Today is Andy Warhol’s birthday and here’s a little something I think Andy would have appreciated - a video game in which the player takes on the role of Valerie Solanas.
“I Shot Andy Warhol” (a mod of Nintendo’s “Hogan’s Alley” made by Cory Arcangel) is a perfect example of a Warholian appropriation of pop culture. But instead of just watching, we get to participate in the process of the modern world eating itself. We have the choice of missing our target and keeping Warhol alive for eternity in our gaming consoles.
Ronald Reagan, that evil fuck President who willfully destroyed working class communities to give tax breaks to the rich. Reagan was happy to do it so long as it was African-Americans that bore the brunt.
Reaganomics left half the Black population on welfare. Reagan had no conscience about it. He had a money lust which hit hardest on those who were weakest and least able to fend for themselves.
Stopping poverty wasn’t on Reagan’s tick list. Rather it was cut corners and take, take, take from the poor - which stooped as low as having the tomato base on pizzas reclassified as fruit to ensure he could slash the cost of school dinners. He even tried to do the same with tomato ketchup but failed.
Reagan’s policy was simple - if you were poor: fuck you. If you were sick: fuck you. If you were dying of cancer: fuck you and get a goddamn job.
For young African-Americans in the 1980s, it seemed the hard-earned achievements of the sixties’ Civil Rights movement had been too easily betrayed and forgotten. And when crack cocaine hit the inner cities, it seemed any hope of a future was gone.
Against this background arose a culture of music that was to redefine Black America. Hip-Hop and Rap reflected the poverty, despair and violence of life in the ghettoes. It also railed angrily against the indifference and cynical exploitation by successive Presidents, whose only interest was to help themselves and help the rich.
Letter to the President is a fascinating over-view of the rise of Hip-Hop and Rap, and their importance in bringing a community together against a common enemy. Narrated by Snoop Dogg, and with contributions form Quincy Jones, KRS-One, David Banner, 50 Cent, Chuck D, Ghostface Killah, Nelson George, Sonia Sanchez, and Dick Gregory.
Yes, you read that correctly: A fucking idiot in a pink shirt who closely resembles a young Rip Taylor decided to protest marriage equality and the General Mills corporation’s support of gay rights by attempting to burn some Cheerios… before it all goes horribly wrong.
As one commentor wrote:
“He had to buy those Cheerios first, before torching them… I wonder if it occurred to him that in doing that he was supporting the company he was protesting against.”
I don’t really think much of anything ever occurs to goofy cereal arsonist Colonel Manboobs here…
The Spotnicks are an instrumental rock group from Sweden. Formed in 1961, they were well-known for their “space suit” costumes and their Ventures-esque electric guitar sound. The Spotnicks have released 42 albums and sold over 18 million records. They still tour.
I guess if your gimmick works, then stick with it!
Below, The Spotnicks do their hit “Rocket Man,” based on a traditional Russian folk song, in 1962:
More of the space-rock sound of The Spotnicks after the jump…
TOHJIRO is the founder of the Japanese AV (“adult video”) studio Dogma, which specializes in producing “extreme” fetish videos including bondage and various unorthodox S&M themes. He is the porn auteur behind such fucked up mayhem as “10 Year Special Lessons In Secret Technique Men’s Bible Vol. 2,” “Female Meat Toilet,” “Vomit Enema Ecstasy X” and the whimsically titled, “Underarm Hair Drug.”
TOHJIRO has been called the “greatest porn director in the world.” He has also been described as a “sick, impotent freak.”
His latest film, “Maple Flowers Bloom 7: RARE FETISH” takes the current worldwide crazy for bacon on everything to its logical conclusion. Well logical if you happen to be a celebrated Japanese pervert, I suppose.
Here’s a direct translation of the description as it appeared on YouTube (they took it down after a few days last year). I’m guessing this gets pretty close to the original meaning(!):
Work is that every problem in the sensational topics covered in entrails of Sanae Aso SEX of the resurrection for the first time in 17 years to get maple flowers that bloom seven abnormal Queen. Cooperation of flowers Mon familiar with Fechizumu internal organs to stage a space suspicious the image of the original force, the interior of the uterus, chair restraint, responsibility dissecting table winding meat body tied malformation bandage, such as hanging lesbian aquarium giblets, upside down bondage intestine, play spooky engaged to be. Flower maple played a perfect girl delusion dream strange possessed desire regression womb, even in continuous blame grotesque, reached ecstasy, sometimes fall into a trance sometimes, out only exposes the sexual perversion with hidden, wrapped in a strange beauty and Eros.
