Life Rotates In 45 Revolutions Per Minute: Bikini Kill's Peel Sessions

My memories are extremely fractured but I clearly recall the spring of 1993 or so when I was living in downtown Lexington attending the University of Kentucky. I was in an extremely small and rather trashy efficiency apartment in a pretty bad section of town near campus. To escape the noise of my neighbors, a collective group that included rednecks, drug-dealers, addicts and assorted shady figures, I would leave my apartment every chance I got to usually go and haunt any number of the local record and book shops that were nearby. It was an extreme period of my life, as well as my most social, and I think I was fairly well known around the area as the guy with long purple hair who never had a dime in his pocket but who could always be seen returning home with a stack of records under his arm. My taste was as extreme as my mood in that period with platters by everyone from PiL to Lydia Lunch to Killing Joke occupying most of my record player's time.
I had recently fallen under the spell of the ferocious and quite brilliant lyrical pull of Kathleen Hanna and her mesmerizing band Bikini Kill, so much of my time was spent looking for fanzines and 45s from the Riot Girrrl movement. Actually most of the other groups from that loud and in your face scene left me cold but I was really captivated by Bikini Kill, especially the raw emotion and force Hanna always delivered with her words and voice. For a Summer or so I was completely enamored and would often quote Hanna's unflinching lyrics to my friends in one of the many creative writing classes I took, most of them under the tutelage of the brilliant and much missed James Baker Hall.
My favorite recording from Bikini Kill remains their lone Peel Session EP, preserved on a semi-legitimate 4-song 45 that I picked up at Lexington's once mighty Cut Corner, a store (since closed down) that was located down from campus on Limestone. I found the 45, which featured "Star Bellied Boy" and "Demirep" on Side A with "New Radio" and "Not Right Now" on the flip in Cut Corner's basement, a vinyl lover's paradise. It cost just a buck or two, I played it constantly throughout the summer as I waited with a mixture of excitement and dread for the fall classes to start.
The Peel Sessions EP isn't Hanna's finest moment, she has rightly said Bikini Kill's stunning sides produced by Joan Jett remains the best thing she has ever done, but it remains bloody brilliant and captures the band at their most confrontational and wonderful. "Star Bellied Boy" is particularly jaw-dropping and is played with the kind of splintering energy that hadn't been heard since the late seventies No Wave movement. I miss Bikini Kill, and the sheer nerve of them, I miss my long purple hair and even that shitty little apartment (but not often). I especially miss Cut Corner, one of the last of the real indie record stores in the area. Thankfully another indie shop resides in the spot now, CD Central, but that basement where I found so many of favorite vinyl sides is long, long gone...

