The Art of the Movie Poster: A David Gilmore Birthday Edition

Mojo Celebrates The Madcap Laughs in Style

I wanted to give a major shout-out to the March issue of Britain's Mojo magazine for the superb look back at Syd Barrett's masterful The Madcap Laughs. Recorded forty years ago, Barrett's first solo-platter remains one of the most astonishing albums I have ever heard, and Mojo's tribute to it (written by Pat Gilbert with input from David Gilmore, Robert Wyatt and more) is extremely well done. Going along with the article is a free CD that recreates the album by a diverse mixture of talented Barrett devotees, ranging J Mascis to Hawkwind to Hope Sandoval (who delivers a startling version of "Golden Hair" that will leave the hairs on the back of your neck standing at attention for days). Thanks to Mojo for putting on such a respectful tribute to such an important artist and album.
Issue 196 of Mojo is on the newsstands now and it's just packed with great articles, along with the Barrett tribute, on Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mose Allison, Captain Beefheart and Sly Stone. Don't miss it...

Robert Plant on Elvis Presley

Never mind that the new issue of Rolling Stone celebrating the best 100 singers of the rock era gets the number one and number two spots wrong (and no offense is meant to either the brilliant Aretha Franklin or Ray Charles), Robert Plant's moving tribute to Elvis Presley makes up for the error in a spectacular way. Reading this splendid little piece on the most important artist of the last century reminds me of a few years back when David Gilmore expressed his bafflement to Mojo over why people couldn't see the connection between "Heartbreak Hotel" and Dark Side of the Moon.

Thanks to Robert Plant for writing such a lovely and genuine piece on my favorite singer.

Rick Wright R.I.P.

I hated to hear the news this evening that Richard Wright from Pink Floyd had passed away. Wright, a founding member of the band, was integral to Floyd's sound from the earliest Syd Barrett days to the mega-success they experienced later. One of my favorite early Floyd tracks, PaintBox, was in fact penned by Wright and I thought it would be an ideal clip to share here. My best to his friends and family and of course the surviving members of the mighty Pink Floyd.

