Monday, March 9, 2009
KLF and "Last Train To Transcentral"
I became enamored with this very tight English Acid House/Techno group in the very late 80's. My daughter was six years old at the time and she and I would spend hours on a Saturday afternoon in Detroit watching music videos on an automated juke box that was provided by a local black beam box company. KLF ( Kopyright Liberation Front ) was usually our favorite of the day . Perhaps you remember this hard driving sound. For leading trance/techno video, this one gets my vote.
Buckethead
Growing up outside of Chicago certainly provided me with a benefit that would shape my future days in many ways. For any of you that also shared my fortune you will no doubt remember the phrases : "Hudson 3- two seven huuuuuuunnnnndddreddddd, or" Hey! Hey! Its out of here", or" "Welcome to Family Classics", with your host :Frasier Thomas." WGN in the the late 50's and thru the 60's was my school ground. The station was my inner sanctum where I could escape the pressures of the time. Maybe it was the stress of daily monitoring the Little League box scores in our local small town paper. You had to make sure your team was still second in the standings despite the fact you hadn't played a game since the last time you looked. Or maybe it was the strain of trying to figure just how you could make $2.99 by Saturday so that you could get that63 Jaguar HO car while it was still on sale. The pressures of an eleven year old. My childhood was over all a pretty happy place even considering that a full 1/2 of it seemed to be spent in bed, sick. I had yet to be diagnosed but in about seven years I would learn that I had a nefarious illness called Crohn's disease. When I wasn't in bed with the normal kid things like measeles or the ubiqutous week long puke fest that was locally called "THE STOMACH FLU" while in reality was no doubt an active outbreak of rotovirus, I was sick as a dog with intestinal ailments. I would always manage to drag myself back to life every couple of months and enjoy an interlude between sessions. Being an only child these prolonged vacations at home on the sofa in front of the only television in the house was my treatment. I spent hour after hour and day after day watching everything from Dave Garroway on the Today Show , to Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark. WGN an independent station based in Chicago afforded lots of immature entertainment due in part to the budgetary restrains a small indie station was limited to. It mattered not to me , because as long as I had something cool to watch and 8 drops of belladonna nightly( belladonna came in tincture form and I was administered 8 carefully measured drops that would be diluted into a glass of water. The tastes was very distinctive not unpleasant but very heady, similar in fact to a gulp of warm garden hose water that has lain in the full sun of a July afternoon. The belladonna was used as an anti spasmodic and would give me a few hours of stomach ache free life . ) As I would while away a pajama clad afternoon , having been served chicken broth and jello for lunch, I would alternately draw,read part of the S book of the World Book Encyclopedia or play with soldiers on an afghan that my Grandmother had crocheted, ( it made a great landscape device for soldiers , if you could ignore the pink, blue and violet rivers of color and somehow view the overall pile of yarn and plastic as American soldiers in the Ardennes heroically repelling the Nazi's back to the Fatherland to skulk amongst great piles of knackwursts and dachshunds .) Now this is where WGN comes back in . I was entreated daily with Warner Brothers movies of the 30's and 40's where the never ending stream of black and white gangsters, cowboys, soldiers, pirates, spanards, crazy- eyed Betty Davis romances - ugghh I hated Betty Davis , Joan Crawford, and Rossalind Russell. The managed to creep out at age 11 and to this day I get very anxious if I hear their voice on a television, even in a distant room. In other words I was schooled in some of the finest entertainment and education any atomic age kid could have wished for. After all I learned management skills from Cagney, philosophy from Bogart, and future romantic skills from the grand master Errol Flynn. While all my friends were were busy discussing "The Yearling" and enjoying their health while sitting upright in a drab school room , I was stretched out comfortably listening the priest Pat O'Brien explain how to take it like a man to Cagney 's Rocky Sullivan. Now sometimes my illness even brought me added benefits. In my house when Dad got home from work , he became the defacto keeper of the television, and his mood dictated what type of viewing night we would be entreated to. After his dinner he would move to the living room and immediately turn on Huntley and Brinkley as a matter of habit. In a few seconds he would glance my way and out of sheer pity he would switch over to WGN and behold Family Classics hosted by Fraser Thomas would be starting. Now to an 11 year old the only thing that could ruin Family Classics would be some doillie wrapped crap like "Little Women". If that were to happen which it did maybe 1 out of every 10 episodes, it would be a night of baseball card organization. But most of the nights we were treated with cinematic gems like the Frogmen with Richard Widmark, or The Horse Soldiers with the Duke, forever lighting the gunpowder then galloping his horse across the bridge just ahead of the dynamite blasts that consume the bridge, seconds before the Confederates ride into the now empty camp, save for William Holden, the battalion surgeon who stays behind to escort his wounded troops to a delightful stay in Andersonville. About once a year WGN would hit the cosmic jackpot in my opinion and schedule the coolest, most kick ass movie ever for any red blooded American boy or girl for that matter. Yes once a year we were treated to Prince Valiant. now I sure don't know what element of this movie caught hold of the youth audience so thoroughly but I assure you , in my age group and demographics there had to be something for its mass attraction. Was it the rousing musical score with all the heroic strings and the medieval horns that we were afforded? Was it James Mason's deliciously evil grimaces as Sir Breck/ The Black Knight? Or maybe Sterling Hayden's oafish caricature of Sir Gawain the only Illinois farmhand among King Arthur's Court? The weirdly electronic and futuristic song of the Singing Sword? Janet Leigh's pointy torpedo's? Perhaps it was all of the above coupled with a smart ass talking Valiant himself played by Robert Wagner, a "cool" guy to most pubescent boys of the 60's. When my sickness would pass which it did on a regular basis , I'd be right outside with one of my hard ball bats in my hand standing on the lower limb of the worm riddled crab apple tree in the back yard.Fighting off three long horned vikings while my fearless four legged companion ,Herman would bark in unison with my thrusts as the singing bat and barking dachshund kept Camelot safe for all the citizens and of course the pointy torpedo titted ladies . While I considered myself a war movie aficionado , my specialty was the historical costume epic. Anything old or ancient was okay with me as long as there was some sort of sword play. I was always good for a 4 hour dissertation on The Vikings, Taras Bulba, El Cid, The Warlord,Jason And The Argonauts, or Ulysses. I even lovingly watched the cheesy Ivanhoe with Roger Moore and its country cousin, William Tell , in all their black and white sharpness. It occurred to me at one point that if somehow Abner Doubleday had been born in the 1100's the middle ages would have been a great place to live. As the years passed it seemed that my chronic illness had also and I enjoyed a few year respite from gut aches. Little did I know what fate had in store for me. Needless to say I would be surprised at the outcome.
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