THE REAL WORLD OF OZ
“Before the censor’s axe, before the critics’ attacks, before the Brazilian wax…” if you genuinely don’t know where this is going, we suggest you look away now. RICHARD S JONES takes us to a land, way down under…
One documentary you’ll soon find filed under the “Where Should We Exactly File This?” rack at your local entertainment store is Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of “Ozploitation”. Recently released to mass approval
from fanboys/girls across the globe, the
colorful. They were usually the bi-products of nonconformists’ dissatisfaction with the budgets offered to those in more mainstream industries. But as Not Quite Hollywood director Mark Hartley explains: “These are the real stories from the
people who were there in the cinematic trenches – the trailblazing mavericks who found private finance, snubbed their nose at authority, made their own rules and in the process introduced the car chase, karate kick, BMXbike and water bed to Australian cinema.” From films such as 1982’s soap-
star-cast/dystopian nightmare heavy Turkey Shoot to more breakout films of this genre
shut firmly tight. Additional time is fleshed out with truly memorable and candid interviews and the talkative heads of Barry Humphries, Jamie Lee Curtis and Quentin Tarantino – who unsurprisingly provides the most insightful and rabidly excitable opinions on these films.
success of this documentary has been largely built on many commendations but in particular its unanimous praise for shedding some much-neglected light on Australia’s mid-70’s foray into the darkened realms of exploitation cinema.
Like comparable cinema of the
period produced by Australia’s Northern Hemispherical cousins, films of any “[insert sub-genre]sploitation” flirted wildly with the explicit, the violent, the energetic and the
like Mad Max, the unrelenting and newly remastered cut scenes and promotional trailers crop up like unexpected knife attacks. Never letting up, not even when you’re tucked up in bed at night with eyes
With further behind-the-scenes footage from roughly 80 Aussie pictures and poster and foyer art to boot, this documentary doesn’t simply touch upon on all things counter-cultured as much as force them into submission and asks us to
watch. It’s like standing back and admiring a newly accomplished picture puzzle, except the pieces are shaped like muscle cars, wax- wary women, manly men and breasts the size of Ayers Rock.
INTO THE VAULT JOHNNY BLACK goes online and discovers a treasure trove of rare concert material.
When Bill Sagan got switched on to live rock music in 1969 he had no inkling that he was setting off along the path to his own destiny.
“I had a date with a beautiful girl
in ’69,” he remembers fondly. “I took her to the Kinetic Playground in Chicago to see Jethro Tull who were supported by a virtually unknown band called Led Zeppelin.”
In his denim flares, Sagan lay
sprawled with his girl on a huge cushion on the floor. “Led Zeppelin were just amazing. It was a huge shift from the kind of bands I’d seen before, a much harder edge to the music and astonishing levels of workmanship and the ticket cost just $3.25.”
What Sagan didn’t know, on his
awesome night of musical enlightenment, was that half a continent away, over in San Francisco, another young man called Bill was recording a concert by The Byrds in The Fillmore Auditorium. Nor did Sagan know that one day he would become the owner of that concert and hundreds of others like it.
Here’s how it happened. “I loved rock music from the
14
start,” he explains. “I used to go and see local bands like The Bel-Aires in New Jersey, and when my dad came back from Japan with a copy of Tea For The Tillerman, I got heavily into Cat Stevens.” At first though, life took Sagan
away from the music. He became wealthy as a businessman running healthcare and insurance companies, but his first love remained and eventually, he gravitated back to it. “I sold my company in Minneapolis,” he says, “and bought Music Interactive, a small company that sold sheet music on the Internet.”
Around this time a light went on
in Sagan’s head. “It seemed obvious that technological changes like the Internet meant that small companies could now compete with big ones.” He resolved to buy into intellectual property, mainly music copyrights, and market them online. In 2003, against competition from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Sagan acquired a vast archive of concert recordings, posters and more that had been built up by famed California-based rock promoter Bill Graham. This now forms the basis of the website known to rock fans internationally as Wolfgang’s Vault – so named because
Graham was born as Wolfgang Grajonca. Sagan vividly recalls his first
glimpse of the archive, in a cavernous basement on San Francisco’s 265th Street. “It was hard to believe what was in there,” he says. “It took months to catalogue it, but there turned out to be almost 7,000 concert recordings, over 1000 of which were filmed, mostly three camera shoots. For every concert he ever promoted, Bill Graham had also kept copies of posters, badges, promotional silk neckties and six of every t- shirt.”
Although Sagan has faced some
legal challenges over his right to market some of this material, Wolfgang’s Vault is flourishing. “The site gets about 31,000 visitors a day,” he declares with evident relish.
Recently described by the Wall
Street Journal as, “the most important collection of rock memorabilia and recordings ever assembled in one business,” it now features hundreds of free streamed concerts by the likes of Hendrix, Springsteen and Janis Joplin alongside its veritable treasure trove of rock memorabilia for sale.
www.wolfgangsvault.com
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