Underground culture, exotica, erotica, avant garde culture, underground film, midnight movies, nihilism, extreme behaviour, hardboiled fiction, cinema of transgression, experimental film, Bataille, criminal psychology, 'freaks', cargo cults, pataphysics, mondo movies, art brut, low brow culture, experimental music, fine wine, radical culture, outsider art, Vienna Aktionists, philosophy, Deleuze, Foucault, Nietzsche, true crime literature, apocalypses, forensics, industrial culture, horror movies, porn, photography, Harry Crosby, the unusual, Dada, loud noises, nosology, forbidden things, driving in the Australian Outback, walking in Icelandic lava fields, the Northern Lights, deserts, film noir, strange forms of beauty, exotic food, Thai food, questionable anthropology, sex, abjection, radical thought, tactics, sexology, medical museums, extreme weather conditions, electrical storms, mind control and manipulation, hypnosis, travel, neglected science, Caspar Hauser, coffee, Nicola Tesla, Rat Fink, Jack Parsons, accordians...
Music
Music that effects the 'body' through volume, intensity, frequency, often erroneously described as 'noise' i.e Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Merzbow, early SPK, live early Swans, Boris, Vagina Dentata Organ (these groups are obviously cerebral also and I like the depth of their thought and engagement with their obsessions, but I enjoy the raw power of the volume).
Music brut (made by 'mad' people) and outsiders i.e Gesualdo, Mumesons, 'Songs in the Key of Z' albums, The Shaggs, music by children. Singing saw music. The sounds of the body and respiration. Electricity and electrical storms.
Science fiction music, esp. Delia Derbyshire and BBC Radiophonics Workshop, Theremin music. Exotica: Les Baxter and Martin Denny. The sound of insects. EVP field recordings. Thunder. Speaking in tongues. Drag racing records. Sine waves and sine wave samples i.e Sachiko M, Ryoji Ikeda. Sounds that shouldn't be pleasant.
Cambodian pop songs. Mexican folk songs and mariachi music. Carnival / midway / circus music. Italian horror film soundtracks, esp Goblin. Religious and ecstatic music, esp. early twentieth century gospel music and Master Musicians of Joujouka.
'Pop' songs about car crashes, suicide, and death - esp. 'Gloomy Sunday', 'Leader of the Pack', 'Give Us Your Blessings', 'Tell Laura I Love Her', 'Terry', 'Gloomy Sunday', 'Phantom 309', etc.
Early blues and country: Hank Williams, Doc Boggs.
Free music. Anything that expands the concept of music whether Tony Conrad or Einsturzende Neubauten.
Misc greats and visionaries in no particular order that make up my regular listening: Lee Hazelwood esp 'Love & Other Crimes' album, 'Some Velvet Morning', Foetus, Velvet Underground esp the songs 'Sister Ray' and 'Sunday Morning', Teenage Jesus, DNA, Mars, Handsome Family, Cotton Ferox, Birthday Party, Carter Tutti, Monte Cazazza (esp 'Mary Bell' song), Rowland S Howard 'Teenage Snuff Film' album, Mick Harvey, Cramps 'Psychedelic Jungle' album, Johnny Cash, Die Haut, Gun Club esp 'Miami' and 'Death Party', Bob Dylan esp bootleg series, Triffids, Oxbow, Dave Graney Show, The Necks, early Sonic Youth, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, John Fahey, Love, Dirty Three, Stanley Brothers, Townes Van Zandt, early Beefheart, Low, Factrix, Doctor Octagon, Wiseblood, Shockheaded Peters, Cobra Killer, Melvins, Coil, Bonny Prince Billy, Tom Waits, Albert Ayler, Contortions, The Stooges, Beasts of Bourbon, The Make Up, Lydia Lunch, Raymond Scott, Sun Ra, Tindersticks, Fantomas 'Director's Cut' album, Earth, Serge Gainsbourg, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Tiger Lillies, Current 93, Cat Power, Suicide, The Devastations, Sunno)), John Zorn when he plays hardcore and death metal, Mississippi John Hurt, Crime, the MC5 'Looking At You' original 7" version, Billy Childish, Grinderman, and many others.
Comedy recordings: Lenny Bruce, Celebrities At Their Worst both volumes, John Trubee 'Blind Man's Penis', I love Neil Hamburger's phone pranks CD.
