(Items from the Vault)
The Plastics - Forever Plastico Victor Musical Industries
Originally released: 1988
In the late 1970s, the demo tape of a little-known Japanese new wave group found its way into the hands of the B-52’s manager by way of David Byrne. As the story goes, the group’s male lead singer, Toshio Nakanishi, was working on the Talking Heads’ Japanese tour booklet and had slipped David Byrne their demo tape. By 1979, his band, called The Plastics, had released a single, Copy/Robot, with a subsequent album release in 1980. By 1981, after the release of two other albums, a deal with an international distributor, and a slew of shows in New York (they were even featured in Jean-Michel Basquiat’s movie Downtown ‘81), the Plastics decided to disband for reasons unknown to anybody outside of the band. During those three years, however, the Plastics created some of the most unique, energetic and engaging new wave music ever to be released on vinyl. They’ve inspired a variety of Japanese bands, from the angular, noisy new wave of Polysics to the retro stylings of the Pizzicato Five (both of which, coincidentally, covered the Plastics’ “Good”). They’ve even developed a small, albeit faithful fan base in America; Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo) swears by them.
In 1988, Victor Musical Industries released Forever Plastico, a CD that compiles the Plastics’ first album, Welcome Plastics, and one-half of the Plastics’ second album, Origato Plastico. Why they didn’t simply take the time to include Origato Plastico in its entirety is a mystery. As an import that might be, as of this writing, out-of-print, it is virtually impossible to find it in most North American music stores, both online and off. Luckily it can easy be had for a mere 20 dollars through eBay.
Their influences can be found throughout the album, integrating the retro kitsch of the B-52s with the percussive, minimal synths of Kraftwerk, the angular guitar funk of the Talking Heads and, at times, the melodic idiosyncrasies of the Beatles. One influence, however, never seems to dominate over the others; like any good band, their influences combine gracefully with a few of their own eccentricities to form a sound that is unmistakably Plastics.
The compilation opens with “Top Secret Man,” the first track on Welcome Plastics. It begins with a single note strummed repeatedly on an electric guitar over a barely audible drum machine, growing increasingly urgent as the seconds pass. By the 13-second mark, Toshi’s vocals enter the fray. Singing in English, his voice is vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese David Byrne, conveying a similar spastic, dazed energy with a slightly reedier timbre and a Japanese inflection. The vocals alternate between Toshio and the Plastics’ female singer, Chica Sato, creating an engaging and unique vocal interplay that serves as one of the band’s trademark elements. The compilation continues in a similar fashion, using similar instruments to great effect. On “Copy,” one of their only songs sung mostly in Japanese, repetitive, staccato synth sounds happily permeate a simple, sharp drum machine track as Chica and Toshi implore the listener to “Copy this and copy that.” Other highlights of this compilation include the sharp, fast-paced “Complex”, the saccharine-sweet, Beatlesesque “Park/Eight Days A Week,” and the silliest, most thought-provoking track on the compilation,“Robot.” During this particular song, Chica and Toshi name various three-letter corporate and governmental acronyms, including RCA, EMI, and NHK, whilst declaring in the chorus, “you are robot.” Amazingly, the ambiguity of this simple, three-word lyric results in multiple interpretations of the song; are the aforementioned organizations gigantic, artificial organisms, or are we mere robots following the directions of such organizations?
Forever Plastico makes for a perfect introduction to the short, prolific career of the Plastics. The band does have its faults; the general sound never strays too far outside of the established guitar, synth, drum-machine, dual vocalist line-up, and their idiosyncratic, repetitive style can be difficult at times, sharply dividing a group of music lovers instantly. However, the album is a must-have for any fan of the New Wave genre, any fan of the current crop of Japanese new wave revivalists (although such fans tend to be one in the same), or even any fan of minimalist electronic music in general; upon reaching the halfway mark of “Copy,” one can imagine the music of the Plastics as being the type of music that a Casio SK-1 would make if it were to suddenly become a human being.
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Reviewed by Aaron Licht
This Sporting Life (1963)
If… (1968):
O Lucky Man! (1973)
Britannia Hospital (1982)
Are you familiar with British director Lindsay Anderson? If not, don’t let it deflate your cinematic-fueled ego; most of his best work, including If . . . and O Lucky Man! hasn’t even found its way to DVD. For those in the know, his films are seen as Britain’s contribution to European art cinema in the late 1960s and early 70s, before the prominent wave of British art cinema of the 1980s. Like many filmmakers with a highly personal vision, he struggled against the commercial machine of his art form. Despite this, during the height of his career, he was the only British director that Hollywood financiers would trust to make a film entirely about Britain. If you can track down his highly idiosyncratic work, you’re in for a treat.
