2 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM
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Our
2022 by Editors
34 | HARPER’S
35 | PUZZLE Washington Post Crossword CONVERSATION Heaven 17. Page 18 As
Living No
Like a Rolling Stone by
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KeithDavidFredrickaSusanGeoffPeteSusanRobertRicardoA.D.CONTRIBUTINGJoannePaulPRODUCTIONfilipiakr@comcast.netRainaADVERTISINGFilipiakRosenSmytheWRITERSAmorosiBarrosBeckCaputoCroattoGehmanVanDongenGrigsbyMaisterStollerUhlichPOBox120NewHope18938215-862-9558IReproductioninwholeorinpartwithoutwrittenpermissionisstrictlyprohibited.ICONwelcomesletterstotheeditor,editorialideasandsubmis-sions,butassumesnore-sponsibilityforthereturnofunsolicitedmaterial.ICONisnotresponsibleforclaimsmadebyadvertisers.©2022PrimetimePublishingCo.,Inc.PUBLISHER&EDITORTrinaMcKennatrina@icondv.com (Continued) by Scott Turow Jann S. Wenner with Southern Living of Southern Plan B: Jack Reacher by Lee Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of Social Media Rewired Minds World by Max Fisher What If? 2: Additional Serious HypotheticalAnswersScientifictoAbsurdQuestions by Randall Munroe Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie by Gary Weiss IndexFindings Heaven 17, Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, moved from lo-fi, sci-fi-based, analog, avant-garde synth-punk in the Brit-centric 1970s into something shinier, sleeker and more groove-oriented by 1980.
5 | A THOUSAND WORDS At the Source 10 | THE ART OF POETRY 12 | PORTFOLIO 14 | THE LIST CityValley 16 | HIS STORY Ghosts of Harmony 20| FILM ROUNDUP Three Thousand Years of NopeBulletPreyLongingTrain 22| FILM CLASSICS What Happened Was… Crimson Gold The House is Black Museum Hours 24 | BOOKS Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant by Jody Williams, Rita Sodi and Anna Kovel The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell ON THE COVER: 4 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM contents 18 ART EXHIBITIONS 6 | Members’ Show AOY Art Center Jean Childs Buzgo: Beneath the Surface Silverman Gallery Cynthia Murray & Thomas Mann A Mano Galleries 8 | Founders & Fellows Foundation House Linda Stein: Fluidity of Gender Penn State Lehigh Valley Art at Kings Oaks Newtown, PA BOOKS
HEAVEN 17 ICON The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, nightlife and mad genius. Since 215-862-95581992icondv.com
Child The
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early this summer. Doreen and I were up in the Lehigh Valley, where I gave a talk at the Emmaus Library, and we stayed at the Hotel Bethlehem (thumbs up). The next day we strolled the elevated walkway along the remaining blast furnaces at Steel Stacks, much like the High Line in New York. (Do it before or after the summer crowds.)
www.robertbeck.netIHADAGREATexperience
a thousand words STORY & PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK AT THE SOURCE ICON | SEPTEMBER2022 | ICONDV.COM 5
Robert Beck is a painter, writer, lecturer and ex-radio host. His paintings have been featured in more than seventy juried and thirty solo gallery shows, and three solo museum exhibitions. His column has appeared monthly in ICON Magazine since 2005.
Then we went to Vasari Colors in Easton—where they make my oil paint. At first, I considered it a pilgrimage, but it ended up much more. We saw them make the oil colors, and I got to discuss my uses while they showed me an expanded view of what is possible. It was an education.
I used another brand for thirty years because it was good enough, affordable enough, and available everywhere I might find myself, all of which were impor-
Cynthia Murray & Thomas Mann
Members’ Show AOY Art Center 949 Mirror Lake Road, Yardley PA Septemberaoyarts.org 10–25 Friday, Saturday and Sunday 12–5 Artists’ Reception, Friday, September 9, 6–8 This Members’ exhibition will showcase the work of our member artists and artisans in our gallery. The show will be online at aoyarts.org beginning September 9. Come to the Artists’ Reception. Stop by and enjoy some great art by local artists.
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exhibitions
A Mano Galleries 42 N Union St., Lambertville, NJ 609-397-0063 amanogalleries.com
Thomas Mann has been in the vanguard of American art jewelry design for nearly five decades. Following the collage/assemblage strategies of early-20th-century sculptors, he combines silver and non-precious metal elements with found objects. His distinctive wearable pieces have been included in national and international art exhibitions.
Nancy Allen, Rhinosaurus, glazed clay sculpture Frame Cohen, Sandhill Crane with Leaves, photograph.
Jean Childs Buzgo: Beneath the Surface Silverman Gallery 4920 York Rd., Rt. 202, Holicong, PA silvermangallery.com 215-794-4300 Opening reception 10/1, 5–8 and 10/9, 1–4 Wed–Sat. 11–6, Sun. 11-4 & by appt. Jean Buzgo paints using a base layer of multiple colors, and thick and thin dripped paint, followed by overlaying more detail and scraping down to the original painted surface.
Jean Buzgo: “For me it’s about diving deeper into my craft, exploring the possibilities of the unexpected first, letting my subconscious create what is pleasing to me. The result of this first stage dictates my next direction, which is a more intentional planning of subject matter and composition. The push and pull of working with the left and right brain results in a final painting based in reality and imagination.”
The Lilies as I Dreamed Them, 12 x 12, m/m on birch panel Morning Light, 30x30, m/m on canvas
Cynthia Murray, Brackney Roadside
Marie Ferrin, Gone Fishing, watercolor Thomas Mann, Cat Box Pin / Necklace
Cynthia Murray: “Creative pursuits in my life began during childhood when my five siblings and I would do summer craft projects under our mother's direction. As I conquered skills more complex than gluing greeting cards to scrap pieces of wood, I understood how art could be an effective way to communicate ideas that often felt too complex for words, a way for me to tell my story. Each painting is a way for me to interpret the world around me, not necessarily how I see it, but how I feel it.”
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Justice for All
Edward Redfield (1869-1965), Winter Solitude, c. 1920
Linda Stein: Fluidity of Gender
Founders & Fellows Foundation House, historic Village at Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA newhopecolony.orgOpenweekendsthrough
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Part of the HAWT (Have Art: Will Travel!) collection, Fluidity of Gender is a multimedia exhibition comprised of sculpture, collage, prints, and video. Stein strives to broaden awareness and inspire empathy by presenting gender multiplicities and diversities. By addressing body image, Stein wants the viewer to become more familiar with—and even self-conscious about—society’s destructive focus on oversimplified gender boxes for human expression and identity. She melds and scrambles the continuum between “masculinity” and “femininity” to help collapse these gender binaries. haveartwilltravel.org
Charles Cooper, Seaside Series, No. 1, Graphite pencil, 7”x11"
exhibitions
The artist-led exhibition on an historic farm near Newtown, returns for the its 8th year, featuring paintings, drawings, collages, ceramics, sculptures, and textiles by 28 artists from the U.S., England, France, Georgia, Israel, Pakistan, and Scotland. Preview the exhibition 09/17 & 09/18 by attending Walking the Farm: a Progressive Concert by Grammy Award-winning chamber choir, The Crossing. Tickets: crossingchoir.org. Curated by painter Alex Cohen and theatre artist Clara Weishahn. Members’ artwork is installed in a 19th-century barn and chapel on the farm where they live.
Visit website for gallery hours Events 9/22, Artist Lecture 5-6, Gallery Reception 6-7 (free and open to the public)
Stephen W. Evans, Two Men Talking About Shostakovich, Oil on wood panel, 15”x18"
William Lathrop, Red Shale
Art at Kings Oaks 756 Worthington Mill Road, Newtown, PA SeptemberKingsoaksart.com23-October 9, 2022
Ronald K. De Long Gallery
November 6, 2022
The exhibition is an overview of the original New Hope Artist Colony and artistic legacy of its founders, William Lathrop, Edward Redfield, and Daniel Garber. The Founders is complemented by the Fellows showcase comprised of the first ten artists from the inaugural Fellows of the New Hope Colony Artist Residency in 2021: Rachel Barnard, Miriam Carpenter, Lisa Hunt, Marianne McGinnis, Malika Oyetimein, Marianna Peragallo, Meenakshi Ramamurthy, Soraya Sharghi and Sarah Walko. Guided architecture and landscape tours on the first Saturday of every month. Register for free tickets to the exhibition, and to purchase tickets for the tours: newhopecolony.org/founders-and-fellows.PaintingsonloanfromPayne Gallery, Moravian University.
