See the Bells, Up in the Sky: Lou Reed, RIP

The death of Lou Reed (March 2, 1942-October 27, 2013) is a "Proustian moment:" the man, the music, his words and vibe, all serve as memory triggers. All day today and probably well on into the future.

From Lou Reed solo, from Velvet Underground tracks, too, I can remember people, places, trips, journeys, books, surroundings, time drifts, compadre artists and lit candles. Among other things. 

The time my buddy-pal JC and I schlepped our way to Richmond, Virginia, to see Lou and his crazy-electric band rip this joint, the Mosque, on October 9, 1984. (Life lesson: do it!) 

Birds of a feather like Andy Warhol, Nico, John Cale, Stooges, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Laurie Anderson (his widow), William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Bob Dylan, Ramones, Talking Heads, Hotel Chelsea, Václav Havel -- and outward goes the spiral.

"See the bells, up in the sky
Somebody's cut the string in two" 
-- Lou Reed, "What Goes On"

Lou Reed was sharp, pithy, jangly, often a pain in the ass, an artist. With him, beauty comes through distorted guitars and talking songs and words that stick in the mind. Rarely would Lou put up with "a saccharine suburb in the mush," to use the Iggy phrase. Love him or hate him, he was great. A fond farewell. 

Today's Rune: Joy.  

The Girl on a Motorcycle: Take One

The shortest way to characterize Jack Cardiff's The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) / La motocyclette (aka Naked Under Leather)? Madame Bovary on a motorcycle. Given Cardiff's experience as a cinematographer, it's not surprising that a lot of this B movie's strength is visual. That's a good thing, because the soundtrack is cheesy, ersatz, brassy and corndog.

The tale, much of it a joyride, employs internal monologue, flashbacks and psychedelia. The feel reminds me a little of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) and John Palmer and David Weisman's Ciao! Manhattan (1972), starring Edie Sedgwick. Certainly it's nowhere near as whacky as Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968).  

In The Girl on a Motorcycle -- based on André Pieyre de Mandiargues' short 1963 novel La Motocyclette -- Rebecca (Marianne Faithfull), rides via a motorcycle between her slightly masochistic husband Raymond (Roger Mutton) and her slightly sadistic paramour Daniel (Alain Delon). The motocycle (a Harley Davidson Electra Glide), a wedding gift from the latter to Rebecca, provides her a vehicle for escape and freedom, but also keeps her hooked and sometimes inspires a certain recklessness.

"Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive!"

Today's Rune: Protection.

The Velvet Underground: Under Review

This popcorn and cotton candy documentary doesn't do much, but it's still a fun little romp through the Velvet Underground's discography. Key players John Cale and Lou Reed do not appear for interviews; these are left to others like drummer Mo Tucker and later addition Doug Yule.

Like time spent with an old friend, it's worth watching The Velvet Underground: Under Review (2006) if you dig the Velvets. Hard to determine who directed this, part of a British series.

Some of the great Velvet Underground tracks:

I'm Waiting for the Man
Femme Fatale
Venus in Furs
All Tomorrow's Parties
Heroin
There She Goes Again
I'll Be Your Mirror
White Light/White Heat
Sister Ray
What Goes On
Some Kinda Love
Beginning to See the Light
That's the Story of My Life
Sweet Jane
Rock & Roll

What am I missing here? John Cale gave the band its initially dark, super-cool sound, and Lou Reed's lyrics tend to stick in the memory. I often think of Reed phrasing. Two lines in particular:

I could sleep for a thousand years (Venus in Furs)

and

Aren't you glad you're married?  (Kill Your Sons)



Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

La Dolce Vita: Fifty Years Down the Road

Watched La Dolce Vita / "The Sweet Life" (1960; US release, 1961) again. The passage of time even since the last time I saw it in 2008 has made it all the better. It's hard not to be dazzled yet again by Anita Ekberg, Nico, Marcello Mastroianni, and my personal favorite in this film, Anouk Aimée (Françoise Sorya Dreyfus).

