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Masturbating man attacked by marauding mushroom feeder
05.24.2012
11:22 am
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It doesn’t say if the masturbator was also fed mushrooms. Or if he continued masturbating. Either way, it all sounds very John Waters.

Thanks Boag!
 

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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05.24.2012
11:22 am
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‘Roots Music for the Gay Community’: Horse Meat Disco’s tribute to Donna Summer
05.24.2012
09:57 am
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Horse Meat Disco are one of the most recognisable names in the modern dance music landscape, a four-piece dj unit known for their top quality record selection as well as their rather cheeky “boner horse” logo.

Focusing heavily on disco music, Horse Meat have done much to rehabilitate that maligned genre in the eyes and ears of the club-going public, and have already released three compilations of rare disco gems on the London-based funk and disco Strut label.

Their weekly party in South London’s Vauxhall is a free-for-all of dancefloor intensity and wickedly positive vibes. It’s overtly-gay, yet open-for-all, and its friendly atmosphere has done wonders to re-establish gay clubbing (and clubbing period) as something cool and fun to do in these down-at-heel times. By concentrating, heavily but not exclusively, on music from the 70s and 80s, Horse Meat have reconnected the modern gay audience with their own, often overlooked, history and culture, and serve as a timely reminder that going out, getting out of it and dancing ‘til the wee small hours was not invented yesterday.

In short, they’re legendary. And it’s my favorite club. To me, the best description of Horse Meat Disco comes from the Brixton DJ and label owner Andy Blake, who calls the club “roots music for the gay community.”

For their latest podcast, the second in a new series being made available through Soundcloud, Horse Meat Disco DJs James Hillard and Luke Howard have put together over an hour of their favorite tracks by Donna Summer, who died last week at the age of 63.

It’s a suitably joyous, and touching, celebration of disco’s reluctant female queen, and features much of her work with super-producers Giorgio Moroder and Quincy Jones, including a whole side of the excellent 1977 LP Once Upon A Time. Although generally regarded as a “singles” artist, Summer had some killer album tracks, as demonstrated here. She could also turn her hand to straight-up soul as opposed to icy electronica, and must rank as one of the most sampled artists of all time.

I wonder if any current musical “gay icons” will leave such a lasting legacy?
 
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  HMD’s Donna Summer Tribute Podcast by Horse Meat Disco

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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05.24.2012
09:57 am
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The cosmic ramifications of Vanessa Paradis singing ‘Walk On The Wild Side’
05.23.2012
10:33 pm
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The fact of Vanessa Paradis (proudly displaying her Jane Birkinesque diastema) and Dave Stewart (a neon Serge Gainsbourg) singing Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” is evocative enough in and of itself. But there’s an added dimension to this video that makes the whole thing kind of spooky and more than a little bit clammy. Watching Paradis performing a duet with Stewart, who looks uncannily like a combination of the future father of her two children, Johnny Depp, and Depp’s frequent collaborator Tim Burton plus his former lover and collaborator Annie Lennox, is like watching a re-tooled version of “Lemon Incest” for the MTV generation…without Gainsbourg’s real incestuous vibe.
 
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As the echoplex of history loops in upon itself, let’s ponder other elements of this time warpy video.

Paradis’s cover of “Walk On The Wild Side” appeared on her 1990 album Variations sur le Meme T’Aime, the same year that Depp and Burton’s first collaborative effort, Edward Scissorhands, hit the big screen. 1990 was also the year that Lou Reed re-united with John Cale and the other members of The Velvet Underground to play a charity gig in Paris. The last time they had played together was 1972, the year that Paradis was born. Add up the numbers in 1990 and you get 19. Paris 1919 is the title of John Cale’s third solo album.

Exactly 19 years after singing her duet with Stewart, Paradis covered the Serge Gainsbourg song “Ballade de Melody Nelson” with Johnny Depp.

Sigmund Freud was 19 years older than Carl Jung. Flight 19 disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The Qur’an teaches that 19 angels are assigned to guard the fires of Hell. Which brings up the question: “where were those angels when this video was made?”

“Walk on the Wild Side” is 40 years old. So is Vanessa Paradis. Jesus fasted 40 days and nights….
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.23.2012
10:33 pm
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Dirk Bogarde: Never screened on TV interview from 1975
05.23.2012
07:41 pm
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Bishopbriggs was where the trams from Glasgow ended. It was also where Dirk Bogarde spent his early teenage years, from 1934-37, living with a well-to-do uncle and aunt, while commuting to-and-from Allan Glen School in the city.

