Lookalikes #22: John Cage, JJ Cale & John Cale

I never wrote a song called 'Cocaine'
I never told a lie
I never wrote a song called 'After Midnight'
But my name is Cale
You can call me John
Yes my name is Cale
I know, I know, I know
How that will be
– From What's Welsh for Zen, The Autobiography of John Cale (and a song occasionally performed live by Cale).

John Cage (1912-1992), influential American avant-garde composer, most famous for his composition 4' 33", consisting of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence. You really must hear it. Or not.

JJ Cale (b. 1938), American blues musician and songwriter, most famous for songs After Midnight and Cocaine, covered by Eric Clapton. Born John Cale, a Vegas nightclub owner employing him in the 1960s came up with the 'JJ' to avoid confusion with the other John Cale.

John Cale (b. 1942), Welsh, founder member of the Velvet Underground and record producer. Since leaving the Velvet Underground, Cale has released over thirty solo records of variable quality. He has also produced probably more, including The Stooges' first album, Nico's The Marble Index, Desertshore and The End, Horses by Patti Smith and The Modern Lovers debut LP.

In the 1960s it apparently embarrassed John Cale that people confused him with John Cage, a musician Cale respected. 'And I sometimes got the royalty receipts of JJ Cale,' remembers John, 'and I think the bluesman got mine'.

Lookalikes #21: Anna Karenina and Anna Karina

Anna Karenina is a 19th century Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karina is a Danish-born French actress, most famous for her films made with Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s, including Une Femme est une Femme, Bande à Part, Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou. As well as being Godard's muse, she was also his wife. They were divorced in 1965 and she's been married four times since.

I'm not surprised to learn there is a band called Anna Karenina/Anna Karina (and one called The Death Of Anna Karina, though she is currently alive).

Previously on Barnflakes:
Bands named after actors

Lookalikes #20: Flesh Gordon & Flash Gordon

It's hard to say which version is camper (or sexier): Flesh Gordon, a 1974 soft core porn spoof of the original 1936 Flash Gordon TV series, or Flash Gordon, made in 1980, which often seems like a parody of Flesh Gordon. Flesh Gordon has surprisingly high production values for a porno film, but this was the early 70s, when porn threatened to go mainstream with films such as Deep Throat (1972), The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and Emmanuelle (1974).

In Flesh Gordon, earth becomes infected by a 'sex ray'; Flesh, Dale Ardor and Dr Jerkoff set off in a penis-shaped (well, aren't they all?) spaceship to planet Porno to defeat the evil Emperor Wang (though his original name, Emperor Ming, sounds ruder). There is much nudity and sexual innuendos throughout. The impressive special effects were created by Mike Minor, Greg Jein and Rick Baker, who, between them, would go on to design effects for key sci-fi films of the 70s including Star Trek, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rick Baker would become most successful as a special make up effects designer, earning an Oscar for An American Werewolf in London and working on many films including Videodrome, The Howling, Gorillas in the Mist, Ed Wood, Batman Forever and Men in Black. Memorable special effects in Flesh Gordon include the penisaurus and the hilarious Great God Porno (a monster with personality!), both created using stop-motion animation, recalling films such as Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. Indeed, the similar use of animation makes the effects look like Ray Harryhausen's with a hard on. And it's worth noting that the Great God Porno's unofficial name is Nesuahyrrah (which is Harryhausen spelt backwards. Harryhausen is also the name of the restaurant that gets vaporised in Monsters Inc.).

The special effects and acting in Flash Gordon are possibly worse than its soft core cousin – but that's part of its charm. Based on the comic (rather than the TV series) and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr who wrote the equally-camp Batman TV series (though, inexplicably, he also wrote the excellent – and serious – films The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor), the film performed great in the UK but really badly everywhere else. Also inexplicably, it was directed by Mike Hodges, who made the hard-as-nails Get Carter (though before Flash Gordon he'd directed a sci-fi film, The Terminal Man, and would go on to make the moronic Morons from Outer Space).