Fellini follows the existentially lost Marcello as he longs to become something more than a well-heeled celebrity journalist -- often in company with frenetic paparazzi associates (Fellini's character Paparazzo in La Dolce Vita inspired the jaded term we now take for granted). Though maddening in his indecisiveness, Marcello somehow remains sympathetic (he really wants to write novels, but seems to lack self-discipline of any kind). Perhaps because he's mortal and flawed and occasionally has flashes of self-understanding.














Here: Marcello Mastroianni and Nico.

In black and white, sometimes brash, always stylish and meditative, La Dolce Vita provides insight into today's world and refracts a colorful funhouse from the Fellini Rome's chiaroscuro nights and dawns of fifty years ago. The pace may be too whimsical for some ADHD viewers to endure in one shot, but the imagery is breathtaking. Maybe sample a little at a time first and go from there.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

13 Most Beautiful . . .

Digging 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2009), with tailored ambient soundtrack by Dean & Britta (including a Velvet Underground adaptation).

It's stunning how two to four minutes in front of a camera mutely doing not much of anything actually seems to reveal about persona and personality.

What I hadn't realized prior to screening this: the screen tests are slowed down versions of "reality," not played back in actual speed. However, you can bring them up to "real life" motion by fast forwarding. You can learn yet more about radiant human gestures by speeding them up even beyond that.

Technique -- really great. The peeps include the late Dennis Hopper, Nico (a real pisser), Ann Buchanan, Edie Sedgwick (blink-blink), Billy Name, Susan Bottomly, Mary Woronov and Ingrid Von Scheven. Also, see Lou Reed drink a Coke and Baby Jane Holzer brush her teeth. Then compare with commercial advertisements.  

Today's Rune: Defense.

Bananas!

When a person or coterie has unchecked access to heaps of wealth and power, what happens to them? They go bananas! Of course, some of them already were that way; money and power merely lets them go public, the genie uncorked.

You've got the business model -- Howard Hughes, the Koch brothers, Ross Perot, Donald Trump.

You've got the pop artist model -- Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson.

You've got the business-demagogue model -- Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.

You've got the religious prophet model -- Jim Jones, Ted Haggard, Eddie Long.

And you've got the dictator model -- Idi Amin, Bébé Doc Duvalier, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi / Qaddafi / Khaddafi (pictured above with his "bodyguards," who are looking suspiciously like Janet Jackson in Rhythm Nation mode), and let's not forget Kim Jong-il, Supreme Leader of the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea." 

They all fall on a continuum spectrum, those committing real atrocities on the most depraved and socially damaging end, those who simply get drunk, pop pills and mouth off on the garden variety end.  The moral: having tons of money and unchecked power does no good for anyone.














Janet Jackson is rich and silly, but seems harmless enough.  

Michael Jackson was certainly bananas, living in Neverland in more ways than one. 

Woody Allen spoofed "banana republic" dictators and revolutionary upheavals in 1971. Now one can shop for clothes at Banana Republic, a chain formed in 1978 and snapped up by The Gap (between rich and poor?) in 1983. And the rest is . . . history.

Andy Warhol became wealthy with iconic Pop Art such as the Banana album cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). Long before he died, he accrued considerable riches.  The cult of celebrity is not confined to artists and the rest of the above -- let's not forget sports figures, "regular" politicians and so on.

Finally, The Dickies' cover of the Banana Splits theme song will drive this Bananas post to its final conclusion:   



Today's Rune: Warrior.

From Walk on the Wild Side to Midnight Cowboy: The Silver Factory

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) is, despite garish-colored promotional posters, a black and white movie. Seeing it recently made me think of Andy Warhol's Silver Factory at Manhattan's 231 East 47th Street, and the Hotel Chelsea, 222 West 23rd Street, both Warhol hangouts. El Quijote Restaraunt and Cocktail Lounge, right next to the Chelsea, has the same aura as the red Spanish-language poster for Walk on the Wild Side, El Gata Negra.

The Silver Factory developed as a synergistic Avant-garde meeting place and production nerve center for films, superstars, Pop art, music and photography. Nearly everything produced (or "transgressed") in the Factory between 1962 and 1968 challenged accepted societal "norms," either through wry artistic observation or by outright breaking "the rules." 

