Hotcha's Calypso Now Label

July 4, 2011

Herschell Gordon Lewis, accountant of splatter and gore

Filed under: Uncategorized — Hotcha @ 11:35 am

The baddest, the bloodiest splatter’n’gore movies are often made by unglamorous accountant types, me seems. What does an accountant type look like, you probably immediately ask yourself, dear cliché-hating reader. Thanks for asking, proves we both are intelligent people. Accountant types look like splatter’n’gore filmmakers.

Herschell Gordon Lewis

Like Herschell Gordon Lewis. He’s the creator of the gore film, it is said. I just hope he does not read this here, because this could be the case, he being at the NIFFF in Neuchâtel at the moment, an 80 year old monsieur, which has been parked by his still actif wife in the festival center while she does the weekly shopping, that’s what he looks like. I just passed by him, he was sitting there, waiting to be picked up again, I could have easily slit his throat or chewed off one of his fingers, nobody would have seen it, nobody would have noticed a thing, he was there all alone. I could have acted like Fuad Ramses, the bloody caterer from Blood Feast, the first Splatter’n’Gore movie, made in 1963 by Lewis. Ramses goes much further than slitting throats or chewing fingers, though, he does not hesitate to cut out the tongue of a blonde bombshell, of course she’s still alive while he’s at it

Later that day Lewis will present his movie to a young crowd of a enthusiastic public, where he tells them that he made this film for commercial reasons. Well, that’s a reason I do like, chapeau. Searching for a kind of a movie that has never been made before, that will make it into the cinemas and will motivate people to shove out their dollar. And to make the movie the cheapest way possible. Not the worst set of ideas to create a great and lasting artwork. So he invented gore. And he was a successful accountant, too. Wrote the music himself, for instance, because he obviously hates to pay people to do things he can do himself, maybe even better. He also did this for his second movie, 2000 Maniacs, where he even wrote the catchy and cheasy hillbilly title track. It’s catchy, proof: He sings it that day with his public, “Hee-Haaa” – a great entertainer, the man, who without problem can pretend he does this here for the first time, because we are such a wonderful public. Of course he must have done that a dozen times….

2000 Maniacs is his favorite HGL movie, according to his words. Why are so few people here? For Blood Feast he had a full house. But as he says himself, 2000 Maniacs is not easy to understand for a european public, treating a very US theme, the civil war of the 19th century. The dialogs are sometimes hard to understand, the recording quality is just too poor. But for me, of course, this is a sign of quality, because the first take is always the best, just leave it at that, the next ones can only get cleaner, that’s all.

Blood Feast

So let’s get back to Blood Feast. The first splatter’n’gore movie. The first in a billion dollar business. And a very good movie, absolutely. Those trashy colors, plenty of green orange red, the wooden dialogues, this fantastic non-acting which is so difficult to obtain, the special effects that come directly from the second hand shop. Just look at the egypt goddess, a shop window dummy with painted-on gold, 2 meters of velvet, all in all about 80 $ worth of material.

You can appreciate this movie from so many different angles. First of all, it’s pure esthetic pleasure: the camera, the cheesy fake egyptian death march music, it’s a rock video, many bands would be proud to have such a thing on Youtube. Never forget, Lewis is not a musician, he just hates to spend money and wants to cut costs wherever he can!

Then you have those fantastic dialogues: the desperate housewive, who wants to have a very special party for her daugter, who is a totally underexposed blonde – she uses the same spray-on tan as Shawne Fielding, by the way… At the end, she even lays herself under the demonic egyptian’s knife, to not spoil his fun! But first on my list are the two FBI agents in their brownish office, plastic tree in the corner, chewing on a pipe, not ashamed to show that they do not have a clue – and when they find the one piece this mosaic is made of, they can go on and on about how clever and intelligent they sherlockholmed this case.

Hello David Lynch

You can become addicted to this kind of storytelling. There’s a whole crowd of filmmakers who created a complete work on Lewis’ invention. Hello David Lynch! I do not know all of HGL’s movies yet, but I presume, it’s like with all trash: First try is the best. I could be wrong, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. What I can say, is that I’ve underestimated Lewis’ work until now, which is completely my fault, I could have watched them all on the net for free. Let me recommend you to buy them all, you’ll get a better screen resolution and a better sound where the music is concerned (I do not talk about the dialogs…). And show them at your next party, with a beamer, on a big stereo.

The Vicious Brothers

When I’ve started this post here, I planned to write about the Vicious Brothers and their movie Grave Encounters. It’s a surprising ghost story treating a very swiss theme, I do not know if this was planned as such. Maybe I’ll write about it tomorrow. Do not miss this movie, it will be screened one more time at the NIFFF in Neuchâtel, July 5 2011, 17:00 at the Apollo One.

January 15, 2011

Late Night Links

Filed under: Uncategorized — Hotcha @ 1:09 am

Listen to this here, a history of spanish avantgarde underground: http://www.ubu.com/sound/spanish_avant.html.

If you rather feel like watching, then here’s a fantastic movie I found: http://retrovision.tv/freevideo/bigamist-the-1953.

First of all, it features the great Ida Lupino. I always liked here a lot, but I did not know that she also directed movies. Here she does. You find other movies of her on the same site, Retrovision. Just hit the Ida Lupino tag.

