My route into the work of Kris Kristofferson, who died this week, was an unusual one – an album by left-field California rock trio Acetone.

Released in 1995, I Guess I Would was short (very) and consisted entirely of covers of songs by artists such as Gram Parsons and John Prine. But over a third of the running time was taken up by an 11 minute version of Border Lord, the title track from Kristofferson’s 1972 album.

I loved the fuzz-drenched, three chord riff it ran on – even taught myself to play it – but it was the gravity of the opening line that dragged me into the orbit of Planet Kristofferson and has kept me there ever since: “Darkness had us covered when we split from Minnesota in the morning, in the rain.” And then the refrain: “Tapping time and thinking of the time we never had the time to take.”

‘Wow,’ I thought. ‘There’s a storyteller. Let’s go where he’s going.’ So I did.

I found a copy of the original album on vinyl – Kristofferson’s version is even better, of course, though shorter – and then grabbed at anything else of his I could find, like Jesus Was A Capricorn (also 1972) and Spooky Lady’s Sideshow, from 1974.

The very definition of a man of parts – Rhodes scholar, Oxford University boxing blue, helicopter pilot in the US Air Force (and this all before 1965) – Kristofferson was clearly more than just a country singer, even if country singer was really all he wanted to be.

Sure, his masterpiece in terms of lyrics and emotions is Me And Bobbie McGee. It still brings a tear to my eye, though did you know it was partly inspired by the final scene of Federico Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada?

So yes, a genius of a songwriter. But dip into the early albums and you can also see him as the missing link between country music and the hippie counterculture and, I would argue, find a template in his best work for the literate-yet-passionate American songwriters of the decades to follow – particularly those like Bruce Springsteen who set their mind to America’s idea of itself.

I never met Kristofferson, but musician and broadcaster Roddy Hart did. And he never forgot it.

Farewell then, Kris. You’ve split from Minnesota for good this time, but the memories – and the music – will remain forever.

Read more

Chain gangs

My colleague Neil Mackay thinks Tobe Hooper’s 1974 slasher flick The Texas Chainsaw Massacre one of the greatest film ever made. I’m not sure I agree entirely, unless you add qualifiers such as: ‘featuring a portable handheld power tool in a significant role’.

But in celebrating TTCM at 50 Neil makes his case well, and on the basis of everything from the film’s social and political critique to its technical aspects and the character tropes it introduces, strengthens or subverts. 

TTCM isn’t the only cult horror film with art-house pretensions turning 50 this year, though. So if half centuries are your thing as Halloween approaches, you might want to check out Symptoms by UK-based Spaniard José Ramón Larraz (it played in competition at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival), Peter Weir’s Oxploitation classic The Cars That Ate Paris (that’s Paris in New South Wales) or Craze by Freddie Francis (Jack Palance as a psychotic antiques dealer with a demonic statue in his basement). The year also saw films from Larraz’s fellow Spaniard Jess Franco (Lorna The Exorcist), artful French vampire obsessive Jean Rollin (The Demoniacs) and giallo pioneer Mario Bava (Lisa And The Devil). Check them out. They’re all, er, interesting.

And to Neil’s point about the censoriousness so-called video nasties they evoked in panic-stricken parents and tabloid newspaper editors, we can add this: banning something just makes people want to watch it, and some of those who do will actually make something creative of the experience. Click here to read Neil's piece

One such person is young British film director Daniel Kokotajlo, whose folk horror adaptation of Andrew Michael Hurley’s novel Starve Acre stars Matt Smith and is in cinemas now. Interviewed in The Herald, he talked about his upbringing in a family of strict Jehovah’s Witnesses and the teenage love of horror flicks which began as an act of rebellion and has since become a source of inspiration. Click here to read more

To Save The SeaTo Save The Sea (Image: free) And finally Herald theatre critic Neil Cooper has been to Glasgow’s Tron Theatre to watch To Save The Sea, Andy McGregor and Isla Cowan’s musical recreation of the 1995 protests against the proposed dumping at sea of the Brent Spar oil rig. He finds a “radio friendly pop drama”, though one with a measure of political bite.

Still in Glasgow, music critic Keith Bruce was in his seat at City Halls for a performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of Gustav Mahler’s epic Fifth Symphony and Folk, a new commission for soprano and orchestra by young Scottish composer Helen Grime. It comes recommended.

Read more

Barry Didcock is an Edinburgh-based Herald writer and freelance journalist specialising in arts, culture and media. He can be found on X at @BarryDidcock