A decent cast (amongst the bad acting), including Max von Sydow as Ming, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed and Robbie Coltrane, did not extend to the eponymous lead, played by Playgirl magazine model Sam J. Jones, who had all his lines dubbed by another actor in post-production. But Jones' hunky looks suit the role, his dumb blonde persona a perfect foil to the British (or European) thespians, who all look like they're having a great time. The whole film is pure over the top fun; a pop art cartoon, kinky, gaudy, with a great Queen soundtrack and terrific, sexy costumes.

Brian, bless him; Sam, a Flash in the pan

Since its initial relative flop and negative reviews, Flash Gordon seems to have been reappraised on the web as a cult classic (Flesh Gordon was always, inevitably, going to be a cult classic). And Sam Jones' performance may have even contributed to some people's sexuality; well, he does approach his execution wearing just handcuffs and a pair of leather trunks – that kind of image is going to affect certain young, male, sensitive souls. In my case, I was exposed to Flesh Gordon far too young (aged 8), though what the long term psychological consequences of that are, I'm really not keen to speculate.

Modern architecture is rubbish

It regularly gets voted as one of the ugliest buildings in London and has been threatened with demolition for over a year now, but I have a soft spot for the Marco Polo House, otherwise known as the QVC Shopping Channel building. It's an imposing monolith overlooking Battersea Park and sitting next to Battersea Power Station. Designed by Ian Pollard, not actually an architect but a developer, it was built in 1987 when postmodernism was in full swing and brash architectural statements were all the rage.

With the lease on the building ending in July this year, staff of QVC are planning to move to Chiswick Park and there are plans to demolish the glass and marble structure to build, inevitably, blocks of bland, ugly luxury flats. Which look like the architectural equivalent of terraced rice paddies on a hill.

Another postmodern eyesore is No 1 Poultry in the City of London, which came number five in Time Out's poll of London's ten worst buildings a few years back. Like the QVC building, I actually don't mind No 1 Poultry, it's only because the beautiful (and listed) neo-gothic Mappin and Webb building was demolished to make way for it that I feel bitterness towards it and all involved in it (who need to be rounded and shot for crimes against aestheticism). An interesting blog here, though, about its history and rooftop garden.

Beauty and the Beast... Before and after

This is apparently quite a regular occurrence, with councils of course having no regard for architectural beauty and history but only to make a fast buck. Iconic Pimlico school was apparently demolished a few months before it was to be listed. Built between 1967-1970, it was designed by John Bancroft (who died last September) and a fine example of brutalist architecture. In recent years the school had been performing well too, but Westminster council had let the building deteriorate and a friend of mine whose son attending the school, heard rumours of the school falsifying its performance, i.e. stating it was doing worse than it actually was in order to make the academy seem an appealing prospect. Although not always the case, it would have been a lot cheaper to keep the old school and renovate it rather than demolish it to build the academy. But the academy – owned by a venture capitalist with close ties to Tory Party front bench – went ahead and is now a specialist arts college. Just what we need, then, when public spending on the arts is being cut to pieces.

Similarly, according to uban75, Erno Goldfinger's (who designed iconic Trellick Tower) Coronet cinema in the Elephant & Castle was demolished the weekend before it was to get listed. Not that even being listed makes any difference; if the beautiful, listed Mappin and Webb building can get demolished, what hope has a concrete cinema in south London?

A similar fate befell the beautiful Firestone Factory in West London, demolished days before it was to get listed status. At least they kept the front gates. In all these examples, when reported in the news, it starts with the now obligatory phrase, 'despite protests...' It's always a losing battle.

In my daydreams, I often think it would be nice to stop demolishing or building any new buildings for, say, five years, and in that time, preserve, regenerate and convert what we have, ie buildings that have been left empty for years to rot. There is now close to a million empty homes in the UK and over 10% of office space in the City of London has remained empty for years, as well as many vacant government buildings around the country.

