B-52s’ frontman Fred Schneider has teamed up with Ursula 1000 for a new (and super catchy!) Halloween-themed novelty number and video called “Vampire Vamp.”

From the press release:

Ursula 1000 is the alter ego of Brooklyn, New York based producer/DJ/multi-instrumentalist Alex Gimeno. His five albums and mix sessions have taken on a broad scope of retro tinged spy grooves, bumping Latin disco funk, hints of post-punk, electro, trashy garage rock, sleazy glam…not just a road trip of pastiche but more like altering the past for a better tomorrow.

Fred Schneider is of course the inimitable voice of the classic American new wave band The B-52s. The Superions is Fred’s comedy synthpop side project alongside Noah Brodie and Dan Marshall. It’s on their “Totally Nude Island” single where Fred and Ursula 1000 joined forces (Ursula did a remix of it). After that they continued to collaborate.

After working on the song “Hey You!” from Ursula 1000’s Mondo Beyondo album, Fred thought “Hey, let’s do a Halloween album!”. Well, after some mad lab experiments and a couple of bottles of wine, “Vampire Vamp” appeared! This is the first song from an upcoming Halloween themed long player.

Isn’t it about time that someone resurrected the novelty song from the grave? Are you ready ghouls? Start stalkin’!

Purchase “Vampire Vamp” on Amazon.
 

 
“Vampire Vamp” video directed by Tom Yaz. Thank you Syd Garron!

 
The Dirty Three appear on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and planet Earth briefly wobbles on its axis, rights itself, and then resumes spinning in the fashion we’re most accustomed to.

Set List:

“Rain Song”
“The Pier”
“Last Horse On The Sand”
 

They’ve done it again…
 
Die Antwoord rapper Ninja teams up again with directors Terence Neale and Saki Fokken Berg to drop another mad Die Antwoord video on us for “Fatty Boom Boom” from their Ten$ion album released earlier this year.

The group’s camp describes it as:

a bright and colourful African adventure, complete with wild animals, zef savages singing and dancing in the streets, and a special guest appearance by a sneaky little prawn star.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Pre-Zef Die Antwoord in a strange little film called Picnic
Die Antwoord: Another transmission from the edge of madness
Brand new from Die Antwoord: I Fink U Freeky

 
Herbie Hancock demonstrates his Fairlight CMI on Sesame Street circa 1983.

The Fairlight Computer Music Instrument (CMI) was a state-of-the-art Synthesizer/Sampler workstation when it hit the market in 1979 and its rep has endured. Finding one today for sale is nearly impossible. They’re highly collectible among people who collect such things.

The little girl whose voice is being sampled, Tatyana Ali, went on to star on The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air.
 

 
Insanely great live Roxy Music performance from Montreux at the Golden Rose Festival, April 29, 1973. Even if the sound is a little ropey (and Eno’s microphone does not appear to be working at all) this is a pretty worthwhile clip for Roxy fans, as they’re really putting their back into it, here.

Like much European TV of the era, the camera operators hardly know where to point their gear, but eventually you do get a glimpse of Eno at work during the number’s crazed synth solo.
 

 
HT to WFMU

Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, and Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag
 
One of the hallmarks of punk rock has been its imperative to record its own history as it happens. Zines and independent magazines have been integral to the scene from the start, and in those pre-internet days they were often a lifeline to a community you felt a solidarity with, even if you were the only punk in your town. That being said, We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California is one of the most thorough and lush compendiums of any punk movement.

David Markey and Jordan Schwartz started the ‘zine We Got Power! in 1981 in southern California as teens. At a time and a place when punk music felt both anachronistic and oddly incongruous with the California surfer culture, they played in and documented the bands that defined an entire wave of punk rock. The sophistication of the photography is singularly intimate, and the accompanying essays give a naked accounting of the moment. It includes every issue, plus retrospective essays from the likes of Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, Mike Watt of Minutemen, and The Adolescents’ Tony Adolescent (who, by the way, is now an elementary school teacher and autism advocate). The mood is analytical and historical, without any nostalgic sentimentality or bitterness. As a child of the 80s, this was always the music I swiped from my friends’ cool older brothers, and it’s strange to look at the pictures and see them looking so fresh-faced and young here. It’s even more affecting to read their reflections on that youth.

It looks (and feels) like a coffee table book, but We Got Power! is a primary historical document with forwards by the subjects, themselves. Zines like this have allowed us to be our own historians, and that’s so incredibly meaningful. Because, who else can you trust?
 

Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies: punks raising punks

 
Graphic designer and artist Peter Saville tells the interesting back-story on how the now iconic Joy Division Unknown Pleasures album cover art came to be in 1979. 
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
Andy Warhol co-directed this seldom-seen video for The Cars’ single, “Hello Again,” with Don Munroe in 1984. It featured Manhattan “It Girl” fashion designer Dianne Brill (above), a young Gina Gershon, Benjamin Liu (as Ming Vauze), Warhol himself as the bartender and my late friend John Sex, the guy with the boa constrictor.

From an entry dated Thursday, March 29, 1984, pages 560-561 in The Andy Warhol Diaries:

It was raining and snowing out and this was the day we had to film all day doing the Cars video for their song “Hello Again” at the Be-Bop Cafe on 8th Street. Benjamin [Liu] came in drag to pick me up for shooting. He was going to be in it, too.

I had to be a bartender and wear a tux. The crowd of extras looked like the old Factory days—Benjamin in drag, and a bald-headed mine in a Pierrot outfit, and John Sex with this snake. And then there was Dianne Brill with her big tits and hourglass figure. The Cars were cute.

They finally got to my part at 8:00 and I had to sing a song but I couldn’t remember the words. And I had to mix a drink while I was doing it, and with my contacts on I couldn’t see the Coke button on the soda dispenser.

And that meant being face to face with the Cars for a while, and it was hard to talk to them. I didn’t know what to say. I finished at 9:15. One of the kids gave me a ride home.

 
The website An Occult Experiment is making these sterling silvers rings as an homage to the band Coil.

The outside reads the dreamer is still asleep in a mix of raised / recessed lettering over a blackened background.  The inside is engraved the dreamer is still dreaming followed by a chaosphere.

The ring comes in various sizes and can be ordered at the website.

 
Of the dozen or so shows I saw this past weekend at Austin City Limits, the highlights, for me, were Die Antwoord and Neil Young. Two very different musical entities that both delivered outstanding performances within their particular styles. Die Antwoord was dynamic, funny and hugely charismatic. The 10,000 plus people in the audience went apeshit for Ninja and Yolandi and it’s easy to see why: the duo brought some much needed energy and hard beats to the fest.

Young was the storm after the storm. Hitting the stage after a series of monsoon-like downpours, Neil and Crazy Horse were epic. Young may have played these songs hundreds of times but he continues to make them sound heartfelt and fresh. Of all the shows I saw at ACL, this was the purest, heaviest and most bliss-inducing rock ‘n’roll, out-punking Iggy and wiping the floor with Jack White.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse at ACL - Saturday, October 13: