Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
Various
Music Down Home
(Folkways, 1965)
For that lonesome 'Werner Herzog in America' feeling.
Released in 1977, and first broadcast on BBC2 on the evening of the May 18, 1980, Werner Herzog's pitch-black US picaresque Stroszek is perhaps most famous for being the film Ian Curtis stayed in to watch on his last night on earth. Given Stroszek's overwhelmingly bleak and defiantly enigmatic ending, it's very tempting to wonder just what might have happened if Curtis has caught another re-run of 633 Squadron or A Matter Of Life And Death instead. The tale of an harassed and humiliated German street musician who goes to seek his fortune in the badger state of Wisconsin, Stroszek ends with its lead character's shotgun suicide on a ski lift and a burning truck driving in circles in a deserted parking lot before Herzog's camera finally focuses in on three horribly claustrophobic roadside attractions - a dancing chicken, a duck paying a bass drum and a rabbit riding a fire truck - as Sonny Terry's Lost John plays out on the soundtrack. Herzog may have chosen Lost John for its subject matter - the tale of an escaped chain gang joe on the lam across the States, his sightings ever more sad and strange - but there are no lyrics in Herzog's chosen Folkways version (to be found on this wonderful 1965 album of field calls, railroad songs and gospel wails), just Terry's eerie harmonica wail and train whistle holler. The tune somehow became synonymous with Herzog's take on America - the romance of the American frontier descending into gibbering, whooping madness - and fittingly, he's returned to it again in his new portrait of American insanity, a jazz riff on the Hollywood corrupt cop genre entitled The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans. Lost John returns, fittingly, during another nightmare dance sequence where Nicolas Cage (a deranged career best) as corrupt coke-snorting, crack-smoking, pill-popping police lieutenant Terence McDonagh has just witnessed a gangland shootout between two rival druglords. As one Mr Big lies dead on the floor McDonagh yells "Shoot him again! His soul is still dancing!" We cut to McDonagh's POV and see the blood-spattered mobster breakdancing and spinning on his back as Sonny Terry's Lost John once again plays out on the soundtrack - "Woo! Heee! Woo! Heee! Ah! Woo! Ah Woo! Wupwupwup! Woo!" He's long gone.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 17/02/2010
Further Listening
Various – The Deep South Musical Roots Tour (Global Village, 1992)
Popul Vuh – Aguirre (Spalax, 1975)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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