VOID
VISION – SUB ROSA
Mannequin Records
(2014)

Review
by Sam Haine –

            I’ve been
following Void Vision as a fan since 2007/2008. From the days of seeing an
earlier incarnation performing at Digital Ferret when it was a full band and observing
with time the evolution into the stripped down eargasm it is today. Even as I
write this out, hanging on my wall is Void Visions “In 20 Years” 7in single that
I purchased after seeing a performance down in the L.E.S. So, it’s no surprise
that I am excited to finally be able to sit and listen to the new full length album
just released on Mannequin records entitled “Sub Rosa”.

Shari Vari, the one
woman femme fatale of symphony is here at full power with ten tracks worthy of
either the dance floor or the bedroom and both. She is a multi-talented artist
with an exceptional and unique vocal capability. Her music isn’t wishful
thinking to an earlier time; instead it is possessed by it, and pushes it
forward without cliché or pretention. It is synthesized foreplay, both
liberated and consolidated.

The opening song, “One”
with its pulse that will cause you to sway like a virgin on the dance floor just
before Shari’s vocals both seduce and hook you in. “Everything is Fine”
continues the momentum and relishes in the atmosphere and the tension that the
production creates. “The Hidden Hand” is damn near poetry in motion as well is “Sour”
with its imagery of a love affair broken. “To the Sea” is probably my favorite
track, both on record and performed live. The song itself immediately makes me
dream of a couple dressed for a black tie affair dancing in a slow almost tango
like waltz on a moonlit beach. “Slow Down” is an instrumental track that
invokes both the darkness of Depeche Mode and the suspense of early Dario
Argento films. If love were a fist it couldn’t be better defined than it is in
following track “Vulgar Displays”, before all bets are off and burned away with
the liberating “The Source”. Included is an extended version of “In 20 Years”.
And the journey ends with the hypnotic and haunting kiss off, “Queen of Hearts”.

If you ever have the opportunity to see Void
Vision live I recommend it.
Void Vision – https://www.facebook.com/voidvision

Remember
This… Celebrity Crushes

          Remember the time before
you discovered nudie magazines or what to do with it if you had it? Remember
watching the television from your bowl of Coco Puffs and seeing a woman that was
set apart from the others on screen. Remember how sometimes you’d watch that
program just to see that chick again? Who cares if it was just a Jordache jean
commercial? Who cares if they were only comic book characters? You would think about
that person after the credits rolled. You would find her spontaneously appearing in
your dreams. They fascinated you and in some indirect way you coveted them- you
cut out pictures from magazines and taped them to your wall and you followed their careers in
entertainment. They stole your heart, wore your ring and kept your
varsity jacket over their shoulders. It was love. Until you found the next
crush or discovered the lurid and treacherous game of real life relationships
and sex.

            We
are talking about the childhood crushes here. No, not Sally or Tamika from
across the street. I mean the broads, ladies and dames of entertainment.
The hot members of the X-MEN, the sexy actresses from your favorite movies,
even the ladies of cable television; yes, even MTV’s Kari Wuhrer and Gadget from
the Rescue Rangers. I am talking about the crushes that nocturnal waterfalls
are made of.

            I
can’t speak for each and every one of yous specifically. I can
only try to reach as far back into my own memory and pluck the celebrity crushes
that made me blush as a kid. Starting with:

Julie Brown – I was maybe 7 years old
when Just Say Julie was airing on MTV and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the
screen. I guess I’ve always had a sincere attraction to redheads, not a fetish,
and Julie Brown was my first. You may have noticed the easter egg I left in part
4 of this column, her music video for “The Homecoming Queen Has Gun” from
her first album Goddess in Progress. She
is a comedian, writer and actress who has helmed a number of television series
and appeared in such films as Clueless, the cult classic Shakes the Clown and
writing, producing as well co-staring in Earth Girls Are Easy. Her first appearance
in a feature film was the 1981 slasher film Bloody Birthday. 

