Thursday, March 17, 2011

Satan has the best disco dance tunes


Can you give me sanctuary   
I must find a place to hide 
A place for me to hide
Can you find me soft asylum
I can’t make it anymore
The man is at the door.
     (Lyrics from “the soft parade”, 1969, by the Doors)

The New York Times of the 22nd September 1881 described the place near 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues NYC as “the hell itself”. This way of describing the so called “Five Points” was important in the matter of giving them the new nickname of “Hell’s Kitchen”.
Walter Rauschenbusch was a great man, and the leader of the 2nd German Baptist Church of West Side Manhattan. He founded the “social gospel” liberal theology, and in the second half of 1800 he built a beautiful church, also thanks to the contribution of his good friend John D. Rockefeller. The building is at 407 43rd Street & 9th Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen .
For 5000 years the Chinese had used “ma-huang” to improve their lives, and in 1887 someone discovered that this was ephedrine.
In the thirties a mass abuse of amphetamine began in USA and then in UK. For example, American and British soldiers fighting in Europe during the World War II took amphetamine to get more attention and courage, and students helped themselves with the “pep pills”. A lot of the “speed labs” were in West Coast .
In 1938 the great damned bluesman Robert Johnson died at the age of 27. He was probably the best guitar man of all times.
In 1943 the researcher Albert Hoffman casually discovered lysergic acid (LSD) studying some kind of mushroom.
In 1945 Lafayette Ron Hubbard knew Jack Parsons, a follower of the UK occultist Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s doctrine was about amplification of pleasures and unlimited sexuality, and his main concept was the refusal of death. In 1946 Hubbard and Parsons gave themselves the appellative of “moonchild”, then they started doing the magic rituals called “babalon working” and inspired by Crowley. On the 1st December 1947 Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley died.
Around 1948 Lafayette Ron Hubbard was one of the first buyers of Chamberlin’s mellotron, the first music and sound sampler ever built.
In the fifties and in the sixties the counter-culture of the beat and hippy generations was developed, especially in USA UK and Australia, also thanks to the cultural work of William Stewart Burroughs II, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, and Ken Kesey. Like Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Crowley, these writers didn’t refuse to try psychoactive substances.
In 1954 Lafayette Ron Hubbard founded Scientology, the religion of science based on the Dianetics ethics.
From 1956 in UK amphetamines were legally sold only under prescription.
Around the beginning of 1960 Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) followed Hoffman’s studies on hallucinogenic mushrooms, and they obtained the psilocybin.
Someone says in 1962, others say in 1963, the first mod club of London was opened in Soho, and the name of this club was Scene. At the Scene there was beat music played from vinyl records, and the DJ was the famous and appreciated Guy Stevens. The mods of London soon began to associate this dance music with some kind of pills, such as the doobs, the blueses, the bennies, the purple hearts and the black bombers. One good friend of Guy Stevens was Roger Eagle, who shared many records with Guy and was asked by the Abadi brothers to be the main DJ of the new Twisted Wheel.
On the 27th January 1963 the night club Twisted Wheel was opened at 26 Brazennose Street Manchester UK, modifying the ex Left Bank coffee bar, and so the new temple of rhythm & blues and pills was born.
On the 13th December 1963 Brian Morris opened in London near Leicester Square the night club Ad Lib, a place for hippy celebrities to dance black American soul and blues vinyl records. Although this club was hidden at the fourth floor of an anonymous building, its activity was interrupted many times by the authorities.
In the month of August 1964 the manual on “the psychedelic experience” by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner was “finally” published. This manual puts together : the myths of the so called counter-culture ; the oriental philosophy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Bardo Thodol, also containing the doctrine of the three bards ; and the aspiration to immortality of the scientologists and their leader Lafayette Ron Hubbard. All these elements are unified under the sign of Aleister Crowley ; in fact Leary said to the young people that there was a way to get immortality, and this was the musical meditation helped by the LSD, in order to get the 7 levels evolution from the cocoon to the reborn man.