Free admission, artwork for sale
Penn State Lehigh Valley, Center Valley, PA 610-285-5261 Lehighvalley.psu.edu/gallery Aug. 29–Dec. 3, 2022
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10 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM DAVID STOLLER
David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner and co-head of Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet
Somewhere Far Away She dreams of a place She’s been here before Just over the hill Just through the door She’s been here before She remembers this place The ground so soft The sun on her face Just over the hill A feather drifts past Reaching to hold it, It slips from her grasp Just through the door She follows along, Memories as guideposts A soft swell of song All whom she’s loved And loved her the same A chorus of voices Singing her name Somewhere far away, Now close as a kiss Is a place called home On a day like this. This is a painting by the noted Pennsylvania modernist—however reluctant he may have been to be so labeled—Robert Alexander Darrah “RAD” Miller (1905–1966). Miller lived in New Hope in his beloved Green Gables, now inhabited by our good friends, the Dorians. He studied with the great Pennsylvania impressionist Daniel Garber at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1923 to 1927, and worked with—and was certainly influenced by—Thomas Hart Benton. This painting is typical of much of his work and unique style, in its geometry and forms, its luminous colors, and its … mystery. It never fails to draw me in, into a world that seems to be outside the passage of time—a world that can feel, depending on one’s own state of mind/heart, idyllic or, as reflected in my accompanying poem, Somewhere, Far Away, melancholic. It’s about “home,” a place that for so many, particularly those who are suffering, feels out of reach … somewhere, far away. And sadly, RAD Miller lost (or had never found) his way when, at age 61, after the death of his beloved wife Celia, he stood on her grave, a few days before Christmas, and put a bullet through his heart.
the art of poetry
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Vladimir Kanevsky
PHOTOGRAPH AND ESSAY
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BY RICARDO BARROS
I like to photograph purposefully. A notion pops up in my mind and I search for the best way to express it as some form of story. That story can be simple or complex. While independent viewers may not discern my story’s particulars, I believe they can discern the presence of intent and narrative. This they perceive as promise of reward. It is worth their while to explore a little bit more. But regardless of how clear or powerful an author’s story, we lose control of the narrative when a work is released to the public. We have little control over the context in which the work is subsequently presented. Or, as happened to my portrait of Vladimir Kanevsky, unrelated events can overwhelm the artist’s intent.
Ricardo Barros’ works are in the permanent collections of eleven museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of “Facing Sculpture: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas.”
Vladimir Kanevsky is Ukrainian. It happened to snow on the day of my making his portrait, so of course I invited him to be photographed outside. We drove to nearby Liberty State Park, then blanketed in white. Lower Manhattan loomed across the Hudson. My concept was that an immigrant artist was bringing his whimsical sculpture to the art capital of the world. Of course the events of September 11 overtook this narrative. Now the first thing people see are the World Trade Center’s twin towers. This photograph is tainted with historical lament. But not for me. I still see an intrepid artist approaching Oz, full of hope and optimism for the future. n
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Photo: Carlos Gonzalez / Star Tribune Eric Knight with Lassie
Godfrey Daniels is the first club that made me feel I belonged. Way back in 1981, five years after the music room opened, I embraced an intimate den with rustic walls festooned with posters, instruments and a vintage buzz of subterranean homey blues. Every one of the 100 seats is a stone’s throw from the stage—even the corner
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14 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM the list VALLEY — GEOFF GEHMAN CITY — A.D. AMOROSI CONTINUED ON PAGE 33
A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dogdaughter Tia. Have you ever sat on a chain-sawed stump placed specifically by a stream to make you absorb water-on-rock percussion? You can at the Jere Knight Nature Trail, a heavenly haven where the sun paints skyscraper trees and winds rustle leaves like a didgeridoo. The best loop of the 1.6-mile preserve is the Pursell, which spirals past ravines, rivulets, a concrete satyr embedded in a tree hollow, a bench by a beautiful farm field, a grassy knoll and a stump resembling a fairy throne. Another path leads to a meadow frequented by butterflies with stained-glass wings, a nursery of American chestnuts, an ancient white oak with wildly gnarled Medusa-like limbs and a memorial to Jere Knight, a pioneer environmentalist who helped save Cooks Creek, which runs below the bronze plaque listing her many virtues (poet, editor, friend). Jere was my good friend; I spent many hours in her nearby house discussing her late husband, Eric Knight, author of the 1940 novel Lassie ComeHome, the best-known, most beloved story of the unbreakable bond between two- and four-legged creatures. (2844 Slifer Valley Rd., Riegelsville; 215-345-7020; heritageconservancy.org; jereknight.com)
Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry) He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net
Having not yet outrun summer’s swelter, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that a breeze—even but one Autumnal wind cooler than 99 degrees —can be achieved as we head into the heated live happenings of fall. But that’s September in Philadelphia. Still dense. Still damp. Relentless. That’s not a happy portrait, but at least it’s accurate, temperaturewise, in a literal and figurative sense. Ugh. Because Beyonce’s new house music album, Renaissance, didn’t sell as much as Lady Bey had planned, her husband, Jay-Z, is holding a self-charitable event during the Labor Day Weekend. September’s Made in America festival, held across two days in and around Philadelphia’s Art Museum area Oval, will play host to Tyler, the Creator, the number one album artist of 2022 and a star of Bullet Train, Bad Bunny, and other helpful hip hop, pop and dance music artists looking to lend the Carters a helping hand. Now that there’s no more Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon, you have extra dough to spare. Know how you weren’t totally OK with Tom Hanks’ oddball Dutch accent as Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrman’s Elvis movie? You really will set to twitching when you watch Netflix on September 28 and catch Blonde, director Andrew Dominik’s (The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, many a Nick Cave documentary) much-anticipated new film on the life and legend of Marilyn Monroe, and one based on author Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same name. The so-called ‘blonde’ is played by Cuban actress Ana de Armas who reportedly spent nine months training with a dialogue coach to nail Monroe’s breathy voice, but still has an accent that is uniquely off point. Having seen its trailers and spoken to its director, de Armas’ off Tyler the Creator.
