CDOTD 02/12/2025

VA: Beat at Cinecittà (Crippled Dick Hot Wax!)

Purchased used at Jerry's Records Future Zone

This blog isn't serious music journalism, criticism, nor musicology, so maybe I shouldn't apologize for making the narrative about me much of the time. As recently as yesterday I posted question about whether I had anything left to offer in this forum, yet here I am again.

Hardly a week goes by when I don't pay a visit to at least one of our local record and CD shops around Pittsburgh, and often more. You wouldn't know it to see my studio/mancave at home, but I go home empty handed more often than not. I didn't walk into Jerry's today intending to find anything in particular; that's probably not how Jerry's works anyway. If you're lucky, something you want or looks interesting turns up. Good stuff, even if the prices have largely increased since the time Jerry sold off the business, tends to move quickly. 

During those recent years, the 78 room was cleared out to make space for other non-LP media: CDs mostly, DVDs, laserdiscs, VHS tapes, cassettes, books, and other odds and ends. New CD adds are closest to the door.

You just don't know what will turn up. I recognized the tiny blimp on the spine of this disc for the Crippled Dick Hot Wax! label. This takes me back to a time when I worked for Borders for two or three years in the 1990s, the apex of compact discs as a popular medium, VHS just on its way out with DVDs just starting to quickly take over. Several items on that label turned up at the store which I probably bought with my employee discount (40% off for part time employees!). I don't remember this one in particular but we did have Jerry Van Rooyen's At 250 Miles per Hour, Gert Wilden's Schulmädchen Report, and particularly Manfred Hübler/Siegfried Schwab's Vampyros Lesbos: Sexadelic Dance Party. All European soundtrack collections.

I've seen Jess Franco's Vampyros Lesbos. The most memorable thing about it is the music cue used as the opening cut on the CD collection. Oh of their were beautiful nude women who I guess were vampires. There was also a scene with those Aurora monster models in it. Franco's not known for his tight plotting. Still, with a title like Vampyros Lesbos, you ought to come up with something memorable.

The subtitle to this particular collection reads: "A sensual homage to the most raunchy, erotic filmmusic of the Italian 60s & 70s cinema." That's a lot to live up to. Like I've quoted David F. Friedman before, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak." A number of these pieces, if you were to ask me the country of origin, I'd probably guess Italy. There's a certain sound to them, similar to how Italian films have a certain look to them. I've seen enough Italian horror movies that I feel I can guess if something's Italian by its look and production, and not just the clearly dubbed voices. 

What makes them sound Italian? There's the era for one thing, the swingin' 60s and 70s, with lounge-y blues-rock. Certain uses of guitar, especially as a trebly twangy lead instrument. And definitely the wordless vocals, scattered throughout these excerpts. Only one track is a song with lyrics, all other voices are vocalise. It's possible this overall Italian sound originates with Ennio Morricone's pop orchestrations, but I don't know enough on the topic to say that definitively. Morricone is nowhere to be found on this collection, but a single Bruno Nicolai piece is. Often on Morricone soundtracks, you'll see Bruno listed as the conductor. 

It's Riz Ortolani who appears most often here. Riz might be best known for his soundtrack for Mondo Cane, but the work I know better is Cannibal Holocaust. There's another example of me having listened to the soundtrack without ever having seen the film. (And I don't need to see it. It just looks gross and cruel. I don't feel like sitting through Hostel either.) The opening theme for CH is pure vocalise Italian pop, followed by a really grimy, ugly minimal synthesizer cue. Very strange. 

I guess part of my personal attraction to sitting down with these soundtracks and collections is the weirdness of them when they're separated from the visuals. Plus it's a different era, and a country besides the US, it all contributes to it feeling alien to my experience in 2025. That's a good thing. If Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift are the state of popular music these days, I'll gladly stay in the past.

The woman at the register was enthusiastic when she saw I was buying this, and said there were more sold off by the same person to be put out. I guess I know where I'm going Tuesday when they put more stock in the new bins.

VOTD 02/11/2025

Matching Mole: Matching Mole's Little Red Record (CBS)

I don't remember where I bought this.

I suppose one of the pleasures of a sizable collection of LPs and CDs is not remembering that I owned something. Have I bought duplicates of anything unintentionally? Not many things, but it's true. There are some records that come in series, such as the Spectrum series on Nonesuch, that have covers similar enough that I don't always remember if I have a particular issue. I've learned, yes I probably do have a copy, and even if I don't, don't spend the money unless it seems essential.