Demi Moore – I had a crush on her
when she first walked onto Moon Lighting
as a cameo. I had a crush on her in One
Crazy Summer. She broke our hearts in The
Seventh Sign. She made your mom cry in Ghost.
She was Nothing But Trouble and
killed it in Mortal Thoughts. It’s
not a perfect filmography but Demi Moore has been in a lot of good and great films. Hands
down and without a doubt one of the hottest women of the era and still hot and holding it down today. Possibly my longest lasting crush alongside Jennifer Connelly.

Cassandra Peterson – Jet black hair,
dressed to kill and drives a 1958 Ford Thunderbird, I’m either talking about a
pimp or I’m talking about the Mistress of the Dark Elvira. I remember one time
going to the video store with my mom and picking out Neil Jordan’s The Company
of Wolves on VHS… or was it Children of the Full Moon? I had no idea what the movie was
about or who was in it, all I knew was that on the cover it said Elvira’s
something, something, something, and there was this very buxom ivory pale woman
on the cover with her hair up in a beehive and I just knew I had to see what
was on that VHS. To this day I still have no recollection of what movie was
actually on the tape but, Elvira will remain a part of pop culture. Elvira’s Mistress
of the Dark (1988) is one of those movies that I will watch whenever it
comes on.

Jennifer Connelly – I didn’t know about her
scenes from The Hot Spot till years
later when I was leaving my teens and for many years I didn’t need to. All it
took was seeing her in Career Opportunities,
The Rocketeer, Dark City, and I was sold. 1996’s Mulholland Falls is a very slept
on noir and 2000’s Requiem for a Dream
is the closest thing to a genuine real world horror movie as you’ll get. For
some of you followers, she was half of maybe the first mainstream on-screen
lesbian kiss we had seen (Higher Learning
1995). She is the recipient of the 2002 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for
her performance in A Beautiful Mind. If Gary & Wyatt could use their weird science to create Lisa, then my genie
would look like Jennifer Connelly.

 Nicole Lyn – Late 90’s, I was flat
on my back on the sofa watching boring Sunday morning television and Mighty Max
had just finished. Flipping through channels with the remote clicker and I came
across this odd random and out of place teen series on Fox 5. I couldn’t figure
out what the show was actually about but, I didn’t care I was sucked in and
fixated on the main star, or one of the main stars, named Nicole Lyn, one of the most jaw dropping beautiful black women I’ve seen on
film. I couldn’t stop watching the episode and before I knew it, it was over.
These were the days before TiVo and some programs weren’t listed so if you
missed it, guess what, you had to try and remember what time slot it aired and
hope to see it again. I had OCD over this show for 3 weeks just to look at this
chick. The series was called Student
Bodies and was a Canadian production however; Fox only carried it for a few
months in the States. In time I forgot about the show with the help of my
,then, limited attention span. A year or two later, Anne Rice’s The Feast of All Saints was premiering on Showtime as a
mini-series and behold one of the main stars was the same Nicole Lyn from
Student Bodies. It all happened again, only this time I actually watched the
drama. Some time after, I moved on. Until now, when the flashbacks all of
a sudden came back and with the help of the interweb I see she is still a
bombshell and still acting as well as DJ’ing under the name Ms. Nix.

Honorable mentions: Gillian Anderson (X-Files), Sherilyn Fenn & Madchen Amick (Twin Peaks), Nicole Ari Parker (Boogie Nights), Julianne Moore (Hannibal), Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Kathleen Robertson (Splendor), Melinda Clarke (Return of the Living Dead 3), Madonna (1982- 1991), Lisa Wilcox (Nightmare on Elm Street 4). 

So, who were your celebrity crushes? List ’em if you got ’em in the comments below or where ever. Beauty never fades and neither will that rewind button your pressing.  

Remember This…?

          Episode #4: The
lost art of VHS or the ways analog has programmed my thinking patterns.

            It’s
that time to Remember This… and continue the stroll down memory lane while
examining the current theme loosely revolving around that wonderful black box you
had in your living room; the one with the warm slit and the dust cover just
begging you to insert some rigid plastic rectangular VHS tapes inside it. Push
play here.