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In 1980 I graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, my dad’s alma mater. Six months later I began my newspaper career in nextdoor Bethlehem, home of a famous Bach festival. Over 20-plus years I covered the evolution of the State Theatre from dying movie house to thriving performing-arts center. I reviewed every-
GHOSTS OF HARMONY
The Beaux-Arts State Theatre in Easton, built in 1910, and remodeled in 1926, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
W 16 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM his story GEOFF GEHMAN
WE ENSHRINE THE DEAD in cemeteries and bars, bedrooms and the mansions of our mind. I enshrined my departed dad during an all-star benefit concert in a theater he was forbidden to frequent as a youngster. I satisfied his spirit as Rosanne Cash sang about enshrining her departed dad in dreams and blood stream, grooves andWegalaxy.connected the cosmic dots at the State Theatre, a plaster palace in Easton, PA. opened in 1926, four years after my father’s birth ten blocks away. Then a movie/vaudeville house, it was condemned as a den of sin by his father, a fiery Mennonite minister hell bent to save his son from the corrupt “world” outside his congregation. Elder William Gehman vowed to whip Clarence, the youngest of his eight children by two sisters, if he dared commune with sexpots, gangsters and lewd comedians. During his 19 years in Easton my dad never attended a State show; never heard Bing Crosby croon After You’ve Gone with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra; never watched Bert Lahr kvetch as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, a role my sister played in elementary school. This chilly childhood was warmed by making ice cream, breeding Boston terriers, and performing for pay. My dad was an elementary schooler when he started singing hymns to his dad’s sermon listeners at Mennonite churches and missions in three states. Attractive ladies rewarded the boy’s pure, mature voice with nickels and dimes, pats and winks. Smart singing, he discovered, is basically selling by seducing. It was his first honest-to-goodness epiphany.Mygrandfather’s sudden death in 1941 freed my father to be the rogue he needed to be. He joined the Navy, disqualifying himself as a religious conscientious objector. Six years later he was selling ads for a major fabric company in Manhattan, living in bohemian Greenwich Village, watching Jackie Robinson revolutionize baseball in Brooklyn. He sang saloon tunes in saloons, sea shanties with the celebrated Robert Shaw Chorale, dirty Irish ditties to my mother, an English Roman Catholic. In 1958, the year I was born, my parents joined a progressive Presbyterian church with African-American deacons and Asian-American elders, ditching their original oppressive faiths. The same year Larry and Pat Gehman found bliss on the South Fork. The beach-and-farm paradise was delightfully different from my dad’s cramped industrial hometown—“like chalk and cheese,” to quote one of my mom’s favorite English folk-isms. Over four decades Dad ran a barbershop singing shop from Westhampton Beach to Montauk. His sure, smiling tenor graced the Whalers Chorus, directed by Don Clause, the notorious vocal coach and real-estate agent; a quartet Dad named after a hardware store in Marcus Hook, PA., and The Peddler’s Opera, an operetta my ad salesman father wrote about a vain salesman’s comic comeuppance. I loved Dad’s love of barbershop’s skin-tight harmonies and ringing chords, elastic dynamics and rhythmic gymnastics. I hated the musical boot camp he ran for my sister and me. He hammered into us theharmonies to Silver Bells,” step by bloody step, while driving to summer errands at a Southampton department store, a Bridgehampton lumber yard and a Water Mill nursery. At the time we desperately wanted to get back to bike riding and body surfing. In time we understood that Dad was just giving us the lifetime thrill of hitting notes that tingle the body and stir the soul. Meg gets this thrill as a singer, songwriter and band leader; I get it as a choir tenor and music journalist.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 30 I quickly emailed Rosanne, inviting her to use the State Theatre concert to please the ghosts of both our fathers. I asked her to sing two signature numbers from her dad’s list…and told her I’d be listening from the front row of the balcony, where my father would have sat, munching popcorn and chocolate, watching the 1937 Humphrey Bogart shoot-’em-up San Quentin, set at the prison where Johnny Cash premiered A Boy Named Sue.
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Sleeker, Shinier
Heaven 17
Forty years into their career, electronic music-makers Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware hit the United States on tour
CONTINUED ON PAGE 32 Martyn became the first of us to get a job—in computers, no less—and had to make a decision as to how to spend his first monthly wage: either get driving lessons or buy a new, monophonic Japanese synth that was more affordable. Thankfully, he bought the synth. And, to this day, he still can’t drive.
A.D. Amorosi: The last time I saw you was mere days after David Bowie passed, and you were singing as part of Tony Visconti’s Holy Holy tribute ensemble. How would you describe the evolution of your work with Bowie’s longtime producer? Glenn Gregory: We’re still going. I was in the right place at the right time to begin that collaboration with Tony in what, 2015? I had been doing an album with a Dutch artist that Tony had been producing when, one day—sitting at the desk, mixing a track—he stops and tells me that when he’s mixing my voice, he’s hearing a lot of David. I asked him then and there if he would put that in writing to which he said, “no,” which is very Tony. Not long after that, while he was talking with (Bowie Spiders from Mars drummer) Woody Woodmansey about touring The Man Who Sold the World together, with David’s blessing, Tony offered me the job. I thought, at first, he only wanted me to do one song—but no, Visconti asked me to sing everything. The whole lot. We’re talking about doing another tour of duty after I finish the Heaven 17 tour. Tony’s an amazing guy.
[ ]
18 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM conversation A.D. AMOROSI
Glenn Gregory: I was 15, Ian was 17, and we were real Sheffield with lyrics that were very risqué. It was truly punk before there was punk, really. In Poly Styrene’s autobiography, she wrote that she had seen us and that we were like the first punk band. Her words, not mine, but
A.D. Amorosi: Let’s go back to the very start of your career singing at the birth of the electronic music continuum as it goes back before 1980—to you nearly being the vocalist for the Human League when Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware started in Sheffield.
Glenn Gregory: Absolutely true. I left Sheffield the weekend they were starting the Human League, which just happened to be the very same weekend I decided to move to London to pursue my other dream, being a music photographer, which I did for a number of years. Initially, I was in a band with Ian Marsh called Musical Vomit—this was 1973, and very pre-punk—a real theater rock band. Imagine a more rubbish New York Dolls. A bit more steelworker Northern Dolls, but with a lot of glam.
A.D. Amorosi: That sounds simultaneously glorious and terrible.
AT A TIME WHEN electronic pop and house music infiltrate the very top of the mainstream American album charts—Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind , and Beyonce’s Renaissance, in particular—it is crucial to celebrate those techy avatars of electronic music whose innovations made the present day all the clearer. At the very top of that list are Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, who, as Heaven 17 (and acts before its formation, such as The Human League), moved from lo-fi, scifi-based, analog, avant-garde synth-punk in the Brit-centric 1970s into something shinier, sleeker and more groove-oriented by 1980. With that pulse and pop, Heaven 17 took things one step further by including the working class sensibilities of the Sheffield hometown, and Britain’s punk-explosive political climate and including that into its lyrical mien with hits such as “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, and “Let’s All Make a Bomb,” and albums such as Penthouse and Pavement (1981), The Luxury Gap (1983) and Bigger Than America (1996). In celebration of its 40th anniversary (give or take a year or two), Heaven 17 makes their first extensive trek through America throughout September and October with a Glenside, PA stop at the Keswick Theatre on SeptemberWhen24.I joke with vocalist Glenn Gregory about having witnessed Heaven 17 live on their only other occasion in America—a single night at Manhattan’s Studio 54 in 1981 as part of a Jim Fouratt and Rudolf Modern Classix production—the singer laughs. “I sincerely hope I’m not as drunk this time as I was that night.” Ditto.
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LongingofYearsThousandThree
20 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM CONTINUED ON PAGE 26 KEITH UHLICHfilm roundup
Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com.
Three Thousand Years of Longing (Dir. George Miller). Starring: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba. The critical and commercial success of Mad Max: Fury Road clearly afforded writerdirector George Miller carte blanche with his followup. This wonderfully strange feature, adapted from an A.S. Byatt story, is basically a two-hander between a lonely academic (Tilda Swinton) and a wish-granting Djinn (Idris Elba), the latter of whom tells the eras-spanning tale of his imprisonment. The leads are in a hotel room for much of the movie, and it’s to Miller’s immense credit that he makes these scenes as visually, aurally and thematically interesting as the colorfully over-the-top flashbacks to the Djinn’s tortured life. The whole production has the feel of a Powell-Pressburger fantasia, though one slanted heavily, at least on the surface, toward the didactic. This complements the cultured perspective of Swinton’s character and makes for an interesting contrast when the tale turns fully romantic. Those looking for the pedal-to-the-metal kineticism of Fury Road will surely be disappointed, but there are riches here that show how sublimely versatile a filmmaker Miller can be. [R] HHHH Prey (Dir. Dan Trachtenberg). Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro. Set a few hundred years before a violenceprone extraterrestrial faced off with the former Governor of California, this latest installment of the Predator series surprises with how generally alright it is. That’s not effusive praise, and indeed, the things that don’t work (overreliance on CGI; acting that’s at best shrug-worthy) are legion. Still, there are plenty of positives, particularly how director and co-scenarist Dan Trachtenberg sets this tale of woman v. alien among the tribes of the Comanche nation prior to the founding of America, which effectively reorients the series’ steroidal ‘80s-actioner ethos. Our very 2022 hero is Naru (Amber Midthunder), who wants to prove her warrior mettle to her tribe and gets her chance when one of the towering mandibular martians sets up shop in the nearby forest. It’s bloody fun and games from there, though the film is only at its best after a second group of villains—a hiss-and-spit prone group of psychotic French trappers—show up to act stupid and get dismembered. [R] HH1/2 Bullet Train (Dir. David Leitch). Starring: Brad
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The House Is Black (1963, Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran)
Writer-director-star Tom Noonan’s prizewinning drama (it took top honors at Sundance) is the best ever movie about the worst first date. Noonan and Karen Sillas play Michael and Jackie, coworkers who meet at the latter’s apartment for what is supposed to be a romantic evening, but one that quickly spirals into darkly humorous and cringingly complicated psychological territory. Every awkward pause and attempt to impress (Jackie’s creepy reading of a “children’s story” she wrote is a wince-inducing tour-de-force) portends a neutron bomb-like explosion that, in truth, never comes. The prevalent sense of discomforts left unacknowledged, and never to be addressed, is fireworks enough. The actors performed the script as a play first, though there’s never a sense that we’re watching filmed theater. Like the work of Noonan’s mentor John Cassavetes, What Happened Was… deals with the mess of merely being alive, and there are few things more cinematic than that. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)
The only film by the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who tragically died in a car accident at the age of 32, is a lyrical, stunningly cut-to-the-quick documentary set in a leper colony. Farrokhzad both directed and edited, and the 22-minute film has the feel of verse in motion, the images and sounds cut and-or juxtaposed in such a way as to rhyme and resonate. Narrated passages from the Old Testament, the Koran, and Farrokhzad’s own work are placed atop candid visuals of the colony residents being attended to/going about their day. The aversion and pity one likely feels at the outset soon morphs into something much more complex. This is a profound meditation on the human condition
22 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM KEITH UHLICHfilm classics
inSillasKarenandNoonanTom WasHappenedWhat CONTINUED ON PAGE 28
What Happened Was… (1994, Tom Noonan, United States)
(Streaming on MUBI.)
