A look back at Jim Jones' history in Los Angeles, the sad, smelly fate of Rose Parade floats, 5 Every week and more!
The miking secrets of David Bowie's 'Heroes'
Former KPCC engineer Peter Stenshoel used to do an Album of the Week feature for the former Off-Ramp blog. In 2011 he wrote this entry about the late David Bowie's landmark album "Heroes."
Darrell Perry, my media-savvy friend and the bloke who first lead a team of photographers at the Wall Street Journal, once shared his understanding of David Bowie. "Bowie wants you to think his work is ten years ahead of its time," he said, "but, in fact, each album perfectly captures the present."
In summer of 1977, West Berlin was the city of the future, representative of the same nervous energy fueling the music of international youth. "Heroes," an album recorded just 500 feet from the infamous Berlin Wall, captured the Cold War angst of its age with innovative musical techniques and high levels of lyrical ambiguity. Exactly 10 years later, President Reagan, speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in the summer of 1987, exhorted the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to "...tear down this wall!" In 2 years, the Brandenburg Gate was opened, and the Berlin Wall was effectively "torn down."
I'm not claiming this album in particular had anything to do with that remarkable reversal. But the late 20th Century spirit of grand adventure and change -- from new wave to punk, free jazz to minimalism, DIY to performance art, hyper-realism, and deconstruction of formal models of the past -- could have left its mark on East German consciousness.
Regardless, "Heroes" is a cultural touchstone. Critically acclaimed as one of David Bowie's best albums, he was assisted by major talents including Brian Eno, Tony Visconti, and Robert Fripp. Producer Visconti achieved a remarkable vocal effect on the title track by spacing three microphones -- 9 inches, 15 feet, and 50 feet away in a straight line out into a huge orchestral recording room to catch Bowie's vocals echoing the entire room. His genius was to put "gates," or stoppers, on the farther microphones until Bowie's vocals got louder. So there's an intimacy at first, which begins to yield to the natural reverberation of the room as he sings an octave higher and louder. This is one of the reasons "Heroes" is such a memorable song. Fripp's musical guitar feedback and Eno's odd electronic sounds are other landmark elements.
German bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Neu! also were paid tribute in atmospheric, minimalist instrumentals like Moss Garden, Sense of Doubt, and V-2 Schneider. Other songs are downright noisy, but enjoyable romps.
Hear more wonderful details of the session in this interview with producer Tony Visconti.
Tearing down Rose Parade floats is sad, smelly and takes weeks
It happens every year: the lights come down. The good gifts get used, the bad ones get returned. Christmas trees linger in the street. And floats used in the Tournament of Roses parade can't stay on display forever.
After they run their route and go on display in Northeast Pasadena, the floats go back to where they were made. For Phoenix Decorating Company, one of the largest float makers in Pasadena, that means about a dozen of them end up in a giant warehouse on Raymond Avenue — just down the street from KPCC's studios.
Just weeks before, the warehouse was packed with volunteers. Now the building is quiet. It's a giant room with empty, motionless floats crammed together inside.
"As you can see, it's very tight parking," said Chuck Hayes, who works in sponsor relations at Phoenix.
The deconstruction process is meticulous — at Phoenix, flowers are removed one-by-one from each float. All possible living material is extracted and turned to mulch by a local recycling company. Eventually a smell permeates the warehouse: wilting flowers, oranges. Hayes says you get used to it.
Building a float out of a living thing means that, by definition, it's going to die. Hayes says it's always a bittersweet time for him. He remembers the first year he worked, back in 2006. "I was looking at all the great elements that we had created — all the attention to detail. Hours. Thousands of hours of patience and getting it right. And then all of the sudden the welding torch comes out."
When the teardown is complete, Phoenix will begin preparations for next year.
Without shelter space, LA's homeless turn to tents
This week, government workers flooded L.A.'s riverbeds, hoping to convince people like South L.A.'s Yvette Grant to get out of her tent and into a homeless shelter.