The sensual beauty of organ modeling captured by the camera is really striking. Offal is just her costume color. Ekusutori -ーsystem! Unbelievable! Surprise and excitement. Serious uneasiness. Birth of a masterpiece of heresy was larger than the previous scale-up. To witness the genius of director TOHJIRO, can not help but groan involuntarily. After 17 years Turned Upside down by the sickest was Adult Video in history, Genius-Hentai director is finally back with His MOST Tohjiro Infamous, incredible, anyone’s Beyond Imagination Project: Rare Fetish. Proudly presented by Dogma, a Festival of viscera, Bowels, raw Meat and Extreme SM & Fetish play, featuring the beautiful Fuuka Nanasaki, at Her Best erotic performance. Buy its digital version via Dogma’s Official Website! (no Animal was Harmed in the Making of this video, since all the meat and viscera came from professional meat shop).
BEFORE YOU PRESS PLAY, I should probably warn you that you cannot unsee what awaits you in this video. Nothing X-rated here, and no nudity either, but please make sure that you really want to see this before you hit play. That is all.
Thank you to a friend who probably doesn’t want his name associated with this stuff!
Joe Strummer is interviewed for a British television talk show in 1988.
Joe discusses the freshly released CD “The Story of the Clash, Volume 1” and Aex Cox’s film Walker , for which he did the soundtrack and had a small acting role (as a dishwasher turned mercenary).
Like many Americans, my first exposure to Kate Bush was via her fourth album, 1982’s The Dreaming, for despite being a chart-topper the world over, and with a 1978 appearance on SNL under her belt, Bush had virtually zero profile in America before it. The Dreaming is also my favorite Kate Bush album, although it doesn’t have a single one of my favorite Kate Bush songs on it.
Even during a period of popular music that produced such off-kilter masterpieces as PiL’s The Flowers of Romance, Japan’s Tin Drum and Nunsexmonkrock by Nina Hagen, The Dreaming was still an album that was difficult—at first—to get your head around. It’s an album that requires three to five listens before it “clicks,” but when it does, the listener is rewarded with one of the most dazzling, ambitious and audacious things an artist has ever attempted, before or since. In this case, by an artist who was then just 23!
As a song cycle, The Dreaming is a complex and accomplished work, practically demanding to be listened to all the way through (if only out of respect for the genius who created it). Although I went backwards through her first three albums, in retrospect, The Dreaming—produced by Kate alone for the first time—is an abrupt (make that very abrupt) break with what had come before. Gone were the intimate observations on life, the intensely passionate musings on love. sexuality and England’s green and pleasant land—indeed all of the pretty songs that her fanbase obviously expected—to be replaced with poetic and cinematic narratives that evoked far off exotic lands, paranoia, fury, a quest for learning, a stymied oneness with God and comedy. The Dreaming is the work of a great talent operating totally free of any outside pressures or concerns. It would be ridiculous to call it the first “real” Kate Bush album, but there is certainly a clear line of demarcation between Never for Ever and everything that comes after it.
Obviously there was always something monumentally idiosyncratic about Kate Bush, but with The Dreaming, the eclectic nature of her mature vision became boldly manifest for the first time.
“Sat in Your Lap” is the album’s frantic opening number. One of the engineers Bush used on The Dreaming was Hugh Padgham, the man responsible for achieving the famous “gated drum” sound of Phil Collin’s “In the Air Tonight” number, and I would imagine he’s probably responsible for the fantastic drum sound on “Sat in Your Lap” (I could be wrong about this because Padgham brought in Nick Launay, PiL’s engineer for the heavily percussive The Flowers of Romance album, for The Dreaming and it might be he who recorded the drums here, I’m not sure) (Here’s a link to a demo of the song)
