Bowie was scheduled to sing a duet with Crosby of “The Little Drummer Boy.”

—–

The pair seemed an odd fit artistically, but commercially it made sense, at least in theory. Bowie was then seeking to somewhat mainstream his career, and the producers of Crosby’s special no doubt hoped that a young, ultra-hip performer like Bowie would bring in a demographic not normally inclined to tune in to a very old-fashioned holiday special.

But Bowie balked at the choice of songs; he thought “Little Drummer Boy” was wrong for him, and asked the producers if he could do something else.  So, as The Washington Post described the scene:

Just hours before he was supposed to go before the cameras, though, a team of composers and writers frantically retooled the song. They added another melody and new lyrics as a counterpoint to all those pah-rumpa-pum-pums and called it “Peace on Earth.” Bowie liked it. More important, Bowie sang it.

But before he sang it, the conventions of the form dictated that the two men, who barely knew each other (indeed, there is some dispute whether or not Crosby even knew who Bowie was), engage in some very canned, very stilted banter. And boy, did they ever succeed.

The segment begins with a doorbell ringing. Crosby answers the door and lets in David Bowie, who introduces himself and asks Bing, “You’re the one who sings, right?” Ouch. Crosby answers, ‘Well, right or wrong, I sing either way.” Bowie casually mentions that he, too, is a singer. Bing’s eyes light up: “Good! What kind of singing?”

The whole thing is so cheesy, so painful to watch, that when the piano at last heralds the beginning of the inevitable duet, one cringes at the train wreck about to ensue.

But then something very strange happens: There is no train wreck. The two men slip into perfect, haunting harmony. Bowie looks into the camera and sings his part with a sincere and restrained melancholy, Crosby buoying him softly with the staccato refrain pah-rumpa-pum-pum. It is, frankly, weird. It shouldn’t have worked at all. But it did, in true Christmas miracle fashion.

It was one of Crosby’s finest moments, and also one of his last; one month after recording the special, and one month before it aired, the 73 year-old crooner was dead.

The Crosby/Bowie duet remains one of the most memorable and surreal moments in television history. It is far and away my favorite Christmas song. I hope you like it, too.

Merry Christmas.

—–

Not entirely sure what the point of this is. Maybe you can figure it out.

Original Source: 1976 Mugshot Photo

(Author’s note: Apologies to all the readers of “The Vault” who wrote in wondering when the next chapter was coming. I promise I have not abandoned this series, and have been grateful for all the suggestions and critiques of the previous posts, which can be read here and here. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome at mpatterson.column@gmail.com)

–

October, 1975. A Roxy Music concert in London, England. Budding bassist Steven Severin meets a striking young woman named Siouxsie Sioux. “She had some mad outfit that she had hired for the night and I had dyed white hair and a 1950s Lurex jacket,” Severin later recalled. “It was a match made in heaven.”

A few months later, in Sussex, classmates from St. Wilfrid’s Comprehensive School form a band. They call themselves Malice, and feature on guitar a young man named Robert Smith. In January, 1976, they begin rehearsing in a rented church hall on Thursday nights, cutting their teeth on David Bowie tunes; in April they are joined by guitarist Porl Thompson. Later that year they rename themselves Easy Cure before settling, eventually, on just the Cure.

Meanwhile, by February Severin and Siouxsie had joined a group of Sex Pistols acolytes dubbed the Bromley Contingent. “The Sex Pistols inspired us all,” Severin has been quoted as remembering. On the High Holy Day of September 20, 1976, Siouxsie and Severin form an ad hoc band – soon to be called the Banshees – and open for the Sex Pistols at a punk festival “We made all this noise while Siouxsie recited the Lord’s Prayer. It was horrible,” remembered Severin. Maybe. But a lot of people thought it was something else, as well.

Earlier that summer the Sex Pistols had stormed the midlands and played a gig up at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. In attendance were two twenty-year-olds, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook. The next day, Hook begged his mother for the 35 pounds to buy his first bass guitar.

Sumner and Hook, friends since age 11, agreed there was only one thing to do in light of the Pistol’s incandescent performance – start a band. Summer later recalled that the Pistol’s “destroyed the myth of being a pop star, of a musician being some kind of god that you had to worship.” They could do it, too, and they would: Joined by singer Ian Curtis and drummer Stephen Morris, they called themselves first Warsaw (after “Warszawa,” a dense dirge co-written by David Bowie and Brian Eno) and, finally, Joy Division.

The Cure, Joy Division, and Siouxsie & The Banshees all began their ascent in 1976. These three bands would become the nucleus of the gestating Goth movement, though both Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux would later work mightily to disassociate themselves from the monster they had helped to create (Joy Division, whose music first inspired the tag “Gothic,” did not survive long enough to feel the confining bonds of the label).

And in a sense, they were right to do so; none of these bands can be classified as “only” or “purely” Goth. The Cure and the Banshees, after all, went on to achieve significant chart success, appealing to a wide popular audience in decade-spanning careers (the Cure’s latest album as of this writing, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, is indeed their best work in ages).

