Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Jaws Next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner

A clean shave, a clean shirt, and sparkling repartee made for another enjoyable evening with Roy, despite the questionable value of our subject matter, the time-hopping espionage yarn “Dimension 5” (1966) – and the fact that a three-inch spider crawled into sight just as we were about to go live. The spider is now living outdoors, and the episode is now living in our archive, so definitely check it out, even if I can’t recommend the movie (streaming free on YouTube, if you really want to groan).

Next week, we’ll try to make amends with a conversation about one of the most perfectly constructed blockbusters ever made – further highlighting the ineptitude of “Dimension 5” – Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975). A seafaring trinity of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss take on Bruce the shark, after he puts the bite on a New England beach community.

Part suspense thriller and part swashbuckling adventure, what does it all have to do with science fiction? Well, I guess Dreyfuss’ Hooper does get to play around with some high-tech equipment as the team’s marine biologist. But who cares?

What can be more “Fourth of July” than a trip to the beach? Leave your shark repellent in the comments section, as we be swimmin’ with bow-legged women, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. There’ll be tourists on the menu, when we livestream on Facebook, next Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

June 26, 2021
Kurt Schwertsik A Velvet Gentleman’s Birthday

Even if Erik Satie had never claimed the mantle of “Velvet Gentleman,” there would still be Kurt Schwertsik. Schwertsik, impish and dandified on the one occasion I met him (pictured, right), was born in Vienna on this date in 1935.

A pupil of both Joseph Marx – a self-professed romantic of rather conservative bent – and avant-garde icon Karlheinz Stockhausen, Schwertsik was a founding member of the so-called Third Viennese School. He also co-founded the ensembles die reihe (the series), with Friedrich Cerha, the composer who completed Alban Berg’s “Lulu,” and MOB art and Tone ART, with his friend HK Gruber. (All uses of upper and lower case are Schwertsik’s. Clearly, he is rather loose in his application of the shift key!)

In addition, he played horn with the Vienna Symphony, and taught at the Vienna Conservatory and Vienna Musikhochschule.

Schwertsik’s music is frequently characterized by irony and humor, and invariably rooted in melody and tonality.

I had the privilege to interview him during a concert held at Austrian Cultural Forum New York in March 2012. The Aron Quartett performed his “skizzen und entwürfe” (“sketches and drawings”), from 1974, and a Schwertsik world premiere, “Lammersammlung” (“Song Collection”), which had been commissioned for the occasion. Also on the program were works by Erich Zeisl and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Schwertsik, sporting Freudian beard and spectacles, was all smiles, and rather dapper, in cravat and red velvet jacket. He exuded much charm and held the audience in the palm of his hand.

By the time of our meeting, his “Dracula’s House-and-Court Music” had already become a staple of my Halloween programming, just as I try to include his Strauss tribute, “Vienna Chronicles 1848,” in my playlists around New Year’s. Neither piece is posted on YouTube.

Here’s one that’s new to me, “Adieu Satie,” for bandoneon and string quartet:

“Conversation Piece” for guitar and marimba:

“Drei späte Liebeslieder” (“Three Late Love Songs”) for cello and piano:

Happy birthday, Kurt Schwertsik!

June 25, 2021
Dimension 5 A Christmas Movie Sci-Fi Oddity?

Is “Dimension 5” (1966) actually a Christmas movie?

Unless the United States withdraws all its troops from Southeast Asia, a foreign crime ring is set to detonate a hydrogen bomb in Los Angeles on December 25.

Justin Power (Jeffrey Hunter), of Espionage Inc., is teamed with Chinese agent Ki Ti “Kitty” Tso (France Nuyen) to take on the nefarious Big Buddha (Harold “Oddjob” Sakata, the closest to James Bond this film is ever going to get).

Oh yeah, there’s also a little matter of time travel. Very little, it turns out, since “Dimension 5” has probably the most bafflingly underutilized piece of advantageous gadgetry in sci-fi history.

Made on a TV budget and with rudimentary technique, the film is of principal interest for providing employment for a veritable farm team of future “Star Trek” guest stars. No less than five cast members appeared on the original, classic “Trek” – one of them was in three different episodes! – and a sixth appeared on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

To be perfectly honest, I kind of wish I could time-hop out of this one. Sadly, that kind of technology is unavailable. I’ll risk dementia in our discussion of “Dimension 5,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Leave your marbles in the comments section, as we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

PLEASE NOTE: If you plan to subject yourself to the film in preparation for Friday’s show, it appears currently to be available for streaming in the U.S. only on YouTube. It’s your call. The film may be free, but it’s also 90 minutes of your life you’ll never see again, without a time-belt.

June 24, 2021
Medieval Dance Mania The Dancing Plague

Probably the last thing anyone wants to do after a long night of leaping over bonfires on St. John’s Eve is to cut a rug – but on this date in 1374, that’s precisely what happened. Against their collective will, hundreds found themselves swept up in an involuntary dance mania.

It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, but it was one of the largest and most noteworthy outbreaks of terpsichorean madness, a malady that seems largely to have been a phenomenon of the Middle Ages. Participants danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. Some dropped down dead.

The cause of the frenzy has never been adequately explained.

Read more about St. John’s Dance (often attributed to St. Vitus) here:

https://www.onthisday.com/articles/the-fatal-dance-manias-of-medieval-europe

And here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania?fbclid=IwAR0rpc5K6wIEUrTmSfNGHhLRRvzCJUBY1IJgMLMpG1NQMV05Vigml3c-Zkw

Gotta dance!

June 24, 2021
St. John’s Eve Bonfires, Folklore & Fun

Just as you’ve recovered from your solstice hangover, here comes St. John’s Eve!

You can thank the Romans. They’re the ones who designated June 24 the summer solstice – hence, the discrepancy between the longest day (June 21) and Midsummer. The Romans gave us roads, aqueducts, and a legacy of midsummer debauchery. Why split hairs?

Later, as was so often the case with the placement of religious holidays, the Church figured out it had the highest probability of winning friends and influencing people if it diverted the stream of paganism, rather than outright dam(n) it. To this end, June 24 became the Feast Day of St. John. This worked out very nicely indeed, since St. Luke implies the birth of John the Baptist occurred six months before that of Jesus. Which reminds us: only 185 shopping days until Christmas!

On the eve of St. John’s nativity (observed), the night of June 23, good Christians celebrate as only reformed pagans can, with an understanding that everyone will be up to fulfill their religious obligations on the morrow. What happens on St. John’s Eve stays on St. John’s Eve.

For tonight, it will be a time for harvesting St. John’s Wort, with its miraculous healing powers. It will be a time for seeking the fern flower, which can bring good fortune, wealth, and the ability to understand animal speech. It will be a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits, and even dragons, which roam the earth, as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it will be a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the Slavic demon Chernobog, who emerges from the Bald Mountain at the climax of Disney’s “Fantasia.” (Erroneously, the narrator, Deems Taylor, claims that it’s Walpurgis Night.)

Leaping over a bonfire is seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Not to light a bonfire is seen as offering up one’s own house for destruction by fire. The bigger the fire, the further at bay are kept evil spirits. The further the evil spirits, the better guarantee of a good harvest.

So get out there and cavort heartily under a strawberry moon!
Chernobog loves strawberry.

Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in this Disney showstopper by Modest Mussorgsky:

http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Fantasia-1940/film8.html

Happy St. John’s Eve!

June 23, 2021

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