Crimson Gold (2003, Jafar Panahi, Iran) Iranian director Jafar Panahi was recently sentenced to six years in prison—the latest in a series of oppressive tactics by the censorious Iranian government against one of its greatest artists. The mere fact that Panahi has often painted his home country in complex shades is enough to earn him suspicion and worse at home. One of his strongest efforts is this 2003 drama, written by Panahi’s mentor Abbas Kiarostami, about a pizza delivery man who turns to crime to make ends meet, and to push back more generally against the cruelties (micro and macro) that he experiences daily. The film begins at the end with the protagonist’s botched robbery and subsequent suicide, then flashes back to sketch in what led him to that point. It’s a literal portrayal of the vicious cycle that afflicts so many people who face poverty and injustice. And like most of Panahi’s films, it has an uncanny power to both enrage and engross.
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books Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant: An Italian Cookbook by Jody Williams, Rita Sodi, Anna Kovel Knopf,James$40Beard Award-winning chefs Jody Williams and Rita Sodi share the secrets of their beloved restaurant, which is synonymous with New York City’s Greenwich Village. Since 2014, Via Carota has been a destination for food lovers, celebrities, and well-informed travelers because of its impeccable Italian fare. Emphasizing vegetables and seasonal cooking, the dishes that come out of Williams and Sodi’s kitchen are astonishing in their simplicity yet dazzling in their elegance. Now, with this beautiful, deeply personal cookbook, they share the keys to cooking Via Carota’s traditional cuisine at home.
Christmas with Southern Living 2022 by Editors of Southern Living Abrams,Discover$28.99fun and creative new ways to decorate, entertain, and handcraft gifts for the holidays. Sparkling menus and décor ideas, along with more than 100 new recipes, make entertaining a breeze for celebrations of all sizes. Inside, the editors of Southern Living reveal their favorite cooking tips and make-ahead secrets that take the pressure off hosting and put the focus on family and friends. There is also a special gifts-from-the-kitchen section with recipes for treats to wrap and share. More than 200 photographs show off dazzling holiday decorations and table settings to try, plus inspired designs for holiday wreaths, trees, centerpieces, and mantel arrangements.
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The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell Knopf,Florence,$28 the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
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No Plan B: Jack Reacher by Lee DelacorteChildPress, $28.99 In Gerrardsville, Colorado, a woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise, grabbed the dead woman’s purse and strollingWhenaway.another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste.But Reacher is unaware that these crimes
Suspect by Scott Turow Grand Central, $29.00
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent and The Last Trial returns with a riveting legal thriller in which a reckless private detective is embroiled in a fraught police scandal. For as long as Lucia Gomez has been a police chief, she has walked a precarious line between authority and camaraderie, and has maintained a spotless reputation—until now. Three police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation. Clarice “Pinky” Granum spent most of her youth experimenting with drugs and failing at professions. Pinky knows that in the eyes of most people, she’s nothing but a screwup. She finally has a job as a licensed P.I. working for Rik on his roster of mostly minor cases. Rik’s shabby office and even shabbier cases are a far cry from the kinds of high-profile criminal matters Pinky became familiar with in the law office of her grandfather, Sandy Stern. But they feel that Chief Gomez’s case, which has attracted national attention, is their chance to break into the legal big leagues. Like a Rolling Stone by Jann S. Wenner Little, Brown, $35.00 Jann Wenner has been called by his peers “the greatest editor of his generation.” His deeply personal memoir vividly describes the music, politics, and lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, fullthroated backing. Like a Rolling Stone is a beautifully written portrait of one man’s life, and the life of his generation.
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The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher Little, Brown, $29.00 We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, in their pursuit of unfettered profits, preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions.
are part of something much larger and more far-reaching: an arsonist out for revenge, a foster kid on the run, a cabal of powerful people involved in a secret conspiracy with many moving parts. There is no room for error, but they make a grave one. They don’t consider Reacher a threat.
26 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM BOOKS / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24
Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie by Gary HachetteWeissBooks, $29 Before Enron, before Madoff, before The Wolf of Wall Street, Eddie Antar’s corruption was second to none. The difference was that it was a street franchise, a local place that was in the blood stream of everyone’s daily life in the 1970s and early ‘80s. And Eddie pulled it off with a certain style, an inyour-face blue collar chutzpah. Despite the fact that then U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoffcalled him “the Darth Vader of capitalism” after the extent of the fraud was revealed, one of the largest SEC frauds in American history. In Retail Gangster, investigative journalist Gary Weiss takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most unbelievable business scam stories of all time, a story spanning continents and generations, reaffirming the old adage that the truth is often stranger than fiction. n Pitt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry. There is indeed a bullet train in Bullet Train, a frenetic action comedy in which a gaggle of hitmen (and hitwomen) converge on a speeding Japanese locomotive for what initially seem to be disparate reasons. Brad Pitt is, of course, central among the ensemble, playing a career contract killer with perpetual bad luck who’s tasked with picking up a briefcase full of ransom money. Simple job made more complicated by a pair of impeccably dressed Cockney “brothers” (Aaron TaylorJohnson and Brian Tyree Henry) in the employ of a mysterious figure named White Death (the reveal of the actor playing this big bad is one of the film’s few genuinely funny moments). Not to mention a cluster of other subplots (an escaped killer snake; two generations of yakuza out for revenge), the overarching purposes of which are revealed incrementally as the train races toward Kyoto. Obnoxiousness is at full force—in the whip-panheavy visuals; in the irritatingly clever needle drops; in several smug star cameos (begone Ryan Reynolds!); and in the proceedings’ general sense of turn-your-brain-off disposability. [R] H1/2 Nope (Dir. Jordan Peele). Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun. For his third feature, writer-director Jordan Peele looks to the skies, toward a ravenously extraterrestrial threat hanging out above the California countryside. Brother and sister OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) are owners of a down-on-its-luck farm where horses are trained for use in motion pictures, and a viral photograph of a UFO would be just the kick in the pants they need financially. Unfortunately, the ship (or what seems like a ship) is good at evading cameras, and it also appears to enjoy the taste of warm bodies—animal, human, don’t matter. None of this otherworldly rigmarole is more than competently staged and performed. The most interesting thread here proves to be a more down-to-earth subplot involving OJ and Emerald’s neighbor Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star still traumatized by his long-ago encounter with a rampaging chimpanzee. Only via Yeun’s haunted performance does Peele’s overarching theme about the toll of staring into an inhuman void really resonate.