And yet, and yet. Whether they like it or not, whether they realize it or not, without these three bands, no Goth, no way. All of the elements are there in the early works of these titans: The lyrical tendency toward morbidity; the focus on syncopated and/or primitive rhythms; the elevation of the bass to principle melody maker; the expansion of the guitar palette to include sharp, icy, and dissonant tones.

The early singles of these bands are transitional species – more than punk, not yet Goth. It is a tale of becoming. Inspired by the Pistols, grateful that they had torn down the bloated edifice that rock had become, these three bands were not content merely to take part in the creative destruction. They wanted to build something in its stead, something grand and grotesque, something that would connect the listener to the eternal mysteries: love and life, beauty and death. According to Severin: “We were trying to create music that you could get lost in, an intensity of sound that was hypnotic, ritualistic.” The Lord’s Prayer was a fitting first performance – Goth would make music sacred again, and embrace those emotions discarded by punk: longing and loss, loneliness and lust, dread and despair.

That Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith would distance themselves from Goth is especially ironic, since it was those two above all who set the style template for untold legions of Goths: Siouxsie with her skin-tight black PVC and gorgeous black gowns, her porcelain face framed by Medusa-like black hair; Smith (who would join the Banshees for a short time on guitar) with his teased and tentacled black hair and smeared lipstick.

Here, as in so much else, Joy Division stood apart. No Gothic dress for these boys – posters from the time depict them in white shirts and ties. Nice, normal English lads, the attire said. This was a brilliant deception, for their music was brutally, inescapably stark and chilling. In fact, when it comes to the exploration of extreme mental and spiritual states, no band, Goth or not, before or since, has ever come close.

Joy Division is in fact one of the most important bands of all time, because it is one of the most unique bands of all time. Their story is a sad and sombre one, and deserves telling in the full.

Next Time: Joy Division

Recommended Listening:

1) Warsaw – Joy Division

2) 10:15 Saturday Night – The Cure

2) Carcass – Siouxsie & The Banshees

3) Boys Don’t Cry – The Cure

4) The Leaders of Men – Joy Division

5) Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie & The Banshees

6) Charlotte Sometimes – The Cure

7) No Love Lost – Joy Division

Jigsaw Feeling – Siouxsie & The Banshees

9) Failures – Joy Division

10) Warszawa – David Bowie

Look for the entire iMix of “The Vault: An Exploration of the Gothic – Part 3″ in iTunes

1965.  Cafe Bizarre.  Greenwich Village, New York City.

An unknown band takes the stage and begins to play.  The electric viola weeps an unearthly, hypnotic lament, as the singer chants: “Not a ghost-bloodied country, all covered with sleep, where the black angel did weep…’”

–

Perhaps The Black Angel’s Death Song was just a little too bizarre for Cafe Bizarre.  Perhaps the song’s rumored anti-communist message did no go down well in deep-red lower Manhattan.  For whatever reason, The Velvet Underground are promptly fired from their first regular gig for playing the strange and dissonant tune they had been warned not to play.

But the Velvets had secured their future nonetheless:  Andy Warhol was at Cafe Bizarre that night.  He described the audience as “dazed and damaged” after the performance – Warhol loved it.  He took them into his fold and became their manager, producer and sponsor.  He helped them secure their first record contract; he painted the cover for the first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico.

It is (too) often said that, while their first record sold only a hundred copies, everyone who bought it started a band.  Like most apocrypha, this is exaggeration which nonetheless contains a large truth, which is this – compared to their minimal chart success, The Velvets had a disproportionate impact on the sonic landscape of America.  They single-handedly gave birth to what we call alternative rock, of which Goth is very much a subspecies.  And The Black Angel’s Death Song may itself be the first piece of modern Goth.

Decades later, Iggy Pop would recall the effect The Velvets had had on him in the mid 1960’s.  He was especially inspired by vocalist Lou Reed, who had once been a house song-writer for Pickwick Records:  “Hey, he (Reed) can’t sing,” Iggy thought; “I can’t sing.  Let’s all sing!”  (I paraphrase here from memory an interview seen long ago.)

In Detroit on Halloween night 1967, Iggy debuted his band The Stooges.  The performance, like all Stooges performances, was a slash and burn musical onslaught (more slash than burn – Iggy would make a name for himself by self mutilating on stage).  In 1969, The Stooges recorded their first record – produced by The Velvet’s classically-trained violist John Cale.  Like The Velvets, The Stooges would sell little, but inspire legions.

Meanwhile, back in New York, two teenagers in the sleepy suburb of Forest Hills, Queens had formed a garage band in 1966.  Over the next eight years, this band would undergo many line-up and name changes.  By 1974, they had decided on a monochrome look of jeans, t-shirts, and leather jackets, and settled on the nom de guerre The Ramones.  Punk was born.

Musically, The Ramones were a throwback to pop from the 60’s – more Beach Boys than Velvet Underground.  But their style was raw and visceral, and their delivery brutal – one, two, three, four and then a towering electric wave would wash over the audiences of Max’s Kansas City and CBGB in lower Manhattan, where The Ramones quickly ensconced and took residence.

