Behold the rarely seen music video for Bongwater’s feminist indie rock anthem, The Power of Pussy, from the album of the same title.
When The Power of Pussy came out, in 1991, I became obsessed with doing a music video for this song. I was, and still am, a huge, huge Bongwater fan. Luckily, at the time, I was working at the studio where Ann Magnuson’s Cinemax special Vandemonium had been produced and one of the partners knew Ann and introduced me to her. Ann and I have been great friends ever since. (Bongwater’s Kramer and I went on to author a screenplay together, a conspiracy theory comedy about homicidal mailmen, called Mailman, which we’re going to adapt into a graphic novel one day).
Partnering with a friend of mine named Alan Henderson, I had been working on various low budget music videos for a couple of years—-mostly for “underground” and indie acts from New York’s East Village. We’d shoot and edit them in the Manhattan-based Windsor Digital Video post production house where we both worked, off hours and on the weekends. The highest budget we ever got was, I think, $3000. (This Bongwater video had a budget of $1000 and $600 of that went to Ann’s hair and make-up, with the remainder going to pizza and videotape stock.). We did videos for John Sex, two for Larry Tee, one for an absolutely brilliant band called The Beme Seed, whose lead singer was Kathleen Lynch, the naked, gyrating go-go dancer from deep within the bowels of Hell who made the live Butthole Surfers experience so deeply berserk in the mid-80s. I’m going to post them all here in the coming week.
I had just left this job at the post house and had taken a new gig downtown at this production studio when this was in the planning stages. One of the principal animators in the studio, Glen Claybrook (who had projects like Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the opening credits for Madonna’s Who’s That Girl film under his belt) came up to me one day and said “Hey, I hear you are going to do a video for Bongwater’s Power of Pussy and I have had a vision….”
That, as you will see from the animation Glen produced, was a coy understatement! A vision, indeed! The best thing was, we didn’t pay a single cent cent for any of the animation costs because it was all shot on 35mm short ends and was processed, transfered and charged off to a huge advertising agency’s budget. We probably buried about two grand of the costs in that way. Sometimes you have to be a little creative, right? It never would have happened otherwise.
And speaking of getting creative, we also needed, to be able to pull off the title, as seen above, a woman who wasn’t shy about getting naked. I’ve read on the Internet that she is supposed to be Christina Martinez from Boss Hog (and wife of Jon Spencer) but this is inaccurate. It’s a good guess, it’s just not true. We found the performer for this, a woman with the first name Gina, at the New York Dolls topless bar near Wall Street. As you can see from the video, she was staggeringly beautiful. When she would change stages, as dancers tend to do, the entire gravity of the room would shift as every guy in the house moved across the floor, clamoring to get a better look. She was Megan Fox hot. Probably made $5000 a day in tips, which she spent on putting herself through medical school as I recall.
The feral felines were shot on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. An eccentric old lady fed dozens of stray cats and someone I knew suggested that I just needed to show up with a few soup bones to see them totally go nuts. And they did indeed (see video). I shot that part on Super 8.
In the end, as will come as no surprise to anyone, this video got played very, very, very few times in public: twice on Playboy’s Hot Rocks (a music video show hosted by Jenny McCarthy and produced by my old friend Eric Mittleman) and once on Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue cable access program when Bongwater’s Kramer was a guest on the show). It’s in the permanent collection of 17 museums around the world (mostly in former Soviet client states, believe it or not, but one is in California).
Ann threw a big party to premiere the video and it was the first time I was ever in Los Angeles. There were tons of TV and movie stars there (Albert Brooks, Richard Lewis), rockstars (members of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone) Russ Meyer actress Kitten Natividad and even Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, who asked me for a copy for his personal collection, which was a thrill. (When his wife arrived at the party he even made me play it a second time). The party was written up in the LA Weekly. It was my first evening in Los Angeles and that night I decided I wanted to move here and did, six months later.
I haven’t seen this video in years, but today Eric made a digital copy for me from the sole tape I have of this piece—a 3/4” tape, I might add—and I laughed my ass off watching it. Now it’s your turn… Enjoy!
