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Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Oil Rig #99

Y'all know that Joe Gage retired from the gay porno business in the early/mid 80's (and of course came back in 2001, beginning with Tulsa County Line), but not before accepting an offer from P.M. Productions to do a few more films for a few more bucks. So, using the new pseudonym Mac Larsen, he directed several more films before his retirement (and then went on to do a few low-budget horror films like Robot Holocaust and of course, the wonderfully titled Breeders). Anyway, the porno deal was a few bucks for a few days to film and edit, and then churn out another one - which is why he wanted to use a different pseudonym, as he felt the quality wouldn't be up to the JOE GAGE name.

So here I am last Friday night, trying to organize shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes and two closets of porn, so, needing some working-on-the-porn-collection music I click on the Jean Michel Jarre' album I downloaded recently, and about 10-15 minutes into it, there's this tidbit, this riff, sample, melody - whateveryoucallit - just a few seconds of sound that briefly send me back to the mid 80's Jewel Theater on 3rd Avenue. But I continue cleaning, and don't think much about it til later in the album, a part I probably fell asleep to the first time I nabbed it, and BOOM! Acid-flashback! Seriously, I was vividly remembering sitting in one of those seats at the Bijou, tripping, with Oil Rig #99 up on the big screen. And I was there for hours, tripping, watching that dang film over and over, the music, the smell of reefer, the moans around me... you get the idea. I quickly checked this guy's site I had bookmarked on Jean Michel Jarre's The Concerts in China and determined that the song was Magnetic Fields II. Eventually I downloaded the whole album, as this particular track wasn't the haunting them I had remembered, but it was definately in the film, most notably during the opening sequence. But, alas, the sound I was looking for was no where on that album. Finally, this morning, I found it was on his first album, from way back in 1976, Oxygene. And finally the track I had humming thru my brain all last weekend, and then all morning after downloading it, Oxygene (Part 4).

You have no idea how long I have been searching for that music, and especially after I got this copy of the video on eBay a year or two ago.