 I’ve caught up on a lot of films over the past weeks, including 1973’s Ricco the Mean Machine—also known as just plain Ricco, or Cauldron of Death, or a particularly bizarre title as seen in this Italian-language trailer . The DVD got a nice repackaging from the Dark Sky label, with bonus features that include an interview with star Christopher Mitchum.
The star of Ricco—and the spawn of Robert Mitchum—had a busy early career that included roles in Chisum, Rio Lobo, and Big Jake. Those were three John Wayne films. Mitchum would win the Photoplay Gold Medal Award for Best New Actor in 1972. As the amiable actor notes in his Ricco interview, that would mark the end of his American stardom:
The
phone never rang. I couldn’t get an interview, nothing. I
finally—months, months later—went on an interview for a thing called Steelyard Blues,
and the casting director took one look at me and said, “I’m sorry, I
can’t interview you.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Well, you starred with
John Wayne. I can’t interview you.” And basically, what it was, because
Duke was very outspoken against guys burning the flag and the people
throwing urine on our troops when they came back from Vietnam—it’s not
that he was pro-war, but these are American kids dying for their
country. He felt that we should support our boys. Because he was so
outspoken about that, liberal Hollywood didn’t want anybody else with a
strong voice. So anybody who starred with Duke, that was it. They were
blackballed.
Mitchum is probably being polite by not noting that Steelyard Blues starred Jane Fonda.
He would later find work by doing foreign exploitation films like Ricco.
A lot of those were huge hits, but that only helped to make Mitchum an
instant B-lister in Hollywood. Of course, those who watch Ricco
might have their own suspicions as to what stalled Mitchum’s career.
It’s not a particularly dynamic performance. Just keep in mind that Ricco is really Hamlet vs. the Mob,
and Mitchum’s blonde prince doesn’t have much enthusiasm for anything.
You can find the actor having a lot more fun going after a mad doctor
in 1987’s Faceless .
Also
consider that there were plenty of other John Wayne films from the ’70s
with promising young actors whose careers suddenly stalled. Bruce Dern
did okay, but that’s probably because he killed Wayne in 1972’s The Cowboys. |
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 I’ve wanted to write this article for a while, but everything would seem redundant after I’d start with the headline, “When Did Everyone I Used to Know Turn Into Prudish Leftists Trying to Impress Each Other?” Fortunately, some pandering creepiness from the New York Times recently gave me a decent hook. There’s even some film content with a reference to the upcoming Leftist fantasy of Fair Game. The piece won’t change anything, of course, except maybe I’ll get less e-mails from old acquaintances telling me to visit their Facebook page. |
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 With the show denied its record-breaking 21st season, everybody now bids farewell to Law & Order. It’s a real blow to Leftists who need weekly assurances that they’re the true good guys. I’m pretty sure they still have Cold Case on CBS, though, as well as pretty much everything else on network television. Anyway, I'm linking here to three L&O entries from this site’s olden days: 1) a fumbling attempt to address Islamic terrorism; 2) an attack on an ersatz Ann Coulter; 3) the show's truly defining meta-moment. Some of us will certainly miss Law & Order as a situation comedy. |
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 I’ve never been a fan of summer songs, and I’m certainly no fan of
“Walking on Sunshine.” Still, the story of Kimberley Rew and his big
hit with Katrina & the Waves is pretty interesting. This article is
running in the current issue of Atlanta, GA’s Stomp and Stammer,
but also reprinted here since the article isn’t likely to end up on the
website. No real political content, but there is a reference to the Iron Eagle soundtrack…
Waved Out
Kimberley Rew celebrates the 25th anniversary of his Summer of Hit
There
are a lot of good songs by Katrina and the Waves. There are even good
songs by The Waves, who made their debut in 1982 with Shock Horror! Katrina
Leskanich’s didn’t get top billing on that one, but her vocals would
convince The Bangles to cover “Going Down to Liverpool” in 1984. By
then, Katrina and the Waves were signed to a Canadian label, and the UK
act had already released 1983’s Katrina and the Waves (aka Walking on Sunshine) and 1984’s Katrina and the Waves 2.
The band wouldn’t sign an international deal until 1985—long after any
hipster cachet remained from songwriter Kimberley Rew’s work with the
Soft Boys.