Credits, as I recall them after 19 years… Directed by Alan Henderson and Richard Metzger. Animation directed by Glen Claybrook. Produced by me, and shot and edited by Alan. Billy Beyond did Ann’s make-up and Danilo did that ‘leaning tower of wig’ that Ann’s wearing (she had worn this same wig the week before in London, giving an award to ZZ Top(!) with Justin Hayward and John Lodge of Moody Blues on the Brit Awards program). Thanks would be appropriate also to Peter Rosenthal who helped shepherd this through the production process as cheaply as possible via his former production company.
Klint Finley conducted an interview with me last month about digital piracy, the death of the Hollywood business model and right-wing fucktards:
So your position is that piracy is going to completely undermine these businesses models?
Well, it’s not just piracy. It’s also changing consumer habits and what consumers will put up with. Price points that make sense and are viable in the consumer’s mind are not going to be the same sorts of numbers that sustain big Hollywood blockbusters. Shrek 4 was just released this weekend and in New York City the ticket prices edged north of $20. And it didn’t do that well. Because I think what they found is that there’s a pain threshold above which the consumer is saying “Fuck it!” Who the fuck is going to pay that much to see a Shrek movie instead of something else? It’s utterly ridiculous.
And then the other news, which shows that the Hollywood studios are ready to throw the theatrical distribution industry under a bus, is that they’re going to shorten the distribution window between theatrical release and DVDs in stores. Day-and-date releasing is something that Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban have done with their movies, but they got a lot of push-back. Hollywood studios are embracing this now. What does this do effectively? It’s like burning down the only grocery store in town. It doesn’t make any sense to do this from a selfish point of view –or an accounting, cash flow viewpoint–given current business realities. Yet they can’t not do it either!
There was one really compelling thing we found that stood out amongst all the facts about where the entertainment business is inevitably headed. Domestic box office basically pays for 15% towards what is goes to make tentpole motion pictures profitable these days. 85% is home viewing, including 59% for DVD sales. Hollywood is doomed, or at least the current way of business is doomed. That much is certain.
Read the entire interview at Media Punk
Here’s an astounding clip of theatrically-leaning electronic producer/performer Kevin Blechdom (also a past collaborator of mine, truth be told) showing off her considerable vocal prowess in a spot-on yet original take on Tim Buckley’s deathless hymn “Song to the Siren”. Superb !
Bonus clip (couldn’t resist): Tim Buckley his own self playing said song on The Monkees final TV show in 1968
Get Gentlemania by Kevin Blechdom
thx Dominique Leone !
And difficult listening hour continues today with British free jazz giant, drummer Tony Oxley. Being a pioneer in the introduction of electronics and found objects into the standard traps, the man is a self contained orchestra. This however doesn’t stop him from being an MVP collaborator with the likes of Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. The below clips of the man in typically furious action cause your humble blogging muso much happiness, I must say.
Tony Oxley - Ichnos (1969) (jizz relics)
It Cuts Through: A Tony Oxley Mixtape (Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches)
Derek Bailey previously on DM
From a YouTube commenter: “This is a great commercial, but it sort of makes me want to buy a gun to protect my kids. And I don’t even have kids.”
Super creepy video for Felix Da Housecat’s “Madame Hollywood,” directed by Guy Sagy.
Everybody wants to be Hollywood
The fame, the vanity, the glitz, the stories
Thanks, Marc Campbell!
Bogota duo Bomba Estereo started out in 2005 comprised of multi-instrumentalist/producer Simón Mejía and singer Liliana Saumet. As the infectious “nu-cumbia” sound started making waves around that time, groups like B.E. have become its young, largely educated face. They’ve become a full band that’s currently on worldwide tour.
As shown by clip #2, the tropical bass scenes currently burgeoning throughout West African and Latin America (along with their European diasporas) are not going unnoticed by global marketing agencies.
I read this story about a magazine called Lavender ‘outing’ an anti-gay Lutheran pastor by crashing his gay ‘chastity’ support group with interest and a chuckle this morning. Pastor Tom Brock, a local radio personality, had notoriously linked a tornado that struck a church and the Minneapolis Convention Center to gay marriage
The story went around the Internet faster than you could say Ted Haggard. Predictably, the judgement on hypocrite extraordinaire Brock was swift and chock full of schadenfreude. The Queerty website had this to say: Lutheran Pastor Tom Brock Blamed ELCA’s Tornado on Homosexuality. Which, Uh, He Suffers From. Ouch!