In 1965 the Hell’s Kitchen’s gangsters known as “westies” did their affiliation to Carlo Gambino’s “family”. In the month of May 1965 Sybil Williams, the ex wife of the great UK actor Richard Burton, opened the night club Arthur on 54th Street NYC and choose for it a musical band, the Wild Ones, whose leader was Jordan Christopher. Sybil was immediately fascinated by the handsome Jordan ; probably she didn’t know that he was living together with an homosexual professional dancer, and the name was Terry Noel. Terry lost Jordan, but he put a spell on the night clubs musical bands. Sybil knew the UK way to animate the musical nights ; in particular she liked the mod style of the London Ad Lib, and so she searched for someone to play the records and give “little help” to the people (if you need to know something more about this, please listen to Rolling Stones “mother’s little helper”). I don’t know exactly how, but Terry convinced her to let himself do this at the Arthur, because he wanted to show to everyone that he could do better than a musical band, and he did it. A few months later, Terry decided to become a woman by surgery. His (her ?) new look was similar to Sybil’s one.
Between 1965 and 1967 the chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III produced in California over one million doses of his exceptional long-acting (LA) LSD called “Owsley acid”. Owsley Stanley III was also the sound engineer of the Grateful Dead. That’s one of the reasons why so many pop and rock songs talk about “LA” and “California dreaming”. Don’t think that “LA” always means Los Angeles !
On the 30th April 1966 Anton Standor LaVey founded “the church of Satan” in California, and his spiritual guide was Aleister Crowley.
On the 6th October 1966 the LSD was declared illegal in USA .
On the 14th January 1967 at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco California Timothy Leary was the speaker of the event “Human Be-In” ; he said to 30.000 hippies to “turn on, tune in, drop out”.
On the 8th March 1968 the famous psychedelic rock concert manager Bill Graham, whose main activity was in California at the “Fillmore West”, opened in NYC the “Fillmore East” at 105 6th Street and 2nd Avenue East Village ; it was a live psychedelic music venue and also a cinema .
In 1968 the manager Ivor Abadi, who had just opened a new seat in Manchester UK for his Twisted Wheel, decided to lead this club to what now is known as “northern soul all-nighter”, based on live soul acts, and a lot of up-tempo soul vinyl 7” played by a DJ with two turntables ; Abadi also prohibited to his DJs the use of the microphone, in order to obtain a non-stop sequence of fast soul music. Oh, how much speed !
In 1968 Terry Noel looked like a woman, and she (he?) was the resident DJ of the night club Salvation II, Central Park and South Nephenta NYC. The owner of this club was Bradley Pierce, and he wasn’t happy with his famous and scandalous DJ ; probably that’s why Bradley asked Terry to choose a substitute, in order to transmit to someone her (his?) know-how. Terry, who started her (his?) career as a professional dancer, called another professional dancer, an “Italian” born in Brooklyn and named Francis Grasso.  
In 1969 the New York City Authorities decided the urban renewal for Hell’s Kitchen. In the same year a man known as Arnie Lord opened a night club at 407 43rd Street & 9th Avenue Hell’s Kitchen, and he gave to this club the name of “The Church”. The club was a mixture of sacred symbols and erotic objects, and there were pornographic statues of angels and a blasphemous explicit mural. I think that “Arnie Lord” was a man of the westies, and that someone of the Brooklyn Catholic Church did a strong protest for the described outrageous night club. The protest arrived to Gambino’s ears, and the boss of the bosses decided to close it. I don’t know what happened to Arnie Lord, but the night club was closed for almost two years. Someone says that the NYC Catholic Church obtained the closure of “The Church” from a judge, but I don’t believe it, also because this club stayed open only for two weeks.
In 1969 Anton LaVey wrote the “satanic bible”, in which the most important number is 9, or 2-7 and 7-2. Many Satanists identify also today the number 72 with their lord ; I have also read that the main venue of Satan’s church is no longer in California, but in Hell’s Kitchen NYC. Not very far from this “bible”, Timothy Leary changed his theory about immortality, and the new magic number was no more 7 but 9 (7+2). The 1967 song by the band Love “seven and seven is” was almost forgotten, and the NYC club DJs played Love “revelation”. Some years after, in 1972 the band Hawkwind made the song “seven by seven”, and they explained that there were “seven ways to find the long lost bards”.