1968 saw pivotal changes in the Factory scene: Warhol was shot and badly injured, the Silver Factory was closed, Bonnie & Clyde had already created a stir to be followed in 1969 by Midnight Cowboy, and meanwhile the stifling Motion Picture Production Code morphed into the MPAA/Motion Picture Association of America's film-rating system, beginning with G, M (later GP, and now PG-13), R and X (later NC-17, "No Children Under 17").

Lou Reed and Velvet Underground "chanteuse" Nico, a European-born icon not unlike Capucine. Nico would go on to film a sort of music video for "Evening of Light" with Iggy Pop in 1968; the Velvet Underground's John Cale would produce The Stooges (1969), David Bowie released "Andy Warhol" in 1971, and Lou Reed went solo, his biggest single hit to date being "Walk on the Wild Side" (1972). What goes around, comes around.

Today's mystery question: Is there one great role for art, or is that up to the artist and society to battle or work out through time and context?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.  

Dean & Britta: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests

If you saw The Squid and the Whale (2005), you probably noticed the atmospheric soundtrack, at least remotely like some of Donovan's work in the 1960s. Thank the mysterious Dean & Britta in part for that and even more so for 13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2008-2009).



Here's a trailer for 13 Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests. The whole thing is available as a DVD and can be downloaded via iTunes. Note Edie Sedgwick, Mary Woronov, Nico and Lou Reed among the Warholian superstars. Here's a link to the official Dean & Britta website: http://www.deanandbritta.com/

Today's Rune: Defense.

Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Revisiting movies that made a big impression years ago, I recently watched La Dolce Vita / "The Sweet Life" (1960) again. The passage of time has made it all the better to my eyes. It's hard not to be dazzled by Anita Ekberg, Nico, Marcello Mastroianni, and my personal favorite in this film, Anouk Aimée (Françoise Sorya Dreyfus).

Fellini follows the existentially lost Marcello as he longs to become something more than a well-heeled celebrity journalist -- often in company with frenetic paparazzi associates (Fellini's character Paparazzo in La Dolce Vita inspired the jaded term we now take for granted). Though maddening in his indecisiveness, Marcello somehow remains sympathetic (he really wants to write novels, but seems to lack self-discipline of any kind). Perhaps because he's mortal and flawed and occasionally has flashes of self-understanding.

In black and white, sometimes brash, always stylish and meditative, this Fellini classic provides insight into today's world and refracts a colorful funhouse from the Fellini Rome's chiaroscuro nights and dawns of fifty years ago.



Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Forever Amber

Old school: letters were in. Hand-written letters. New school: email is in, blog posts, cell phones. As plot devices and as real life devices. A Letter to Three Wives (1949) might be updated to An Email Message to Three Significant Others. Ha! Twelve Angry Men becomes Twelve Angry People!

A Letter to Three Wives revolves around a letter from "the other woman" -- she's gonna run away with one of their respective husbands! But which one? It's soul-searching time!

These days, government agencies might slap a wireless wiretap on all of their phone calls, all of their email.

Verizon Communications, via "an October 12 [2007] letter to members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce . . . says that from 2005 through this September there were 63,700 such requests, and of those, 720 came from federal authorities" (AP/CNN). Nice!

I'm sure the three wives would have liked access to their husbands' land line logs back in the day. Maybe.


Linda Darnell in 1944: a tonic for the troops. Who needs technology, anyway?


Nico the femme fatale, circa 1960 -- before The Factory, The Velvet Underground and heroin. La Dolce Vita, baby!

Erin Brown in Masters of Horror: Sick Girl (2006). Beware of bug bites, among other things.

Today's Rune: Movement.

Birthdays: Noah Webster, Oscar Wilde, Michael Collins, Alice Pearce, Kathleen Winsor, Günter Grass, Mary Daly, Nico (Christa Päffgen), Suzanne Somers, Bob Weir, Tim Robbins, Bob Mould, Wendy Wilson, Erin Brown.

Ciao!

The Nico Insurgency

Why do perceptions of all kinds of art and artists change over time? Sometimes it's hard to notice a trend or separate out a particular artist in the roiling present because of the din and distractions of the competition. But bestsellers now may be all but forgotten in twenty years, while those obscured in their time sometimes emerge into the light of a new now.