Born in 1923 to a Scottish major-general stationed in India, Lindsay Anderson was famous for his deeply felt, anarchic visions. In the 1950s, Anderson first made his reputation in the cinema as a prominent film critic. He established his lifelong reputation as an angry leftist voice, quick to make enemies in his challenge of the British establishment. During these years, his most famous piece was “Stand Up! Stand Up!” Prescribing a new manifesto on film criticism, he called on his fellow critics to become more politicized.
His first feature film was a highly regarded adaptation of David Storey’s This Sporting Life (1963), but Anderson’s most important contribution to British cinema is his trilogy consisting of If. . . (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973), and Britannia Hospital (1982). They were all written with David Sherwin, feature Malcolm McDowell (of Clockwork Orange fame) as main character Mick Travis, and use much of the same cast and crew. The films are a harsh satire of established institutions and all display Anderson’s distinct style.
If. . . is the story of a few boys who rebel against the authority at their strict boarding school. In the final scene, the crusading students erupt in brutal violence, bombing and spraying machine guns at the entire ruling body of the school, including their fellow students. This metaphorical satire ends abruptly without a traditional conclusion. If. . . proved to be Anderson’s greatest commercial hit. It won the Palme d’Or at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and is seen as a major British film of the 1960s.
O Lucky Man! is a picaresque satire following Mick Travis’s naive search for his personal fortune. Diegetic musical interludes provide ironic commentary while Travis encounters, and barley escapes, an enormously troubled British society. The film even ends with Anderson, playing himself, casting Travis in his own part and slapping his protagonist into self-awareness. This self-reflexive style runs throughout many of Anderson’s works.
Britannia Hospital concluded his trilogy working with Sherwin and McDowell. The film is a harsh and very dark satire of Britain's medical establishment. Anderson ridicules everyone and everything, from unions to the aristocracy, scientists to political protesters. Despite the film’s troubling lack of point of view, it served to reassert Anderson’s forceful character within British filmmaking. According to Sherwin, after the film’s failure in England, a place Anderson loved passionately and hated passionately, his wounds never healed. In 1992, a Sight & Sound article attempted to rehabilitate Anderson’s reputation by describing his masterful trilogy, uncompromising attitude and his refusal to fit into any existing category.
Although his filmmaking career spanned four decades, Anderson directed only six feature films. Always a self-reflexive artist, his final film, Is That All There Is? (1993) is a mockumentary of the director’s daily life, including a scene of Anderson in the bathtub gazing at his only movie posters. He died one year later at the age of 71.
“Faced with men like Anderson, Kubrick and a few others... They are in large parts the film that emerges... What’s in their minds may be viewable later, but often it can’t be written down, or even satisfactorily explained, at the time the money is required” -George Ornstein of Paramount, London. (Hedling, 81)
“It hasn’t just got the simple irony of being nasty about rich people. It’s nasty about poor people as well. It’s nasty about people.”
-interview with Anderson, about O Lucky Man! (Hedling, 123)
REFERENCES:
Hedling, Erik. Lindsay Anderson: Maverick Film-Maker. London, England: Cassell, 1998.
Kops, Bernard ‘A Compassion for Faces.’ Sight and Sound, May 1992, pp.36-7
Sherwin, David. Going Mad in Hollywood. London, England: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1996.
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Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tail
Original Date of Publication: 1986
Reviewed by Deborah Beckers
My favourite kind of book is the one that upsets you and makes you think. The Handmaid’s Tale does both in a way that will make you sit up and take notice of what is happening in the world around you.
Margaret Atwood is a writing icon for a reason. She has written over 30 books that have been translated into over 35 different languages. She has been nominated for the Booker Prize four times (including for The Handmaids Tale) and won it in 2000 for her novel The Blind Assassin. The Handmaid’s Tale is now a full-length opera that enjoyed its world premiere with the Royal Danish Opera in 2000 and its Canadian Opera Company premiere in September of this year.
Through the eyes of Offred (pronounced “of Fred”), a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead (the former United States of America), we see a society in which a woman’s place is determined by her ability to work, her husband’s rank, or her reproductive fitness. Any woman who doesn’t fit into these categories are either executed or sent to the colonies as slave labour. It is a darkly chilling tale of the future living in an oppressive, patriarchal, society. It isn’t all milk and honey for the men, they must adhere to the rules of this restrictive society too.
There is more than one type of freedom… Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it. ~ “Aunt” Lydia at the Centre
Particularly chilling is her description of everyday life, and her gradual acceptance of it as normal. The complete hopelessness of the situation is only kept bearable by the brief glimpses of humanity, or of humanity as we think of it of our society today, and of Offred’s remembrance of her life before.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. ~ Offred
The Handmaid’s Tale is a compelling read. Atwood did a lot of research on totalitarian societies in North America and in the rest of the world. There is nothing in the book that is not based on something that has already happened. That, my friends, is what makes this book so unsettling; it’s only a slight twist on the society that we currently live in.