 

 “The Homecoming Queen’s
Got a Gun” is a 1984 song by
American singer–comedian Julie Brown parodying 1950s’ “teen tragedy”
songs.

            Instead
of romancing those dirty things filled with more random data than a mnemonic
courier, let’s talk about what we actually recorded on them. The smut, the MTV,
the sporting events, the aerobic shows, political speeches [yeah sure] and
whatever else you could cram into your TDK. Let’s focus on the smut first.

           This
was before the internet and chances are if you never saw it then you might
never get the chance. Remember feeling curious on those days your parents
weren’t home and you started rummaging through their personal drawers and
closets? Didn’t you feel like Indiana Jones? The fixed cable box if you had one
never quite worked after a while and all you had was that fuzzy scrambled
signal and the hint of nudity just behind the static line. Sometimes you had
friends and when you had them, you might even trade tapes and watch them with
the sound off. Those were the days, the days when biological functions were
both science fiction and a circus sideshow. You had them unmarked, or scratched
in some way, so you could recognize them. They were hidden behind your drawer,
in your closet, inside a shoe box or in the garage. If you didn’t want to watch
a scene you had to sit there and fast forward or rewind. Two hour tapes became
six hour tapes and so one. Scenes were cut and paste together like a William
Burroughs production; fake tits and cocaine pricks that were only overshadowed
by the wooden acting and Aqua Net hair. Those weren’t skeletons in your closet;
they were the stains of youth after dark.

             

         Remember
Public Access television? Before podcasts or whatever the new thing is nowadays we
had a set of channels (free channels) on our televisions where anyone could get
a half or an hour long show on the rotation. It didn’t matter if you had talent or
not because we all know most Americans don’t. Anything you could imagine was on
it and people took advantage of it with ease. Because you favorite custom VHS
tapes were in a way a microcosm of what Public Access was (some cases still
is). It was low budget but entertaining. While your family watched Dallas, you
were watching random insanity and self-exploitation. And it was beautiful as it
happened.

Here are some examples
of the insanity I am talking about. I am going to make you
experience the thinking process and patterns of a tape head… an insomniac tape
head. I’m going to take you on a journey through my mind and my youth. You’ll
recognize some of the places and some of the things but in here they are sexy
and mutilated and without guilt. TALK HARD.

–Sam Haine. 

CONCRETE
TV– Concrete
TV is a NYC-based public access show that aired on Channel 67 combining sex,
violence and art into video collages set to music. This half hour program is
produced by Ron Rocheleau, known as Concrete Ron. It is shown Friday
nights at 1:30 AM. Episodes are heavily thematically based in 1980s video,
hearkening back to the early MTV days, in a mash-up art style.

  The Dangers of the live cable access program

 That concludes this session of Remember this, Retro Lovers. And until the next time keep your finger on the rewind button. Or call 555- KVETCH.

REMEMBER THIS…GWAR’s Phallus
In Wonderland
by Sam Haine

 R.I.P. Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus)

            I bet you didn’t
think I was going to take you here this Halloween. Well, I guess you were wrong
in all the right ways you could be. Because before Mushroomhead, Slipknot, ICP
came on the scene and way before Wes Borland started dressing up like Kung Fu
Skeletor, there was Gwar.

            Gwar
formed in 1984, they are a thrash
band from Virginia comprised of a rotating line-up of musicians, artists and
filmmakers from Slave Pit Inc. They are known for their elaborate and often
grotesque appearances and sadistic stage performances. “Imagine a gumbo soup of blood, brains, Cthulhu, Barbarella, Snuff-porn
Conan the barbarian, Guardians of the Galaxy, Luke Skysquirter, Skate metal and
political and social satire.” If you are lucky enough to attend their shows
then you are in possession of fond memories of celebrities being fed to worms,
disembowed and beheaded like Oklahoma beauty queens; all these things while
being splashed on the face Peter North style with more fluid than a Gallagher
show. They were ugly; they were funny; their songs were really damn good and
unforgettable.