Inspired by The Ramones (though they always took pains to deny it), across the pond, Johnny Rotten began to lead his merry band of anarchists to incandescent glory as The Sex Pistols in 1975.  The Pistols made punk harder, more angry – they spat on audiences and each other.  They terrorized journalists who dared interview them.

Nevertheless, The Pistols quickly garnered a small but devoted following, the core of which was known as the Bronby Contingent.  Among them was a girl called Siouxie Sioux, and her friend, bass player Steven Severin.

There were other portents floating in the musical firmament in these years.  David Bowie was riding to rock glory on the backs of Martian spiders; Alice Cooper was bringing horror show Vaudeville to Metal.  A two-man combo called Suicide combined drum machines and primitive sythns with lyrical homages to ghosts and motorcycles, creating a template that would be copied over and over in the years to come.

All of these things combined and congealed, bubbling sometimes under the surface, sometimes simmering just on top, until 1976 when, like Frankenstein’s monster, a not-so-pretty amalgam of disparate limbs would finally take its first steps.

Alive! they cried, and called it Goth…

Next Time: 1976 – The Big Bang

Suggested Listening:

1) The Black Angel’s Death Song - The Velvet Underground

2) Venus In Furs - The Velvet Underground

3) 1969 – The Stooges

4) Judy Is A Punk - The Ramones

5) Anarchy In the U.K. – The Sex Pistols

6) Ghost Rider - Suicide

7) Keep Your Dreams - Suicide

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie

9) The Black Angel’s Death Song - Vitamin String Quartet

(Author’s note:  Look for the entire iMix of “The Vault: An Exploration of the Gothic – Part 2″ in iTunes)

Part one of this series can be read here.

Moon rocks the imagination as it presents a totally plausible, realistic way of utilizing space for practical purposes — in this case, mining for eco-desirable Helium 3 energy from the lunar surface.  Jones strove for science-fact over fiction in researching many minute details of the script.  He even screened the film before a panel of NASA scientists — many of whom are working on making fantasy into fact. 

Before reading any further — be advised: don’t see Moon to learn about science, but DO see it! It’s a fascinating film featuring an Academy Award-worthy performance by Sam Rockwell. 

Now, back to reality… In 2004, President George W. Bush called for a return to the Moon to build a base — it would be a prelude to something even greater: a mission to Mars.  He noted words from astronaut Eugene Cernan, who traveled with the last Apollo mission: “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.” With that, scores of engineers, scientists and experts made headway designing, building and planning America’s next endeavour to explore space, they were ready to accomplish the mission. 

Should President Obama decide to continue with the 2004 Bush plan, enterprising Americans would need to invent many of the things featured in Jones’ film.  And for Obama, who is presiding over one of the worst economic crisis in history, an invigorating Kennedy-esque call to space would present a granddaddy of a stimulus package — jobs created, factories built, innovation; to say nothing of stimulating the truly priceless things like learning, inspiring a generation and advancing the species. 

But don’t pack your moon boots quite yet – Obama has organized a committee to review the entire space program and make recommendations sometime in August. He has left many to guess his agenda for America’s space program.  What would have happened if Columbus or Magellan stood around waiting for a group of consultants to return findings?  Thank goodness President Kennedy didn’t wait to hear committee recommendations of his idea — we would have never made it to the Moon.  So, we’re left to wait — along with the rest of NASA — while this committee discusses, studies and contemplates.  Call it the community organizer’s guide to the galaxy …  it just might get us going nowhere fast. 

Moon writer-director Jones is a self-described sci-fi nut having been inspired as a child by great films such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Ridley Scott’s Alien.  Those films, like many other 60’s, 70’s and 80’s sci-fi fare, helped feed the world’s growing appetite for all things space — I know, because my younger brother and I grew up in the Lucas/Spielberg-golden age of sci-fi.  With the 1969 Moon landing, and the Apollo missions thereafter, a huge milestone was met, and imaginations exploded — people wanted to learn what else could be ‘out there?’ How could we travel into space in the future? What would life in space be like? 

Moon portrays the same questions NASA faces building a moon base, or traveling to Mars — loneliness, mental stamina, human endurance.  To say nothing of imagining real-life possibilities such as fusion power, mining for clean energy and living in artificial environments (as well as some truly mind-blowing plot twists). 

It should come as little surprise that Jones thought up this film.  After all, he is the son of David Bowie — the man who gave us “Space Oddity” and Ziggy Stardust.  Bowie was fascinated by humans landing on the Moon and translated that into brilliant art and music.  Come to think of it, without the Moonshot, we never would have Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” cell phones, microwave ovens — or juice bags for the kids!  The demonstration of American grit and ingenuity instilled the nation with pride, confidence and solidified American technology and willpower as the envy of the world.  We could use a little bit of all that right about now… 

So, what will it be President Obama: One giant leap… forward or backward?