But then a bunch of articles calling the reporter’s journalistic ethics to task for betraying the anonymity of a support group setting started to appear. Lavender Media’s head Stephen Rocheford confirmed that reporter John Townsend was sent into the program “undercover,” but insists—and I agree with him 100%—that Brock — who broadcasts on a Christian radio station called KKMS-AM nearly every day of the week— is a major “get” for the gay community of Minneapolis:
“I personally, and Lavender Magazine as a matter of policy, do not believe in outing anyone. People are allowed to be crazy and dysfunctional in their lives. There’s one exception: a public figure who says one thing and does another. This is not the first homosexual minister who denounces homosexuality in public and engages in it in private.”
Damn straight (ahem) and every time one of these twisted, self-loathing Christian closet cases is exposed as a hypocrite, displays of public homophobia will become rarer and rarer and this is a very, very good thing. Brock should look at this new chapter in his life as a good thing, too, because he’ll no longer be able to live a lie and hurt the very people he might otherwise (if he is to be honest with himself) be the most appropriate pastor for. Go with God, Pastor Brock, go with God, mi’ fren…
Anti-gay Lutheran pastor protest too much (Lavender)
Lavender ‘outs’ Lutheran pastor—by crashing confidential support group (Minneapolis Post)
Lutheran Pastor Tom Brock Blamed ELCA’s Tornado on Homosexuality. Which, Uh, He Suffers From (Queerty)
Dangerous Minds pal Charles Hugh Smith has posted an open letter to the folks belonging to the so-called Millennials and Gen Y generations. Many older readers will probably agree with his thoughts on the matter, while younger readers will either be pissed off or agree themselves. I think this is one of those things where there’s never going to be agreement across the various age groups. If you’ve ever had conversations about this and similar “generation gap” type topics, you’ll know why I say this! Surely this is a controversial subject no matter what age you are.
Take it away, Charles:
Here are my first-hand observations of Millennials:
1. They can’t/won’t recycle. Here in a “green” capital of activism, very few American students can be bothered to recycle cardboard, paper or even aluminum. They stuff a cardboard box (unfolded) into a trash container, filling the container, and then pile the garbage on the side since they are too lazy to recycle the box (the recycling containers are right next to the trash cans) collapse the cardboard box or even press it down to make room for more garbage.
2. The males generally own their own vehicles; on my street, that includes Mustangs and Jeep SUVs sporting bumper stickers like “The environment is all we have.” The Millennial owner is apparently blind to the irony.
Most of the students who recycle with any sort of consistency (i.e. demonstrating their belief via actual action instead of bumper stickers) are Europeans.
3. At the end of the Spring semester, Millennials stuff dozens of huge 20-foot long containers with their waste and tossed-out “stuff”—trash bags full of barely worn shoes, perfectly good beds, desks, books, etc. I have no direct knowledge that any graduating student took all their perfectly good shoes, etc. to the Goodwill, a few blocks from the university. From my informal dumpster diving, I can attest they throw out tons of high-quality food—whole unblemished fruits, canned goods, etc. Based on my direct observation, I would say the Millennials are the most wasteful, profligately consumerist generation in history.
4. My brother-in-law reports that the vast majority of his students are in active denial about the economy or the interlocking problems of the nation and world. They express little to no interest in environmental issues or actions, or in Peak Oil, etc., even though it will most certainly impact them.
5. Local “progressive” politics is still completely dominated by Boomers and Gen Xers. If there is a Millennial political movement or zeitgeist, it is currently invisible in one of the great political hotbeds of the nation and world.
6. The over-arching emotion of the Millennials I have met and observed is fear: fear that they won’t get a cush job with bennies, fear that the “good life” which apparently means a secure job with high pay might not open up, fear that life might not work out easily.
It’s over, so move on to something better. The whole cheap oil, Savior State, consumerist/media/facebook solipsism has no future. Clinging to it in the hopes you can extract some meaning, security or swag is a losing proposition. Where is the excitement about changing things, rather than fearfully hoping the swag lasts long enough for you to get your share? Fearfully clinging to Mommy, Daddy and the Savior State is no path to greatness.
I even make an appearance at one point in the essay. Read more of Charles Hugh Smith’s An Open Letter to the Millennials/Gen-Y: Where Are You? (Of Two Minds)