When I was 14 years old, I started a comic book fanzine. With an original cover of Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sim on the cover of issue #1, I was already more interested in independent comic producers than Marvel and DC. In fact, I was more interested in zines than comics I think. I co-edited four issues of Gratis with Scott Hutchison, now a high-powered lawyer, though I haven't been in touch with him in over 30 years. I think they all came out in 1978, and then I went on to science-fiction zines and something called amateur press alliances. By 1981 I was putting out punk/new wave fanzines, and getting interested in small press poetry and other forms of DIY publishing. 37 years later, I'm still fascinated by small press publishing and continue to be personally involved in that world. Just a reminder that it always starts with rock and roll for me: it was KISS that led to Howard the Duck that led to comic zines, then to science-fiction zines, then punk/new wave zines, then small press poetry, then everything that I'm doing in my life today. I'll return to this theme over the next 494 entries.
#5: Howard the Duck #12 + #13
The story goes like this. Back in the mid 1970s I was into KISS for about 30 seconds. My friend Bruce Sorozan (spelled wrong I’m sure - my apologies) was getting into comic collecting and told me that KISS were doing to appear in Howard the Duck #12, and then in a full-fledged way in #13. I went to our local variety store (“John’s” or Neighbourhood Variety) and Lloyd Monaghan, who was a comic collector and son of John Monaghan, sold me a copy of Howard the Duck #12.
I dug Howard the Duck and I still do, though I’m a pretty passive fan now. I have an original page from #12 (I’m willing to sell it if if you are interested). I liked the rebel-duck without a cause vibe, and my interest in comics was always toward the marginal: underground comics, parody, EC/Mad, Eisner, Spiegelman, Crumb, existential water fowl from Cleveland: Howard the Duck #12 was the gateway drug.
My interest in comics comes and goes. I worked at four different comic stores. I worked at comic conventions. I showed my comic collection to Prince Phillip (honest) at one of those Duke of Edinburgh Prize visits he used to make (I believe were in the conference centre of the Hotel Toronto/L’Hotel/The Hilton). I collected thousands of comics. I sold them all. I regressed during the del Toro exhibition and installed about 1800 comics in our exhibition. I made sure we had a run of the original Howard the Duck series.
The KISS comic came out (“printed with real blood!”) and it was pretty good, with better paper, printing and finishes then typical Marvel and DC fare. By then I was into punk, new wave, and many things that weren’t KISS.
And I got into zines (next!).
#4: Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits Volume One
Memories are unreliable, filled with condensations, displacements, distortions, and outright errors. Nonetheless, my first memory in life seems to be hearing this record, one of the few LPs in my parents’ collection in the mid-1960s. “Ring of Fire” is my clearest memory. I loved it so much that in kindergarten, when we were asked to teach songs to the other children, I sang “Ring of Fire”, not “Itsy Bitsy Spider” or anything along those lines. I didn’t see the humour in it, because I was in love with that song, that album, and with music.
My love of all of the above has never wavered.
Back in 2007, in the early days of my 1000 Songs Facebook Group, I wrote about “Ring of Fire” (https://www.facebook.com/notes/1000-songs/song-19-ring-of-fire/10150202361111451/):
I don't remember anything before "Ring of Fire." This might quite literally be true. My earliest memories in life include listening to music on my parent's "hi-fidelity stereo" system. We had certain records (mostly 45s) that could be played on the "record player" and others (mostly 33 1/3 LPs) that could only be played on the stereo system. Now, I remember my dad actually getting the stereo system so we must have been playing the Cash albums on something before that, but it's all a bit of a blur. "Ring of Fire" was recorded in March, 1963 and I was born six months later so it's understandable.
But I couldn't have heard it, in fact, until 1967 when Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits Volume 1 came out, an album that my mother played incessantly, as did I, once I was trusted with the stereo system (and later when I got my own copy). We only had a handful of albums and this was one of them, as well as at least one other Cash album that we got the next year, the classic live album At Folsom Prison, and I believe its brilliant sister album, At San Quentin.
I loved every cut on the Cash albums we had and, as it turns out, had memorized the songs word for word. So, when I got to kindergarten and was asked to sing a song to the class, instead of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" or something like that, I sang "Ring of Fire" to the class. I just loved that song and still do today. And, despite the fact that the Sun years aren't well represented on the collection (it's all material from 1959-1966, mostly Columbia but, for some reason, at least some Sun-originated material like "I Walk the Line"), and that I now also love so much work that followed, including the miraculous Rick Rubin-produced albums, my understanding of Cash was really formed with this pantheon:
Jackson (though the At Folsom Prison version is the classic)
I Walk the Line
Understand Your Man
Orange Blossom Special
The One on the Right is on the Left
Ring of Fire
It Ain't Me Babe (my first Dylan song? Or possibly Peter, Paul & Mary's Blowin' in the Wind?)
