weird subgenre when we coined the term 'psychobilly' in 1976 to describe what we were doing. To us all the '50s rockabillies were psycho to begin with."
-Poison Ivy, of The Cramps


The Cramps may've sired Psychobilly sideways, but it quickly metastasized globally with Misfits, The Meteors, Guana Batz, and Batmobile.


Misfits; Demented Are Go
By the mid-80's a Psychobilly scene stomped at London's Klub Foot, with acts like Restless, Frenzy, Styngrites, The Coffin Nails, and Demented Are Go. (Like the initial Teds revival, it started too male, which would gradually change.)

The blistering rush was paralleled by revivalists like Barrence Whitfield, The Milkshakes (with Billy Childish), and The Leroi Brothers; blues blasters The Paladins; and the garage of The Delmonas (with Ludella Black) and The Gories.



Perennials

David Bowie in 'Absolute Beginners';
Neil Young; The HoneyDrippers
The second wave of rockers still relayed the torch with incendiary numbers by Neil Young, John Fogerty, The Rolling Stones, Bill Wyman's Willie And The Poor Boys, Charlie Watts with Rocket 88. And was run forward by third decade rockers like David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Sylvain Sylvain, Patti Smith, and The Honeydrippers (fronted by Robert Plant, featuring Jimmy Page)..

And of course true-school Rock bopped in the solo endeavors of Messrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.



Offspring

By now 50's Rock was in the blood, carried on by Billy and Rocky Burnette, Rosanne Cash, Carlene Carter, and Hank Williams, Jr.



Boogie

The boogie was in 'em, and had to come out of Heart, ZZ Top, Spider, Steve Miller Band, Little Feat, and Badfinger.



Traditionalists

Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe;
Marshall Crenshaw; Chris Isaak
Keeping the living traditions viable in new expressions were Rockpile (fronted by Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe), The Blasters, Marshall Crenshaw, Ry Cooder, and Chris Isaak.



Next Wave

The PoleCats; The BopCats; The TeenCats
But some just wanted the original Rockabilly back as pure as they could distill it. In the early 80's a legion of coiffed, tattooed, slapbass combos dizzied up the dancehalls. Following in the suede shoes of the Teds and Robert Gordon, they mirrored the zest and flair of the psychobillies but with a more deliberately classic sound.

Carl Perkins once wailed, "Go, cat, go!", and now catalyzed a movement: thus prowled The Blue Cats, The Rhythm Cats, The BopCats, The Polecats (UK), The Teencats (Norway), The Ace Cats (Germany), The Go-Katz, Levi And The Rockats, and The Catmen loud and proud.


Stay Cats:
Lee Rocker, Brian Setzer, Slim Jim Phantom
This of course unleashed the massive mainstream success, through MTV exposure, of Stray Cats, featuring Brian Setzer, Lee Rocker, and Slim Jim Phantom; their breakthrough may have arguably done more to revive 50's Rock for the mainstream and cement it as a tradition for the ages than any other act or movement.

Also rockin' the bop till the sock hops sagged dragged and dropped were Les Forbans (France), The Shakin' Pyramids (Scotland), The Sharks, The Rattlers, and The Dead Beats led by Suzy May.



Roots

The Fabulous Thunderbirds; Lucinda Williams; Los Lobos
Meanwhile the main force in 80's music was synth-driven, a gestalt expression of futurism.

Rock has always trysted in the cross-current between the earthy and the alien, the organic and the eerie. One movement insures a parry. But for all the sleek sheen and chrome dreams of the sythethic scene, others pined for rust and dirt and soul.

By the mid-80's a Roots rebuttal kicked butts with revisals of Blues, Country, Mariachi, and Zydeco. The pulse of 50's Rock throbbed in the veins of The Fabulous Thunderbirds (with Jimmie Vaughan), Joe Ely, Lucinda Williams, Los Lobos, Marcia Ball, Rosie Flores, Dwight Yoakam, Katie Webster, Omar And The Howlers, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Lou Ann Barton.

Abstractly, Paul Simon connected the historical circuit from Township Jive to Doo Wop when he worked with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, as recognition of organic World musics flourished.



Cowpunk

Texacala Jones; Jason And The Scorchers; k.d. lang

Simultaneously, some artists shotgun-wed these roots forms to punk energy, in a trend loosely corralled as Cowpunk.

Bringing some throwdown to the hoedown were Tex(acala Jones) And The Horseheads, The Knitters (X in plain disguise), Lone Justice, The Textones with Carla Olson, Jason And The Scorchers, The Long Ryders, and the early k.d. lang.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Outlaw Country artists like Nelson and Jennings, a new breed of Country upstarts were rejecting the factory pop to re-embrace Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and George Jones. Thus rose Neotraditionalists like Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakum, Roseanne Cash, Townes Van Zandt, Patti Loveless, Lyle Lovett (who brought in Soul and Jazz), and Steve Earle. Bluegrass caught new fire with Allison Krauss. The spirit of Gram Parsons lived in Emmylou Harris and The Desert Rose Band (with Chris Hillman). And k.d. lang worked with Owen Bradley, Patsy Cline's producer, to redefine herself as a Country torch singer.

