Author Topic: ICKY FLIX (Project of the Week for 8th of May)  (Read 426 times)

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moleshow

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ICKY FLIX (Project of the Week for 8th of May)
« on: May 08, 2017, 10:38:38 am »
YUKKKKK!! HOW ICKY!

sort of a weird project to choose, but its one that im very fond of and i don't quite think this week is right for more of the Classic stuff. soon, though. soon.
"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."

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dunwich

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Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (8th of May): ICKY FLIX
« Reply #1 on: May 08, 2017, 10:40:24 am »
Wish I had more to say about this, but I don't own it! Going off the videos I have seen and the bonus tracks on the Freak Show Special Edition, I can say though that:

1) Molly Harvey is a treasure.
2) Icky Flix versions of Freak Show >>> Album versions.

CheerfulHypocrite

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Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (8th of May): ICKY FLIX
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2017, 03:12:35 pm »
The Residents do not seem capable of actually putting out a compilation. Nibbles which is not Icky Flix seemed like a compilation. It had  You YesYesYes and Santa Dog and a green cover and it only cost £3.50 which was worth it for Skratz, Good Lovin' and The Electrocutioner. Green on the Front and Red on the Back. It is probably the only Residents compilation that sounds like someone simply thrown together. As the sleeve notes say, "so non concept that nobody bothered to tell the Residents. It seems like the early experience of having compilations thrown together by Branson rankled deep.

So, when it comes to Icky Flix there is a sense that the Residents have a warehouse full of tapes - or some strange kind of digital equivalent. At night, when nobody is about, people like Roger and Timmy wander about seeking out music to listen to. Which is want seems to happen with Songs for Swinging Larvae - the entire Renaldo and the Loaf original is sieved through a cheesecloth and placed into soaker squirt guns. Which is a euphemism for "real musical instruments". Thereupon Timmy sings along to the newly mutated music.

Which is what Icky Flix achieves most effectively: mutation. Like some kind of strange high school water pistol shooting tragedy, Unlike the horrors of real life High School Shootings - such as recalled by the Boomtown Rats in I Don't Like Monday's, the Tommy water pistol version has much more joy in it. Which is what characterises all of the pieces of Icky Flix I have heard.

And the truth is I have only heard the Icky Flix pieces. For several years I had, because of the peripatetic nature of my days, no access to a DVD player. The two pieces that stand out, for me, are Songs For Swinging Larvae and Vileness Fats. Mostly because the versions seem to sit well with the Molly Harvey vocals and the cheesecloth of real musical instruments technique. Unlike Our Finest Flowers the construction of Icky Flix is about film soundtracks not art music. Songs For Swinging Larvae had a curious place in video history. The Graeme Whiffler video narrated the story of a child abduction and was, thus, apparently excluded from television broadcast. Which is a nugget of information that I only really became aware of quite recently.

When I first heard Songs For Swinging Larvae it was in a Road called Alverstone. Which was named after The 1st Viscount Alverstone (1842 - 1915). The good Viscount was involved in the Litigation against Charles Stewart Parnell (Irish: Cathal Stiúbhard Parnell; 1846 - 1891) the Fenian and all round Republican. My landlord, being a Persian traveller from the recently created Iranian Republic - and not of theocratic bent - managed to dig up the blasphemous Lord's Prayer created by students at Cambridge University...

Quote from: Cambridge Alverstone Club
Our Lord,
Who art at Wilberforce,
Alverstone be thy name,
Thy swaps will come,
Thy grass reps will be done,
On earth as they are in Chariots,
Give us this day our daily banter,
And forgive us for our pennying,
As we forgive those who penny against us,
And lead us all into Cindies,
But deliver us from Gardies,
For thine is the club, the tie and the track,
For ever and ever,
Amen.

My Landlord believed this held the same relationship to the High Anglican Church as Renaldo and the Loaf and The Residents bore to mainstream Western music. My Landlord's Sister - who was very much a supporter of the Revolution - explained bar and cabaret music was one of the most popular forms of music while my Landlord - very much unhappy with the Revolution - preferred classical Persian and Iranian Music. In the evening, they agreed, was the time for music and conversation.