The Ballad of Ira Hayes
The Rebel - Johnny Yuma (I have memories of a "Yuban" commercial being set to this song - that can't be true, can it?)
Five Feet High and Rising
Don't Take Your Guys to Town
Wow! What an amazing collection of songs.
"Ring of Fire" itself was penned by June Carter and Merle Kilgore and was Cash's biggest hit single. The song is about June's falling in love with Cash, now immortalized as a cliche in the film Walk the Line (I'm not a fan but I want to stay as positive as possible in my postings! I won't always succeed). The original recording of th song was by Anita Carter, June's sister. Cash heard it and claims that in a dream her heard the song accompanied by Mexican horns and decided that his version had to be rendered thus, with mariachi horns.
There are tons of cover versions. The first one I remember hearing was by Wall of Voodoo about 35 years ago (or more... I'm getting old!). It was goofy but I still like it.
Social Distortion did a punk-ish version that was a minor hit (it's OK). Frank Zappa did a parody (not his strongest moment). I have a nice version by Elvis Costello (and someone else - can't remember off the top of my head). There are many 1960s versions I've yet to hear by Kitty Wells, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dave Dudley, and Tom Jones (! - released in 1967). But the song is so inextricably Johnny Cash's that I'm not sure it's ever going to become a "standard" in that sense.
#3: Innis Film Society, 1985-1994
(I wrote this for the record, before my memory is completely shot. Let me know if there are details I've misremembered, or whether you notice any egregious omissions.
The Innis Film Society was born of out of love, ambition and opportunity.
There had been an Innis Film Society since at least the mid-1970s and, while it was similar to typical student film societies at the time, Innis College was and is home to the Cinema Studies Programme at University of Toronto, so the programming tended to be a mix of art film, Hollywood classics and the occasional avant-garde film. Think Truffaut, Welles, Snow. In 1985 there was a leadership vacuum, so it was possible for a small group of us who were interested in augmenting the avant-garde content to take the reins. There was also a healthier than usual budget from the student society so we were able, in the 1985-86 season, to begin to establish a new identity for Innis, attracting enthusiasts of avant-garde film and not just university students.
Of course, that was still a transitional time, so if memory serves me well, the premiere of Bruce Elder's Lamentations, shown over two nights in the fall of 1986, was followed the next week by Munster Go Home, and probably a Max Ophuls double bill after that. However, we became increasingly interested in becoming a showcase for avant-garde cinema, especially the "classics" that we read about but had almost no opportunity to actually see, and as a place for "artists with their work" presentations, featuring both local and traveling filmmakers. We believed we could offer something different from the Funnel and the AGO, the only other regular forums for avant-garde film at the time.
In the of spring of 1985, the Innis Film Society was principally Jim Shedden, Paul Della Penna (now a senior librarian with the Toronto Public Library system), Mike Zryd, and Bart Testa as our faculty advisor. During the 1985-86 season we were joined by Kate MacKay, Susan Oxtoby and Lisa Godfrey. Dave Morris joined the group in the fall of 1986 and became a very prolific member, and a maker of a series of fantastic super-8, and one 35mm, films. He disappeared from the film scene altogether and now teaches philosophy at Concordia.
Over the years, the following were also either members of the IFS board, or helped make it happen in other ways: John Kneller, John McCullough, Elizabeth Yake, Alexa Frances Shaw, Amy Bodman, Tracy Jenkins, Melony Ward, Chris Eamon, Art Wilson, and Holly MacKay.
The Film Society showcased a huge representation of films from the CFMDC's collection, while also drawing on all the university libraries, the public library, specialty libaries, and private collections. When our funds were better, we broadened our reach to include MoMA's Circulating Film Library and Canyon Cinema, and we even broke down the Film-Makers Coop's resistance to sending films across the scary Canadian border. Favorites emerged, including some oddball films that we would take any opportunity to program, including Maltese Cross Movement (Keewatin Dewdney); Cosmic Ray (Bruce Conner); On the Marriage Broker Joke As Cited by Freud in His Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed? (Owen Land); and anything by Paul Sharits, David Rimmer, Hollis Frampton, Marie Menken, Kenneth Anger, Robert Gardner and Joseph Cornell. Andy Warhol joined that list when MoMA started making new prints of his films available. Showing Chelsea Girls, a life-changing film when I saw it at the Funnel in 1981 (82?), was a highlight of our programming.
Innis Town Hall, our primary venue, was built in the 1970s and seated 200 people on groovy orange benches. They were replaced with proper theatre seats in the mid-1980s, making it a little more comfortable, but taking away a bit of its soul. At that time there were only 16mm projectors, which wasn't a problem for avant-garde cinema. Eventually 35mm projectors were installed and we inaugurated them by showing a beautiful step-printed 35mm print of Brakhage's The Dante Quartet, the first time we brought him to Toronto. The film was so beautiful that we decided to show it again. That's when it was revealed that our union projectionist (not Kate) had gouged the print adding a deep green line to the film. We all got over it, but you could smell the anxiety (mine) in the theatre that night.