Solution to HEARSAY
What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe Riverhead Books, $30 The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billionstory building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. Unfazed by absurdity, Munroe consults the latest research on everything to answer his readers’ questions, clearly and concisely, with illuminating and occasionally terrifying illustrations. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances.
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Whenever I do a painting of an interior where there is a painting on the wall, I can count on somebody saying, “Look, a painting in a painting.” I think it’s fun too. This one is a little like that, as I’m doing a painting of John making the color paint that I’m using to do the painting of him making the color paint I’m using . . . etc. It’s tricky. You can’t depict all the paint in the machine using straightout-of-the-tube color because it will appear unnatural. The way to utilize the purity of color is to set a stroke in a field that isn’t as pure. I used one thin brushstroke of fullstrength alizarine to represent the concentration of oil and pigment cradled between the rollers. I suppose I could have asked for a little nip of the color out of the machine to use in my painting, but that would have been a bit too clever. It’s a nice trip up the Delaware River to where Vasari colors are made, and there’s plenty else to see in the Lehigh Valley. Vasari has a showroom In Manhattan (Chelsea) where they do the same table-talk about mixing. If you are an oil painter, you should visit one or the other. You might find that they make your paint too. n
I wanted to paint the milling process at Vasari from life, and they graciously said yes. The color they were doing the day I came was Alizarin Crimson. Each time the mixture was put through the milling machine, it looked more like angels sound, until it was pastry quality—lick-your-fingers good.
tant at the time. When I decided to concentrate on the studio work a few years ago, I upgraded the paint—from Chevy to Bentley. Vasari paints are high-quality pigments in refined linseed oil. Nothing else. They are hand-made one batch at a time (about 200 tubes). They even draw down a sample from every batch on gessoed paper, cut it into strips, and wrap it around the tube, so you know exactly what’s inside.
ings I’ve done (thousands), switching colors required some re-programming. The large image of a whale I did in 2019, Blue Boy, was my first using Vasari colors, and I’ve painted with them since.
AT THE SOURCE / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5 FILM CLASSICS / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22 in its concomitant beauty and horror. (Streaming on rarefilmm.) Museum Hours (2012, Jem Cohen, Austria/US)
We watched as they mixed the oil and pigment by hand in a tub and fed it to the milling machine (the size of a kitchen island), which combines the already powderfine pigments with the oil. They ran it through multiple times, resulting in a jewellike, thickly smooth, erotically rich feast for theThensensibilities.wespent time with Gail at the mixing table, with tubes of all their colors on one side and a glass mixing surface on the other. We discussed the palette I preferred. Gail would put a dab of one color on the glass and mix it with others using a painting knife to show me interesting ways to create shadow colors or a range of secondaries. She knew what she was doing. It was mesmerizing. Gail gave me all the time I needed and showed me everything I wanted to see. Of course, I left with a bunch of paints. The ones with widely accessible pigments are comparable in price to the other brands. Some colors use rare and expensive pigments, and those tubes can be pricey. Either way, it’s a high concentration of the finest pigment in the best oil. I find the tubes last me a long time. Every brand has its unique palette and handling characteristics. After all the paint-
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A blissfully transient friendship anchors writer-director Jem Cohen’s drama. Canadian actress Mary Margaret O’Hara plays Anne, a woman visiting Austria to attend to a neardeath family member. While she waits for the situation to take its inevitable turn, she wanders the city of Vienna, eventually making her way into the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where she befriends a guard named Johann (Bobby Sommer). The museum becomes their playground to discuss art, life, death, and other subjects, and though there’s an intimacy to their relationship, romance never seems in the cards. Both performers bring clear aspects of themselves to the film, particularly Sommer, a non-actor with a gentle, mysteriously expressive demeanor. Cohen’s film proves a sublime mix of the fictional and the factual, capturing the same sense of tranquil engagement one often feels in the best artistic institutions. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.) n
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one from Aretha Franklin to Jose Carreras to Ellen DeGeneres, whose then-partner, actor Anne Heche, was filming her funny lover. The State became the fun oasis my dad never had, my shrine for entertaining redemption.
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I wrote this essay to atone for not writing about taking my dad to the State. In 1991 he was living with me in Bethlehem, depressed and paranoid, victimized by a stroke that screwed up his speaking but not his singing. I decided to cheer him up with a duet in his once-forbidden den. Standing in the State’s balcony, we shared a lusty sea shanty set in Swansea, a Massachusetts coastal town founded in 1667, a year before Wainscott’s official birth. In a flash Dad became his best South Fork self: chesty, zesty, tuned into pleasure. Easton blended with East Hampton, rivers with ocean, past with pastime. We proved yet again that harmony is all about fitting in, belonging, enshrining. n Geoff Gehman is a former resident of Wainscott, a journalist and the author of The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons (SUNY Press). He lives in Bethlehem, Pa. geoffgehman@verizon.net.
The author and his dad.
In 1995 I watched Johnny Cash and his relations turn the State into a gospel chapel on the prairie. Hearing him sing Bird on the Wire, Leonard Cohen’s prickly poem of penitence, I realized he could have been chiseled from my dad’s block of granite. Both men were lay preachers who made music to chase and corral their demons. Both tutored their children with their jukebox mouths. My dad had me memorize three dozen of his top tunes, everything from One for My Baby, the Frank Sinatra wee-hours standard, to Honey/Little Eyes, a standard of greasedlightning barbershop. Johnny Cash prepared his daughter Rosanne for a musical profession by compiling 100 country essentials, everything from Motherless Children to Miss the Mississippi and You. Both fatherly lists contained Long Black Veil, a gorgeously haunted tale narrated by a dead man visited by his best friend’s wife, whose adultery got himMyhung.kinship with Rosanne Cash was sealed by her 2010 memoir Composed, a lyrical, drop-dead honest portrait of the healing beauty of music and love, forgiveness and the East End. I learned that we both mourned our dads while walking South Fork beaches— Beach Lane in Wainscott for me, Indian Wells in Amagansett for her. It was on Indian Wells that she welcomed the comforting vision of her father living on in her son Jake, who was singing and moving “like a stuttering windmill,” merrily oblivious to a coming storm.
Rosanne’s time machine whirlpooled me to Hampton Bays in 1990, when singing stopped me from giving up on my father for good. Divorced from his second wife, who cared for all his needs, Dad was living in a hovel, high on wine and low on Lithium, noxiously obnoxious. We pacified ourselves by performing My Way, his anthem; Helplessly Hoping, which inspired my first original harmony (and which Crosby, Stills & Nash rehearsed in Sag Harbor for their first album), and If With All Your Hearts from Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, which he sang at the Presbyterian churches in Bridgehampton and East Hampton. We even broke out Dad’s clever lyrics to Over the River and Through the Woods, which the Gehmans sang while motoring to his mother’s house in Easton (“The car knows the score/It’s been thereMusicbefore”).elevates magically, which is what happened when Rosanne and John slowed down The World Unseen, chiming guitars like soft bells. Their descending notes made my spirit ascend. I felt myself floating around the State’s chandelier, the wraparound friezes of heraldic shields, the Spanish-galleon boxes. Revelations jingle jangled like doubloons. I noticed I had unknowingly booked a seat a baseball toss from the box where I saw k.d. lang with my mother. I remembered Mom’s recently discovered 1956-58 diary, a tender account of Dad distracting her with baseball games, dinners and movies in Manhattan while she was bearing me. And that’s when it dawned on me that my father loved to take his kids to movies in Manhattan because his father never took him to movies in Easton. Watching classics— Young Frankenstein, Chinatown, The Exorcist—allowed him to atone for his dad’s sin.