So it was that, one evening, I was sitting in a kitchen - up the road from Penny Lane,  - possibly named after James Penny (d 1799), a wealthy 18th century slave ship owner and strong opponent of abolitionism - discussing Renaldo And The Loaf

Quote from: James Penny Evidence To Parliamentary Enquiry Into Slavery
If the Weather is sultry, and there appears the least Perspiration upon their Skins, when they come upon Deck, there are Two Men attending with Cloths to rub them perfectly dry, and another to give them a little Cordial...
They are then supplied with Pipes and Tobacco....
They are amused with Instruments of Music peculiar to their own country...
and when tired of Music and Dancing, they then go to Games of Chance


Unlike James Penny the discussion was not centred on justifying anything but on the experimental nature of Renaldo And The Loaf and how all the Iranian Musician had either stopped creating or gone to Los Angeles. It was a repeated conversation about with how culture would die because politics would take control and ossify culture if possible. How the songs in Iran were all about the achievements of the Republican Guard and none about waking up and having a walk in the cool hours. Which led to the denunciation of Nibbles because it was merely a warehouse and not a carefully curated collection. Which was why Songs For Swinging Larvae was infinitely preferable.

Bizzarely, despite their differences both Zorha and Reza - Landlord and Sister - agreed that Nibbles was an outrage and merely a warehouse. Despite which, when she returned to Iran Zorha took a tape of Nibbles with her. Reza chose to stay in the UK. So far as I know, Zorha lived a happy life in her home. Reza spent the remainder of his life teaching around the UK after converting to Christianity - as this was the religion of the United Kingdom. Their grandparents were Zoroastrian and so, according to Reza, practicing the religion of the Country you are in is perfectly acceptable.

Which is why Vileness Fats and Songs For Swinging Larvae stand out for me on Icky Flix. Not because they are the greatest works in history but because they both strike me as going beyond the practice of compilation and warehousing music and help to keep music as a living, breathing entity. The strange vault of music that Timmy races through picking and sampling from here and there. Keeping music alive rather than preserved.

Which is what Icky Flix seems to be: keeping music alive. The reimagined Songs For Swinging Larvae is as far from Penny Lane as James Penny is - in the same way that the Lords Prayer of the High Anglican Church is distant from the Alverston Club's version. Yet, both Anglican and Averstone were, and are, the Ruling Class. They keep their culture alive with blasphemies that would have lesser mortals deemed venal. The vault of Timmy and Roger and Arf and Omega and even Lonesome Jack seems to let anybody who can enter recreate everything with a kind of licence. As if the weather were sultry. The vault of the Cryptic Corporation is not a reliable repository in the way that the compilers of Nibbles would want to ossify and pickle music.

Which is why I sometimes listen to Icky Flix online without ever really wishing to purchase it. To be honest, my curiousity has never really been piqued enough. Icky Flix is merely a station in a journey. An imaginary station.

Not altogether reliable for facts.

moleshow

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Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (8th of May): ICKY FLIX
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2017, 12:46:36 am »
Icky Flix was sort of a marker in terms of the timeline of my rz obsession. my friend told me that she had seen it in her parent's basement and i went on over and we watched it.

i think what im interested in is mainly the live renditions- the whole operation has always been strangely interesting to me. it all feels like i'm not seeing some aspect of it, some piece of the inspiration for the project, some part of the creative process. and that's fun. according to the Kettles of Fish DVD, the theme for Singing Resident and Molly's costumes was "beauty and the beast". i just thought that was interesting- i'm not sure that it holds much relevance to the content. it's similar to The Way We Were in how it doesn't really have to make sense. it just is.

there are certain covers that stick out- the TR&R Concentrate, which warmed me up to the whole thing, the cover of Constantinople with the Nigel Senada-esque sax riffs, the dreamy Man's World... i might just end up naming the whole setlist.

the one that struck every chord with me was the rendition of Benny, with the section from Nobody Laughs When They Leave so wonderfully put in there. the slow, almost winding guitar plays nicely with what seems to be MIDI harpsichord. the way Singing Resident tells the story of the man who's head was halfway eaten by a shark really has a hazy feeling to it. the second half of the song seems to slow down time itself. i really love how Singing Resident does the little kissy kissy noises after "still... half... a kiss". it's very silly and very cute.

since this project is really based entirely on other projects, it's not one that you can get really deeply into. but it's good anyways.
"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."