Death is Not The End: Karen Elson's The Ghost Who Walks

A dazzling musical collision between vintage Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Marlene Dietrich and Hank William,s Karen Elson's wonderfully hypnotic is one of the first truly great LPS of this very young decade. Far from being a vanity project from a beautiful model, Elson's album is a truly bewitching and absolutely compelling week that shows as an artist of massive talent who should have a very long career in music ahead of her.
Born in the early part of 1979 in Oldham, England, the striking red-headed Elson began her career as a model when she was a teenager and immediately became a favorite of many top designers ranging from Marc Jacobs to Jean-Paul Gaultier. As far from the stereotypically air-headed super-model though, Elson has been dabbling in music, film and art since she first began to really make a name for herself in the early parts of the last decade.
A gifted vocalist and songwriter, Elson really began paving her way in the muisc industry with her acclaimed time in the ambitious New York Cabaret troup The Citizens Band. Wowing audiences and critics with her delicious vocal renditions of songs from the catalogues of everyone from The Velvet Underground to Elvis Presley, Elson caught the attention artists ranging like Robert Plant to Cat Power (both of whom she lent her beginning vocal chops to).
While her skills as a great song interrupter weren't in question, few knew just how solid a songwriter Elson was becoming during this time. Not even husband Jack White, who Elson met when she appeared in The White Stripes stunning Floria Sigismondi "Blue Orchid" video, until one day he heard her singing one of her songs in private in their Nashville home. Urged on by his excitement at her material, Elson took the major step of preparing and album, and with White and several other top musicians on board, The Ghost Who Walks began to come together last year.
Named after a nickname she had in her school days, Elson's The Ghost Who Walks is a really wonderful debut work that features beautifully inventive (and yet wisely understated) from White, a dozen beautifully designed songs, a top of the line band clearly enjoying how distinctly different this project is and Elson firing on all cylinders as creative leader. The Ghost Who Walks is one of the first albums of this decade that feels like it has a legitimate shot at becoming a classic and its freewheeling spirit is absolutely refreshing among the deliberately plastic and robotic pop that is currently controlling the summer's releases.
While the album is remarkably consistent as a whole there are some definite highlights, including the stunning opening set of songs that recall the Murder Ballads of Cave and Cash as well as the poetic collaborations between Exene Cervenka and Lydia Lunch. The album's title track and first single, The Ghost Who Walks opens with a bit that sounds like Donald Rubinstein's Martin score before coming out blazing with Dean Fertita's commanding guitar and organ work and Elson's beautiful vocal that is both seductive and menacing. Equally as powerful are the floow-up tracks, the bruising "The Truth is in the Ground" and the swampy fifties-tinged "Pretty Babies". Elson is a commanding lead throughout but White never lets the band get lost in the mist, especially Carl Broemel whose gorgeous sounding pedal steel guitar is present on over half the album's tracks.
While the album has a definite country and rockabilly sound throughout, a couple of the most remarkable tracks show the influence of German composer Kurt Weill and obvious Elson influence Marlene Dietrich, such as "A Hundred Years From Now" which would have been right at home in a Von Sternberg film as imagined by David Lynch. The Velvet Underground and Nico's influence can also be felt but what is more remarkable than the wide variety of influences on the album is Elson's ability to mix them up and make them her own. The Ghost Who Walks is the kind of truly great Americana record that only someone from outside the country deliver.
Elson's debut only slightly slips on a couple of tracks that are more straightforward country than anything else, such as "Lunasa" and "The Last Laugh". They are far from bad tracks though, they just feeling slightly limp when placed beside such powerfully strange and adventurous songs like "The Birds The Circle" and the powerhouse closer, "Mouths to Feed." Elson offers a quote by Anais Nin in The Ghost Who Walks' liner notes and, like Nin's best works, The Ghost Who Walks is a wildly seductive and original vision from a clearly talented artist. I really can't wait to hear and see what she comes up with next.

Gordon Willis' Windows (1980)

A notorious failure that was yanked from most theaters shortly after its limited release in January of 1980, Windows was the first and last directorial effort from legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis. A fascinating train wreck of a film, Windows is a bizarre collision between a super stylish European Art-Film and a gritty downtown American exploitation-picture. Directed with extraordinary care by Willis from a hollow and lethargic script from Barry Siegel, Windows isn’t a good film but it has a disquieting and haunting quality that makes it entirely too hard to easily dismiss thirty years after its release.



Recently separated from her husband, shy Emily Hollander’s life is permanently fractured when she is sexually assaulted inside her apartment one evening upon returning home. Understandably terrified, Emily quickly moves into a supposedly safer high-rise apartment to feel more secure. After getting involved with a policeman, who had been assigned to her case, Emily realizes that the person behind her attack was none other than her best friend Andrea, a deranged woman who has become completely fixated on her.



The first and most striking thing about the ultra-bizarre Windows is that this absolutely looks like a film that you would expect the great Gordon Willis to direct. Close your eyes and remember your favorite shots in any of the numerous classic films he photographed, from The Godfather to All the Presidents Men to Annie Hall, and you will be able to picture Windows. Willis’ first and only film as a director is, even in a faded full-screen transfer, quite astounding to look at. Framed immaculately and photographed with the skill only a true master could bring to the screen, Windows is a visual triumph. Sadly, the look of Windows can’t save it from its stale storyline, poor plotting and wooden dialogue. Willis brings his all to the look of the film, from the first frame to the last, but it is ultimately regrettable that he bothered to give such care to a script in need of so much work.