It’s a tough sell: Grant's saving to move into an apartment, but she's stayed in shelters before. The lines are long.
"People are just in your business, that you don’t even know," she says. "So no, I’d rather just do as I do — be as I be — right here. I’m comfortable."
What to do with LA's homeless tent encampments was a big topic for local officials in 2015. And this year, as heavy El Nino rains hit, the problem's only becoming more pronounced.
Tents like Grant's have become a sort of de facto solution to Los Angeles’ homeless problem. In its biannual count, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported that while L.A.’s homeless population rose 12 percent between 2013 and 2015, the number of people living in tents or makeshift shelters has literally doubled.
And even as government workers, backed by harsh weather, try to convince homeless to abandon their tents, some non profits are handing out new ones.
Rebecca Prine runs Recycled Resources for the Homeless. She’s been handing out tents and other supplies for just over six years. She says even in good weather, you need tents.
"I think that regardless of what’s available in terms of housing, you’re always gonna have a population who is severely mentally ill, or caught in the throes of a heavy addiction, who are going to be hesitant to use any type of institutionalized setting," says Prine. "And most of the shelters are just that."
And even if all of LA’s homeless were ready to move to shelters, there aren’t enough beds.
Earlier this week, a Civil Grand Jury report found only 13 percent of L.A. County’s unsheltered homeless could be accommodated with current shelter space. The Civil Grand Jury recommended, among other things, handing out tents.
But that solution's not popular among many in Los Angeles. Residents and businesses who live near encampments have complained.
And others, like Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph, who patrols Skid Row, say the tents breed crime.
He says the tents make doing patrols more difficult — he needs a warrant to look through them usually. He says they’re hiding places for drugs and bargaining chips for local gangs.
Joseph points to a rise in aggravated assaults and robberies on Skid Row this past year. In a presentation to the L.A. City Council, Joseph blamed the tents for an increase in heroin overdoses and rapes, too.
"For the most part, what I see are people with the best of intentions giving out tents, he says. "But the streets are telling me something different."
City officials haven’t been able to agree on a way to remove the tents without violating the rights of the people inside them.
Still, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti says the city must do something.
"People sleeping in sidewalks, people sleeping in tents, is a reflection of our failure to house people and to have a homelessness infrastructure to get people off those streets," he says. "My opinion is that’s not humane at all."
The city’s focus has been to expand permanent housing option for the homeless, less so emergency shelter space. The idea is to use limited resources to solve homelessness--instead of continuing to fund temporary solutions like shelters, which has largely been the anti-homelessness strategy for decades.
Last year, both the L.A. City Council and L.A. County Board of Supervisors pledged $100 million towards tackling the homeless problem. Some additional funds have gone into expanding emergency space during winter storms. Much has been committed to rental vouchers and other permanent housing options.
On Thursday, L.A.'s chief administrator released a report saying it would cost $1.85 billion--a far larger investment than the city's current commitment--to find homes for all of L.A.'s homeless.
Prine doesn't disagree with funding long term housing. But she says without enough current housing or shelter space, the tents will continue to be necessary.
"Giving somebody a tent and a warm place to sleep and a safe place to sleep is simply keeping them healthy," Prine says. "I don’t think it’s encouraging them to stay homeless."
When the next rains hit, she'll be out, helping L.A.'s homeless weather the El Nino storms--inside brand new tents.
'Famous for being famous' icon Angelyne lets Off-Ramp hitch a ride in her pink Corvette
In 2000, when I arrived in Los Angeles from an obscure state in the Upper Midwest, people tried to explain Angelyne. "Who is she? What does she do? Why is she famous, again?" Then, after a while, you get it: She is Angelyne, and Angelyne simply is.
In an article about her new 2015 pink Corvette, Los Angeles magazine described her thus: "The enigmatic billboard legend Angelyne is famous for being famous — the original Kim Kardashian (without the sex tape) — and though her pictures have appeared above city streets for the last three decades, only her closest confidants know her original identity."