Christa Päffgen / Nico (10/16/1938-7/18/1988) is back, though she's been dead almost twenty years. A nice trick, that. She was a person who didn't let physical beauty deny her a life of her own, but did benefit from it early on. From a springboard of modeling and use as an album cover treat in the early 1960s, she learned to act, then acted in movies, began her own recording career, served as chanteuse on The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967), went solo with a number of admiring collaborators, acted some more, made more records and did more tours, eventually kicked a long heroin addiction that eroded her good looks, and then died after falling of a bike at age 49. But her work is back.


An expanded CD edition of Nico's The Frozen Borderline (1968-1970) has just been released. More will be revealed. Hopefully Susanne Ofteringer's 1995 documentary Nico Icon will also be re-issued on DVD. As of now, used copies are going for more than $60 USD.


Back cover: looks like a still from the British series Absolutely Fabulous. Here's a link to Nico singing "Femme Fatale" with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S52aR94DYVs

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Birthdays: Sylvia Beach, Albert Einstein, Diane Arbus, Michael Caine, Quincy Jones.

Viva Nico!

NICO - Frozen Warnings (1969)

Songs For Drella

Velvet Underground veterans Lou Reed and John Cale came together after their mentor Andy Warhol's death to create the 1990 album Songs for Drella. It's an homage to Warhol (Dracula + Cinderella = Drella, a fond nickname from the Sixties), but also a meditation on art, friendship and loss. The sound is stripped down and intense (though sometimes playful, too) -- Lou on electric guitar, Cale on keyboards and viola.

Mark Deming showers the album with various adjectives in his All Music review. Since I agree with his assessment, here they are: cerebral, literate, intimate, theatrical, tense/anxious, autumnal, confident, refined/mannered, bittersweet, reverent, wistful, plaintive, reflective, somber.


A beautiful, thoughtful album but not for all tastes. Just a few rockers here (like "Work," an anthem for artists of all kinds), yet a little too rough for tender classicists. It has been compared to a memorable novel in its staying power.

Tracks:

Smalltown
Open House
Style It Takes (Cale vox)
Work
Trouble with Classicists (Cale vox)
Starlight
Faces and Names (Cale vox)
Images
Slip Away (A Warning)
It Wasn't Me
I Believe
Nobody But You
A Dream (Cale vox)
Forever Changed (Cale vox)
Hello It's Me

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Lou Reed at 65

Lou Reed is sixty-five. For the third time, I caught the beautiful documentary Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart (1998) and found it better than ever. This time, after two more stints in Manhattan, I could follow more nuances in every direction. Increasingly, everything seems interconnected.

The 75 minute Grammy-winning film, part of the "American Masters" series, provides a helpful overview of Lou Reed's career, starting in the early 1960s and ending in the late 1990s (in real time since this came out, Lou keeps working).

I love how it starts out. Lou talks into a mike: "Disliked school, disliked groups, disliked authority; uh, I was made for rock and roll." Segue to the Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll" superimposed over an Andy Warhol screen test of Lou. Boom, take off through the Velvets and solo career.


Lou is one of the more literary of all rock stars, and his brief tutelage with poet Delmore Schwartz at Syracuse University is covered, as well as some of his other literary influences (William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr., etc.)

Made very clear is Lou's love and respect for Andy Warhol: "He was our protector -- no one cared about us." The Velvets became Warhol's "house band," and were soon joined to create their first album with Nico Superstar. Lou on Nico: "Here was this goddess . . . All right, we'll have a chanteuse. . . why not?" And the VU morphed into the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with writer-artist Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga as "whip dancers."


In addition to excellent concert and New York City footage, there's a string of interview snippets from many of the main players and allies (some of it archival): besides Reed, John Cale; Maureen Tucker; Sterling Morrison (1942-1995); Andy Warhol; Mary Woronov; Gerard Malanga; David Bowie; Patti Smith; Jim Carroll; Candy and Little Joe ("Walk On The Wild Side"); Thurston Moore; Suzanne Vega; Václav Havel; and others. The real find this time was beautiful Barbara Rubin (1946-1981), the person who connected the Velvet Underground with Andy Warhol. She is stunning, and though she only appears briefly for the 1965 period, I want to know more. Apparently she died from an infection after childbirth at 35 years of age or so.