I feel the need to re-read this book again and again because although it was originally published in 1986, it still resonates, perhaps even more now. Our world has changed a lot in the almost 20 years since we were first introduced to Offred and the thing that frightens me now is that we haven’t moved away from Gilead, we have moved closer to it.
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Theodore Dreiser - Sister Carrie
Original Date of Publication: 1900
Reviewed by Filonna Thomas
You might be wondering why I am reviewing a novel written over a century ago and what possible relevance it could have today. Well, I read Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy about a year ago and was struck by the author’s style. The story itself was ultimately depressing, but Dreiser managed to bring up interesting observations on what people are capable of doing in order to protect the life they feel they should have. Because I liked Dreiser’s style, I thought I would try a more popular work of his that was, hopefully, more upbeat. And thus, Sister Carrie became the novel of choice.
Sister Carrie, the first novel written by the former newspaperman, is the story of a naïve small-town girl, Carrie Meeber, who moves to the big city of Chicago and is quickly seduced by the city’s promise of excitement, glamour and success. The story is based on the life of Dreiser’s sister Emma, who had an affair with a married man. The ensuing scandal led to their fleeing to Canada.
While the story was not as upbeat as I would have liked, I found myself enjoying it anyway. The pacing was fairly steady (although at times I felt that the author weighed the narrative down with a little too much pretentious philosophy); and the style was accessible, especially to a person whose reading diet consists of large portions of Stephen King and Jeffrey Archer.
This is a novel that was written in a time when a woman’s virtue was a commodity that was fiercely protected. Therefore, a story about a woman who is led astray by two men (one of whom is married) was considered to be quite controversial, especially when the immoral woman in question is not even punished by her actions. On the contrary, Carrie is rewarded with success and wealth at the story’s end. However, her success does not seem to make her happy, and I was left with the feeling that Carrie would always be searching for something better and never truly be content with what she has.
This theme – the search for excitement and greener pastures which ultimately leads to discontentment – made me think of how much emphasis we seem to place on material possessions. We seem so preoccupied with conspicuous consumption, and even if we do obtain what we want, at the end of it all, we still want more. But enough with pretentious philosophy (I guess we are all guilty of that from time to time), Sister Carrie is a novel that I would recommend to anyone, especially a young woman just starting out in the big city.
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Stargate SG-1 - Season 1 MGM Studios
Original Release: 2001
Starring Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge & Don S. Davis
Reviewed by Adam M. Anklewicz
I, Adam M. Anklewicz, am a geek. So much so that in June of 1999, I told my girlfriend at the time, that no, I could not go on a date because of the series finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I didn’t hear the end of that for a while. I got my revenge though. I married her. Now I have made my lovely bride a sci-fi geek as well. As DS9 was being released on DVD, the two of us watched the series from the beginning, eagerly waiting for the next box set. Culminating on New Years Eve when Lisa (my wife), my sister and I all stayed up watching the entire final season of Deep Space Nine. I had her hooked. Though I made a grave mistake.
Canada’s sci-fi channel decided to have a marathon of Stargate SG-1 episodes. I tuned in and I was amazed. The quality of the writing, the acting, the humour, the drama, the suspense. I decided to re-watch the movie that SG-1 is based on. Joined by my wife, I watched the movie neither of us had seen in a few years. Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) figures out how to work the Stargate and along with Col. Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell), they travel to the world of Abydos where the Egyptian sun God Ra is enslaving humans brought through the Stargate thousands of years earlier. Eventually saving the Abydos people and killing Ra, O’Neil returns home, leaving Jackson with his new wife, Sha’uri. My wife loved it, and we had to watch as it continued in the television series. Stargate SG-1, however, is not the type of show you can start watching from the middle. So we found a VHS copy of the pilot. The cliff-hanger at the end of the first episode drove us nuts and we had to buy the first season on DVD.
Stargate SG-1 picks up a few years later. The U.S. Air Force had abandoned the Stargate project until Apophis, an Egyptian God of Evil stepped through the Stargate, killing guards and kidnapping one of them. Well obviously the program would begin again. Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson), this time with twice the letter l, heads back to Abydos to find out what’s going on. Long story short, they find out that the gate goes other places, Jackson’s (Michael Shanks) wife is abducted, and we meet Teal’c (Christopher Judge) and Capt. Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping).
Now that you know what’s going on, you’re wondering, “how’s he going to convince me that I’d like this show?” Right, I can read your minds! What other show pits the heroes against Gods? Over the first season, the storyline builds slowly until Apophis prepares to destroy Earth, through that year the audience quickly becomes attached to a great group of characters who are the core of the series. O’Neill is a sarcastic bastard, but funny. Jackson is the conscience, Carter the brains, and Teal’c, well Teal’c gets most of the laughs. He’s the straight man with no knowledge of Earth’s cultures; of course he’ll be funny. Who else but an alien would ask, “What is an Oprah?”