The good news is that the international deal provided
exposure for Kimberly and the Waves’ most brilliant moment—that being
the bluesy AOR stomp of “Maniac House,” which survived from Katrina and the Waves 2 to make it onto the soundtrack of 1986’s Iron Eagle.
That alone would warrant the new CD reissues that cover all the band’s
Canadian releases. But if you ask Rew about “Maniac House,” he’s
suspiciously quick to bring up a different song.
“When you’re
a new band on the scene,” Rew explains from his English home, “people
will start sniffing around and be keen to put your songs on their
films. They want to seem up to the minute. Of course, ‘Walking on
Sunshine’ has been in lots of films, too, and keeps being played on the
radio. I think it’s nice that people like to still hear it. It makes
people feel good and happy, and I’m sort of proud to be associated with
that. It’s a positive thing. It’d be great if that success was repeated
ten times over with ten different songs, but having one hit is a lot
better than having none at all.”
“Maniac House” should’ve been
the first song to fill up the Top Ten all by itself. Still, since Rew
mentioned it, “Walking on Sunshine”—which hit America in 1985 as a
rerecorded (or remixed) tune—remains Katrina and the Waves’ most
beloved hit. The current reissue campaign is built around the song’s
25th anniversary on the US pop charts. Rew is certainly correct about
the terminally bouncy tune being in plenty of soundtracks and
commercials. You’ve heard it on American Idol, and the cast of Glee
recently returned the song to the UK charts. That’s kind of
unfortunate. “Walking on Sunshine” swamped the band’s later singles,
and nobody noticed that Katrina and the Waves were still making good
music by the time of 1993’s Edge of the Land.
In fact,
enough Americans had forgotten Katrina and the Waves—if not their
biggest hit—that a younger generation was amused to learn there was a
band with that name after New Orleans flooded in 2005. In truth,
though, Rew is being modest in claiming the one hit. Katrina and the
Waves scored a worldwide comeback in 1997 when the band won the
Eurovision Song Contest with a Rew composition called “Love Shine a
Light.”
“That was only in the UK,” says Rew, “so I didn’t think
you’d know about that one. Factually, there you are. It was strange.
We’d had our one hit, and we were just making music and doing shows all
the time. We were aware that our career was on a downward trajectory,
but we just kept doing it. We love making music, basically. If you’d
asked me in 1995 if I was planning to enter the Eurovision Song
Contest—and even win it—I would’ve explained how that’s not the natural
career progression. But the system in those days was that anyone could
send in a tape of a song and get a chance to represent the UK. There
was nothing else going on with us at the time, so we did it. Funnily
enough, winning made it easier for Katrina and the rest of us to move
on to other things.”
Those other things would include Rew renewing the solo career he’d begun with 1981’s The Bible of Bop—which
was essentially a Waves album without Katrina, and is also part of the
reissue campaign. Rew has released several more fine albums over the
past few years, while Leskanich has pursued a solo career. (Legal
objections prevented her from performing as Katrina and the New Wave.)
She’s pushing the 25th anniversary of “Walking on Sunshine” with a live
album.
Leskanich is also spared Rew’s place in the pop and/or
punk pantheon. He’s one of the few musicians with both cool cult status
and an embarrassing pop hit. It was probably his Soft Boys lineage that
got “Walking on Sunshine” into a scene from High Fidelity. The song was used as a gag, though, and wasn’t hip enough to make the soundtrack album.
Strangely, Rew hasn’t given any of this much thought.
“There
may be a difference in perception,” he acknowledges. “So many things
come of just meeting people over the years. I knew [Waves drummer] Alex
Cooper before I met Robyn Hitchcock, when we were all in my hometown of
Cambridge. Alex and I were already The Waves before I joined with
Robyn. Then Robyn went on to his next phase, and I got back together
with Alex. Robyn and I are both very creative people, but we’re very
different. That’s why we get on. I met Katrina and [Waves guitarist]
Vince de la Cruz and [bassist] Bob Jakins, and suddenly I was the
songwriter for a new band. That’s the way it came out—at least, at
first. The fact that the Waves weren’t anything like the Soft Boys is
neither here nor there. It all makes sense in my head, but I can’t
expect the rest of the world to fall in line with what’s inside of my
head.”