These movements set the stage for Alt-Country in the early 90's.



Iconoclasts

Willie "Mink" DeVille; Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits;
Nick Cave
And you know, some people are just crazy. You can't tell 'em nothin'. They're just gonna go right on.

Somewhere in the mania of Mink Deville, Alan Vega, David Byrne, The Gun Club, Tom Waits, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, 45 Grave, and the deranged Hasil Adkins, you can darkly parse the distorted shards of 50's Rock.



The Originals.

Chuck Berry's all-starr concert film;
Little Richard's biography;
Eric Clapton, Carl Perkins, George Harrison,
Ringo Starr, Dave Edmunds
But you can't beat the real Real.

The original pioneers of Rock'n'Roll got a lot of respect due in the 70's and this reached a peak in the late-80's.

The Million Dollar Quartet returned in 1985 for a new 30th anniversary album: Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, with Roy Orbison subbing for Elvis. Jerry of course went and got a gun to hunt down a Rolling Stone scribe (because they had accused him of killing one of his wives).

Chuck Berry was celebrated royally by his peers and scion in the concert documentary HAIL! HAIL! ROCK 'N' ROLL (1987), with all-stars led by Keith Richards, including Julian Lennon, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, and Robert Cray.

A bestselling biography brought the Fourth Coming of Little Richard, who became ubiquitous on chat shows and record cameos.

Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" haunted David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (1986). (The film's eerie evocation of a late-50's/early 60's-esque variant of the present day, with dream pop music, would be the template for 'Twin Peaks'.) It brought Roy back in a lavish relaunch album and special supported by famous acolytes, including U2, Jeff Lynne, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, and Elvis Costello.

Carl Perkins likewise got the all-star treatment with a concert TV special featuring George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Dave Edmunds, Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom, and Roseanne Cash.

The Traveling Wilburys
This led to the tongue-in-cheek supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys, with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.



Screen

'Back To The Future' (art by Drew Struzan);
Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens;
Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase in 'Mystery Train'
The 70's had remembered the 50's directly in films and shows, whether heartfelt or half-baked.

The 80's reflected the 50's more abstractly.

HEART BEAT (1980) simplified the true love triangle of Kerouac and the Cassadys. STREETS OF FIRE (1984) collaged all the styles from the 50's to the 80's into one parallel world. ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS (UK, 1986), featuring David Bowie, achieved the same through anachronisms about 50's Britain.

Conservative Americans in the 80's lived in a suburban sitcom fantasy of the 50's revived, that ignored the real tumult of either decade and specifically the progress of the 60's and 70's between. Hence Reagan and BACK TO THE FUTURE. (Relax, I'm not knocking your favorite movie, I like it, too. Bear with me.)

This clever time-travel movie connects 1985 to 1955 in an ancestral causal loop. Yes, we all like the movie..., (spoiler critique:) but saying a suburban 80's kid inspired Chuck Berry to invent Rock'n'Roll by way of Van Halen is a crime against culture on too many levels. No. Luckily, this bogus butterfly effect got its wings clipped when HAIL! HAIL! ROCK 'N' ROLL arrived in time soon to restore reality.

Just as Buddy Holly was immortalized for new fans with THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1978), the same happened for his friend Ritchie Valens with LA BAMBA (1987); the biopic featured Marshall Crenshaw (as Buddy Holly), Brian Setzer (as Eddie Cochran), and Howard Huntsberry (as Jackie Wilson), with a hit soundtrack ghosted by Los Lobos.

If the spectres of 50's gang pulps and films echoed in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptions of THE OUTSIDERS (1982) and RUMBLE FISH (1983), then the era was reflected directly with the magic realist timetrip of PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (1986).

And if the 50's had haunted the decade askance, then the ghost of Elvis literally haunts the modern Memphis of Jarmusch's MYSTERY TRAIN (1989), featuring Screaming Jay Hawkins, Rufus Thomas, and Joe Strummer.





With the overground success of Stray Cats, and all the underground experimentation beyond the margins, the 80's broadened the scope and depth of the 50's revival. In the 90's, these seeds would flourish in a new landscape of support for proud Revival acts.


Next:
1950's Rock, D: The 1990's disciples‏


© Tym Stevens

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See Also:

The Real History of Rock and Soul!: A Manifesto, A Handy Checklist

Revolution 1950's: The Big Damn Bang of Rock'n'Roll!

1950's PUNK: Sex, Thugs, and Rock'n'Roll!

CHUCK BERRY: The Guitar God and His Disciples

BO DIDDLEY: The Rhythm King and His Disciples

BUDDY HOLLY: Rock's Everyman and His Disciples

LITTLE RICHARD: The Voice of Rock and His Disciples

JIMMY REED: The Groover of Rock, From Motown To Sesame Street



1950's Rock, A: The 60's Disciples

1950's Rock, B: The 70's Disciples


1950's Rock, D: The 90's Disciples

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