Glasgow shaped Bogarde, and though he hated his time there, he latter admitted, in his first volume of autobiography, A Postilion Struck by Lightning:

‘The three years in Scotland were, without doubt, the most important years of my early life. I could not, I know now, have done without them. My parents, intent on giving me a solid, tough scholastic education to prepare me for my Adult Life, had no possible conception that the education I would receive there would far outweigh anything a simple school could have provided.’

What Glasgow gave the young Bogarde, after his childhood idyll of Sussex, was “a crack on the backside which shot [him] into reality so fast [he] was almost unable to catch [his] breath for the pain and disillusions which were to follow.”

At Allan Glen’s School, Bogarde soon found himself “dumped in a lavatory pan by mindless classmates” because he spoke with “the accent of a Sassenach”. It was part of the cruelty that taught the young Bogarde to build a “carapace” against his peers. In his isolation he developed his skills as an artist and writer, and dreamt of escape.

Glasgow also offered Bogarde his first sexual experience with an older man - the dressed in beige Mr. Dodd, who he met whilst skipping classes at the Paramount Picture Palace - “the meeting place of all the Evil in Glasgow”.

Mr. Dodd seduced the young schoolboy with an ice lolly and a hand on the knee, during a performance of Boris Karloff’s The Mummy. Though Bogarde had seen the film 3 times before, he was keen to replicate Karloff’s performance, and so willingly returned to Mr Dodd’s apartment, where he was tightly trussed-up in bandages, all except his pubescent genitals, which thrust through the swaddling rags “as pink and vulnerable as a sugar mouse.” Mr. Dodd flipped Bogarde onto a bed, and tossed him off. Bogarde felt something terrible was going to happen, and offered up 3 or 4 “Hail Mary’s” in the hope of being rescued. Of course, he knew God’s help wouldn’t arrive, as he knew what would happen as Mr Dodd fiddled about.

When he left Glasgow, Bogarde was changed. He had developed the drive that would bring him success, and formed a personality that would keep the world twice-removed from the creative and sensitive young man he was at heart.

The following interview with this charming man was never broadcast on TV. Recorded in London for the release of the film Permission to Kill (aka The Executioner) in 1975, Bogarde discussed the movie, and his career with interviewer, Mark Caldwell.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Dirk Bogarde Still Cool

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.23.2012
07:41 pm
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I’m a NUT, Elect Me: Michele Bachmann’s ‘political mentor’ is running for US Congress

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Allen Quist is the crazypants political mentor to MN Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. The two teamed up as Minnesota state representatives in the late 1990s to fight the onslaught of the atheistic, permissive, Marxist totalitarianism society encroaching upon our “freedoms”—or something like that—and to successfully beat back a state school curriculum that would have taught some scientific ungodly stuff they didn’t like.

Now the 67-year-old Quist, an anti-gay crusader and soybean farmer who believes in dragons, that females are “genetically predisposed” to subservience to men and that humans and dinosaurs coexisted on Earth (possibly as late as the 11th century), is running for the US Congress to join his former partner in Washington, DC.

“Thanks” in large part to the, uh, zany supporters of Congressman Ron Paul, the Minnesota GOP’s nominating convention, held in April, ended in a stalemate after 14 hours and 23 ballots failed to select a clear winner in District One, meaning that the top two candidates (incredibly, one was Quist, which says a lot about whoever came in third!) will now have to face one another in front of voters in an August primary race. Mother Jones has the story:

As a Minnesota state representative in the 1980s, Quist staked out a position on his party’s far-right wing. At the time, the state’s GOP was undergoing a rightward shift from a party known for its mild-mannered moderates to one populated by family values firebrands. Quist was the tip of the spear.

During his time as a state representative, Quist slammed a gay counseling clinic at Mankato State University by comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan (both would be breeding grounds for evil—AIDS, in this case) and went undercover at an adult bookstore and a gay bathhouse in an effort to prove to a local newspaper reporter that they had become a “haven for anal intercourse.” (A decade later, Bachmann would bring groups of supporters onto the Capitol floor to pray over the desk of a gay colleague.)

Quist’s almost singular focus on sexuality didn’t go unnoticed. “At one point,” the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1994, “a Senate leader suggested he had an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, having devoted 30 hours to it in a single session.”