With appearances by Thor, the Nox (a race of pixie like people) and Hathor, Stargate SG-1 is off to a good start which only gets better.
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Smothered - The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour New Video Group
Original DVD Release: January 28, 2003
Starring Dick and Tommy Smothers
Directed by Maureen Muldaur
Reviewed by Russell Bartholomee
Every great comedic act is known for its classic bit. For Abbot and Costello, it’s “Who’s On First.” For Burns and Allen it’s “Say Goodnight Gracie.” For the Smothers Brothers, it’s sibling rivalry. The lanky, crew-cut, fresh-faced frères — Tommy, the older, “dumber” brother and Dick, the annoyed straight-man — would launch into a well-known folk song, only to have Tommy ruin it, much to the delight of the audience and the consternation of Dick. Song after song in the brothers’ set would come to an untimely demise by the (sometimes innocent, sometimes gleefully naughty) antics of Tommy. Every show would come to a climactic war of words between the brothers, with Dick pointing out all of Tommy’s flaws, shouting him down until Tommy would burst forth with his trademark, “Mom always liked you best!” and bring the house down.
It seems a wonder that such an innocuous act could be considered threatening to anyone. And yet by 1969, the brothers had earned a reputation as troublemakers, ruffling so many feathers at CBS that, in spite of great ratings and an innovative variety show, the network chose to cancel The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, effectively ending the Smothers Brothers’ television careers. How did the brothers manage, by decade’s end, to transform from clean-cut, nice young men to radical agitators? What would make CBS cancel a groundbreaking, highly rated, critically acclaimed show in mid-season?
These are the questions asked and answered by Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The film documents the rise and fall of the variety show, from its unexpected runaway success in 1967 to its abrupt and controversial cancellation in 1969. It makes fine use of rarely seen (and very funny) clips from the show as well as interviews with the show’s writers (including Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, and Elaine May), a host of performers, network executives, and (of course) the Smothers Brothers themselves. Documentarian Maureen Muldaur does a marvelous job of explaining how the brothers’ desire to do a show that was both entertaining and socially conscious clashed with network executives, who preferred to keep politics out of the picture.
One of the film’s best qualities is the way Muldaur puts the show in the context of the turbulent times. With the Vietnam War raging and racial tensions continuing to erupt, the Smothers Brothers had a choice: either ignore the pressing issues or satirize them. They could either play it safe (as contemporary shows like Bewitched and The Beverly Hillbillies did), or they could try to be relevant and funny. They chose the latter, and in doing so, they redefined television. They established the template for a new kind of comedy show, innovating the use of the music video and the modern comedy-with-two-musical-performances format. Before them, a “variety show” meant Ed Sullivan. After The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the path was cleared for MTV, SNL, and Late Night.
The central issue of the film is censorship. The brothers’ major offense seems to have been questioning the war, the draft, and the policies of Presidents Johnson and Nixon in a light-hearted way. There is nothing here that would have raised so much as an eyebrow in the post-Watergate world. But at the time, saying that “morons” ran the government on national television was unheard of. The establishment still thought the emperor was fully clothed. And Tommy and Dick’s saying otherwise was terribly unpopular with the network executives. After more than a year of weekly conflicts over content, the network pulled the plug on the show. The Smothers Brothers successfully sued for damages—but their TV days were done.
In scene after scene, the Smothers’ struggle serves as a microcosm for the fight for free expression that has become synonymous with the late 1960s. In one very touching moment, George Harrison of the Beatles appears on the show, urging the brothers not to give up. When they point out that some folks don’t want them to say what’s on their mind, Harrison replies, “The important thing is that you keep trying to say it.” The Smothers Brothers tried, and for a while they were about the only ones trying.
Perhaps one day soon, the show itself will be released on DVD. I certainly hope so. Maybe then the Smothers Brothers would get the credit they deserve for this hilarious show that was so far ahead of its time. In the meantime, Muldaur’s fine film will have to do. But I hope they don’t wait too long. In the age of “Freedom Fries,” the show seems more relevant than ever:
Kate Smith (playing a wife, doing a crossword puzzle): A seven-letter word that means “United States.”
Pat Paulsen (playing her husband): America.
Smith: A seven-letter word that means, “difference of opinion.”
Paulsen: Dissent.
Smith: One who loves his country.
Paulsen: Patriot.
Smith: Objection made to official of government.
Paulsen: Protest.
Smith: Word that means all those things.
Paulsen: Freedom.
- The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, October 27, 1968
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