There are some fun bonus tracks of The Waves in 1976 on the Shock Horror!
reissue. Still, a misinformed music geek would easily contrive a
simpler scenario. That would involve Rew having an officially
acceptable heyday with the Soft Boys, and then awful commercial years
with Katrina and the Waves. Rew is secure enough that he doesn’t mind
an interviewer spelling all that out for him.
“Oh, yeah,” he
muses. “I think I see what you mean. Oh, man. The Soft Boys were left
alone as a band, ultimately. Robyn’s went on to do fantastically well,
but it’s taken a long time, and all on his own terms. What you get is
not in any way diluted. It’s the Hitchcock experience. When I signed to
Capitol with the Waves, it was really new to me to be working for a
large organization that wanted to have an affect on your work. I could
never stand outside myself and see that we were going in a wrong
direction. If you listen to something like Edge of the Land,
you can hear how it’s more of that rock sound of the time. There’s that
kind of feeling where we were blown hither and thither by circumstance.
Of course, we’d break up in a couple of years, anyway, so not to worry.
It turned out all right in the end.”
Besides, as noted, Edge of the Land
was a pretty good album. Rew’s solo albums have been plenty catchy,
too. With that in mind, it seems harmless enough to close things with a
nod to a real low point for Katrina and the Waves—that being Break of Hearts from 1989, when the band were label mates to Vanilla Ice and Wilson Phillips.
“Glad
you mentioned that,” replies the relentlessly mannered Rew. “That was
the point where Katrina and the Waves sounded most like the year they
were in. In 1985, we sounded like 1965. In 1989, we sounded more like
adult-oriented rock. I’m 58 years old, and I’ve been making music for
about 35 years. I suppose it’s only natural that some has been more
successful than others. But I’m here in Cambridge in the house that I
bought in 1985 when we had the hit, and it’s very nice to have a roof
over your head.” |
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 I’m having very minor surgery this week, but it was probably still a bad idea to catch a screening of The Human Centipede. Anyone who doesn’t know the gruesome details can let IMDB fill them in on the medical mayhem. It’s still a well-made film, despite a script that requires the protagonists to act in abominably stupid ways. I was also impressed by German actor Dieter Laser, who plays the film’s mad doctor. He explained in a Q&A afterwards that he enjoyed playing an absurd version of Dr. Josef Mengele, mostly as a kind of revenge on his country’s Nazi past. Laser went on to praise “the American heroes” of World War II who saved him from living “a terrible life” where he might have ended up as a true zombie.
Then he abruptly shouted, “Thanks, America! You have my respect!” That might not be much, but it was probably the most patriotic moment that’s ever been heard at the Independent Film Channel Center.
Catching up other news, since I’ll be distracted the rest of this week: The new A Nightmare on Elm Street is lousy, but not exactly lousy in the way I expected . The big change is that Freddy Krueger is now just a child molester instead of a child killer. That’s Hollywood’s way of making Krueger sympathetic, since so many industry types don’t even think child molesters should go to jail—let alone suffer fiery vigilante justice.
Also, as previously Twittered , I’m betting on a Dixie Chick as this week's upcoming Out Celebrity Lesbian. Queen Latifah has a romantic comedy to push, so the folks in Marketing wouldn’t approve. And since some people have had fun goofing on CNN’s Roland Martin this week, here’s an older Twitter where I noted what Martin was contemplating this past September 11th. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready to wake up in the year 2173... |
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 I should post something to show that I’m back from vacation, and here’s an old music video that’s worthy of comment. Until recently, I didn’t even know Material Issue made a video for their cover of “Kim the Waitress” on 1994’s Freak City Soundtrack. It’s even more tragic to think the money was just wasted on what is clearly one of the most screwheaded videos in the history of rock. As you’ll hear, the song is a lovely pop ode. As you’ll see, the video is a paranoid Leftist fantasy.