In January I learned that Rosanne would perform in a March gala gig at the State Theatre produced by a fellow friend. Boak Bash 2 was dreamed up by Dick Boak, the magnetic retired director of artist relations and archivist for Martin Guitar, the fabled maker of acoustic instruments in Nazareth, PA, where my dad died in 2001, two years before Johnny Cash passed. Dick helped design and build customized, limited-edition guitars for all his headliners: Rosanne; rock star Steve Miller, one of Rosanne’s teenage heroes; country star Marty Stuart, a Johnny Cash confidant. All of them, including Johnny, are enshrined in the Martin factory museum that Dick co-created. I quickly emailed Rosanne, inviting her to use the State Theatre concert to please the ghosts of both our fathers. I asked her to sing two signature numbers from her dad’s list for her: I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, the Hank Williams weeper, and I Still Miss Someone. which she convinced her sick, reluctant father to let her sing with him during his last show at Carnegie Hall. I told her I’d be listening from the front row of the State’s balcony, where my father would have sat, munching popcorn and chocolate, watching the 1937 Humphrey Bogart shoot-’em-up San Quentin,” set at the prison where Johnny Cash premiered A Boy Named Sue Rosanne never zapped back. Her non-response didn’t bother me because her State set was a complete family affair. Accompanied by John Leventhal, her lead guitarist, producer and husband, she sang Long Black Veil; The Sunken Lands, a tribute to her dad’s rock-solid mom, and The World Unseen, a panoramic view of her eternal bond with Johnny. Imagining herself as a sparrow and a rainbow, she embraced her dad’s spirit in Memphis and morphine, stars and dreams, “the rhythm of my blood stream” and “the grooves of songs we sing.”
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Glenn Gregory: That’s the asymmetrical haircut, there. So Martyn got Phil in and gave him the instrumental of “Being Bolled,” Phil whipped up some lyrics, and I’ve never been happier with a decision because I love the Human League as it was.
A.D. Amorosi: And Philip (Oakey) did have a fantastic haircut. I know because I had that haircut.
A.D. Amorosi: Now, getting you back to singing—from being in a trash can New York Dolls to crooning in the manner you do as part of Heaven 17. How does that happen? How do you wind up coming back and packing punk’s aggression into somewhat sleeker electronic music by 1980?
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Glenn Gregory: That weekend, we had this big party, and I left for London that Monday. Martyn and Ian had been toying with this purely electronic thing, but nothing was definite. Then they asked about getting a singer. They wanted to ask me, but I had just left. Then Martyn said to Ian, “I don’t know if he could sing, but I have a mate at school named Philip who has a fantastic haircut.”
Glenn Gregory: I believe so. It was fit. As a vocalist, there is a timbre that is very analog-y. Like an old Moog, it has that resonance and has expanded due to everything else I have done. Hand in glove, my voice fits that music. The political outlook of the lyrics too. Now, of course, it’s just Martyn and me, as Ian just melted away back in 2007. There’s a lot of connection between us and our audience—a lot of chat.
A.D. Amorosi: Then punk came in and told you otherwise, wiped the slate clean.
Glenn Gregory: There are things that we’ve done that are on my computer that no one’s heard, but we’d want anything we do to be relevant. A reason to do it—not just put it out, and it’s onto streaming the next thing after that. I think whatever we do in the future would have that heft that you are talking about. It’s not as if things have gotten any better. To that end, songs such as “Fascist Groove Thang,” and “Crushed by the Wheels of Industry,” and “Let’s All Make a Bomb,” are as relevant now as they were 40 years ago. Those Heaven 17 songs are throwbacks for celebration, of course, but I promise you, they’re just as meaningful now, if not more so. n
32 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM there in black-and-white. Martyn was on the scene too and started coming around and had friends such as Bob Last, the label owner, who wound up signing the Human League. Martyn, Ian, and I had similar tastes: Faust, disco, Can, and experimental electronic music. We began messing around, writing music—it was a weird time because Sheffield was so working-class. The idea of being in a band and making a career of it sounded unthinkable.
A.D. Amorosi: There was this whole scene of Sheffield electronic people at the time, the mid-1970s.
Glenn Gregory: Yes. Punk blew away all of those pre-conceptions. Suddenly, even non-musicians could do it. Soon after this, Martyn became the first of us to get a job in computers, no less, and had to make a decision as to how to spend his first monthly wage—either get driving lessons or buy a new, monophonic Japanese synth that was more affordable. Thankfully, he bought the synth. And, to this day, he still can’t drive.
A.D. Amorosi: Other than that baritone croon, your addition to H17 was?
A.D. Amorosi: So moving the aggression of punk into electronic music’s lyrical lean in terms of Heaven 17’s politics was your tell. That and how you moved from a scream into a whisper.
Glenn Gregory: I think one of its main differences, when we do it as opposed to others utilizing the electronic music form, is that Martyn and I have only ever done this, written and produced electronic music. Together in the studio with equipment that is surely 45 years old in some cases. Like Martyn still has and uses the first synth he bought from his first wages. And it still knocks the socks off of anything else newer, it’s that amazing. When newer people do this, there are so many different writers on one track. I don’t mind it, but I do think it loses a little bit of focus. And feeling. That’s a skill, making those hits. For us, however, there is something more personal at work. There is an importance in writing what’s from the heart—from us to you. We write our own songs, really.
Glenn Gregory: There was Cabaret Voltaire and the Vice Versa guys who later became ABC. Everything was fabulously chaotic. It was guitars and synths going everywhere, and everything was absolute fun.
A.D. Amorosi: And then you decided to find fame and fortune as a photographer.
A.D. Amorosi: Along with this Heaven 17 tour and celebrating 40 years, you keep talking about you and Martyn writing together. Should we expect new H17 music sooner than later? And will the fresh material have the same political heft as Heaven 17 favorites?
Glenn Gregory: While I was in London doing photo shoots, the Human League was making its impact. I had to go to Sheffield to photograph Joe Jackson for the NME, and I phoned Ian to meet for a beer. By sheer coincidence, that was the same day the band would have its apocryphal meeting where Phil and Martyn split when the Human League threw Martyn out of his own band. Martyn didn’t know which way Ian would go but wanted to start a new band immediately. He asked if I would come back to Sheffield to start singing again with him. And I was ready to do that then. That was on a Friday, and by Monday, I was back in Sheffield singing for what would become Heaven 17, starting on the backing track to “Fascist Groove Thang.” Now, the only asset—and I use the word loosely—that the two bands shared was a studio, a derelict building with one room filled with electronic equipment. As beat up as it was, no one wanted to give it up, so we wound up sharing that studio: the Human League worked from 10 in the morning until ten at night where they wrote Dare, then we came in the rest of the time, and we wrote Penthouse and Pavement.
A.D. Amorosi: We started the conversation by talking about how you were part of the start of electronic pop. What is your take on the currency of its sound, and how mainstream artists such as Beyonce and Drake use it for their own means?
Glenn Gregory: I think where Phil tended to come from a science fiction perspective when it came to lyrics—something strange, something TV-oriented, more amorphous—Martyn, Ian, and I were very political. We were very interested in what was happening in the news and society, so Heaven 17 went that route. I could do that very easily - the whole “Fascist Groove Thang” bass solo took five days. The split wound up being acrimonious, and everyone wanted to be the best. Martyn, in particular, wanted to prove that Phil had made a mistake in throwing him out of the band. I’m sure Phil was doing that, too, so the creativity for both of those albums was at a boiling point. That level of excitement carried on for many years.
If you’ve had quite enough of buying David Bowie re-issues, here’s something immersive and wondrous to tuck into: an Imax-only presentation of the rarest ever live Bowie events with Moonage Daydream, director Brett Morgen’s post-psychedelic, way comprehensive documentary tribute to the late Bowie’s 50-year musical journey.