Councils allowing luxury apartments to be built all over the place certainly isn't going to solve the housing crisis, not least because (ironically) many of them remain empty, bought as they are by rich Asian and Middle Eastern businessmen as an investment and destined to remain vacant for years, or bought by landlords to rent out at exorbitant rates (still, at least the council get their money, even if they are knocking down important buildings, or even just practical ones, you know, like schools, colleges, hospitals, post offices and pubs). Normal flats for normal families to be able to buy just aren't being built any more. My top ten ugly buildings wouldn't be any of Time Out's top ten, most of which I quite like but, rather, all ten would be modern apartment blocks and all they represent.

Besides, though it does seem as if ubiquitous ugly over-priced apartment blocks are turning up all over London, ruining it bit by bit, in fact only 129,000 homes were built in England in 2010; only 2.8 per cent of which were converted offices. But if all long-term empty office space were converted it would create 250,000 new homes; add that to filling up the million empty homes and you've solved the housing crisis (temporarily) without ruining the country.

emptyhomes.com
derelictlondon.com

Previously on Barnflakes:
Death of the High Street
Postmodern Teapots

Top 10 foreign sci-fi movies

In the zone: Tarkovsky's Stalker (above), like many of the sci-fi films on this list, relies very little on special effects, just extraordinary imagery and severe obfuscation. One of my favourite contemporary writers (who I've mentioned before once or twice), Geoff Dyer, has just had published Zona: A book about a film about a journey to a room, an examination of Stalker, a film Dyer is obsessed with.

1. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979, USSR)
2. La Jetée (Marker, 1962, France)
3. Brazil (Gilliam, 1985, UK)
4. Alphaville (Godard, 1965, France)
5. The Man who Fell to Earth (Roeg, 1976, UK)
6. La Planète Sauvage (Laloux, 1973, France)
7. Solaris (Tarkovksy, 1972, USSR)
8. Tetsuo (Tsukamoto, 1989, Japan)
9. Battle Royale (Rouaiaru, 2000, Japan)
10. 2046 (Kar-wai, 2004, Hong Kong)

Also: Metropolis (Germany), Le Dernier Combat (France), Fahrenheit 451 (UK/France), A Clockwork Orange (UK), Akira (Japan), Timecrimes (Spain), The Host (South Korea)

She Leaves: The Remake!

I know I'm the first to bemoan European art house filmmakers who sell their films to Hollywood only to have them remade into bland, pointless, mainstream blockbusters, but it appears a similar fate has befallen one of my early student films, She Leaves (made at film school in 1993). Well, sort of. I worked with producer Bruce Webb in 1995 on a low-budget road movie shot in Nottingham and Morocco. Since then he's run a successful production company, Whatever Pictures, and recently directed his first feature film, The Be All and End All, about a youth with a heart condition not wanting to die a virgin, featuring, among others, Liza Tarbuck.

Anyway, what I'm getting to is that Bruce remembered me telling him about She Leaves in Morocco when it had for its soundtrack the Shipping Forecast (now it's just Boards of Canada). Something about it caught Bruce's imagination (presumably the naked woman in a bath). He asked my permission last year to re-make it. Bemused, I of course said yes and promptly forgot all about it. Now he tells me he's actually shot it, though it's a long way from being finished as he's going to spend a lot of time on the sound. The edge he has over my version – apart from skill, experience, budget, proper actors, technology, etc – is he knows the man who reads out the shipping news and is getting him to do the voice over.

Disregard what I said at the start – remakes? They're the ultimate compliment! I'm looking forward to seeing Bruce's interpretation. In the meantime, you'll probably want to revisit my original (above). And be reminded about my DVD. Which Bruce and his girlfriend love, by the way.