I knew this record from my college radio days. I can't recall if I was told or read about it, or if I came across it in my thorough hunting through the WRCT record library. The attraction would have been Robert Wyatt's name primarily. 

It's poignant that I think Robert's best work is after he became a paraplegic. He drunkenly fell out of a building, losing the use of his legs. If he sounds like he has the saddest voice ever heard, he's certainly earned it.

If you didn't know, Matching Moles is a play on the name of his former band Soft Machine (I mean itself a direct WS Burroughs reference). In French, the name is "machine molle." There's no hiding their political leaning, both the title and the blatantly Maoist cover painting of the band. This in itself seems amazing given the current times politically. Not that this music could attract the attention of even a minor subsidiary of a major label now, but the blatantly Communist images would have been a non-starter. I mean, you could find some way to get it released in this form, but my guess is you'd be on your own.

Somewhat similar to Soft Machine, the music sits in a place somewhere between Canterbury-scene prog leanings and jazz-rock. It's a good record but I get the sense that CD length might have done them well on this. A little more room to stretch might have done the music some good, but who knows? Maybe the LP length reeled them in from going too excessive, kept the results tighter. The group only lasted as long as two LPs before disbanding, Robert's accident happening later.

There are some odd touches to this that says it's a studio project and not simply a document of the band playing, specifically quiet voices speaking in spots in groups. Brian Eno makes a synth appearance on side two. There's an odd, slight pitch shift and what sounds like a loop near the end of side two that's a studio creation for sure. The pieces run together and are generally not discreet songs, making identification difficult. At moments, when Robert's singing, the music wouldn't have been out of place on Rock Bottom. 

I don't recall if I noticed that Robert Fripp is credited as producer. This would have come at an interesting time for him too, in that general time frame when the Boz Burrell/Mel Collins/Ian Wallace band was winding down, and the Wetton/Cross/Bruford/Muir lineup was forming. 

Robert Wyatt is an excellent drummer, by the way. I'm not fond of how the drums are recorded/produced here, they sometimes sound flat and almost muted at times. Maybe it's an accurate capture of his sound. I can't strike it up to the state of the art of recording though; Bill Bruford's drum set always sounded amazing on Yes records: tight and snapping. I even believe the first problem with Tales From Topographic Oceans is Alan White's dead and thuddy-sounding kit. 

I am starting to wonder again if I'm running out of steam on this blog, whether I really have anything to say and it's not just an empty exercise. However, if it meant I picked out this record for a good re-listen, then at least there's that.

VOTD 02/10/2025

 Emil Beaulieau: Abusing the Little Ones (Self Abuse)

I can't recall where I bought this. I note this under the title because at one time I could told you where I bought most of my individual records, but no longer.

If one of the basic tenets of punk rock was to learning to play an instrument by forming a band first, where does that put noise artists? To go from unrepentant instrumental primitivism to no discernable skill whatsoever?

I feel like this is something I've covered in previous blog postings, so I'll avoid prattling on too long on this subject now. 

The most interesting "noisicians" have skills, but they're necessarily in any way traditional. Some of it might have to do with synth patching, audio editing, or at least new and creative ways to put together sound-generating electronics. And even if their intention is to annoy or even crush the listener with sound, there has to be an ear for getting interesting results.

Unfortunately, sometimes the imagery or subtext these people use is reprehensible. I know there's an argument to be made for unsettling imagery to accompany unsettling music, but often find that too easy. I don't need to see autopsy or medical atrocity photos, and that's assuming the person involved isn't flirting with fascist or even blatant Nazi imagery. I mean seriously, I think it's fair to assume Hitler would not have approved of your recordings, if his regime banned jazz and too many syncopated rhythms. And really, think about that: a government agency banning a musical rhythm. Those Nazis sure were fussy.

Okay, while Nazis of any era are thoroughly worthy of ridicule, I also don't want to treat the subject too lightly either. 

Emil Beaulieau: AKA Ron Lessard of RRRecords out of Lowell, Mass. It's no secret that one is the other. Ron told me that Emil was actually the mayor of the small town in New Hampshire where he grew up. And who was going to know or complain?

