Sitemeter Sez: Visitors from Ommen, Holland; Bradford, UK; Livonia, Michigan; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Paris, Ile-de-France and Carapicuba, Brazil.
Check out ROCK against Reaganomics at: Theater X-Net
Starring: Ida Rubinstein Belle Epoch Russian/Parisian beauty.
Ida's Places in Paris -- from my first jet-lagged day by the Seine.
Read more about Ida in Sisters of Salome by Toni Bentley
Visit: Michael's Montana Web Archive
Theater, Art, Flash Gordon, Funky Music and MORE!
NEW --Launching NOW! Outre Space Cinema -- Featuring: 1930's Rocketry, Spitfires of the Spaceways and Cellulose to Celluloid, Flash Gordon in the Saturday Matinees and Sunday Comics.
Many thanks to Jim Keefe (Visit his Website) -- the LAST Flash Gordon illustrator of the 20th Century, and Flash's first illustrator of the 21st, for his recommendations -- HERE!
Charity Alert: Check into Terra Sigilata blog -- donate $$$ to cancer patients just by clicking onto the site. Keep that Resolution to click on The Hunger Site every day.
In The Community: Current shows at the Hockaday Museum of Art include Rails, Trails, and A Road -- honoring the 75th Anniversary of Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park, plus Ace Powell -- Ace of Diamonds and Native American Interpretations from our permanent collection.
Soon, I'll be running off to Lewistown and Chester, Montana for another stop on Nancy Cawdrey's American Silk Road tour.
Garage Sale Booty: An almost absurdly encyclopedic paperbound book about David Bowie's performing/recording career between 1964 and 1980 called Bowie: An Illustrated Record by Roy Carr and Charles Sharr Murray, plus a Serious Moonlight World Tour program from 1983 in the wake of Bowie's Let's Dance hit with Stevie Ray Vaughn. Carlos Alomar was still his bandleader, and the funky Earl Slick and Tony Thompson were backing him. Twenty-five more years of history were still to be made
Bowie's Hunky Dory was an album which helped turn my world in another direction -- his mixture of Rock Music and Visual Theater was part of a larger movement which I pursued for a number of years, all the way to Europe, as a matter of fact, from the suburbs of Amerika. Rick Wakeman's piano was a particular delight, especially on the following song:
It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen ...
Not exactly MY life, but the emotional landscape of drug-soaked London, 6000 miles away, resonated enough on the commuter roads between the university and my job on the railroad for a local mining company.
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on:
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Personal life as a movie? Not a new idea, but it worked metaphorically in the song. The smug longhair-hating bullies and stooges who populated my workplace came to mind whenever I heard those words. We all project now and then, don't we?
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
Is there f**kin' intelligent life on EARTH? O Gentle Reader -- remember that Chicago, Kent State, Jackson State, and People's Park were violent and real. The so-called Generation Gap affected the police, who were supposed to keep the peace and protect the citizenry -- including me and my friends.
It's on America's tortured brow
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk broads
Rue Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns ...
In 1973, I noticed that I had played Hunky Dory, or a significant part of it, every day for almost a year -- mostly in my Volkswagen's 8-Track on the way back or forth from my industrial job. I made sure I logged a full year before I retired the tape. In that spirit, let's read the refrain once more:
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on:
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
Bowie's further success opened up doors for all kinds of people -- a new round of tolerance emerged for alternative lifestyles, which was GOOD. My theatrical group found unlooked-for supporters at the local gay bar, even though we were straight. This kind of dialog was not so easy before Bowie and Glam Rock. (At least outside of the Dance Building.) The mass interest for what was then called Mime was helped by Bowie when he adapted Lindsey Kemp's pantomimetic flamboyance for Rock concerts.
Somehow the dirt, danger, and reactionary rednecks at Kennecott Copper Corporation lost out to the lure of the International Mime Festival in 1974! Bowie had no part in any good or bad decisions I made, but he sure helped change the culture of my world for the better.