(1997 photo of an Angelyne billboard. Anthony Friedkin/LAPL/L.A. Neighborhoods Collection)
A friend in his 30s remembered in a tweet:
Such an icon. I remember her billboard was the highlight of the school bus ride for many pre-teen boys.
— Jordan Davis (@jordancdavis)
@KPCCofframp Such an icon. I remember her billboard was the highlight of the school bus ride for many pre-teen boys. #losangelesmemories
— Jordan Davis (@jordancdavis) February 8, 2015
I'd glimpsed her signature pink Corvette a few times, but until I went to an art opening at Meltdown Comics a few weekends ago, I had never seen Angelyne in the flesh. But there she was, promoting one of her acrylics — a self-portrait of her, nude but Barbie-neutered, astride a skeleton.
We can't really show the picture, but she's an artist, a singer:
Angelyne singing "My List" in a music video from the early 1980s
... and an actor:
Angelyne in "Earth Girls Are Easy" (1988)
She's also, as I was to learn, beloved by many — including a fish named Lightning at the French Market — and a very good parallel parker. I know because, after 15 years in L.A., I not only got to meet Angelyne, but ride with her in the famous car. I knew Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson would appreciate it:
I already was. (And, by the way, if Huell and Angelyne would have met, there would have been a cosmic singularity that would have destroyed the world.)
During our half-hour drive, I learned:
- Why she charges for fan photos and shields her face behind the Japanese fan: she doesn't want to "blow her wad" by giving everything away for cheap
- That she puts proceeds from her sales into a purse shaped like a chicken
- That she's happy, "because I make people happy." Although she is "questing for a pink, pain-free existence, and I'm going to find it, gods and faeries."
In all, I have to say Angelyne seems old-fashioned nowadays. Almost demure. She's sexy and sex-positive, sure. But while she shakes her silhouetted boobs in that music video, there's no sex tape of her. She's much more a Mae West than a Kim Kardashian. In an age when many famous people share everything about themselves, we still know almost nothing of Angelyne but what she wants us to know.
That moment when you realize Angelyne is in front of you at
. Too good not to share with
— Lana Rushing (@lanarushing)
That moment when you realize Angelyne is in front of you at @TheCoffeeBean. Too good not to share with #mydayinla! pic.twitter.com/cV5xuZIS6p
— Lana Rushing (@lanarushing) February 11, 2015
(Photo of Cassie reacting to Angelyne reposted courtesy Erica Fields)
And still, people get a kick out of seeing her (there were many honks as we drove around) and meeting her, and nobody balked at paying for a photo. They seem to admire her for continuing to do her own thing. "God bless America," said local historian Chris Nichols, talking that night about Angelyne.
Or as Peggy McKay, star of "Days of Our Lives," put it in the French Market parking lot as Angelyne sold T-shirts to fans, "I can't explain [Angelyne's allure], but I recognize it. I think it's an amazing legend that she has created. And I congratulate her on being Angelyne."
Listening to the voices silenced by the Jonestown Massacre
On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 people perished in a settlement in Guyana known as Jonestown. Almost all of those that died that day were members of the Peoples Temple — a church which once had a branch right here in Los Angeles. The tragedy lingers in American history as an example of faith gone horribly wrong.
But behind the mass suicide, the brainwashing and the cult’s maniacal leader Jim Jones, there are stories of real people who joined the Peoples Temple in the hopes of building a community of equality and racial diversity. In fact, African-American women made up one of the largest groups of the people who died at Jonestown.
In her new novel, “White Nights, Black Paradise,” author Sikivu Hutchinson tells a fictional story of the Peoples Temple, but she’s based it on some very real people whose voices have so far gone unheard.
Off-Ramp contributor Robert Garrova went to 1366 S. Alvarado, once home to the L.A. branch of the Peoples Temple, to speak with Hutchinson.