Marc Bolan's Barnes Rock Shrine

After picking up a double LP of T-Rex's Greatest Hits in a charity shop for £1, I remembered that Marc Bolan had died round the corner from where I live, in Barnes, Southwest London, just before his 30th birthday in September 1977. His girlfriend, American singer Gloria Jones, was driving home with Bolan (who couldn't drive) when she lost control of the car and hit a tree on Queens Road. Bolan died instantly; Jones suffered only minor injuries. Marc Bolan's home, a short distance away at 142 Upper Richmond Road in East Sheen, was looted by 'fans' who took most of his possessions.

Though he is buried in Golders Green, the site of his death soon became a shrine with fans leaving flowers, notes, photos, and, of course, white swans and feather boas. In 1997 the memorial stone was created. In 1999 the T-Rex Action Group (TAG) was formed to care for the site. The bust was unveiled in 2002 by Marc's son, Rolan Bolan. Since 2007, the site has been officially recognised by The English Tourist Board as Marc Bolan's Rock Shrine in their Guide to Sights of Rock 'n' Roll Importance.

Nearby: Sir Richard Burton's Bedouin Tent Tomb

Spitting at Shakespeare

In 1989 I had the mixed blessing of seeing Dustin Hoffman perform Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. We had almost front row seats. What I remember most – in fact all I remember – is Hoffman quite literally spitting out his lines. In abundance. I thought there was a leak in the roof there was so much liquid coming down. Some years later, in 2005, I saw Michael Gambon in Henry IV at the National Theatre, also spitting as he spake. And just a few days ago at the cinema, I saw Ralph Fiennes in his directorial debut as Coriolanus*, where he can often be seen spitting ('You banish ME?' *Spit* 'I banish YOU!' *Spit*). So it comes as no surprise that, according to a Washington Post blog post, Shakespeare's plays are known to produce more spit than any other playwright. In fact, theatre or film directors are known to request more spit from actors when they are under performing: 'Give me more spit!' is an often-heard line at Shakespeare's Globe theatre.

But spitting – or expectoration – though 'currently' (say Wikipedia) unacceptable in the west – unless you wear a tracksuit and live on a council estate and have a particularly nasty cold – is acceptable in other parts of the world. Like India. If Shakespeare had his way, it would be acceptable the world over. After all, didn't he write, 'The world's a stage, so spit on it'. Or something.

*My boon companion and I – luckily – just missed seeing Ralph Fiennes in the flesh. My friend, having been one of the make-up artists on Coriolanus, had wanted to confront Fiennes in the Q&A session (at the Everyman in Maida Vale) after a showing of the film to ask him why she hadn't been invited to the film's premiere. But after she had a double Jack Daniels and Coke in the cinema bar just before the film, and a double Pimm's and lemonade after it, it was probably for the best that the Q&A tickets had sold out.

Top 10 Scottish Bands

1. Belle and Sebastian
Best album: Tigermilk (1996)
2. Boards of Canada
Best album: Music has the Right to Children (1998)
3. Orange Juice
Best album: You Can't Hide Your Love Forever (1982)
4. Teenage Fanclub
Best album: Bandwagonesque (1991)
5. Cocteau Twins
Best album: Treasure (1984)
6. Incredible String Band
Best album: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968)
7. Arab Strap
Best album: Philophobia (1998)
8. The Beta Band
Best album: The Three EPs (1998)
9. Mogwai
Best album: Young Team (1997)
10. The Jesus and Mary Chain
Best album: Psychocandy (1985)

Tonight is Burns Night.

Lookalikes #19: Mickey Mouse & Joy Division

Atrocity exhibition: Mickey's Unknown Pleasures T-shirts, top and above, right; Peter Saville's original cover, 1979, above left

I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't a hoax but Disney have apparently starting selling Mickey Mouse T-shirts based on Peter Saville's iconic Joy Division album cover, Unknown Pleasures (according to Pitchfork and Rolling Stone). This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start.

Joy Division's name comes from the areas in concentration camps during World War II that operated as brothels where female prisoners were forced into prostitution for Nazi guards. Joy Division made great but depressing music. Lead singer Ian Curtis killed himself in 1980, aged 24. There is nothing remotely child-friendly or Disney-like about Joy Division.