Abusing the Little Ones is definitely intended as a provocative title, but it refers to Ron manipulating and reworking of a series of 7" records on the same Self Abuse label. Of the eight noise bands worked over, only the names Atrax Morgue and Crawl Unit are familiar to me, the latter being a generally noisy drone project.

I know the intention of some of these....what do I call them? Musicians? Broadly stated it's true, but I'm sure some would bristle at the description. "Noise artists", even if I've used it above, seems clinical. But whatever you call them, bludgeoning the listener with sound seems to be a frequent objective. That requires volume. But ironically, I sometimes enjoying listening to records like this at a relatively low volume and find them relaxing. Maybe it's a similar thing to people who listen to white or pink noise generators at a low volume aid with sleeping.

A detail about this record I like: side one ends with a lock groove. Turn the record over, the audio on side two begins with the same passage. Renaldo and the Loaf's Songs for Swinging Larvae does something similar. Another reason I continue to like vinyl records.

02/09/2025

 The Monkees: Head OST (Rhino)

Purchased used at Vinyl Remains

Superbowl, Superbowl, Superbowl. The closest I come to caring is that I'd rather see Philadelphia win than Kansas City, for no particularly good reason. That's about as much passion I can muster. I like to say that my general distaste for American football originates with having watched five seasons of my high school's generally bad team from the band bleachers. To be fair to them, they played teams from generally much larger schools. And to be fair to myself, I probably wouldn't care too much about football anyway. 

So, put on a record, blog some thoughts, possibly finish the Dune book I'm reading (#3). Looking for something to put on, I was unsure if I had listened to this one completely. 

I think it was Michael Weldon (Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film) suggested watching Head to see The Monkees perform "careericide." I suppose the plotless, trippy feature would endear them to a certain audience in the long run, but this wasn't the cute quasi-sitcom from network TV that I'm sure many expected at the time.

I've seen I think two of those made for TV documentaries about The Monkees. The creation of impresario Don Kirshner, he specifically wanted a 100% image band that he could control completely. So what happens when the band rebels and decides to go their own path? What happens when a manufactured band becomes a real band?

I'm naturally inclined to side with them over Kirshner, but as with most things in life, the truth is a little more nuanced. They did sign up to be part of a television program playing a fictitious rock band. The instigator is acknowledged to be Mike Nesmith, who was starting to establish himself as songwriter outside of The Monkees. He'd later pen The Stone Poneys hit "Different Drum". In one of the docs, Don said he rued the day he met Mike Nesmith. 

But you know, what did he expect? They were talented singers (mostly), it was an era of questioning authority, it comes as little surprise that they'd want to be treated like adults and artists. Kirshner would later score a 100% image band by co-creating The Archies. 

What of the music, this record? It starts strangely enough with a musique concrète edit of clips from the film, not the way to start a pop album in the least. Even The Beatles put "Revolution #9" in the middle of the album. Of the six proper songs on the album, two were written by Peter Tork, one Mike Nesmith. Tork's "Do I Have To Do This All Over Again" is a fairly strong 60s rocker, as is Nesmith's "Circle Sky". "Daddy's Song", written by Harry Nilsson, is an okay song but always kind of struck me as a take on Paul McCartney's "Your Mother Should Know" from Magical Mystery Tour.

I find the standout is the opening/closing song for the film, "Porpoise Song" cowritten by Carole King. There's a demo recording of her singing the song, probably on Youtube somewhere. It's slow and dreamy, interesting chord progression, with an orchestral arrangement that again recalls what George Martin did with The Beatles. In this case I don't consider it a knock, I like the orchestration.

I guess the question with The Monkees, or any music for that matter, is: if you like it, does the source matter? It's easy to look down on their early recordings as prefab, but some of the songs are quite good. They had excellent songwriters working for the show. Ironically, in this age of the mega pop star, those vocalists all seem manufactured to me. I don't know one voice from another, and the vocals are so thoroughly processed that I don't think it matters. The songwriting is often by committee. It's as though they're trying to be a package the way that The Monkees were intended to be, whereas The Monkees strived to break out of that box. 

VOTD 02/06/2025

 Anthony Braxton: Creative Music Orchestra 1976 (Arista)

Purchased used decades ago

Back to Braxtonia.

Forgive me for namedropping Anthony yet again. After I worked with him in 2008, I returned to graduate school. I was flush with excitement from the experience, and devoted at least one of my assigned papers to his work. 