            The
Grammy nominated Phallus In Wonderland was their first full length film. It
depicts the conflict between Gwar and The Morality Squad after the castration
and theft of  Oderus Urungus’ Cuttlefish
of Cthulhu. The Morality Squad consisting of a group of overtly hyper-sensitive
knee jerky hypocritical stereotypes that today can easily be any of your
favorite Fox News & MSNBC personalities: Corporal Punishment, Grambo, Tiny
and we can’t forget the viscous filled Father Reverend Bohab. This piece is a
musical. Sprinkled throughout this near hour long art piece are the romantic
and beer sex inducing songs such as ‘Crack in the Egg’, ‘Have You Seen ME?’, ‘The
Road Behind’, ‘The Morality Squad’, ‘Gor-Gor’ and ‘Ham on the Bone’.

            This
is a musical.

            Starring:
Oderus Urungus, Beefcake the Mighty, Balsac the Jaws of Death, Jizmax the
Gusher, Sexecutioner, Slymenstra Hymen and Sleazy P. Martini. With a cameo
appearance by Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers.

            October
is here, which means you’ll be filling up to the gullet with beer and getting
ready for Halloween. I encourage, hope, and suggest this become the soundtrack
to this year’s festivities and debauchery. In fact you should all watch this
before heading out into the night and creating your future romances with the new
Trevor Something album or Timecop1983’s recent release, just like I plan to do
this month.

The
Wild Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014)

If you have never seen
a film from Cannon then you haven’t lived yet. The Cannon Group Inc. was famous
for releasing classic films that your nephews and nieces and little siblings have
never heard of especially from the Golan & Globus years, 1979 – 1985.

           

 Two
Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus took over a dying studio and
produced the following gems featuring stars like Dolph Lundgren, Sylester
Stallone, Shabba Do, Charles Bronson, Michael Dudikoff, Patrick Stewart, Lou
Ferrigno, The Barbarian Twins, Richard Chamberlain, and others:

Movies
like:
The Death Wish movies
Delta Force
Invasion USA
Breakin
Breakin’ 2
The Last American Virgin
Lifeforce
The Barbarians
Hercules
King Solomons Mines
Cobra
Over the Top
American Ninja
Ninja III the domination
and many more.

             

Here
is a trailer to the upcoming documentary telling the story of these two master
minds. Directed
by Mark Hartley. I suggest yous all go out and search for this movie A.S.A.P.

Rewind time!

3:23am

It’s late night and leading into early morning; this
year’s October has just begun. The cold sniffles have got me by the balls and I’m
trying to make this into an interesting thread before the sun catches me awake past
my deserved bedtime. The days are getting shorter with age. The memories
are still burning but the lighter is gathering some rust and needs maintenance.
I’m halfway through choosing my third movie of the evening. I’d decided to have
a retro cyberpunk binge viewing session; beginning with Blade Runner (1982),
followed by AKIRA (1988). The last selection of my trilogy isn’t even retro, it’s
a recent release called Who Am I – No System is Safe (Kein System ist sicher) a
German thriller about a hacker group grinding on the road to infamy. It’s the
closest I’ll get to a Hackers remake.

3:30am

Well that was futile. I couldn’t even find the damn
flick. I’ve been hunched back into my leather chair listening to my 80’s
playlist of songs and staring at my Hunter S. Thompson poster for five minutes;
why did I ever buy Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) on DVD?

Mindlessly chopping away at the keys, typing in
whatever random thoughts turn over from the deck of my subconscious. It’s
perfect because this is when the carnival starts, the merry-go-round in my
brain, no different from the one in the LOST BOYS (1987). Spinning in circles
with gaudy decals and out dated bulbs… Let’s see where my fingers take me.
Clicking through my playlists and double backing like a screwed and chopped
sleuth. I took another listen to Trevor Something’s – Trevor Something Does Not
Exist album. Then I give Timecop1983’s new album a good listen and it results in
my immediate enjoyment. Before I know it the blue haze is creeping up outside
my window and I have forgotten most of the ideas I initially had a few minutes
ago.