We all have blurry images in our heads of the Peoples Temple, maybe from news coverage or a documentary, but what was it in the ‘70s?
In the ‘70s it was part of the progressive, social justice, activist movement. And many people know about the infamous downward spiral of the church in Jonestown, Guyana, in November of 1978 where over 900 members perished as a result of a cyanide cocktail. But I underscore in the book that Peoples Temple was an extremely rich and vibrant movement. It attracted a cross-section of, again, multi-racial congregationists, African-American migrants from the South and the Midwest and the West, young white folk who were progressive in political orientation, ex-hippies, Vietnam vets, gay, lesbian, trans and queer worshipers. So Peoples Temple really extends beyond the mainstream caricatures and stereotypes that have been foisted upon it within the mainstream media.
You've pointed out that there are some very real, human stories behind what everybody thinks of as just “Jim Jones.”
Absolutely. And even if we look at the final moments of Jonestown, there were a lot of conflicting perspectives on whether or not the suicide that Jones was exhorting everyone to do was in the best interest of the community. And so there’s been this canard circulating within the historical record that, well, it was either an outright murder or it was an outright suicide, that people wholeheartedly “drank the Kool-Aid.” And, of course, that’s a misnomer, because it was Flavor Aid and not Kool-Aid. So I attempt to foreground all of those conflicting and nuanced strands at the end of the novel. Where you had a person like Christine Miller, who was valiantly and singularly standing up against Jim Jones and saying there must be another path towards socialism and freedom.
This is the woman who is on tape, in what’s known as the “Death Tape”?
Yes, her name is Christine Miller. An older African-American woman from the L.A. [Peoples Temple] church who was the only person to actively critique Jim Jones during the final discussion and debate about whether or not the colony should commit mass suicide.
You’re circling back around to re-visit Peoples Temple and the events at Jonestown — albeit in a fictional way — but why is that? Why did you write this book now?
I was intrigued by the fact that, in most of the representations I encountered, there was no black female voice. There have been two memoirs published by African-American survivors. But beyond those two representations, the vast sprawling canon of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, has more or less marginalized black women’s voices and black women’s subjectivity. And so I felt that it was important to try and capture the nuances and the complexities and the richness of what compelled African-American women to become invested in Peoples Temple, what compelled them to emigrate to Jonestown, Guyana. How was it informed by African-American social history and black women’s cultural identity and black women’s solidarity with organized religion and faith institutions. So all of these strands are woven into the fictitious portrayals within the novel... We need to look at the full scope of what happened in Jonestown and not make these reductive condemnations about what was occurring to real human beings engaged in what they believed to be a life and death struggle when it came to the humanity and the self-determination of people of color.
Song of the Week: "Tear It" by Nav/Attack
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week is "Tear It" by singer and producer Nav/Attack.
Nav/Attack is the solo project of Andrew Lynch, who lives in here in Los Angeles and has worked behind the scenes with artists like John Cale, Sia, and Off!
https://soundcloud.com/dangerbirdrecords/navattack-tear-it
"Tear it" is off Nav/Attack's self-titled debut, out now on Dangerbird Records.
There's tons of videos on this new album, they're weird, sometimes gross and sometimes feature actor Adam Goldberg. Take a look at the Nav/Attack Youtube to see what we mean.
The abrupt end of Danny Wylde's porn career: Love, addiction and the decline of adult film
For eight years, Chris Zeischegg was the porn star "Danny Wylde" — until a doctor told him in 2013 that if he didn’t stop abusing male enhancement drugs that he might never be able to have sex again.
Zeischegg grew up in Grass Valley, a small town north of Sacramento. While attending UC Santa Cruz, he picked up modeling jobs on Craigslist.
"Modeling jobs in the sense that I would pose nude for an art photographer. It was like a $50 thing," recalls Zeischegg. "A lot of them wanted me to get an erection."