Quist was a staunch pro-lifer who once argued that abortion should be classified as a first-degree homicide. When his pregnant wife died in a car accident in 1986, Quist had the six-and-a-half-month-old fetus placed in his wife’s arms in an open casket at the funeral. A year later, he married Julie Morse, a former pro-choice feminist who had been reborn as a Republican activist. (Morse had cofounded Minneapolis’ first feminist bookstore, Amazon Books; originally based on the front porch of a women’s collective, it soon migrated to the city’s Lesbian Community Center.)

“When he ran, obviously we looked him up—a very bizarre record. I mean really bizarre,” says Minnesota’s former GOP Gov. Arne Carlson.

Ya think? In 1993 Quist challenged Governor Carlson in the GOP primary on a platform of mandatory AIDS tests for couples wishing to marry and against gay rights:

In one memorable interview, Quist told a Minnesota reporter he believed women were “genetically predisposed” to be subservient to men, pointing to, among other things, the behavior of wild animals.

Quist’s candidacy quickly became a national story—one that sent the state’s moderate party establishment scrambling to avert disaster. Mike Triggs, a former Carlson aide, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “Mr. and Mrs. Gopher are going to think [the Quists] are damn weird.” He dismissed Quist supporters as “zombies.” The governor himself played up his opponent’s under-the-covers ops. “Instead of prowling through dirty bookstores, why didn’t he go out and change state spending policy?” the governor asked the Associated Press.

Carlson, who went on to beat Quist by 20 points, is still sore. “Wonderful, wonderful guy—one of the great intellectuals of the 21st century,” he deadpanned when asked about Quist recently. “He’ll do a lot to improve the IQ of Congress. If we can get a Bachmann-Quist team together, they could probably take over the world. Talk about a dynamic duo!”

When Quist and his wife founded the nonprofit Maple River Education Coalition (MREC), to push for the repeal of the Profile of Learning, a state plan to raise educational standards, they got Michele Bachmann to front the group.

With Quist providing much of the intellectual grist, the MREC argued that the Profile was a step toward a United Nations takeover of Minnesota. International Baccalaureate, the global Advanced Placement program, was brainwashing by another name. “Sustainability” was a euphemism for a future dystopia in which humans would be confined to public-transit-oriented urban cores. Schools would be breeding grounds for “homosexual indoctrination.” Even math was under assault by the forces of moral relativism.

In 2000, Bachmann won election to the state Senate with help from the MREC and the Quists. When Bachmann ascended to Congress six years later, Julie Quist joined her, serving as the congresswoman’s district director until 2011.

If Quist can best his opponent, Republican state Sen. Mike Parry—which is entirely possible, Quist has the edge in fundraising—he’ll square off against Democrat Rep. Tim Wirtz, who must be praying he’ll be running against this crazy motherfucker come November:

“Unfortunately,” [former Governor] Carlson added, “what was bizarre in the ‘90s is becoming the centerpiece of this new Republican party.”

Read the whole thing at Mother Jones.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.23.2012
07:13 pm
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Dangerous Minds’ M. Campbell unveils his new music video
05.23.2012
05:24 pm
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Here’s the world premier of a video I just finished editing last night for “The Sound,” a song from my forthcoming album, Tantric Machine.

I wrote the lyrics for “The Sound” after a night of drinking, walking 47 miles of barbed wire and listening to Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love” and some Petey Wheatstraw records.

It’s an old song (writ in 1999) that I resuscitated after years of ignoring it. I didn’t like it at the time I recorded it but I’ve had a change of heart and decided to unveil it (or allow it to escape) for all the world to hear, particularly folks who frequent Dangerous Minds.

After three decades of making records, I still can’t get a handle on my own music, which in some ways is a good thing. If a song takes me by surprise it generally means it has something to say to me. In the case of “The Sound,” I was playing around with the kind of over-the-top, often funny, boastful lyrics you hear in old blues and rock tunes like the aforementioned “Who Do You Love” to which I added a dose of noirish Peter Gunn guitar and a Morricone-esque wail from a Casio keyboard. I’m not sure the song has anything to “say,” but it certainly draws from my history of loving the dark shit.