The Carmelcorn Shop opened in 1931, the same year my father made it his candy emporium, a rare worldly (re)treat for the son of a strict Mennonite minister. Tucked into its original location, with a sign proclaiming “The Original Since 1931.” it still generates a circus glee. Gaze in wild wonder at the rows and rows of novelty candy: circus peanuts, bubble-gum cigarettes, wax lips! Savor a dizzying array of freshly roasted nuts: brazils, filberts, pumpkin seeds! Relish a dazzling ensemble of home-made, chocolate-dipped splendors: dates, orange peel, molasses sponge! The narrow, cozy shop has been run with passion and compassion by Tony and Sia Bassil since 1996, 19 years after Sia began working between walls striped white and red like a circus tent. (62 Center Square, Easton; 610-253-6461; carmelcornshop.com)
the beaten track accent actually helps you focus on the actress’ forgotten talents, as opposed to Hanks’ voice as the Southern friend Colonel, which just messed with an audience’s collective head. For those of you who believe that anti-vaxxers need love too—and why not, we’re a generous, forgiving people—Van Morrison is cheerfully (as cheerful as he can be) back in action after long grousing throughout the pandemic in Europe and the U.K. that he wasn’t allowed to tour due to governmental mandates. Now, I might have seen more reason to mask or avoid Van the Man rather than drop dead hearing Moondance again, but that’s me. For those ready for the supercharge of one of Caucasian R&B pop’s finest vocalists, he’ll be at The Mann Center on September 8. If you’re not ready to go out and face the throng, you can watch Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and ramp up the part where Van sings (another famous crank and agitator) Roger Waters’ Comfortably Numb. A thought.
ICON | SEPTEMBER2022 | ICONDV.COM 33 VALLEY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14 CITY / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14 pews by the lobby/parlor. The acoustics have the vibrant resonance of a Martin D-28 guitar; you can hear Chris Smither’s foot tapping while drinking coffee and eating a brownie at the front-room counter. Spectators are ideal listeners; they know that silence between songs isn’t just golden, it’s sterling. Everyone gladly tunes into an around-the-dial station for beatnik rock barnburners, bohemian cowboy lullabies, country-fried jazz, gypsy punk and more hues of blues than you can find on Crayola crayons. At Godfrey’s I’ve heard Townes Van Zandt, two of the three Roche sisters and Lenny Kaye, who played tunes from his book Lightning Striking, an autobiographical biography of a fan, music journalist and Patti Smith’s longtime guitarist. I was there the night Eric Andersen handed the phone to John Gorka, who heard Joni Mitchell praise Andersen for teaching her open tuning. Gorka later wrote the Godfrey’s anthem That’s How Legends Are Made, an ode to a song lab, an open-mike school, a forum for magic. (7 E. 4th St., Bethlehem; 610-867-2390; godfreydaniels.org. Upcoming shows: Bakithi Kumalo and the South African All-Stars with Miriam Clancy, Sept. 10; Tom Paxton and the DonJuans, Oct.Art26)in the Park is a very pleasant reunion in an urban oasis. Since the 1970s artists and artisans have been selling their works in Allentown’s West Park, which has a canopy of elderly trees, graceful sidewalks, an ornate fountain, war monuments, and a bandshell. This year the Allentown Band, America’s oldest community group, will play 114 years to the day of the park’s christening. Another extra added bonus: on Sept. 10 Civic Theatre of Allentown will premier BROKE(N), a documentary about struggling Allentown residents coproduced by Art in the Park co-chairs Michael Schelp, a TV producer, and Alan Younkin, a veterinarian. (free; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 17; 16th and West Turner streets, Allentown; westpark-ca.org/art)
After having filmed unique rock docs such as 2015’s Cobain: Montage Of Heck and 2012’s Rolling Stones Crossfire Hurricane , Morgen knows what he’s doing and, to that end, was both sanctioned by Bowie’s estate and given unprecedented access to footage,before-seenrecordingsnever-before-heardandnever-concertpersonaljournals, and un-used interview material. “Since I was 16, I was determined to have the greatest adventure that any one person could ever have,” says Bowie within the body of Moonage Daydream. He did, so why don’t you? Freak out. n
My father lived his last eight years at Gracedale County Home in Nazareth, a stroke victim animated by baseball, singing and hot-fudge sundaes at the Spot Drive-In, a sweet, savory hot spot. Dad came alive wolfing his ice-cream concoction under a sheltered patio by a flatroofed building that could be mistaken for a concession stand at a drive-in movie theater. The Spot makes a spiced-apple sundae, a watermelon milkshake and 34 soft-serve flavors, including English toffee and key lime. Equally delicious is the food, especially the chili cheese hot dog and the onion rings, which can be eaten on fiberglass benches shaped like banana splits. (corner of Hecktown Road and Nazareth Pike/Route 191, Bethlehem; 610-759-4458) n
Art in the Park, 2019 Antonin Artaud
The Philadelphia Fringe Festival and O22: the Opera Philadelphia Fest — from William S. Burroughs meets David Lynch meets Antonin Artaud (Artaud in the Black Lodge) to competitive reality television-based immersive dance theater (JUNK’s Luster) to abortion-activist performance art (several troupes), this September 1 start to two dovetailing, separate but equal live arts festivals are the toast of the international avant-garde and intelligent sophistcats everywhere. Why are you still reading this?
Percentage increase since 2019 in the average hourly rate for a babysitter: 26
Portion of those workers who predict that they will one day become that man: 3/10
9 Researchers created a brain atlas of the bearded dragon, reported that the median time for snapping turtles to recover from vehicle-induced partial carapace avulsion is three months, and described a case of marijuana toxicity in a mini rex rabbit. Males over the age of eleven become liabilities in mongoose warfare. U.S. bestiality laws have remained vague, moralistic, and dependent on the assumption that zoophilia is linked to violence against humans. Males of the orb-weaving spider Philoponella prominens spring away at speeds of up to eighty-eight centimeters per second to avoid being eaten after mating. Ubiquitous follicular mites are becoming symbiotic with humans and may be responsible for unclogging our facial pores. The Black Death came from Kyrgyzstan. The drug resistance of the Candida auris fungus is boosted by its occasional sexual reproduction. Comic books were found to be an effective therapeutic intervention for adolescent rape victims in the Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement. Nightmares may be an early symptom of Parkinson’s, and people who consider religion personally irrelevant have a tenfold higher risk of developing the disease. Buddhist and Taoist nurses tend to accept death neutrally, whereas Catholic nurses treat it as an escape from life’s miseries. 9
Average amount Americans estimate they would receive if their partner won a million dollars in the lottery: $291,689
Minimum % of American psychologists who have a lifetime history of mental health difficulties: 80
Archaeologists suggested that a fourth-millennium bc Mesopotamian figure of a human-ibex grasping a pair of snakes expressed the “paradoxes of urban living ” and the “continued presence of the unexplainable,” and that broken, early Bronze Age mace-heads found at Tel Bet Yerah “symbolized the distribution of power in the community and resistance to centralized authority.”
Factor by which Americans over 65 are more likely than those under 30 to worry about the future of democracy: 2
Genital cutting may persist in spite of its physiological costliness because it maintains social structures. A pregnant tortoise was found preserved in the ruins of Pompeii, and the bones of three hundred and fifty frogs and toads were found near an Iron Age roundhouse at Bar Hill. The city revealed in the Mosul reservoir by a catastrophic drought may be the ruins of Zakhiku, which was destroyed by an earthquake. Citizen-operated seismograms detected explosive attacks on ATMs in Bonn and Kürten. The resonance of sonic booms is amplified by the man-made canyons of cities. Soot particles introduced into the upper atmosphere by space launches have five hundred times the heattrapping capacity as soot particles released by aviation. Some marine RNA viruses trap carbon in the deep ocean. Plastics in the ocean may harbor novel antibiotics.
Portion of young Japanese workers who say their office employs a middle-aged man who doesn’t do any work: 1/2
34 ICON | SEPTEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM
Portion of sexually active American men who would consider using hormonal contraception: 1/3
Portion of journalists who say that journalism is bad for their emotional well-being: 1/3 Who describe the industry in negative terms: 3/4
Percentage by which Republicans are more likely than Democrats to use condoms: 14
Of Democrats younger than 50 who think so: 36
Percentage of Americans who say they would keep their winning the lottery a secret: 83 Who say they would be afraid of squandering their winnings: 42 Who say they would invest them in cryptocurrency: 19
Percentage of Democrat-voting college students who would not go on a date with a Trump voter: 71
Of Trump-voting college students who would not go on a date with a Democrat: 31
Percentage by which women are more likely than men to develop long COVID: 22
Percentage by which journalists are more likely than the general public to think misinformation is a big problem: 21
SOURCES: 1–4 Pew Research Center (Washington); 5,6 YouGov (NYC); 7 Global Gateway Advisors (NYC); 8,9 Global Drug Survey (London); 10 Sarah E. Victor, Texas Tech University (Lubbock); 11,12 Pew Research Center; 13 Federal Reserve Board (Washington); 14–16 Zillow (Seattle); 17–19 YouGov; 20,21 Southern Poverty Law Center (Montgomery, Ala.); 22,23 The Generation Lab (Washington); 24–27 Play Pennsylvania (Las Vegas); 28 Labaton Sucharow (NYC); 29,30 Office of the New York State Comptroller (Albany); 31 LendingClub (San Francisco); 32,33 Upwork (San Francisco); 34 Evan Starr, University of Maryland (College Park); 35 Care.com (Waltham, Mass.); 36 Angi Inc. (Denver); 37 American Lifeguard Association (Vienna, Va.); 38,39 Shikigaku (Tokyo).