A big three-gun video projector was added to the mix around 1989 but we avoided it like the plague. Even if we'd been interested in video at the time (and we were very dogmatic cinephiles in those days), we wouldn't have used it. One had to wheel it into place every time it was used, thus throwing off the calibration and making the image look even more hideous than it would have otherwise. A few years ago the theatre was completely renovated and, to my mind, is one of the best places to see film in Toronto. Given that they have great 16mm and 35mm projection, along with a stunning Christie DLP. The theatre is well used by the independent media arts community today, as is Room 222, small film theatre that was renovated at the same time. A collective that I co-founded, ad hoc, uses the space on a regular basis.
Eventually the Innis Film Society became a not-for-profit corporation, trading university funding bodies for arts councils and the like. This had both positive and negative consequences, though today it just seems like it all had to happen. It allowed us to view Innis College as just one possible venue, and to experiment with places like the Rivoli, the AGO's Jackman Hall, the Addiction Research Foundation, and CineCycle, when it was at Spadina and Cecil, behind the LCBO. CineCycle became my favorite venue, despite its obvious shortcomings.
Various members also got in the habit of hosting informal screening salons in their living rooms, and it was there where we able to further establish our connection to the music, literary and visual art communities. Interdisciplinarity was one of Innis's core values, so over the years we were able to feature writers, composers, musicians, scholars, and others whose practice would enhance the presentation context. We featured events like the delirious, 31 hour reading of Finnegans Wake held at CineCycle, and we published Spleen, an avant-garde zine, though it only lasted two issues.
Looking back, one of the most satisfying aspects of putting on the Innis Film Society programs is just how entrepreneurial we had to be. As a result, we collaborated with a huge range of organizations, including some odd bedfellows. I don't remember them all, but they included New Music Concerts, the ROM, the AGO, Harbourfront Centre, the Goethe-Institut, LIFT, the CFMDC, Pleasure Dome, Public, various organizations at U of T, York, Ryerson, the Italian Cultural Institute, the British Council, the Toronto Bloomsday group, and many, many others.
Ultimately, I think the most important thing we did was be a fairly consistent venue for traveling filmmakers. We became a default venue for a certain kind of filmmaker, and Pleasure Dome for another. To caricature it a little bit, the "art for art's sake" filmmakers tended to hosted by Innis, whereas the "subversive cinema" types were more likely showcased by Pleasure Dome. Guests featured by Innis over the years included: Chris Welsby (Australia); Cantrills (Australia); Ernie Gehr; Brakhage; Carl Brown; Marjorie Keller; Sandra Davis; Yann Beauvais; Klaus Telscher; Abraham Ravett; Richard Kerr; Chris Gallagher; Istvan Antal; Barbara Sternberg; Mike Cartmell; Bruce Elder; Michael Snow; Stan Brakhage; Phil Hoffman; Ken Jacobs; Kenneth Anger; Warren Sonbert; Phil Solomon; Carolee Schneemann; Paul Sharits; Pat O'Neill; Alain Fleischer; and Peter Kubelka.
The Film Society lost its momentum in 1992, and had its last screening in 1994. There were a number of factors leading to its demise but its principle players all went on to significant film programming activities elsewhere, or took up various creative pursuits that had their seeds in the Film Society. I went on to be a curator of film at the AGO, and an occasional maker of documentaries about avant-garde filmmakers like Brakhage and Snow. Susan Oxtoby went on to program film for Cinematheque Ontario, and is now the senior curator for the prestigious Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. Kathryn MacKay joined her there as a curator a couple of years ago. Mike Zryd is a Professor of Film at York University, specializing in avant-garde cinema (he is completing a book on Hollis Frampton). Bart Testa became a prolific film programmer, and author of many texts on avant-garde cinema. Lisa Godfrey is a senior producer at CBC, currently working on the legendary Ideas series. Tracy Jenkins runs the Lula Lounge in Toronto, a mecca for great music of the world.
#2: Richard Scarry's Storybook Dictionary
A Giant Golden Book that came out in 1968, it wasn't my first book, but it's the first one I remember. I remember Bossy Bear, Dilly Duck and her ducklings, Happy Rabbit, and Paddy Dog, and many other characters. I remember the fabulously inventive drawings and the primary colours (plus brown). I remember feeling at home in Busy Town, perhaps my first image of "The Urban", with its chaos, diversity, street life, and enterprise. This book was a total gateway drug for me. Opening it up today I am still charmed, and I still want to live in Busy Town.
#1: I Drink
A feature-length documentary made with Peter McAuley about alcoholism, addiction generally, and recovery. We are subjects in the film, as are many friends and family members on a similar journey.
Source: https://vimeo.com/69819102