Voici un lien vers sa biographie sur Wikipedia (francais). Elle était tout simplement adorable!

September 22, 2010

Cassette Mythos

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Hotcha @ 2:38 pm

The website seems to have been deleted, but you can find stuff here: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/03/the-cassette-my.html

Check out downloads of Dino DiMuro here: http://just-john.com/DinoDimuro

Also: go to www.halmcgee.com, he’s re-releasing all his stuff from the 80’s (Viscera, Dog As Master) for an incredible 4$ per cassette. Order all the 50 releases!

Recently, I found ubuweb – avantgarde movies to watch and download for gratis, and a lot of music too.

This should do for the moment, until I get back from holidays…

May 2, 2010

The Living Archive Of Underground Music: Calypso Now

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Hotcha @ 7:27 pm

The Living Archive Of Underground Music

The May 2010 edition of The Living Archive Of Underground Music is now published.

http://www.doncampau.com/livingarchive.htm

New content for this issue includes:

  • Artist Spotlight and interview with Mic Gendreau, experimental SF Bay Area musician and member of Crawling With Tarts.
  • Tape Of The Month , “Why I Did It/Binky’s Revenge” a 1988 classic by Heather Perkins.Free download/streaming.
  • Interview with Rudi Tuscher, the man behind the Swiss tape label, Calypso Now.
  • Perspectives by “Sneaky Pete” Rizzo on his double life as a biology professor and home taper.
  • Feature Arcticle by Thomas Bey William Bailey on the fetish aspect of cassette/CD packaging.

    And much more.

    As always, I welcome and encourage your comments, suggestions and involvement with The Living Archive. Do you have an idea for a future article?

    Thanks for looking,Don

    www.doncampau.com

    (This text from the mail that was sent by Don to his subscribers)

April 13, 2010

Must follow

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Hotcha @ 8:57 am


“I won’t pay for punk records” – download classic punk singles! (mp3 only, so maybe you should consider buying anyhow!)
http://www.kbdrecords.com/

More on Nikki Sudden incl. downloads: http://alittlenecrophilia.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/nikki-sudden-gets-the-necrophilia-treatment/

April 3, 2010

My Kiva Pop Stars

Filed under: Uncategorized — Hotcha @ 4:08 am

Shukrullo Yusupov

I’ve already mentioned my Discogs experience, I believe. Matter of fact, I’ve only recently discovered this platform for all kinds of music aficionados, and I seized that opportunity to dive deep into my huge archives of the 80’s cassette scene. It will probably take me another year to unpack the boxes full of tapes, cover masters, letters etc. At the same time I’m adding releases to the Discogs database, in order to keep this heritage alive. It’s only recently that I’ve discovered that other activists from this pre-Internet-period of networking made the transition to the web, too many to mention now, please have a good look at my blogroll here to the right, especially at the ‘Friends of Calypso Now’. More about them later.

To add releases to a worldwide database is one thing, but I’ve also rediscovered quite a few tapes I had on the shelves for sale when I closed shop at the end of the 80’s. I just stuffed them in boxes and forgot about them. Now, Discogs is also a sales platform, and I started to sell those tapes; I was amazed how big the interest for certain releases is. I plan to sell more and more of the tapes, also from my private archives, because I did get a lot of promos for my radio shows back then (you can download some of those here on the blog).

So now I come to the point: What to do with the money? It’s not that I can’t use money, but on the other hand that’s not the reason why I’m selling – the reason is that I want to give away things I don’t use any more to someone who actually does appreciate it. So why don’t I just give it for free? Because I found a way to serve several sides, by supporting my Kiva Pop Stars.

So I’ve decided to let all the profits from my sales go into Kiva loans. There are thousands of small entrepreneurs out there like Shukrullo Yusupov from Tajikistan. Just see for yourself. And find out why they are pop stars.

December 27, 2009

Last Search Terms & Referrers

Filed under: Uncategorized — Hotcha @ 3:00 pm

From behind the scenes for your surfing pleasure:

Last search terms

Date Time Terms Engine Result
December 27, 2009 00:13:49 the furgler hat Google page viewed
December 26, 2009 15:20:54 “cleaners from venus” blogspot Google page viewed
December 26, 2009 13:31:46 calypso now Google page viewed
December 26, 2009 13:30:21 calypso now Google page viewed
December 26, 2009 13:08:56 joe merenda biel Google page viewed
December 25, 2009 15:53:05 lp 90 kassette reparieren Google page viewed
December 23, 2009 14:46:33 80\’s indies Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 20:49:57 Chicks dig records Google Images page viewed
December 21, 2009 18:40:00 my famous neighbour Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 14:08:07 marc ribot Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 13:20:43 Krakatit Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 08:33:13 trance port tapes discogs Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 08:20:32 trance port tapes discogs Google page viewed
December 21, 2009 03:52:50 calypso xxx Google page viewed
December 19, 2009 23:06:35 lucien dubuis trio with Marc Ribot ultime cosmos blogspot Google page viewed

November 1, 2009

Global Metal

Filed under: Uncategorized — Hotcha @ 5:21 pm

Sometimes, I have my metal period. It never lasts very long, because, honestly, it’s too much of the same all over, it’s GENRE. I love genre in movies, but in music, I need to be surprised. Anyway, I recently came across a bunch of Metal DVD that made me post an order of

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