Percentage by which men are more likely than women not to care about the 1/6 investigation: 19
Portion of U.S. workers who are bound by noncompete agreements: 1/5
Portion of full-time skilled freelancers who say they would prefer a traditional full-time job: 1/4
Percentage by which Americans drink alcohol less often than the average person worldwide: 18
Average amount of a New York City banker’s 2021 bonus: $257,500
Portion of U.S. pools that will be closed this summer due to lifeguard shortages: 1/3
Who say the process was as stressful as a root canal: 1/5 Who say it was as stressful as becoming a parent: 1/4
Social and mental health problems as well as sexual dysfunction were reported among men with adult acquired buried penis. Fathers who use nicotine before their child’s birth have more anxious offspring. Seattle communitycollege students use twice as much marijuana as students at four-year colleges, who drink twice as much alcohol. In the previous decade, mortality among white people declined much more steeply in Democratic counties than in Republican ones. Conspiratorial thinking may be linked to support for progressive taxation. Dispatching mental health responders instead of police for 9-1-1 calls reporting nonviolent offenses in Denver reduced crime by 34 percent and spending by 75 percent. The self-made rich are less sensitive to the plight of the poor. More intelligent people are more impaired by lack of sleep. Most men, when paired with women, walk to the right, possibly so that they can fight more effectively. The ventral striatum is activated in the brains of couples who are asked to compliment each other, suggesting that the anticipation is itself rewarding. The emoji most associated with anticipation, joy, positivity, and surprise is the birthday cake. n
FINDINGS
Who do not live within an hour’s drive of any extended family members: 1/5 Minimum amount of wealth created by the housing market during the pandemic: $6,000,000,000,000
Percentage increase this year in the average rate for a lawn-mowing service: 22
Portion of Americans making more than $250,000 per year who live paycheck to paycheck: 1/3
Percentage increase in the number of freelancers in skilled labor between 2019 and 2021: 8
By which they get drunk more often: 58
Chance that a finance worker making more than $500,000 per year has knowledge of corporate malfeasance: 1 in 3
By which Democrats are more likely than Republicans to have an IUD: 400
Portion of American homebuyers who report having cried at least once while purchasing a home: 1/2
Percentage of Republicans under 50 who think feminism has done more harm than good: 57
Percentage of journalists who believe they should not let personal views affect their work: 82
harper’s INDEX
Portion of Americans who live within an hour’s drive of all or most of their extended family: 3/10
Percentage increase this represents from 2020: 20
ACROSS 1 Play with a serious tone 6 Résumé listing 9 Slumber party get-up, informally 12 “How do you ___?” (judge’s 17question)Charged toward 18 Lobe locale 19 Outback hopper 20 Communication medium for 21astronautsBuzzingwith activity 22 “Three-base hit, hmm?”? 25 Roger seen in “For the Love of 26Movies”Movement for most socialists 28 Part of a cat costume 29 Side trying to score 31 “Gotta go!” 32 “Death Becomes Her” co-star 34HawnSnaking creature 35 “I’m not the one who’s going to change directions here!”? 39 Rocker Snider, when educating students at a French school? 44 Highest point 45 “___: Vegas” (spinoff that debuted in 2021) 46 Enjoy a certain resort 47 “Alice in Wonderland” bird 48 Org. reviewing returns 49 “How is that affirmative vote supposed to help?”? 55 Complementary force of yang 56 Medieval Times weapon 58 Williams-___ (cookware 59retailer)Obeys a sentry’s order 61 ___-than-thou 64 Climactic introduction? 65 Quadrilaterals, e.g. 67 Site of the Taj Museum 68 Many a Model U.N. participant 69 Old gray horse who “ain’t what she used to be,” in song 70 Garments with pictures of Earl Grey and Darjeeling? 74 Be in debt to the Great White North? 79 Covers under coffee tables, 80perhapsNamed before getting married 81 Wine barrel wood 82 Chew (on), like a rat 83 Site of gladiatorial battles 85 Like a pirate’s favorite films? 90 Town congregation spot 91 Not egotistical 93 Human chicken 94 “Baba ___” (the Who hit) 95 Way of shouting “How could this happen?!” to a group of genetic molecules? 98 Title for the late musician Bramwell Tovey 101 ___ out a living (got by) 102 Ares and Hercules, to 106PoseidonSubmit a wrong answer, say 107 Launch point at the X Games 109 Bone with a triangular shaft 110 Like many dishes at a sushi 111restaurantAccessory worn on “Downton 113Abbey”Hearing-related ... and what’s spelled out by eight words in this puzzle when you say them out 118loudWash off, with “off” 120 Frequent assignment in 60 Down 121 Maid of folklore 122 Like members of a dream team 123 Clarinet inserts 124 Gets used to a new 125environmentBeamember of a dream team? DOWN 1 “Oh, fiddlesticks!” 2 Impulsive 3 Poker pot payment 4 This answer often has more than seven letters 5 Hero of “The NeverEnding 6Story”“Bad Reputation” rocker Joan 7 Paddle’s relative 8 Queen Elizabeth II, e.g. 9 Early round, for short 10 “Say it ain’t so, ___!” 11 District of London 12 Like better 13 Given a designation 14 Garden in Thomas Cole 15paintingsBroadcasts on TV 16 Fawn over, with “on” 23 Piglet, to Pooh 24 Part of a jar 27 “Get it!” 30 Like a horrible stench 32 Ground hominy dish 33 Hardly challenging course 35 Something that may be painted or clipped 36 She voiced Eudora in “The Princess and the Frog” 37 Like some binary survey 4038questionsArk.locale“TheOath” director and star 41Barinholtz“TheHound of the Baskervilles” 42authorTightens writing 43 Periods subdivided into eras 49 Evaluate, as evidence 50 Blazers, e.g. 51 “Six Days Seven Nights” actress 52HecheWritten or mental reminder 53 ___ acid (building block of 54protein)“Waiting for Guffman” actress 57CatherineSectionof an alumni magazine with updates on alums’ lives 60 High school lit course 62 “Bewitched” actress Murphy 63 Pinker, in a restaurant 65 Unsubstantiated accusation, 66usuallyUnimaginative writer 70 Disneyland transport 71 Athens currency 72 Barrel-___ beer 73 “The years ___ much which the days never know”: Ralph Waldo 7675EmersonPaperunits?Particularlypicky 77 Befuddled condition 78 Absent 84 Where people drop their butts 86 Pulled apart 87 “Return of the Jedi” creature whose name is never actually spoken in the film 88 Title for Diana Rigg 89 NYC-born star of the Yankees 90 Puts together 92 Banks who once hosted her own talk show 94 Chilling occurrence 96 Food ___ (state after a Thanksgiving feast) 97 “___ Wanna Be With You” (Hootie & the Blowfish hit) 98 The m of “100m sprint” 99 Spring up 100 Begin to fix a mistake 103 “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” singer on “Sesame Street” 104 Garbage collection 105 Clear some dust, as with a 108broomAnimal raising cubs 109 Big coffee dispensers 112 Sick, so to speak 114 Common visitor of the website 115Fatherly“This American Life” host Glass, or former ACLU director 116Glasser___of the iceberg 117 Nose bag morsel 119 Sick Solution on page 26
ICON | SEPTEMBER2022 | ICONDV.COM 35 HEARSAYby EVAN BIRNHOLZ