Movies
visionary films, B-movies, midnight movies, education films esp. sex ed and drivers ed, underground movies, exploitation movies, unusual movies, surgical training films, morally bankrupt cinema, horror films, film noir, rock and roll movies, films with attitude, zombie movies, neglected cinema, conspiracy videos, banned films, films accussed of corrupting influences, mondo films, expanded cinema, intelligent documentries, experimental film.
The filmmakers I write about (Kern, Zedd, Cinema of Transgression, Antony Balch, Conrad Rooks, Harry Smith and so on).
Notable movies: Tod Browning's Freaks, Kern's Fingered, Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Mondo Cane, John Waters' Pink Flamingos, Cannibal Ferox, M, Nightmare Alley, Ghosts of the Civil Dead, The Proposition, Dumplings, Bunuel's Exterminating Angel, Trouble Every Day, Willard, Andy Warhol's Blow Job, Wake In Fright, Mad Dog Morgan, Turkey Shoot, Thundercrack, Jack Smith's Flamming Creatures, David Lynch's Eraserhead, Battle in Heaven, Crispin Glover's What Is It?, Old Boy, Anger's Scorpio Rising, The Beast, Kuchar's Sins of the Fleshapoids, Larry Clark's Bully, Zedd's Police State, Titicut Follies, Gummo, Larry Wessel's Taurobolium, Balch & Burroughs' The Cut-Ups, Meyer's Mudhoney, Pekinpah's Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Wisonsin Death Trip, Alice (Svankmajor version), Witchcraft Through the Ages, Decoder, Elephant, Red Light Green Light, Irreversible, all of Herzog's films especilly Herz aus Glas also Stroszek and Grizzly Man, Drawing Restraint 9, Monte Cazazza's SXXX80, After Cease To Exist.
There's a top ten I wrote a few years ago on the Senses of Cinema web site.
Television
The Kingdom, The Power of Nightmares, strange news broadcasts in foreign hotels, exploitative trash, late, late night TV for flickering light in dark rooms.
Books
Any list is purely a spur of the moment process and is liable to change without warning, merely reflecting my mood at the time I write it. Thus, the following reflects my current thinking, or books / authors / editors I return to frequently, or semi-frequently, there are of course many books missing here, mostly reference books on anthropology, medicine, film, art, crime, sexology, psychology and so on. The following then is merely indicative, and is broken up in some kind of 'genre' basis for ease.
Hardboiled fiction: Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Charles Willeford, James Ellroy, Robert Alter, Derek Raymond.
Sex: de Sade, Friedman, Kraft-Ebbing, Freud, semiotext(e) Sexuality.
Apocolyptia: Stuart Swezey, Adam Parfrey, Simon Dwyer, Jim Goad.
Urban studies: Mike Davis' City of Quartz et al, John Birmingham's Leviathan.
Literature: Harry Crews, Pierre Guyotat, Flannery O'Conner, Larry Brown, Nick Cave, Dennis Cooper, Lydia Lunch, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, H P Lovecraft, Yukio Mishima, Jarry, Hubert Selby, Jerri Cain Rossi, James Havoc two great novels: Moby Dick, Geek Love.
True crime by title: Panzram, Manson File, The Family, Lords of Chaos, Garbage People, Death Trip, Gangs of New York, The French Quarter, The Gates of Janus, Squeaky, The Case of Mary Bell, by author: John Gilmore, Harold Schechter.
Culture: Jack Stevenson, Jon Savage, Steve Thrower, David Kerekes & Slater, Jack Hunter, Jim Morton, Dan Mannix, Steven Barber.
Medicine / teratology: Freaks by Leslie Fielder, Bodies Under Seige, Making the Body Beautiful, Medicine Man, The Science of Woman, etc etc
Rants: religious tracts, extremist statements, home authored porn, oddball literature that exposes the psychic quagmire.
My own (Jack Sargeant) books on film, culture, and true crime: Deathtripping, Suture, Naked Lens, Death Cults, Cinema Contra Cinema, Born Bad, Bad Cop / Bad Cop, Lost Highways, Guns Death Terror.
Books published by Creation, Feral House, Amok, Headpress / Critical Vision, Soft Skull, City Lights, Research, semiotext(e), Zone, Disinformation, Last Gasp etc etc tend to be of interest.