The Sound

This is the sound
Of big love come to town
In the night

This the beat
That crawls up the street
In the night

I’m the mighty soul brother
The mighty machine
That generates love
In your groovy love scene
In the night

This is the sound
Deep and profound

Well young Aphrodite
Was hung from the trees
When I rode though the town
With a bitch on my knees
In the night

The Portuguese mother
With albino twins
Gouged out her eyes
When she saw me walk in
In the night

Women love men
With money and wit
Some will respond
To the crack of a whip
In the night

I’m the mighty soul brother
And Lord there’s no other
Go ahead ask your mother
She knows what this brother can do
In the night

This is the sound of big love come to town

Thanks for indulging me. This is like undressing in public.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.23.2012
05:24 pm
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A girl’s best friend is her guitar: The Elvi phenomenon
05.23.2012
03:47 pm
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“Girls have got balls. They’re just a little higher up that’s all.” Joan Jett

 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.23.2012
03:47 pm
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My Human Gets Me Blues: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, live onstage in Belgium, 1969
05.23.2012
03:33 pm
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Yesterday’s Interstella Zappadrive: When Frank Zappa jammed with Pink Floyd post led me to some more footage from the Actuel Rock Festival, held in late October of 1969 in Amougies, Belgium, of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

Zappa was supposed to be the MC of the festival, but when the language barrier made that impossible, opted to jam with a few of the groups on guitar, including, of course, The Magic Band.

Bill Harkleroad (“Zoot Horn Rollo”) told Hal’s Progressive Rock Blog:

“All I can remember is playing in front of thousands of people huddled together in sleeping bags at three in the morning in this huge circus tent. It’s 27 degrees out, and there’s frost on my strings! It was Don, Victor, Mark, me and Jeff Burchell on drums. Frank was sitting in with us, because he was supposed to be the festival MC - a difficult job when he spoke no French and most of the audience spoke no English. Having Frank play with us made me a little more nervous than normal. I think we played five tunes - the five tunes Jeff knew and that was it. Pretty weird flying us all the way over there and playing one gig!

Don Van Vliet’s recollection of the festival:

“We had a good time. I don’t know, what they were doing; they were throwing what looked like birds nests at us, and then one fellow out of the audience - between one of the compositions - said my name was Captain Bullshit, and I said: “well, that’s all right baby, you’re sitting in it.” You know what I mean? I don’t know if he was an American; I’m not sure, because he was using early Gary Cooper movie talk. Like “yep,” things like that. I think they did well in five days and moving it from France to Belgium. But it was awfully cold… the people in the audience, I don’t know how they did it. I think it was probably pretty nice for them to leave their bodies… but the amplifiers were blown out by the time we got to them, and we need clarity for that, and there wasn’t any. I don’t know. I hope they enjoyed it. I enjoyed it.”

Naturally, as with the Pink Floyd footage that has slipped out of the vault to collectors (and YouTube) there’s no Festival Actuel footage of Zappa actually jamming with Captain Beefheart! Fwustrating! Was Zappa strapping on a guitar the signal to turn the camera off? Of course not, so where is this priceless footage?!?!?

In any case, there’s 5:32 seconds of sync-sound footage of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band in 1969 on my computer screen, so what am I complaining about? They do “She’s Too Much For My Mirror” and “My Human Gets Me Blues.”

The lineup for this concert was Don Van Vliet, vocals, tenor & soprano sax, bass clarinet; Victor Hayden (“The Mascara Snake”) bass clarinet; Bill Harkleroad (“Zoot Horn Rollo”) guitars; Mark Boston (“Rockette Morton”) bass; and Jeff Burchell (“Imposter Drumbo”) drums & percussion. Frank Zappa sat in on guitar on “When Big Joan Sets Up’” at the end of their set.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.23.2012
03:33 pm
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Romanian TV reporter caught faking sandstorm
05.23.2012
02:00 pm
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Oh dear, a reporter from the Realitatea TV news channel in Romania has become a laughing stock for faking a sandstorm. Apparently he missed the real thing and thought this would pass.

He says, “The wind blows with incredible power, there are moments when it is impossible to stand up here.”

Cue “Enter Sandman.”

Austrian Times Online has the rest of story: Dune and Busted

 

 
Via Arbroath

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.23.2012
02:00 pm
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‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ ala Sun Ra and his Arkestra
05.23.2012
01:28 pm
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From Hal Wilner’s 1988 tribute Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films comes this incredible version of “Baby Elephants on Parade” from Dumbo performed by none other than the amazing Sun Ra and his Arkestra.

Some enterprising person decided to sync the Sun Ra version up to the scene in the film. It’s highly enjoyable.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.23.2012
01:28 pm
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