Thoughts On Vegetable Man

With just over ten months passed since Syd Barrett stepped out of this world into hopefully a better one, I wanted to post some thoughts on his still officially unreleased VEGETABLE MAN.
I discovered Syd when I was 19 during my first semester of college. I, of course, was familiar with Pink Floyd but have to admit that I wasn't that big of a fan at that point. It's odd but I can't recall what exactly led me to Syd. It was just like one day he wasn't there and then the next he was. I do remember clearly the first album by Syd I bought, the outtakes collection OPEL in Nashville's now closed Tower Records.
While I can't say what it was that brought me to Syd I can say that hearing OPEL for the first time was a major event in my life. It was, and remains, a music that spoke directly to my soul; music that seemed to bypass any intellectual processing and went directly to my core. The shook up and emotional feeling Syd's music first gave me still remains all these years later when I play his music.
My sudden and impassioned love for Syd and his music led me back to Pink Floyd. Suddenly albums and songs I had previously heard before became keys to unlocking some kind of mysterious dream I couldn't awake from. Throughout my late teens and early twenties Syd was my main man and I ate up everything I could find on him. Books, articles, fanzines...whatever I could locate. Inevitably the subject of the unreleased Pink Floyd song, VEGETABLE MAN, came up in all of them.
VEGETABLE MAN was recorded near the end of Syd's tenure with Pink Floyd for possible inclusion on the PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN follow up SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS. I believe it was recorded at the same sessions that yielded the majestic APPLES AND ORANGES, although I might be mistaken about that.
Along with the original Beach Boys SMILE tracks, VEGETABLE MAN (and it's strangely effective companion SCREAM THY LAST SCREAM) is one of the most legendary unreleased songs in rock history.
VEGETABLE MAN became something of a legend to me. These were the days when you would actually have to search something down, before quickly accessible downloads or youtube made everything so easy. So I read a lot about VEGETABLE MAN before I actually got to hear it, which made it all the more sweeter.
The first time I actually got to hear this mysterious creation was ironically not by Syd. When I was 21 or so I came across the first Jesus and Mary Chain 45 for the song UPSIDE DOWN. Released by Creation in 1985 as a warm up for PSYCHOCANDY, this astonishing single has the Chain's version of VEGETABLE MAN as the flip side. To my knowledge their striking cover of Syd's classic has never been re-released on any format except for that original 45, which is odd considering The Jesus and Mary Chain have released at least three b-side collections. Their cover is astonishing for a couple of reasons. What is most noteworthy is that even though they are faithful to Syd's original it still sounds like a Jesus and Mary Chain song. It would have been right at home on PSYCHOCANDY had they chosen to include it. There are very few pieces of music that are legitimately ahead of their time but VEGETABLE MAN can truly make that claim. It was post-punk, shoegazing and goth before any of these musical genres existed. Listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain do the song one can hear just how a band like them or My Bloody Valentine would have been close to impossible without Syd's innovations lyrically and on the guitar. Along with Lou Reed, Syd Barrett made feedback an instrument in itself.
So what of Pink Floyd's original version? I got to hear the real thing a year or so after the Mary Chain's cover. A friend knew a guy who knew a guy that had gotten a cassette copy of a PINK FLOYD bootleg that had a very muffled version of VEGETABLE MAN on it. We traded that cassette around like it was a missing commandment. Syd's original hit me right away, even hearing it in that distant state its genius was obvious. From the seemingly knock off lyrics and weird chord changes to the aforementioned innovative use of feedback, VEGETABLE MAN was and remains a remarkable creation.
Often said to have been written on the spot with Syd just basically describing what he was wearing and feeling, VEGETABLE MAN feels like a free-flowing word association masterpiece. A closer look reveals a track more thought out than perhaps expected though, as the song takes an incredible turn at the line "I've been looking all over the place for a place for me, but it ain't anywhere." With one line Syd manages to sum up not only his whole career but possibly his whole life. Whether or not it indeed was a a bit of throw away or one of the most grand gestures of his whole career will never be known but the final crazed minute or so of VEGETABLE MAN is some of the most inspired playing Syd and Pink Floyd ever did.
Of course all that said, I really can't blame Roger Waters and crew for not releasing it at the time. It didn't have much of a precedent and after the mystifying failure of APPLES AND ORANGES and Syd's ever increasingly bizarre behavior, VEGETABLE MAN probably wouldn't have been the best move for Pink Floyd. I do like to imagine what the reaction would have been to a single of VEGETABLE MAN with the terrifying SCREAM THY LAST SCREAM as it's flip side in the late sixties though.

Syd only ended up having the haunting JUGBAND BLUES on Pink Floyd's second album, although he did play on at least one other track. He would soon cut his brilliant and fragmented solo collections, THE MADCAP LAUGHS and BARRETT, before slipping away from us. Nothing on those two records, or any of the material that has surfaced since, sounds anything like VEGETABLE MAN. The song is a fitting closure to his time with Pink Floyd and nothing sounded quite like it before or since.
VEGETABLE MAN is easy to track down now in several different versions, all sounding much better than that original cassette copy I heard. It still remains officially unreleased and perhaps that's the way it should be. It's un-official status adds to it's endearingly mythic quality and it would almost be disappointing to have it tacked on to the end of some best of collection.
Throughout Syd's life Roger Waters and David Gilmore always made sure that he received the royalties that were due to him, that's something that needs to be remembered. Syd Barrett haunted every Pink Floyd recording that they made after he was kicked out of the band, he was like a force that stayed with them up to the end. When they reunited a couple of years back at Live 8 Roger Waters dedicated the set to him and it's still a moment that makes me cry.
Syd was rock's most important and beautiful lost soul, VEGETABLE MAN remains one of his most controversial and searing creations. A song that might just be the key to his fragmenting state or just a sly wink to a future he would help create but chose to not be a part of.

