[Landline] Video Parade 5

Baobabs, Francis Bebey, J.B. Priestley, Lee Baggett, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Wire, Wobblies and more

Mar 23, 2025

**Photographic evidence that some part of Austin, Texas is still weird, and still right-on. Found on bluesky.**

Hey gang —

Things are terrible, and also here’s a parade of videos.

As always with these collections, I hope you’ll find something of interest, amusement, inspiration or usefulness. Maybe all at once, who knows.

Watch the parade as a continuous Youtube playlist, or check out individual videos below.

1. Robbie In Search of... The Perfect Pint, (9 min, 1973) originally broadcast on BBC One. Lovely bubblings!

2. The Road Between Heaven and Hell: The Last Circuits of the Leatherman (29 min, 1984): Connecticut public TV documentary on the Leatherman, the distinctive “wandering hermit” who “traveled the same 365-mile loop in the northeastern United States every 34 days between the mid 1850s and 1889,” wearing a 60-pound leather quilt made from discarded boot tops. The Leatherman grunted but never spoke, living in plain view (and in caves) but an utter mystery. (For more on the Leatherman, read last week’s stunning feature by Sam Anderson in the New York Times). Doc is hosted by friendly burly beardo John McDonough, an eccentric Bloomfield thespian/beekeeper who would go on to be the new Captain Kangaroo in a short-lived revival in 1997. h/t Ben Chasny on this one.

3. “Black + Blue” Blue Oyster Cult and Black Sabbath (83 min, 1980)

Speaking of leathermen… A curiosity for the diehards: two bands with deep catalogs going through some motions at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. It’s 1980, Ozzy is gone—this is the beginning of the Dio era—but also absent is drummer Bill Ward, who’d departed mid-tour. So: Half Sabbath. BOC are doing professional roadhouse rock for the arena proles on the eve of Reagan. You get a Doors cover, you get ‘Born to Be Wild,’ you get Eric Bloom riding a motorcycle onstage, and, around minute 50, you get a strobelit Godzilla performing a drum solo. Go, Godzilla, go. Filmed for Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and later released theatrically with some involvement from George Harrison (?). The poster is better than the film.

4. Lee Baggett “Ship of Dreams” video (6 mins, 2023-4)

5. Wire (6 min, 1987) Wire appear on 'The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers' to perform extremely non-hit song "Drill." Suzanne Sommers ('Three's Company'/Buttmaster) is guest hosting that night. All six minutes are weird.

6. My Bloody Valentine - “To Here Knows When” live in Japan (6 min, 2008). Best with headphones. Blinda's vocal, like serenity in/over/through the maelstrom.

7. The great Francis Bebey demonstrates how to make music with a one-note bamboo flute. (3.5 mins, 1995)

8. Arvo Pärt - “And then came the evening and the morning”: a slow-life documentary following around the Estonian composer (dir. Dorian Supin, 1990, 60 min)

9. Baobab: Portrait of a Tree (1971, 52 mins) Gorgeous doc made for British TV, with most narration by David Attenborough.

10. American Job (91 min, 1996) Directed by Chris Smith. Minimum wage life, at length.

11. Salt of the Earth (92 min, 1954): A well-known feature film, but seems underviewed these days (I hope I’m wrong…?). Extremely earnest at points but nonetheless profoundly moving and righteous in about 40 ways. At minute 11:30 I was hooked.

12. The Wobblies - the best documentary on the best union ever: Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) (89 min, 1979)

13. The great Louis Sarno (1954-2017) interviewed by Doug Spencer (4 mins, circa 2012)

14. I Have Been Here Before (98 min, 1982): Made-for-TV version of a 1937 J.B. Preistley play, starring Herbert Lom. “Guests at a small hotel are disquieted by the insistence of a mysterious doctor that he has been there before.” Yup. Priestley was a popular, proudly Socialist English playwright and public figure—with an interest in Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Get in!

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LANDLINE by Jay Babcock

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