5:45am

After, finally removing my boots I can feel it
coming. Sleep is almost here. I ended up drinking some chilled Modelo’s and
instant chatted with a vaporwave artist from Ontario, Canada named SYLLABUS (facebook/vaporwave.is.dead) about his
recent release. We kept jonesing about childhood like a deleted scene from a high
school reunion on how cool it once was to leave your house and go to the store
to pick up cassette tapes at the local music shop. Remember Cassingles? We even
agreed that Return of the Living Dead (1985) zombies could kick the asses of the
walkers on a certain cable shows. “Good people”, is all I can say.

6:14am

I made a nice little Cyberpunk themed playlist for
myself called Blade Runner Nights with some bits from different artists; a few
NRW and some from elsewhere or yesteryear. The title could’ve been better but
the carnival is slowing down. Writer’s block has me in her grip these past
couple of days.  All I can do is wait and
tease these syllables a little bit here and there. Probably put on some Joe
Frank monologues or something before bed. UP ALL NIGHT is down for the count
again. A head full of cold sickness and a napkin stuffed up my decommissioned Charlie
snout. Maybe I’ll have a dream like a Michael Mann film. Maybe, I’ll dream of
women with crimped hair, maybe not. Maybe I won’t dream at all and just fade.
Maybe but I hope not. Only thing left to do is just lay back and close my eyes
and fall into it. Before, I become just another internal monologue from a
sleepless flashback artist and lo-fi delinquent.

– Sam Haine 

(Above photo courtesy of Hainesville)

 

Remember
This…
‘Video Arcades’ 

Nowadays, you get so pissed off after some
douchebag kills you with a knife during C.O.D. … On the bright side
I will admit it is pretty damn fun now to be a sociopath on multiplayer these
days but, it was even more fun and memorable when you knew a tense vs session
could lead into the best donnybrook of the year.

            Alas
nowadays, these are just memories and not many of the great spots are left.
Chinatown Fair closed and recently reopened but, it’s friendlier and looks like
something for the random passerby in spite of the Street Fighter and DDR still
present. No, those days are over and we must accept our place in the present; screaming
at the top of our lungs and throwing empty ramen noodle containers at the
screen because, SwaGG187 called you lame.

             So what are your favorite memories of the video
arcade? Leave some yarns in the comment box. And remember UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN,
LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT and tap the rewind button.

           

R.I.P.
Jay Adams (February 3, 1961 – August 14,
2014)

            In
the wake of Robin Williams (July
21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) unfortunate passing,
we have lost film legend Lauren Bacall (September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014)
and today news broke that Skateboard legend Jay Adams has also passed away.

            “The Original Seed” of skateboarding was born in the part of Venice, California
known as “Dogtown” and one of the original members of the Z-BOYS, a group of
skateboarders in the mid-1970s from Santa Monica
and Venice, California that introduced much of the
attitude and maneuvers that would later birth the skateboard craze of the 1980’s.

            “Adams is probably not the greatest
skater of all time, but I can say without fear of being wrong that he is
clearly the archetype of modern-day skateboarding.”
– Bones Brigade founder Stacy Peralta

            Much
of the Z-Boys fame came from the “Dogtown” articles written about them in
Skateboarder Magazine by Craig Stecyk.

The Zephyr team broke
up shortly after the Del Mar Nationals and half the team followed Kent
Sherwood, who made the Zephyr boards, to a new team. Sherwood and Adams created
the brand and team EZ RYDER, which changed its name to Z-Flex six months later.
Adams was the face of the brand.

Adams was sponsored by
Hurley, Nixon, Osiris Shoes, Z-Flex, Tracker Trucks, Vercelli Surfboards,
Carver Racks, Abec 11 wheels and Black Flys.

Adams was inducted into
the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2012. He is featured prominently in the 2001
award-winning documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys and in the 2005
dramatized film account of the Z-Boys origins, Lords of Dogtown. In the movie, he was
played by Emile Hirsch.