The cover, designed by Peter Saville (who also designed all their subsequent releases), was taken from an image of the first radio pulsar discovered in 1967. I guess in this post-ironic and post-postmodern world, Disney appropriating Saville's appropriation is, well, appropriate. Besides, like with most works of art more than five minutes old, it loses its original meaning and simply become iconic and harmless.

Here's what Disney have to say:

Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey's image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That's appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!

You know what's worst of all, though? I want one!

UPDATE: Disney has seen some sense and withdrawn the T-shirt; one recently sold on eBay for over £200; some bright spark is already selling fake ones on eBay for £12. Bargain.

Banana vs Apple

The Velvet Underground have taken legal action against the Andy Warhol Foundation for trademark infringement of Warhol's iconic banana image, which the band claim is recognisable as the cover of their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico.

The lawsuit was launched when the band discovered The Warhol Foundation had agreed to licence the banana image on cases and bags for Apple iPhones and iPads. Maybe the band just don't like the clash of fruit.

The banana image is already found on plenty of items, from earrings and pillows to shoes and sweets. And no one can accuse the foundation of selling out – Warhol himself would have been delighted to see his art on as many products as possible.

Woody Allen's wise cracks

Woody Allen's film titles – white EF Windsor on black with some old jazz on the soundtrack – have remained reassuringly constant for decades.

I seldom think of Woody Allen as one of my favourite directors, but maybe I should. I mean, I love all his films, even his less successful ones. And though we may think of his films as 'mere' comedies, perhaps they should be taken more seriously. After 41 films, we should be calling Allen an auteur. There aren't many other directors in modern cinema who have produced such a rich, funny, thematically consistent yet stylistically diverse body of work.

Starting today, the BFI are having a season of Allen's films, Wise Cracks: The Comedies of Woody Allen. Of course, Manhattan is already fully booked.

Nerve.com have rated every Allen film from worst to best.

More about Woody's favourite font here.

Lookalikes #18: breastfeeding big cats LP covers

Singer Lynn Carey of the band Mama Lion breastfeeding a lion cub on the cover of Preserve Wildlife (1972); breastfeeding a tiger on the cover of Tigermilk by Belle and Sebastian (1996).

Nico's top ten lovers

Born Christa Päffgen in Cologne, Germany in 1938, Nico moved with her mother to Berlin, 'a desert of bricks', aged seven. By 15, after a hard childhood, she had success as a model and went on assignment to Ibiza, a place she would love throughout her life. Renamed Nico and now a blonde (apparently at the behest of Ernest Hemingway), whilst in Rome she found herself acting in Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

By 1960, in New York, she was taking acting lessons in the same class as Marilyn Monroe. In 1962 she starred in the French film Strip-Tease, also singing the title track written by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1964 she met Brian Jones and had a record produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, with guitars by Jones and Jimmy Page. Back in New York she worked again as a model and had an affair and a child with Alain Delon. She met Bob Dylan in Paris and he gave her a song.

In New York she was introduced to Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, singing three songs on their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. She left the band, though stayed in contact, performing live with Lou Reed and John Cale for Le Bataclan, Paris, in 1972, and having Cale produce and play instruments on several of her solo albums. Her post-Velvets solo debut, Chelsea Girls, with its pleasant folksy tinkerings, penned by ex-lovers Dylan, Cale, Reed and Browne, does nothing to prepare you for her next three albums: The Marble Index (1969), The Desert Shore (1970) (released together on CD as The Frozen Borderline a few years ago) and The End (1974). Armed with her trademark droning harmonium, haunting, deep, monotone vocals and a stark, chilly atmosphere, these albums make Leonard Cohen's records sound like party music.

Addicted to heroin then methadone and drifting from country to country, the next decade became her wilderness years. She would only release a couple more records, including Camera Obscura (1985), produced again by John Cale. She died in 1988, aged 49, of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling off her bike in Ibiza.