About me: Writer and editor of several books on underground film, including books on the Cinema of Transgression, beat cinema, and cult film. Also books on true crime. Books on low-brow culture, outsider and avant-garde art including Joe Coleman, Romain Slocombe, and Trevor Brown.
Film programmer at numerous venues including the Horse Hospital, London and Mumeson Archves, Sydney. Sometimes international film festival programmer. Occasional exhibition curator. Lecturer.
With Simon Kane cofounder of The Salon, an occasional bi-annual cultural event, last held at The Old Operating Theatre, Horse Hospital and October Gallery, and featuring performances and contributions from, amongst others, Cotton Ferox, David Tibet, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, Karl Blake, Penny Rimbaud and the Amal Gamal Ensemble
Occasional performer in underground movies, including Debbie Does Damnation.
Contributor to numerous books on film, culture, and art, as well as writer for magazines and journals including Headpress, Fortean Times, The Wire Panik, Bizarre, World Art, Senses of Cinema, etc etc.
Talking head in various documentaries on topics including Cinema of Transgression, sex and film, and outsider culture.
Sometime contributor to avant-garde music group i/o.
www.jacktext.net for more information.
Books:
No Focus: Punk On Film, (as co-editor with Chris Barber, London: Headpress Books, 2006)
Bad Cop / Bad Cop, (as editor, London: Virgin Books, 2003)
Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression, (London: Creation Books, 1995)
Books As Contributor:
‘Harry Crosby’, Straight to Hell: 20th Century Suicides, (ed. Namida King, London: Creation Books, 2004.)
The Headpress Guide to Modern Culture, (ed. David Kerekes, Critical Vision, 2004.)
‘Knee Deep in the Mud, Blood and Tears’, The Book of Joe, Joe Coleman, (San Francisco: Last Gasp / Los Angeles: La Luz de Jesus Gallery , 2003.)
‘Sticks & Bones: Weapons Training’, Search & Destroy: the Vietnam War & Film, (ed. Jack Hunter, London: Creation Books, 2003.)
‘Voyeurism, Sadism and Transgression: Screen Notes and Observation on Warhol’s Blow Job and I, A Man’, Underground USA: Filmmaking Beyond the Hollywood Cannon, ed. Xavier Mendick & Steven Jay Schneider, (London: Wallflower, 2002.)
‘Squealing Wheels and Flying Fists’, Autopia, eds. Peter Wollen and Joe Kerr, (London: ReAktion Books, 2002.)
‘Violence and Vinyl: Car Crashes in 1960s Pop’, Car Crash Culture, ed. Mikita Brottman, (New York: Palgrove / St Martins Press, 2001.)
Introduction to William S Burroughs' Unforgettable Characters: Lola La Chata and Bernabe Jurado, (Brisbane: Xochi Press, 2001.)
Introduction to Tokyo Sex Underground, Romain Slocombe, (London: Creation Books, 2001.)
Introduction to Butchershop in the Sky, , James Havoc, (London: Creation Books, 2000.)
‘Bringing Out The Dead’, Addicted: The Myth and Menace of Drugs in Film , (ed. Jack Stevenson, London: Creation Books, 2000.)
‘Towards The Medical’, Body Probe , ed. David Wood, (London: Velvet Books, 1999.)
‘Rope of Flesh: Mudhoney Deconstructed’, Necronomicon Book Two, ed. Andy Black, (London: Creation Books, 1998.).
Books available via
www.jacktext.net
www.amazon.com
www.amazon.co.uk
Who I'd like to meet: filmmakers, musicians, philosophers, visionaries, performers, photographers, sexologists, pornographers, nihilistis, 'deviants', medical professionals, explorers, artists, thinkers, outsiders, criminologists, amateur pornographers, amateur surgeons, forensic psychologists, psychoanalysists, readers, archivists, quiet experts, pathologists, medical historians.
please note apparantly I have to state the obvious: I do not censor any 'friends' for their beliefs, but that does not mean that I necessarily agree with what they say either. I figure most people are old enough to make their own minds up.
I will NOT add bands who I haven't heard, please don't ask. ESPECIALLY if you are asking because you think you sound like somebody I like. I like Throbbing Gristle & Nick Cave & Bonnie Prince Billy & Earth etc etc etc because THEY DON'T SOUND LIKE ANYBODY ELSE...
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