Jim Ellison—who wrote plenty of great songs as Material Issue’s frontman—was then just a few years away from being a power-pop suicide. It’s a miracle this video didn’t kill him sooner. It’s a miracle that Jeff Kelly of the Green Pajamas (whose original version can be heard here) didn’t kill himself, as well. The video kind of has a happy ending, but you’ll marvel at how some idiot director heard this lovely tune and decided it was the proper setting for political allegory. |
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 How few conservative rock critics are out there? So few that a has-been like me still gets trotted out as the sole name when someone decides to write a piece about the topic. It’s a thoughtful article, though—and, in the spirit of Good Friday, you’ll find that I’ve added a comment where I discuss my persecution. |
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 Verily I swore via Twitter that my Alex Chilton tribute would be the best, and now it is revealed as so—until I check this link to my article and find a whole bunch of things that I probably should’ve rewritten. The most nerve-wracking part of the piece was trying to verify that my story from 1986 actually happened in 1986. But here’s a link to another fine Chilton tribute where a commenter thinks my 1987 story happened a year earlier, so clearly everyone was addled that decade. |
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 I ran into Sal Maida the other day, and he mentioned that he’d recently
been over to Iraq on a USO tour. Maida’s the bassist for Cracker, so
they weren’t hanging out with the megastars. They were touring in jeeps
and keeping their heads down. Anyway, it reminded me that my 2009 Stomp and Stammer interview with Maida had never been posted online. (That’s
him on the far left, incidentally.) His weird career certainly needs to
be covered, especially since he was left out of the recent Runaways
biopic. So here’s the story of Sal, and apologies for the headline.
It’s been several months, and I still can’t think of anything better…
Glam Cracker
Sal Maida’s March from Glam to Country to Whatever Cracker is Nowadays
“I was thinking the other day,” says Sal Maida, “that I was the
fifth bass player for Roxy Music, and I’m pretty sure I’m the fifth one
for Cracker.”
No other musician can make that claim—or anything close to it. Maida
has had a stellar pop career by just about any standard. In a very
short period in the ’70s, Maida managed the hipster hat trick of being
in three of the glam era’s best bands. That’s before there were even
hipsters. Maida now gets to be part of a hot band that should
technically be an oldies act, with Cracker touring to rightful
acclaim for their new Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey.
Maida’s no mere sideman, either. “I’m still the new guy,” he says from
his Brooklyn home, “but this new record seems to make me a full-fledged
member. I have co-writing credits on nine of the ten songs. A lot of
people are saying this record is the best since Kerosene Hat, so I
guess that’s considered their artistic and commercial high point. I
always thought The Golden Age is underrated. It’s got a lot of great
songs, and there’s some incredible playing and production. You can hear
on that album why Cracker would be so perfect for me. This new one has
all my old styles, from punk to glam to country-rock, and some new-wave
and power-pop.”
Maida’s old styles are Cracker’s old styles, too, considering how much
territory has been covered by founders David Lowery and Johnny Hickman.
Maida gives them both credit for beating him to discovering country
music, though. He spent the start of the ’80s in New York City while
flirting with synth drums. Maida still managed an unfashionable early
start on Americana with The Lovin’ Kind in the early ’90s.
Maida stayed with that ignored NYC scene, too, and that helped him land
in Cracker for a 2007 tour. Sunrise makes good use of Maida’s
complicated musical history, which began when the native New Yorker
moved to England after getting his BS in Economics.
“I’d just gotten there,” recalls Maida, “and I saw Roxy on television
doing ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache.’ Like a lot of people, I
thought they were the most intensely original band around. I knew they
didn’t have a regular bass player, but it never entered my head that I
could play for them. I was working in a record store when [Roxy
drummer] Paul Thompson and [keyboardist] Eddie Jobson came in looking
for a Family album. I hid the copy we had, and told them I’d order it
for them so they’d come back to the store. We got to know each other,
and then I got a call one day from Paul saying that their bass player
couldn’t tour, and inviting me to audition.”
Fortunately for Maida, that would be one of the tours immortalized live
on 1976’s Viva! album. Roxy’s revolving door soon had him looking for
work, though, which is when Maida landed another classic gig—although
it would take decades to become classic.
“I came back to New York,” Maida recalls, “and was approached about
working with Milk ‘n’ Cookies. There was already a pretty big buzz
about them as a glam-pop band. Then it took forever before the album
was finally released in ’76, and the critics just killed us.”
It didn’t help when the band members made fun of the Bay City Rollers
during a UK promo visit. Still, the sole Milk ‘n’ Cookies album is now
a proper cult item, most recently reissued last year on American vinyl.
