No. 18: Tosh Recommends...

This 40-page zine is a must for those interested in fan fiction, a category where fans write their versions of famous works, such as Harry Potter, Star Trek, and so forth. Many of these works have their significant share of eros, and like a broken faucet, the water is pouring out of the pipes. Jackie Desforges goes into this deeply, and there is the personal as well as the history of such activity. It’s lit-crit with a passionate touch. One can purchase Desforges’s zine at Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth or buy "On Erotic Fanfiction" by Jackie Desforges here.

It would have been great if Alex Joyce (George Sanders) and Katherine Joyce (Ingrid Bergman) stayed or remained in their car while chatting away about their failed marriage for the entire film Journey to Italy (1954), but that’s an imaginary movie by Tosh Berman (not yet made) and not Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece. The film reminds me of Jean Vigo’s L'Atalante, which shares the frustration and intensity of a couple trying to work it all out. Journey to Italy is equally a Hollywood film mixed in with Rossellini’s neo-realism. In this filmmaker’s hand, it works like a perfect cocktail mixture—essential viewing for those who had loved or were in the middle of a relationship issue. At the moment, it is streaming on Criterion Channel.

Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968/2014, Sundazed/Philips)

Blue Cheer’s debut album Vincebus Eruptum is the most basic album I have in my collection. It does not rock n’ roll, but more Rawk than anything else, and it’s a prototype of the heavy rock type of sound. It is almost artless, but it also has genius within its grooves. It’s so heavy that it becomes a white light. Blue Cheer is a brand of LSD, and one argues about the aesthetic aspects of psychedelia, this type of music is on the low end of mind expansion. More of a period placed at the end of a disturbing sentence. It’s stoner rock with meaty riffs and being associated with a motorcycle gang. They do a version (actually a hit song in the charts) of Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues. In the hands of Blue Cheer, this is truly a mental condition of being bored and finding a release. It is also a great arrangement (if one can call it that) of a classic teenage angst song. I feel Cochran is very much an observant songwriter, but the way Blue Cheer performs this song, it’s a murderous sentence to teenage hell, and only the riff and tremendous amounts of Acid will get them out alive. So, in other words, pretty awesome and historically an essential piece of work, the whole album, and Summertime Blues.

On American Bandstand, their speakers’ setup at the time, and the classic Dick Clark interview with the band.

The late and great Terry Hall in a one-hour chit-chat with comedian Richard Herring. In his photos and interviews, Terry Hall sometimes comes off as grim, but here in this interview, he has a very dry sense of humor and is hysterical. His work with The Specials, Fun Boy Three, and Colour Field, among others, are superb. Unique and unreplaceable.