1927 – Kenneth Anger born. American underground experimental filmmaker, actor and author of two controversial Hollywood Babylon books. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost forty works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the “Magick Lantern Cycle“, and form the basis of Anger’s reputation as one of the most influential independent filmmakers in cinema history.His films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing “elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle.”
Anger himself has been described as “one of America’s first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner“, and his “role in rendering gay culture visible within American cinema, commercial or otherwise, is impossible to overestimate“. He has also focused upon occult themes in many of his films, being fascinated by Aleister Crowley, and is a follower of Crowley’s religion, Thelema.
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1959 – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, The Big Bopper and pilot Roger Peterson died in an aircrash near Mason City, Iowa – “The day the music died” according to Don McClean.
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1967 – Joe Meek, English innovative music producer extrodinaire, shot his landlady and then himself. The date may not be coincidence – he was obsessed with Buddy Holly and claimed to have received messages from him from beyond the grave.
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Alchemy & Accident 