There was an interview I read in my research I intended to paraphrase in my previous blog post, but failed to do so. (These missives are largely unplanned and come close to an improvisation in themselves.) What he said was effectively that there was an essential challenge considered by some creative musicians of his era. The push in jazz was that the music had grown increasingly fiery. Once you get to Coltrane (and Shepp and Sanders), how much more fiery could you really go? Instead, some of his early work goes in the opposite direction: small, intimate, pointillist. Consider his debut LP on Delmark with a lineup of Leroy Jenkins, Wadada Leo Smith, and Muhal Richard Abrams, as well as his two BYG LPs, one can see this idea played out. It must have also been confounding to some people; where's the jazz?

Point being: For Trio (Composition 76) definitely is an extension of this idea. However, if you know his mid-70s quartet recordings though, there's fire aplenty. The quartets with Dave Holland, Barry Altschul, and either Kenny Wheeler or George Lewis, could blow flames with the best of them. I recommend Quartet (Dortmund) 1976 (unreleased until 1991) for a particularly good example.

Then there's this album. I guess at one time, similar to Ornette a generation or so earlier and John Zorn a few years later, there was the lingering question of whether Anthony actually knew what he was doing. If you wanted to provide evidence to the prove he did, it was probably this session. Braxton in his personal lexicon eschewed the term "big band" in favor of "creative music orchestra." The instrumentation is more-or-less similar to a big band throughout, even if track two (Comp. 56) includes clarinets, contrabass clarinet, soprano saxophone, timpani, and no standard drum set. 

The music itself covers a wide range of expression. It's programmed with every other work being either upbeat or more pointillist/textural. Atonal bop - - chorale and points - - march - - more points with group voicings - - more atonal bop - - long tones with and textures and yes, more points.

It's fair to say that the standout piece ends side one, his Sousa-inspired march. It starts almost shockingly straight forward, but heads into more Braxton-ish territory for solos, with a rousing (and again traditional) closing.

I've always loved this piece dearly. It's as openly funny as Braxton gets, but there's no doubting that he enjoys marches. I managed to get my hands on an arrangement of the score and played the piece with OPEK twice; the first (and better) time is posted to Youtube.

He shared with me one anecdote from that session. The percussionist wasn't playing the bass drum part correctly. Frustrated, pianist Fred Rzewski took the mallet and read the part down, enabling the ensemble to get through that tough passage. 

In the liner notes of the Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978, the liner notes refer to the march as "the greatest closer ever." I'd love to play it again but it would require more rehearsal. Really, a dream show of mine would be to play this album in its entirety, plus maybe add one or two more recent creative music orchestra pieces into the mix. But such a show would cost a lot of time and money, and if I'm going to throw money at a vanity performance, I'll make it my own music. 

But no question, if I did stage such a show, we'd end with the march.

VOTD 02/04/2025

 Anthony Braxton: For Trio (Arista)

Purchased from Jerry's Records

I've been taking advantage of the university's robust interlibrary loan system to access some scores unavailable to me in the general Pittsburgh area. The public library has its own ILL, but the school has one portal that allows me to search specific libraries and select request with a single mouse click. Very convenient. Specifically, I've been using this to access scores by Stockhausen and Braxton. Perhaps I'll think of others, but there isn't much that comes to mind that I can't already access locally that I want to view.

The published Braxton scores are a more recent development and extension of the Tri-Centric Foundation, the non-profit devoted to Braxton's work. There isn't a long list of published scores, and some of them I already had copied. When I worked with Anthony in 2008 (! time rushes by) he invited me to make copies of anything we used for myself. I made a point of printing up everything. 

One of the scores I ordered was the basis of this recording, Composition 76 in his opus list. The pictographic title is represented on the cover. No mention of the instrumentation appears on the cover, which I suspect was intentional. It's a different lineup on each side with no rhythm section in either case, only reed players. In addition to Anthony, side one has Henry Threadgill and Douglas Ewart, side two Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. All AACM-associated players, the latter two of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Putting on the record I thought, hey! I can follow the score! The score begins with an identical passage for all three players, and side one begins completely differently. Okay, maybe the record labels are switched. Side two: no, same story. Returning to side one, I made no attempt to locate where they might be in the score, which is probably how one should listen to it anyway.