Eventually, he found a listing seeking "submissive males" for a porn shoot.
"At 19, I thought I was pretty down to do anything,” Zeischegg remembers. Today, Zeischegg says all of his family and friends know that he was in porn. He came out to his parents because he was dating a fellow performer whom he met after shooting a few more videos.
"There are emotional and physical connections, obviously, you make when having sex with people," says Zeischegg, "and though that's not always true in porn... there are definitely sincere moments, and I've spawned several relationships from those." His first partner in the adult industry introduced him to producers and directors making "punk rock alt-porn" in Los Angeles.
He transferred to the University of Southern California's film program and earned almost $4,000 a month as a freelance performer. He began to appear in films for bigger production houses, but at the time he was only credited by his middle name, Daniel.
"I got a contract with a company when I was 20 or 21, and they asked that I have a last name because they needed to market me, and they also wanted me to sound younger because this was gonna be for a website where I would have sex with older women. I had no preference for what my name would be, and they came up with Danny Wylde. Everyone in the room thought it sounded great... I think it's actually a really stupid name." — Chris Zeischegg
As a performer, Zeischegg's work days varied between three-to-four-hour long "gonzo shoots," with minimal pre- and post-production, and 18-hour days working on feature-length films. To cope with these potentially long hours, and the pressure to perform in front of a crew, Zeischegg says, "Most every guy takes erectile dysfunction drugs as a performance enhancer."
Both Viagra and Cialis warn against taking their drug more than once a day. "By the time that I was performing on a regular basis later in my career I would, on harder scenes, take maybe two or three pills," says Zeischegg.
Zeischegg says he formed a psychological addiction to the drugs that landed him in the hospital several times with priapism — an erection that would not subside. His doctor told him during treatment that if he kept doing this, he could build up scar tissue and ruin his ability to achieve a natural erection.
He quit porn immediately, and Zeischegg admits that the loss of his career was a shock for more than just financial reasons.
"From a really narcissistic perspective, I had achieved this kind of minor celebrity, and wrapped around that celebrity is a weird idea of yourself as a sex symbol. And then you have to admit publicly that maybe that's not really a part of you. That that was pharmaceutically enhanced, and then maybe it's not there at all anymore, and you're no longer this guy that has all this machismo. I had spent near 10 years being Danny Wylde, and it's not like I thought I cared that much about that identity, but I guess that I did, because it was a little devastating to lose all of a sudden." — Chris Zeischegg
Thanks to his experience in film school, he was able to find work as a cameraman and video editor, both in and out of porn. Since he stopped performing, Zeischegg has focused on publishing novels and essays (all links NSFW), including a biting piece about the end of his porn career, titled, "On the moral imperative to commodify our sexual suffering."
Zeischegg's piece discusses a decline in the porn industry that may have ended his career if his drug problem didn't, and he points to one company as the main destroyer of competition in adult film: Mindgeek, a conglomerate that owns major production houses — and more importantly, free streaming sites like Pornhub.
"When Mindgeek started out, they were called Manwin; they were basically taking pirated content, and building a business model out of this. Just stealing everyone else's content, putting it online for free, and then when those companies would go out of business, they would sweep in and buy them up."
"I don't know that I've been robbed of anything," says Zeischegg, "I just feel that there's a large part of my life that I put into this business, this career, that's just sort of... not valuable. It gives people pleasure for a moment when they view this stuff, but I don't attribute any personal value to that."
And as far as what Zeischegg wants people to know about him and his fellow sex workers? He doesn't want them to be stereotyped.
"I cannot to this day give you one determining factor of what makes a sex worker. There are drug addicts in porn, there are people who've been abused in porn. There are also people with PhDs in pornography, who run businesses, who are wives and mothers and fathers, and they come from all walks of life and end up here for a variety of reasons. Many of them are financial, and maybe to fulfill some other personal need; like you do in any line of work." — Chris Zeischegg