Gordon Willis was on fire as the seventies gave way to the eighties. He had just shot Woody Allen’s gorgeous black and white Manhattan, and his work throughout the seventies had garnered him the justified reputation of being one of the best cinematographers in film history. The leap to the directors chair didn’t seem like a stretch for the talented Willis and in 1979 he got the okay from United Artists to helm his first film, a mystery from the pen of Barry Siegel. Despite the fact that Siegel had never had a screenplay brought to the big screen before Windows (and he never would again), UA and Willis threw caution to the wind and proceeded with filming even though the script had major issues. Armed with an extraordinary crew (which included Editor Barry Malkin, Production Designer Mel Bourne and Composer Ennio Morricone) and a winning cast (featuring Talia Shire, Elizabeth Ashley, Kay Medford and Joseph Cortese), shooting commenced on location in New York City throughout the fall of 1979.



Looking to make a splash with his first film as a director Gordon Willis, simply put, directed the hell out of Windows. Perhaps sensing that something was indeed wrong with the script he was working with, Willis brings a carefully studied and calculated cool to every shot in Windows. The film is finally over-directed, and could have ultimately used a little more of a free-wheeling hand, but there is no question that Willis had an eye for creating a scene and building tension, and his work on Windows shows a talented director in the making. It is a shame that the film's disastrous reception caused Willis to never sit in the director’s chair again as one can see clearly he had a great film in him.



Willis wasn’t the only one with something to prove in 1980. Talia Shire’s place in film history was already well-secured due to her work in The Godfather and Rocky films but she had yet to show that she could carry a film completely on her own. She had been solid in both Old Boyfriends and Prophecy (each 1979) but neither film had really caught on with the critics or the public. Windows would turn out to be the last time the talented Shire was given a film to carry, but the film’s miserable reception damaged her career badly. Shire wouldn’t make another film for nearly three years before the incredible Rocky III in 1982 helped put her back on the map. Ironically, her work in Windows is quite remarkable and she channels the shattered Emily Hollander incredibly well. Shire, like Willis, is clearly working her ass off here and she is good even when the script fails her, as it often does throughout the films near 95 minute running time.



The rest of the cast doesn’t fair as well as Shire and can’t rise above the material. This is especially regrettable as Cortese and Medford (appearing in her final film role) are splendid actors, but they just don’t have anything to work with here. Especially hampered is Elizabeth Ashley, a usually reliable actress who slips over the top into an unfortunate and quite annoying caricature as the obsessive and sexually confused Andrea Glassen. Of course one can’t blame Ashley for the material but her performance, which seems shipped in from another film, all but destroys Willis’ meticulous set-ups every time she appears on screen.



Windows had problems enough but the terribly clichéd character of Andrea Glassen would draw the wrath (some of it justified) of gay-rights groups who protested the film heavily upon its release. The protesters claimed that Willis’ work continued to foster an unfortunate negative stereotype of lesbians in film, and it’s easy to see their point as Glassen is indeed an ugly and clichéd ridden character. However unfortunate the fact was that homosexuality had been presented in such a bad light throughout cinema history, the anger directed towards Windows was more than a little misguided. Willis is obviously not making some sort of defining and sweeping statement against homosexuals with Windows, he just happened to be saddled with a script made up of poor choices at every turn, with the worst being the character of Andrea Glassen.



Despite everything that is wrong with Windows, and there is plenty, it has moments that are sublime. My friend Chris, who provided me with this film, mentioned that Willis seemed to be attempting to channel Antonioni and the film's opening, set in a stunningly lit train tunnel, feels like Michelangelo shooting a horror film. Also incredible is the spare but haunting Morricone score (another aspect that connects Windows with the Italian Art-House) and the New York locations are used splendidly. Fans of William Lustig's Maniac, which was shot around the same time as Windows, will delight as Willis uses one of that legendary slasher's key locations throughout. You can feel a brilliant work bubbling under the surface throughout Windows and, frankly, even at its worst it is still more arresting and memorable than most of the studio released nonsense seen today.

Among the first films of the eighties, Windows was pulverized during its short run in theaters. Willis and Shire took most of the fire and the film was withdrawn from distribution quickly, due mostly to the protests and critical disdain. The film would get a whopping five Razzie nominations and it would all but vanish shortly after. Released on VHS in England, in a version missing several minutes, and occasionally popping up on TV, Windows has still yet to be granted a DVD or Blu-Ray release.