On the 3rd July 1969 the Rolling Stones' founding member and guitarist Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones died at the age of 27. His death appeared as an accident to the authorities, but later someone wrote the book "The murder of Brian Jones".
On the 3rd September 1970 the Canned Heat's leader and guitarist Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson died at the age of 27. Although of his eyesight problems, he was able to follow perfectly John Lee Hooker's guitar improvisations ; this ability is incredible, because Hooker's performances were unruly and unpredictable.
On the 18th September 1970 the blues shaman Jimi Hendrix died at the age of 27.
On the 4th October 1970 the motorcycle lady of rock Janis Joplin died at the age of 27.
On the 27th October 1970 president Nixon made effective the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in USA, and the psilocybin of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass was included among the substances under control. Please listen to the funky song “you can have Watergate but give me some bucks and I’ll be straight”, and you will know something about how much many pop and rock artists liked CSA.
On the 31st December 1970 the most important psychedelic rock band, the Beatles, ended their musical activity. With the song “hot as sun/glasses” Paul McCartney a few months before had invited John Lennon to suicide, and to do something similar with his “sun”. For those who don’t know it, the meaning of “7 rays sun” (or simply sun) in psychedelics was the thought of Timothy Leary.
In 1971 Duane “Skydog” Allman used to go with his brothers to Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon GA. With the help of psilocybin, Duane looked for musical inspiration between the tombs, such as the one of Joseph Bond (1815-1859).
In 1971, perhaps on February or March, two gay men known as “Seymour” and “Shelley” reopened the night club at 407 43rd Street & 9th Avenue Hell’s Kitchen, but this time the angels’ statues and the mural were not so outrageous. The purpose of Seymour & Shelley was to give people “soft asylum”, leaving “the man” (the police) out of the door, just the place asked by the Doors in the song “the soft parade” ; and so, why not calling it “Sanctuary”? Seymour & Shelley had an Irish manager at the Sanctuary, known as Michael Crennan, of course a man of the westies. Someone asked Crennan to put some good music in the club, the same beautiful music of another Manhattan club, the Haven at 1 Sheridan Square. The Haven was managed by a Gambino’s man, and the music was provided by a young DJ born in Brooklyn, naturally Francis Grasso. With the technical support of the Jewish engineer Alex Rosner, who built “Rosie” the first 2 channels stereo mixer with separate cueing, Grasso developed at the Haven the genial musical ideas of Terry Noel, the first superstar DJ in NYC, and he reached the ability to obtain a continuous flux of good beat music by beat mixing one vinyl track to the following one. I’m convinced that both Terry and Francis didn’t know what the northern soul all-nighter was ; and I’m sure that the northern soul DJs didn’t know what the beat mix was.
On the 27th June 1971 the NYC concert venue Fillmore East was closed. To remember the end of this important musical activity the Genesis sung in 1974 these words : “the Movie-Palace is now undone/ the all-night watchmen have had their fun/ sleeping cheaply in the midnight show it’s the same old ending/ time to go. Get out !”.
On the 3rd July 1971 the leader of the Doors James Douglas “Jim” Morrison died at the age of 27. He was the son of George Morrison, the chief of the US Navy in Vietnam, who was in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. The hippies and the students did strong protests against the Vietnam war, and that was the reason why Jim in the song “the end” shouted about the Oedipus killing of his father.
In the beginning of October 1971 they say that the ghost of Jimi Hendrix gave to Duane Allman an incredible acoustic guitar song, perhaps the most perfect ever. This song is the only one completely written by Duane, and he chose the title of “little Martha” ; little Martha was a girl who died when she was 12, and her tomb was at Rose Hill Cemetery. Despite of this title, Duane thought to dedicate the wonderful song to his woman.
On the 29th October 1971 Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident.
In the following years a very strange thing happened in NYC : almost all the musical bands left the night clubs, and the night clubs were transformed into disco music halls, with one DJ or more to perform the beat mix of the vinyl records. In other words, Terry Noel’s curse on live musical bands became true.



