“Mother, didn't you know there are children starving in Africa?”

– “Karen Carpenter”

Oz artist and Tiny Tim aficionado Martin Sharp explores Tiny's 1979 world record singing attempt at Sydney Luna Park and the devastating Ghost Train Fire a few months later on June 9. Sadly, Sharp never managed to complete his vision. The sole reason Street of Dreams is out there as a rough VHS bootleg is thanks to Tiny's custodian spirit. “I know Mr Sharp believes in me so much — and I praise the Lord for that — and maybe he's made a cult movie which at the very least will survive as a museum piece.”, he said, insisting that Sharp would release a rough cut for the Brighton Festival.

“I'm right here to stay, When I'm old and gray, I'll be right in my prime, Living in the sunlight, Loving in the moonlight, Having a wonderful time!”

– Tiny Tim, Livin' In The Sunlight, Lovin' In The Moonlight (God Bless Tiny Tim, 1968)

Very much like Mr Tim and a carnival ride ablaze, Street of Dreams is its own beast. Growling, off, unpolished, a blaze – ablaze – out of control. Satanic panic that for once feels truthful, cheery almost. Hallelujah, and God bless Tiny Tim!

“Yes, it's story time on WJAD in the heart of Times Square, New York, New York. The city so nice, they named it twice.”

– Johnny LaGuardia, on the air

A theme park*, or in this case, amusement park.

“Just take it from me I'm just as free as any daughter I do what I like Just what I like and how I love it

I'm right here to stay when I'm old and gray I'll be right in my prime Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight Having a wonderful time”

– Tiny Tim, Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight (Al Sherman & Al Lewis, 1930), from God Bless Tiny Tim (1968)

Tiny Tim is a personal hero of mine. A decade after his mainstream TV debut, Tiny's career had taken a tumble but he still was – God bless him – Tiny Tim, and he performed a two-hour-and-seventeen-minute singing marathon at Luna Park Sydney. Just months after that, tragedy hit the park's Ghost Train ride. A fire, arson as it was determined decades later, killed seven. Fellow Tiny-aficionado and OZ artist Don Lane saw a connection between these two events and spend years cutting and editing the musical marathon, nude drunken interview and disaster footage, and Tiny wandering around a mirror maze into a narrative.

 

Lane passed in 2013 and, in respect of his family's wishes, Street of Dreams remains unfinished.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for December has a few dateless themes. This is one of them.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag–the white flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of America. When they say “black” or “negro,” it means you’re not an American. I pledge allegiance to your flag. Not that I have to, but just for the hell of it I pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The white flag, with no stripes, no stars. It is a prestige badge worn by a profitable minority.”

– Charles Mingus

Soul or rhythm and blues for Ben E. King's birthday.

“Let's face it; the future as a Rolling Stone is very uncertain.”

– Brian Jones

While then-manager Oldham's dream of an all-Stones A Clockwork Orange never manifested, there was an attempt to counter The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964). That too, failed. Instead, Charlie became a cinéma vérité roadmovie of the Stones' touring Ireland in 1965. Whitehead's camera is there for Charlie.

The Northern Hemisphere welcomes the autumn equinox

“Those flowers, take them away; they’re only funeral decorations. This is The Fall and this is a drudge nation. Your decadent sins will wreak discipline. You puritan, you shook me. I wash every day.”

– The Fall, New Puritan (1979), via

A fictional day in the life of choreographer Michael Clark, company, and friends in preparation of the dance piece New Puritans.

“We wanted the money but we wanted to burn it more.”

– Bill Drummond

Provocateur Boyd Rice and friends perform a Satanic rite on August 8, 1988; exactly 20 years minus one year minus one day after the Tate-LaBianca murders.

“The entire world is rotten and corrupt… to us they're dead people who refuse to lay down, they're cadavers”

– Boyd Rice speaking to Geraldo Rivera (via)

Please note that the linked article is written by an dimwitted ignoramus completely oblivious of Boyd Rice's, and Anton LaVey's, prankster background.

A mode of transportation to get me to my ideal vacation destination*. And yes, I would travel to an island by transcontinental locomotive

“What I sought in 'Pacific' was not the imitation of the sounds of the locomotive, but the translation of a visual impression and a physical enjoyment through a musical construction. It starts from objective contemplation: the quiet breathing of the engine at rest, the effort of starting, then the progressive increase in speed, to arrive at the lyrical state, the pathos of the 300-ton train, launched in the middle of the night at 120 km/h.”

– Arthur Honegger, Dissonances. Revue musicale indépendante (1925) (via)

Hinted on in Abel Gance's La Roue (1923), composer Arthur Honegger's Пасифик 231 follows the narrative of a stream train ploughing through the night. The conductor's gestures mirror the fireman's and slowly, the machine comes to live. The music becomes abstract, machine-like, in its rendition of pistons and valves. Using double exposure and Soviet montage theory, music and movement become one. The Futurists, if not opposed to the Soviets that is, would have had a field day with this outing.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for July is, for unknown reasons, mostly not date-related and follows some sort of vacation narrative.