Well, dear readers, I am sitting here in the heat of the night, listening to the cool sounds of Harper’s Bizarre, the weird but groovy group whose albums were all delightful and which I owned back in the day. The harmonies are incredible as is the recording technology as are the incredible orchestrations. Can you even imagine such a thing even being thinkable today. But back then, we got adventurous and unique albums like these every day – adventurous, anything was fair game, and most of all, fun. Ah, well, we have our memories and, of course, the recordings. And we’ll always have Paris. I watched three count them three documentaries last night in the heat of the neat. According to the weather, it was a cool 101-degrees yesterday, but I don’t believe it because it seemed even worse than the 108-degrees of the day before, which is why I refused to leave the home environment. The first documentary was the most fun and the best done – 42nd Street Memories and it’s exactly what the title promised, memories of the sleazy period for that fabled street, starting in the mid-1960s and lasting until Giuliani and Disney turned it into a glorified City Walk or Disneyland, Jr., a corporate, brightly-lit fantasyland. I lived in New York just as the sleaze factor was about to go through the roof, and I moved before it actually came into full flower, but was there many times in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was at its worst. The fact is, in 1969 it was sleazy but you still could go see a movie without being murdered or robbed, sorta kinda. I saw movies in several theaters – the New Amsterdam (Daddy’s Gone ‘a Hunting and Color Me Dead, the remake of DOA), and when my friend Alan Abelew was in town we went to the worst of them, the Anco right off Eighth Avenue – we saw The Undertaker and His Pals there, and I may have seen one other double bill there. There’s wonderful footage of those years and it’s so vivid that it’s like going back in time when even walking the block between Seventh and Eighth was very dangerous – filled with sex shops, adult emporiums, drug addicts, pimps, hookers, and malcontents of every shape and size. But it was New York, not a tourist attraction. Of course, back then Eighth Avenue was just as bad and in a way still is bad. For once, the talking heads here are all people who were either people who frequented the street, made movies that played there, or distributed grindhouse films. Joe Dante, Frank Hennenlotter, porn star Veronica Hart, Matt Cimber, Roy Frumkes, Lloyd Kaufman, Lynn Lowry, and others. It’s at times very funny, affectionate, with lots of clips. I may watch it again and if you like that period it’s recommended highly by the likes of me.
Is there anything better than the Harper’s Bizarre rendition of Anything Goes? It’s genius on every level, and one must give props to William Friedkin’s use of it for the main titles of the film version of The Boys in the Band. Second up was a documentary on the career of Alfred Hitchcock. Well, it was a ridiculous thing, like watching a Wikipedia entry – every film had a perfunctory entry with a few narration bits we’ve all heard a million times, because this documentary obviously cost about ten cents, there are no licensed clips from any films – it’s all from public domain trailers. It’s an astonishing hour and forty-three minutes. A complete waste of time.
The third documentary was also terrific – The Green Girl, about the life of actress, Susan Oliver. In the 1960s it was not possible to a night watching television with Susan Oliver guest-starring on something – she did all the shows and some several times – Route 66, Dr. Kildare, The Virginian, The Big Valley, The Defenders, Peyton Place, The Andy Griffith Show, and every other major series, including Star Trek, from whence the title of this documentary comes. She was an actress I always loved watching – pretty, real, and could pretty much do anything. But she was a free spirit and independent, so she turned down three TV series that probably could have helped her immeasurably. She never had the film career she should have, mostly because she opted out of a Warner Bros. contract and Jack Warner had her blackballed for several years. She never married, but had several relationships, including one with Sandy Koufax. The talking heads are all people she knew and worked with, so that’s good. She tried being a director, but while she did get a couple of TV directing gigs, it wasn’t really the time for female directors. What apparently gave her the greatest happiness was flying airplanes, which she did a lot. She still did occasional TV stuff, but she began to look much older than her years, lost too much weight, and then was diagnosed with cancer, from which she died. She was only fifty-eight. Lots of excellent clips and examples of how good she was.
I forgot that Harper’s Bizarre recorded so many early Randy Newman songs, and they did a great version of the title song to Pocketful of Miracles.
Yesterday was certainly a day without Labor. I got nine hours of sleep. I answered a few e-mails, had a telephonic conversation, stepped outside, thinking I’d go to the market, but instantly stepped right back inside. I ordered my beloved Trousdale sandwich from Paty’s and that arrived thirty minutes later and was great. I had the potato salad – it’s great, but there’s something in it that ye olde tummy doesn’t like. But the sandwich was light and perfect. I had the air on for about three hours and still only got the house temperature down to 79-degrees, although it feels much cooler than that when it’s on. After the first documentary, I used a 20% discount thing and got some stuff delivered from Pavilion’s – just more Diet Coke, a bag of pretzels, a snack-pack of salami and provolone cheese bits, fresh strawberries, and some ketchup. And most importantly, fruit bars – grape, pineapple, and Fudgsicle fudge pops. I had a handful of pretzels, and two fruit bars. That was all fine, since the sandwich and tiny scoop of potato salad was around 700 calories. Then I had five strawberries – they were very good. Then I made a show order.
Today, I’ll be up by eleven, I have a lot of prep work to do on our two new releases so we can announce them. I have to listen to the masters, do track lists, and write the two sets of liner notes. I’ll also at least start to write the Kritzerland commentary. At some point, I’ll eat something, we’ll see how hot it is outside – if it’s tolerable, I may go to Gelson’s, if not, I’m staying in. I’m hoping we have self-tapes to watch and hoping that other folks we’ve reached out to will respond. A couple of folks I really wanted are out of town doing shows. So, a very full day, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is more of the same, and then on Friday we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal, Sunday is our second rehearsal, Tuesday is our stumble-through, and Wednesday we do our show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven, do prep work, listen to masters, write, eat, hope we start getting self-tapes to watch, and then I can watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite grindhouse-type films and have you ever seen a film on the fabled 42nd Street? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have seen a documentary about that fabled street.