Is either side a complete realization of the work? I suspect not. I speculate that there could have been a complete reading by both ensembles edited to LP length. It would be easy to achieve. Both performances are pockets of activity separated by significant silences; excising material would be simple. It is in keeping with Braxton's stated aesthetic that the piece could begin anywhere and end anywhere, or fold back onto the start. The Threadgill/Ewart side is more spare, pointillist, fragmentary, probably with longer silences. On the Mitchell/Jarman side, the ensemble sounds as though it comes together for group passages more often and clearly, most notably a loud bass/contrabass saxophone passage.

The description on the score reads "twenty-six pages of three dimensional notation.' It's all printed on flat paper, though some staves lean up, down, expand, contract, and connect in ways that are meant to suggest three dimensions. Could there be a holographic rendering of the score that would make this happen?

It's amazing enough that Anthony would have been signed to a major label. If he didn't use the opportunity to release decidedly non-commercial recordings like this, would he have had a longer contract with Arista? I suspect not. He was never going to make money for the label, and a producer's faith and stock in an artist can only go so far. Even his most jazz-like sessions, New York, Fall 1974; Five Pieces 1975; Creative Music Orchestra 1976; The Berlin/Montreux Concerts are never completely in the free-jazz mode entirely. And as the joke goes, there's a reason they call it free jazz, because nobody can sell it. It's when he veered into entire LPs of improvisational chamber music with this and the Composition 95 for Two Pianos (performed by Fred Rzewski and Ursula Oppens, no less) or the sprawling three-LP For Four Orchestras that he challenged what a major label could release from a so-called jazz artist. The multi-orchestra work probably bankrupted him, likely not for the first or last time.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not a fan of the multi-orchestra piece, but I'll be damned if I don't admire it. In the notes he suggested there'd be works for orchestras on three planets by 1988, five planets by 1990, different star systems by 1995, and different galaxies by 2000. It's a beautiful thought, I wish I could muster that level of optimism. 

VOTD 02/03/2025

 Mauricio Kagel: Match Für 3 Spieler/Musik Für Renaissance-Instrumente (Avant Garde)

Purchased at Preserving Records

I was contemplating why I, as a musician and listener, have taken such particular interest in particular composers and performers, and have ignored or neglected others. I was about to write "we" but it seems to me I can only speak for my own experience.

There are the obvious reasons: something about the person's work appeals to us personally. That composer (and I'll just stick to that term specifically) has a particular voice or even body of work that resonates with me in some way. I've written about Morton Feldman and Olivier Messiaen on this blog multiple times, and there's something about each man's work that just....does it for me. Each are highly different, each are in many of their works immediately identifiable. And their music doesn't affect mine in any sort of direct way; if anything, I know enough to know that if I tried to draw directly on their music, I'd only sound like a pale or even bad version of what they do. And I don't like every work that either composer has written, which in itself I think is a good thing. It means that in some respect they didn't write the same work over and over.

Something else occurred to me. There are so many composers and musicians whose work is worthy of my time and attention, that I can't possibly pay attention to everyone. That's a case where a recording on a particular label can be very helpful, because I will notice anything that's on DG's Avant Garde imprint 

I know the name Mauricio Kagel. I know very little about him, and have only one or two other recordings of his music. Coincidentally, I had been studying one of his scores prior to purchasing this LP a few weeks. Well, studying is maybe too strong a word. I looked over a copy Acoustica at our university library, for loudspeakers and unusual acoustical sources. I was interested in its non-linearity, of a composition not defined by beginning-middle-end, but as a set of resources for constructing a performance. 

Match (1964) for cello and two percussionists comes off as a disjunct, post-War and possibly Darmstadt-style composition. I don't say that as a critique, I like some of that generation of European avant garde composers. I imagine it must be lively to see performed (and I wonder who might perform such as this in this era) and there's a sense on the recording of it having a bit of an absurd side. Aggressive cello playing (the score must be crazy) but also a vocal shout, a policeman's whistle, in addition to the more standard percussives and marimba. 

Musik (1965/66) opens with a ghostly chord played by the all pre-Baroque instrumental ensemble. It sounds like an effective use of instruments that largely lack the richness of more modern instruments. Both works are textural as opposed to melodic. I did take the time to look up the score online through school, and as I suspected it's thoroughly written out on staves, unlike Acoustica. There are also many instructions. Not only on the pages of introduction leading into the score, but also in the score itself. I don't really need to read through them.