For someone who supposedly didn't like sex, Nico had an impressive series of famous lovers. Jim Morrison was her 'soul brother' who encouraged her to write her own songs. By all accounts she was not a very nice person; perhaps a Nazi sympathiser, perhaps a racist, certainly tortured and depressing but also iconic, beautiful and enigmatic.

1. Jim Morrison
2. Alain Delon
3. Lou Reed
4. Bob Dylan
5. Leonard Cohen
6. Brian Jones
7. Iggy Pop
8. Jackson Browne
9. Jeanne Moreau
10. Philippe Garrel

London through its charity shops #18: Pimlico

I have alighted at Pimlico tube station to visit Tate Britain many, many times over the years. I always thought Pimlico, in Westminster SW1, was a quaint, quiet residential area with a few cafes – I never realised there were actual shops there. But having heard good things about its charity shops I decided it was worth investigating.

From Pimlico tube station, the best way to approach Pimlico's charity shops (though many of them seem to be geographically closer to Victoria tube) is to head along Tachbrook Road until you hit a small food market. On the left is a FARA Kids, small but bright and colourful. Keep going then turn left onto Warwick Way; on the opposite side of the road is a regular if pretty chic FARA. Like with a lot of its shops now, there's a downstairs with media and bric-a-brac. Upstairs is a good selection of clothes. Likewise Oxfam, a few doors along, has a downstairs with lots of DVDs, books, CDs and mainly classical records and an upstairs with men's and women's clothes.

Round the corner on Wilton Way is a very nice-looking Trinity Hospice, well-arranged with a slightly vintage vibe to it, also selling knitting wool and accessories. Round another corner on Upper Tachbrook Road is yet another FARA branch – this one called Retromania and selling mainly vintage clothes, though also some records, books and nick-nacks. It's a beautiful, fascinating and unique shop; great to have a rummage around in; you'll find everything from retro Chanel space suit outfits (£630) and Alexander McQueen cocktail dresses (£300) to Libertines-style military jackets. I was only allowed to take one photo (tiger and guitar-playing bear in a cage, above) but IDOL magazine has a feature about it along with some nice pics. A bargain basement had books and other paraphernalia for £1 and upwards.

Back onto Warwick Way for a Sue Ryder, quite average by comparison to Retromania and Hospice of Hope, which is a little further along and across the road. A charity shop blog I occasionally look at is Charity Shop Tourism, which found Pimlico – and Hospice of Hope in particular – a bit overwhelming. Certainly, upon first entering you'd think you were going into an exclusive chic boutique and not a charity shop. The black and white floor tiles, tidy, sparse racks of clothes and the shop assistant with a severe bob and a duster in hand, actually dusting her wares as if they were priceless antiques and not secondhand crap, were all a bit foreboding. Especially as I was the only other person in the shop. But it turned out to be quite good, reasonably priced, with a good selection of CDs. And the woman with the bob even smiled at me eventually.

On my way back to the tube station, quite by accident, I came across Crusaid (an HIV and AIDS charity) on Churton Street. Described by one charity shop reviewer as the 'Harvey Nicks of charity shops', it has a fine and funky range of clothes and bric-a-brac. In the back room are lots of records and books. The books are well-arranged with even foreign language and gay sections.

Up until M16 worker Gareth Williams was found dead in a sports bag in the bath of his Pimlico flat in 2010, Pimlico was most famous for the film Passport to Pimlico (1949) – where the neighbourhood declares independence from the rest of Britain – though it was not actually filmed in Pimlico itself but about a mile outside it. Anyway, it's a curious place that for some reason I've always liked. I'm not the first to say Pimlico has an air of faded gentility about it, but it's one of the things I like about the place.

The shopping part of town is a revelation to me, previously only ever gone to Pimlico to visit the Tate. The shops have a nice vibe to them; a bit posh, yes, but also pretty friendly with a village feel to the area. The charity shops are mostly all pretty interesting and unique; a most welcome respite from the usual bland homogeneous high street charity shops.