This powerful documentary does indeed bear repeated viewings. I love when it kicks into "New Sensations" (1984), which mentions the Delaware Watergap near where I was born. I remember how excited I was when this one came out, too -- not to mention seeing him live, an experience akin to seeing Bob Dylan.

Here's a link to Lou Reed's website.

Today's rune: Fertility.

Other birthdays: John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Theodore Geisel / Dr. Zeuss.

Viva Lou Reed! Viva Rock and Roll!

The Hotel Chelsea

Along with Leonard Cohen, first we’ll take Manhattan. Set up headquarters at The Hotel Chelsea, otherwise known as The Chelsea Hotel.

For anyone who really loves the arts and wants easy access to a large culturally-packed chunk of the city at a reasonable price, it’s worth checking out their website. This is not a luxury hotel, but it is a working one, with long-term residents and reasonable amenities (like a refrigerator and coffee maker). I love it for its low-key ambience, excellent location and intense history, among other things.

Here’s a sampling of people who’ve stayed (and created) in The Chelsea time-space intersection:

Sarah Bernhardt; Mark Twain; Edgar Lee Masters; Hart Crane; Henri Chopin; Thomas Wolfe; Édith Piaf; Frida Kahlo; Diego Rivera; Dylan Thomas (until the end); Nelson Algren; Henri Cartier-Bresson; Julius Robert Oppenheimer; Charles Jackson (The Lost Weekend); Jean-Paul Sartre; Simone de Beauvoir; Willem de Kooning; Jasper Johns; Vladimir Nabokov; Arthur C. Clark (drafting 2001: A Space Odyssey); Stanley Kubrick; Shirley Clarke; Arthur Miller (After the Fall); Rebecca Miller; Tennessee Williams; Gore Vidal; Brenda Behan; Brion Gysin; William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch); Jack Kerouac (On the Road); Bob Dylan (Blonde on Blonde); Bob Neuwirth; Edie Sedgwick; Mary Woronov; Brigid Berlin; Nico; Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix; Grace Slick and The Jefferson Airplane; Leonard Cohen; Joni Mitchell (“Chelsea Morning”); Kris Kristofferson; Jane Fonda; Donald Sutherland; Dennis Hopper; John Cale; Sam Shepard; Patti Smith; Robert Mapplethorpe; Iggy and the Stooges (“We Will Fall” – Room 121); Sid Vicious; Nancy Spungen; Dee Dee Ramone; Grace Jones; Miloš Forman; Uma Thurman; Ethan Hawke (Chelsea Walls); Gaby Hoffman.

Though no comprehensive history of the place and its guests has yet been published, there's Chelsea Horror Hotel (2001) by Dee Dee Ramone and the upcoming Chelsea Hotel Manhattan by Joe Ambrose, to be made available on February 1, 2007 (cover pictured above).

Don’t confuse this Hotel Chelsea with the London version or with Elvis Costello’s bitingly great song, “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea.”

I most certainly do want to go back to The Chelsea.

Hotel Chelsea
222 W 23rd St
New York NY 10011
Telephone: (212) 243-3700
Fax: (212) 675-5531

Today's Rune: Growth.

Bon voyage!

The Velvet Underground and Nico

Upon first hearing the throbbing sound of The Velvet Underground and Nico in high school, I loved it instantly. Still do. The individual songs are a mixed bag, but it hardly matters. I just play the best ones over and over and ignore the rest.

The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), produced by Andy Warhol, features Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen "Moe" Tucker as the band and Nico as chanteuse, with her singing lead vocals on three tracks and backing vocals on another. The rest is pure VU.

Track list:

Sunday Morning
I'm Waiting for the Man
Femme Fatale
Venus In Furs
Run Run Run
All Tomorrow's Parties
Heroin
There She Goes Again
I'll Be Your Mirror
The Black Angel's Death Song
European Son

Tracks two and seven are the killer Lou Reed-penned songs (he wrote or co-wrote all of them), but I'm also partial to tracks three, four, six and eight. The last two are a little two nutso for my tastes. Reed brings a literary flair to his songs, beautifully written poetry with the jagged edge of short fiction. The overall sound of the band is unmistakable -- and utterly cool.