It reminds me of an observation a student once shared with me regarding Stockhausen's music. He said that Karlheinz would make the circumstances of performance so difficult, that it probably meant his works get played less frequently than they might. I think any composer has the right to define or ask for anything they want, but it does get to be pretty ridiculous in scores such as these.

I like the latter work in particular. It's a kind of rolling, escalating/deescalating sound world. The question is, do I now dive deeper into Kagel's work? Maybe casually, but I don't expect a shelf full of Kagel recordings alongside the masses of Feldman, Ligeti, Messiaen, and Cage recordings I've acquired.

VOTD 02/02/2025

 VA: The Best of Doris Wishman (Modern Harmonic)

I think I bought this new at The Attic

In the spirit of my previous post, I pulled this out. Doris Wishman, what a character. In a sense I think she's something of a feminist hero. The exploitation film world was highly dominated by men to put it mildly. But there was Doris, an independent operator, riding the trends as she was able from the early 60s into the 1970s and beyond. She started in nudist movies, moving into lurid roughies, and then...weirder territory. She's probably best know for her two features starring Chesty Morgan, Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73. I guess Doris went where the work went and directed a few porn features under pseudonyms in the 70s. I'm not making excuses when I write that I've never seen any of those. The tracks collected here (conveniently) overlook those movies.

I almost had the chance to meet Doris. The Warhol Museum scheduled her movie Bad Girls Go To Hell, with Doris flying up from Florida to make a personal appearance. Unfortunately, there was a major hurricane that grounded her, and she couldn't come. I wrote a brief piece dedicated to her, recorded on the second Water Shed 5tet CD; I wanted to present her with a copy. I was later able to get copies to Doris' biographer Michael Bowen; in return, I got an autographed promotional still from that same film. nice! It hangs framed in a powder room in my basement, alongside autographs of Herschell Gordon Lewis, Ray Dennis Steckler, Mink Stole, and John Agar. 

The Warhol showed the movie regardless. I took my wife, and told her one of Doris' techniques to keep her movies cheap. She'd film without sync sound, and voices were dubbed into reaction shots. In other words, you'd see the back of someone's head as he's speaking to someone who's facing the camera, and then it switches when the response is spoken. It gives Doris' movies an additional level of "wrongness." Pretty quickly there's an all-reaction shot conversation in the movie, and my wife started going into a serious giggle fit. She couldn't stop laughing, almost howling. I wouldn't have cared, were we not in a full theater with friends around. I eventually managed to help her calm down. It was funny though.

The better part of this LP are the audio from various Wishman film trailers. "You! You! You! Do you know that....bad girls go to HELL?" As fellow exploitationeer David Friedman would say, "Sell the sizzle, not the steak." Side one is taken up with her nudist pictures, the craziest one being Nude on the Moon. Astronauts land on the Moon to find it's inhabited by a race of alien nudists! And conveniently, they communicate telepathically! Do they return to Earth or decide to stay! Watch it and find out!

For as barebones cheap as Doris would go, there are original songs in some of these pictures. Five on are side one, all written by Judith Kushner (not a Wishman pseudonym, I looked) three sung by the syrupy-voiced Ralph Young. I know it's such faint praise to say the song aren't awful, maybe even not bad. It's some post-50s schmaltz to be sure. The small studio backup band is professional, slicker than some of the original music examples on side two. The music on the trailers is clearly library music, at least some of the time.

Side two is centered on her 1970s pictures. Selling the "healthiness" of the nudist lifestyle is replaced with grittier, nastier titles and themes. "Another day, another man!" The music starts to sound more rocking, more far out! 

In some respects, we live in a pretty amazing time. You can make a feature film on an iPhone; someone made a feature using Zoom and it's supposed to be really good. The material costs of film have been potentially reduced to nearly nothing. The cost of a hard drive.

And yet, what a time Doris lived in. She was able to produce, direct, shoot, and edit her own feature films and get them into some sort of theater or another, and largely from Florida. The drive in circuit was a viable place to get your movie played, if it was fun or entertaining or shocking enough. yes, Doris' movies can be difficult to watch sometimes. But there's a great spirit to them, and she lived in a cinema world that no longer exists. For all of our advances, sometimes I think we've lost a lot too.