Directed by Matt Wolf
Many famous people have said many complimentary things about Arthur Russell and the prolific amount of music he left behind when he died of AIDS in 1992, but few people have actually heard of him or his music. Allen Ginsberg described his music as “Buddhist bubblegum†because his roots were deeply spiritual but he wanted to appeal to the masses. Unfortunately he was not actually interested in marketing himself or his songs, many of which were love songs to his boyfriend Tom Lee. His father said he made music that you couldn’t “really tap your foot to†but disco diva Lola Love said he was the funkiest white boy she ever saw. Even Philip Glass and David Byrne admired his work, but his music was just “too remarkable and too individual for its timeâ€.
Matt Wolf’s beautifully shot doco takes you back to the Iowa cornfields to find out about the quiet kid who learnt the cello, who became extremely embarrassed by acne scars during adolescence and left home after a fight with his religious father about smoking marijuana. In San Francisco, he discovered Buddhism and homosexuality before moving to New York and getting more involved with the music scene. He became the musical director for The Kitchen, an experimental commune of artists including Phillip Glass. Fortunately Wolf was able to find video footage from those times, including some of Ginsberg describing Russell as a “delicate and exquisite-minded youthâ€.
The doco is almost meditative with Russell’s dreamy music as the soundtrack and some of the images almost hypnotic. The viewer is left with a nostalgia for the creative cooperatives of the 1970s and 1980s, and an admiration for Russell’s creative output that has been rescued and brought back to life by his faithful friends. Wild Combination will screen at Kulcha (Fremantle) on SatJune 27 with $1 from each ticket being donated to GLCS. See www.myspace/clubsoundtrack.
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