The Great Ones Vol.2 (Side A Track One) Mimsy Farmer

Among my favorite moments in any Dario Argento film is the climax of FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET where we see the intense Mimsy Farmer blow her top and then literally lose it. It's a moment that could have easily been made ridiculous in the hands of a lesser actor but Farmer handles it beautifully, giving us one of the great freak out moments in all of Italian horror and one of her most iconic moments in a pretty remarkable career.
Farmer was born in Chicago in February of 45 and made her debut as an actress in an episode of THE DONNA REED SHOW. Her first major role came at the age of sixteen Earl Hamner's SPENCER'S MOUNTAIN opposite Henry Fonda among others. The young Farmer already felt unique and delivered a very assured debut feature film performance as Claris.

Several years of tv work followed, as well as a part in the Ann-Margret vehicle BUS RILEY'S BACK IN TOWN, before Farmer appeared in a handful of biker and hot rod films. HOT RODS TO HELL, RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, DEVIL'S ANGELS and THE WILD RACERS are all fun late sixties American exploitation flicks but it was Barbet Schroeder's powerful MORE that would really put Farmer on the map.

MORE is an uncommonly good 'drug' film that still feels unique and fresh today. Backed by an early Pink Floyd soundtrack MORE manages to be to pull off the tricky feat of being honest but not judgemental or condemning of its drug addicted main characters. Farmer's Estelle is a fascinating role and it is with a mixture of revulsion and sympathy as we watch her disintegrate through the film's intense two hour running time. Farmer mentioned in the Palmerini and Mistretta book SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES that she was so good as the junkie Estelle that many people figured she was one in real life.
Farmer was credited as co-dialogue writer on MORE and the film signaled a new chapter in her career as she stayed on in Europe for much of the Seventies and Eighties. A role in STROGOFF opposite the always great John Phillip Law followed as did a role opposite Rita Hayworth in ROAD TO SALINA.
Dario Argento had remembered Farmer's intense work in MORE and in 1971 cast her as Nina in his final 'Animal trilogy Giallo' FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET. This hardest to see of all Argento's films features much of his trademark camera work and an incredible Morricone score but is Farmer who steals it. The aforementioned freak out and her death scene remain incredibly vivid in Argento's canon. Farmer fondly remembers Argento and the film in SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES and it is a shame that the two didn't work together again, although apparently he did offer her a role in a later film that she turned down.
Farmer would continue working in Italy, often in International co-productions like the Alain Delon crime flick TWO MEN IN TOWN and 1974's THE SUSPECTS.
1974 would give Farmer possibly her greatest role in Francesco Barilli's strange and completely compelling PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK. This overwhelming and frankly brilliant Italian thriller is among the best of the seventies with Farmer delivering a vulnerable, moving and finally unhinged performance. It is among the great performances in genre cinema and this still unreleased, in the United States, film deserves a much wider audience. Highly recommended is Raro's imported special edition dvd of the film that can be purchased from the great Xploited cinema site.
After her extraordinary work in PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK, Farmer's career should have really taken off which makes it all the more unfortunate that it was her last truly great role. Some would argue that her work in Armando Crispino's AUTOPSY is among her finest, but it seems to me to be a let down after PERFUME.
The rest of Farmer's career is mostly made up of smaller supporting roles in some fine films, Ferreri's BYE BYE MONKEY and Campanile's GIRL FROM TRIESTE, and some poor ones.
She had larger roles in Deodato's CONCORDE AFFAIR 79 and Fulci's BLACK CAT but she didn't seem fully engaged anymore. One has to wonder if she simply recognized that the roles she was being offered didn't measure up to her talent, so she just didn't give as much as she had in the past. She said of her role in THE BLACK CAT that she, "was a little lazy and lacked motivation" but admitted to liking Fulci.
Farmer made her final acting appearance in an Italian tv movie in 1991. She currently resides in France. She would say of her career in SPAGHETTI NIGHTMARES, "I wish I were offered more intelligent and complex parts; on other hand, I don't exactly feel frustrated because, after all, what I have achieved isn't so bad." In a career featuring work as powerful as her performances in MORE, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, and PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK, I couldn't agree more. Not bad at all Mimsy.