If you don’t fear the fear, there’s a mixtape for you .

Mixtape
Title = Sabbath tonight fever
Conceived, sequenced and mixed by Max Look DJ from Mantua Italy.
Content of the mixtape – description .
1)  Amon Duul II – jalousie; it’s a cut from “Phallus Dei” LP of 1973 by the famous krautrock group Amon Duul; the Amon Duul were one of the first musical bands in Germany to follow the ideas of Timothy Leary; “jalousie” is a very strange and dark track, that evokes the serpentine charm of the evil;
2)  Fatboy Slim ft Macy Gray – demons; a recent CD single, but it sounds a lot like jalousie, isn’t it?
3)  Eagles – hotel California; it’s a 1975 song that perhaps talks about an episode involving Anton LaVey, the author of the “satanic bible” and the founder of the satanic church in California; for better listening experiences, I suggest you to go along Interstate 10 California, to smell the night blooming cactuses;
4)   Rolling Stones – tops; in 1981 the Stones were considered a rock band, but they were born as an UK r’n’b one; starting from playing especially blues cover tracks, they developed a personal style, and an intellectual way to refer themselves to Aleister Crowley and Timothy Leary; “tops” is a good example of this;
5)  Rasmus – Lucifer’s angel; another CD single of 2000 years; this is a “new” rock band from northern Europe, but their music is close to certain Uriah Heep or Black Sabbath productions;
6)   Oasis – helter skelter; a good hard rock cover of a Beatles’ song, naturally deep into Leary’s theories;
7)  Beatles – come together; it’s an explicit hymn to Timothy Leary;
8)  Uriah Heep – gypsy; a metal classic, based on the very bad reputation of the gypsies;
9) Killing Joke – requiem; a 1980 hard rock song, hypnotic and dramatic like an infernal symphony;
10) Blue Oyster Cult – the siege of baron Von Frankenstein; baron Von Frankenstein is a popular monster, because we all fear the ambition of the mad scientists, who wants to possess the secret of the origin of life, and use it for their personal pleasure and power;
11) Mike Oldfield – tubular bells II (Max Look demonical cut); what’s the language of the demons? how a demon speaks? I don’t know if Mike Oldfield gives us a good answer in this cut, but surely it is very amazing; 
12)  Black Sabbath – headless cross; like usual, this 1984 song by the popular UK metal band is blasphemous; on a misty hill we have a witches Sabbath, and their lord is “the master”, who also calls your name;
13) Anne Clark – sleeper in metropolis (Italian afro mood); the Italian well known “afro DJs” during the eighties used to play this 12” at the wrong speed, 33rpm instead of 45rpm; the song is full of anxiety and sadness, and if you listen it at the wrong speed these bad feelings are amplified;
14)  Clash – straight to hell; the famous UK new wave band say to “the boys” to go to a place that’s really deep; the early producer of the Clash was the notorious Guy Stevens, one time the DJ of the Scene night club in London; the song was released in 1982, after the death of Guy on the 29th August 1981;
15)  Chicago – south California purples; this 1969 track is a nostalgic ode to the purple pills made until 1967 by Augustus Owsley Stanley III, the “Owsley acid”; even if great disco writers, such as Tim Lawrence and Peter Shapiro, says in their books about the disco music that the Sanctuary club NYC DJ Francis Grasso did a beat mix between Chicago I’m a man and Led Zeppelin whole lotta love, I think that it’s not possible because “I’m a man” is 127 BPM and “whole lotta love” is 90 BPM; this mixtape shows you that it’s possible and really good the beat mix made with Chicago South California purples and Led Zeppelin whole lotta love;  
16)  Led Zeppelin – whole lotta love; it’s a classic of rock music, but don’t think that the kind of love of the song is the one, for example, between a man and a woman; when you play tennis you may win a set six to love … so the “love” of Jimmy Page means “zero”, or the total absence of human passions that you can find in the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Bardo Thodol; the suggestion of the song is to help yourself to delete your passions with the opium, even the rest of the one just smoked by another person;
17) Doors – break on through; another 1967 rock classic, and people says that this is “LSD poetry”;
18)  Dio – one more for the road ; “nice day for a crucifixion”, these are the words sung by Dio; this song also says that the books and the prophets not always says the truth, and sometimes the suggestion may be to burn them up; on the contrary, I think that it’s a terrible mistake to intentionally cancel any kind of human expression, even the horrible but amazing song by Dio;
19) Marilyn Manson – sweet dreams; it’s a rock cover of the namesake 1983 song by the Eurythmics; the words are the same, but when Manson says “some of them wants to abuse you/and some of them wants to be abused” the mood is really different; see also about “the master” of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne;
20)  Jamiroquai – black capricorn day; I think that on this day they don’t have a kebab;
21)  Cure – lullaby; it might be a lullaby, but so hallucinated and naughty;
22)  Iam Siam – talk to me (Max Look edit); there are many ways to talk about the darkest day in a person’s life; this way is electric and groovy, and the choruses are like floating ghosts;
23)  Flexx – theme from the deep; this is an Italo-disco record of 1983, very electric and full of human blood, not in the veins but on the floor;
24)  Brian Eno & David Byrne – regiment; in this terrible track we have the moaning voice of a real muezzin that dominates all over our world; in fact, the fear that the followers of Islam could one day dominate all over the world is concrete and actual;
25) Enigma – sadness; it’s a desecrate gospel in French, inspired by the catholic sacred polyphonic music;
26)  Who – magic bus ; this bus don’t take you to school or at home, but to another kind of trip;
27)  Bad Meets Evil ft Eminem & Royce – scary movie (partly); also in hip hop music they feel and describe the feeling of fear.
Total time = 1 hour 19 minutes and 30 seconds, and if you dare you will get 2-7 songs . 