Latest fortune cookie: Your spirit of adventure leads you down an exciting new path. Hmmm.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Ciao! Manhattan!

Nico: Chelsea Girl

Nico (Christa Päffgen, 10/16/1938-7/18/1988) was another player in the Warhol crew. First, she left home at age thirteen and began modeling in Berlin; moving on to Paris, she was sponsored by (Herbert) Tobias, a fashion photographer who renamed her Nico. She took swimmingly to modeling for various fashion magazines in her late teens and early twenties, including Vogue. She next expanded into TV advertising and movies, most notably La Dolce Vita (1959), directed by Federico Fellini. She also became involved with French actor Alain Delon and together they reputedly had a son, Christian Aaron “Ari” Boulogne (b. 1962), though Delon denied responsibility.

In 1965, she entered the music scene via Brian Jones and Bob Dylan. After recording a single a la Marianne Faithfull (“I’m Not Sayin’”), she moved to New York City and became an Andy Warhol Superstar. Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were already in place as the house band at the Factory, and Andy put her on their first album. Reed was happy to go along: “Here was this Goddess,” he later recalled. “Okay, we’ll have a chanteuse. . . Why not?” (Mary Woronov did her part dancing on stage, enlivening shows with the “whip dance.”) The results of the combo can be heard on The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967): “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “Femme Fatale,” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror.”

Nico the real femme fatale had dalliances with several rock stars along the way, including not only Lou Reed, but also Brian Jones, John Cale, Jim Morrison, and Iggy Pop. She also starred in Chelsea Girls with Edie Sedgwick and company.

Though addicted to heroin, Nico went on to make several solo albums, starting with Chelsea Girl (1967), and several more movies, mostly in Europe. Eventually, she kept her addiction at bay and began a healthier lifestyle, only to be fatally injured in a bike accident on the Spanish island of Ibiza shortly thereafter. She’s buried in Berlin.

One is left to wonder what exactly made Nico run away from home at such a young age? A wild trajectory from that initial act, to say the least. What a life!

Today's Rune: The Blank Rune.

Tschüss!

Mary, Mary Woronov

"My painting is like a window that just sort of transcends into something that you can't explain."

Mary Woronov (Brooklyn, 12/8/1943 or 1946*-) rocks! She's an artist who can't be pegged down to any one form or genre. She left Cornell University in 1964 (where she studied sculpture, among other things) after coming across Andy Warhol and the Factory scene in Manhattan. She appeared or acted in Factory films, including Screen Tests (1964-1966), Chelsea Girls (1966/1967) and Kiss the Boot (1966, based on "Venus in Furs"); she toured with the Velvet Underground and Nico (primarily as a dancer) via the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.


(from Chelsea Girls)








Since the Factory years, she has been sculpting, painting, writing, editing, acting, directing, and writing some more, producing a dazzling array of work. A sample of cult or independent movies she's participated/starred in: Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974); Death Race 2000 (1975); Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), Eating Raoul (1983), The New Women (2001), Prison-A-Go-Go (2003), The Halfway House (2004). Her TV work includes Charlie's Angels and Babylon 5, and much more.



Mary Woronov is, perhaps most interestingly, a writer who in recent years seems to have allied herself strongly with Serpents Tail Publishing:

Swimming Underground: My Years In The Factory
(2000; 1995)
Snake (novel, 2000)
Niagara (novel, 2002)
Blind Love (short stories, 2004)

She has a helpful website with much more extensive information and lots of photographs and other images:

Mary Woronov: The Website

I imagine there will be much more written about her work on this blog and elsewhere. Blind Love looks interesting, a series of very short stories and vignettes. Snake is described in a blurb on the website as "The Stepford Wives meet Bonnie and Clyde."



(From Rock 'n Roll High School)

*I've come across both years for her birthdate. If she was born in 1943, she shared that exact date with Jim Morrison. Either way, they have the same birthday, which was also the day John Lennon was killed in 1980. My birthday is December 9, so I notice these things. . . . .

p.s. Thanks Robin for setting me straight on the internal web links; and cheers to Luma and Brazil, they just defeated Ghana in the latest World Cup match, 3-0.

Ciao!