Check out the album cover, and you can tell that Maida wasn’t getting
by on his image. His imposing presence doesn’t suggest anything glam or
twee about him.
“Yeah,” says Maida, “I was still this guy from Little Italy, so I had
to shed some testosterone. I was always looking to Overend Watts for
inspiration. He’s a big tall guy, and he was wearing five-inch platform
shoes—so I figured, you know, that’s cool. I was standing out like a
sore thumb in Milk ‘n’ Cookies. Roxy Music was a lot better. Phil and
Andy and Bryan are all at least 6’ tall. I was 6’5” and 150 pounds.
That emaciated look really helped.”
Maida didn’t have to look precious when he joined up with Sparks for
1976’s Big Beat. “They had the same manager and producer as Milk ‘n’
Cookies, so that’s the way it happened. Sparks had been a big glam band
in England, but they were trying to crack the American market. Big Beat
was their take on Aerosmith—or, you know, as close as they could get.”
Big Beat would also lead to more live immortality for Maida, as he’s
featured onstage with Sparks during the climatic sequence of the 1977
disaster movie Rollercoaster—in SenSurround! Cracker doesn’t have anyone else with that kind of background. Lowery
only has Camper Van Beethoven to his credit, while Hickman has an
embarrassing history with the failed ’80s guitarslingers of The
Unforgiven. Frank Funaro got his start drumming with the Del-Lords.
Things still work out nicely with Cracker’s latest incarnation.
“We were playing all the time around 2007,” says Maida, “and the
chemistry was really coming together onstage. It was still kind of a
surprise to be told we were heading into the studio to write a record.
They were just touring off Greenland when I joined the band, and that
had gotten great reviews. Now there’s a real contrast with Sunrise.
It’s completely different as a rock album. The reviews have been great,
the airplay’s been great, and a lot of shows have been sold out. It
feels pretty good knowing all that came together on the stage.”
As noted, a lot of what’s come together with Sunrise reflects on
Maida’s bizarre history—which has a few unheralded chapters. Those
include Maida’s unlikely stint as a member of The Runaways for 1977’s
Waitin’ for the Night.
“I was in the Rainbow parking lot in L.A.,” explains Maida, “and
[producer] Kim Fowley came up and asked me if I was Sal Maida. He said
that he needed me for the new Runaways album. He had a dream that
Vickie Blue was tied up by snakes around her arms—or maybe it was that
her arms were snakes. Anyway, Vickie was the Runaways’ new bass player,
and she couldn’t play in Kim’s dream, so he took that as a sign. I told
him that I’d be happy to help out, but he was going to have to tell the
girls before I showed up at the studio. So I walk in the next day, and
all the girls are there. Maybe not Joan, but Vickie sure is, and they
look at me and say, ‘Who are you?’”
Maida never told anyone about his work as a Runaway. Nobody knew until
Waitin’ for the Night was reissued in 2004, when Fowley revealed that
fun fact in the liner notes.
“Yeah,” says Maida, “Kim outed me. I wouldn’t have told anyone. That’s
part of being a working musician. There are a lot of great musicians in
New York who don’t have regular gigs. I’ve been spending the past few
years with Cracker and working with Mary Weiss, so that’s been kind of
great. People ask me if it feels weird, but I don’t know if that’s the
word for it. I’m just appreciative." |
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 The Ten Commandments is probably one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s over three hours long, but moves as quickly as any kiddie matinee. Still, it’s not the only movie worth watching as a Passover event. The Abominable Dr. Phibes is about a vengeful psycho who’s out to kill the eight doctors (and one nurse) he blames for the death of his wife. His elaborate murders are based on the Biblical plagues that God brought down upon the Egyptians. There were ten plagues, but that’s a plot point. The Jews aren’t having an easy time nowadays, so it’s nice to enjoy any movie that honors their proud history.
There’s also the matter of my wanting J.R. jr. to have strong Jewish role models. My 6-year-old likes mad doctors, and really likes Dr. Phibes. It’s pretty funny to hear a little kid robotically intoning, “I am…already…dead.” Anyway, I suggested to him that Dr. Phibes might be Jewish. “Dad,” he sighed, “Dr. Phibes is a bad guy. There aren’t any bad Jewish doctors.” Oy!
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