New York by night is a galaxy of pleasure and pain (lyrics from “New York by night”, 1979, by Dennis Parker)

Disco music was both, utopia and hell (words by Peter Shapiro)

You can mail me your opinions. I'll try to send you a thank or an answer if asked. My mail address is: max.lookdj@alice.it.


Only for the Italians (solo per gli italiani, avviso postato a far tempo dal giorno 8 luglio 2014, modificato il 13 agosto 2019 e il 9 agosto 2020) – 

Informazione preliminare: questo blog non contiene copie, ma solo produzioni originali dell’autore, in ogni caso non distribuite dal territorio italiano e prive di qualsiasi scopo commerciale. Avviso: gentili connazionali, da questo momento non potete considerarmi responsabile per qualsiasi forma di violazione del Decreto del Ministero dei Beni Culturali del 20 giugno 2014, pubblicato sulla gazzetta ufficiale n.155 del 7.7.2014, modificato dal Decreto del Ministero dei Beni Culturali 18 giugno 2019 (gazzetta ufficiale n.180 del 2.8.2019), e integrato dal Decreto del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo 30 giugno 2020 (gazzetta ufficiale n.195 del 5.8.2020), recante “Determinazione del compenso per la riproduzione privata di fonogrammi e di videogrammi”. Vi invito infatti a non usufruire del materiale contenuto in questo blog, qualora, in quanto ed eventualmente rientrante nel campo di applicazione del citato Decreto. Di ciò mi scuso, ma penso comunque di non essere responsabile delle decisioni delle Autorità italiane. 




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