Remember
This?

The Local Video Store

By
Sam Haine

            Before
NETFLIX  and HULU, before Blockbuster
Video, even before youtube or the corrupted and self-obsessive internet. The
only place to see new films was at the Cineplex. People would make plans ‘over
the phone’ and make a day of going to the theaters to see what was playing;
most times without even knowing what the hell they were about to watch. If you
loved the film, you would spread the word and go back to watch the film again.
Why? Because after its run the only way to see the same film again was to wait
possibly a year before cable television could air it. Unless you stretched on
your sweat bans and pushed that hunk of junk bmx down to your local video
store. You know the video store that smelled of make shift wooden shelves and
filled with empty VHS boxes from floor to ceiling. Each box was held in its
place by a piece of string from one end of the shelf to the other; I guess they
were jumping off the ledge constantly.

            In
every neighborhood there were at least one video rental store and sometimes
there were two. Some places you had to actually drive to from your house so, it
became a family activity, “Now you kids go pick something for you and me &
mommy are picking a movie for us.” Remember the days when families actually did
things together… even if you didn’t have one like that you knew other kids who
did.

            The
place was a hangout for the local kids and the local kids who had nothing to
do. Mine like most others even had space for arcade games: Terminator 2 arcade
shooter, Out Run, Street Fighter, an SNK arcade cabinet with King of Fighters, Fatal
Fury, Samurai Showdown & Metal Slug; even that damn claw crane vending
machine. Back when claw cranes actually had stuffed animals and toys in them;
before my neighborhood fucked it up by filling it with pre-paid phones, fake Rolex
watches and other junk like big-ass fake diamond earrings (I shit you not).

            The
video rental spot charged you a reasonable fee and only required that you
return the tapes (later dvd’s) when you were supposed to and for the tapes to
be rewound. The staff was from the neighborhood or cute enough that you didn’t
care where they came from. The staff also knew what they were talking about
because they loved nothing more than to watch movies and geek out over good
ones and rant poetic hatred about bad ones.  

There was always a mysterious
backroom with a neon Adults Only sign above a dark curtain and you just knew
there were things behind that curtain not for you but you couldn’t resist
somehow taking a peek every time.

Their inventory didn’t
consist of the flavor of the month based on customer habits, no, they had what
they had and that was everything from B-movies, kung fu movies, foreign films,
classic films and Hollywood big studio defecation.  Remember the Elvira collections where she
would give an introduction to the feature? Remember the Sho Kosugi collection?
Remember all the great movies you haven’t seen in forever.

That’s what Netflix is
seriously lacking – the oddities and the obscurity. I have probably only been
on Netflix maybe only six times. Instead I take free time to go and surf
youtube for all the lost memories. Where else would you find any of the films I
feature every month on this site for you and your viewing pleasure? Everybody
remembers the summer fluffers but it’s the little thrills and chills and movies
that only you and your friends remember with all the inside humor that make the
memories of youth so cherished.

Another
thing to remember – SUNCOAST VIDEO stores and how they sucked!

 Suncoast the harbinger
of mediocrity; they never had anything you wanted. Movies were never where they
were supposed to be or they just didn’t have it. The anime section was only six
films: Robotech, Bubblegum Crisis, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Project A-ko and Wicked
City.

The staff sucked balls
and didn’t know anything. In fact they were the ancestors to the blue shirt
douches that worked at Blockbuster.

“Hello sir, where are your Troma films?”
“Troma? Oh yeah third aisle in the foreign section.”

“Face/Off is an official movie, I liked it,”says the Employee of the Month.
“Official? So every other movie here at FYE is bootleg?”

             Remember
these things? What are your memories of your local video store? Reminisce a little and keep your
fingers firmly on the rewind button.

Sam HaiNe is a writer of short stories and flash
fiction and the creator of Hainesville (facebook.com/allhailming).
He’s a contributing writer for NRW including our Retro Movie of the Month. As well he contributes content
and Cult Fiction to CultClassicGoods.com.