Sixties short film Vertige by Jean Beaudin mixed a time-stretched version of The Beatles “I Am The Walrus” results in a spooky ambient experience that has a decidedly lysergic feel to it.

Thanks to AngelMusification for the The Beatles’ time-stretch.
 

 
This past weekend in Austin, Texas, R. Kelly performed for 75 seconds to a packed-house of people who payed up to $950 each to see what can only be described as a massive rip-off.

My wife and I almost went to see this “show” - out of curiosity more than anything else. The buzz around town was generally skeptical as to whether the show was legit or not. The venue where it was scheduled to take place, The Mansion, flies under the radar of the local music press, so there was little advance hype. But a lot of people ended up going and were, in my opinion, treated like shit.

Considering R. Kelly’s past karma, this whole debacle doesn’t seem like a smart way to get right with the cosmic powers that be…or your fans.

Here’s a first-person report from Devon Tincknell as it appeared in the Austinist:

Last night, I went to see R. Kelly at the Mansion, a strip club in North Austin, and it was one of the biggest scams I’ve ever experienced. Sure, there were moments leading up to the show where I wondered, “R. Kelly is playing at a strip club I’ve never heard of and general admission tickets are only 30 bucks? That’s almost too good to be true,” but I never expected it to be as worthless as it turned out. Being led into an alley by a hand drawn cardboard sign that promised a “Free R. Kelly concert” and then being beaten with a brick and robbed would perhaps have been more satisfying; at least you could file a police report.

Like most modern frauds, this story begins online with an Eventbrite page selling tickets for “An Intimate Night w/ R. Kelly (Mothers Day Weekend).” Tickets ranged from $30 for general admission all the way up an escalating price scale caste system of VIP and celebrity room statuses to the ultimate baller package of $950 for a super-duper-ultra-pimp-VIP bottle service table accommodating eight people. It was a little odd that the R. Kelly of “Space Jam” soundtrack fame-and-acclaim would be playing a remote strip club rather than say, the Frank Erwin Center, but it seemed plausible. Maybe people had finally lost interest in the plot line of “Trapped in the Closet” and Kells couldn’t pack the house like he used to. I mean, if they’re selling $950 tickets it’s got to be a real R. Kelly concert, right?

My stomach dropped a little when we showed up at a swanky strip club near the junction of 183 and 290 and right past the entrance was a sign proclaiming “NO REFUNDS.” My fellow concert goers and I joked that they were just going to play us some R. Kelly music videos, but once we saw the room we were too excited by the idea of seeing R. Kelly perform up close and personal to really believe this could all just be a rip off. R. Kelly’s legend is so great that Aziz Ansari does a bit where he simply describes going to an R. Kelly concert. And here we were, about to watch the man perform on a stage five feet from us. A stage with stripper poles on it.

Doors opened at 9 p.m. and we arrived around 10. We camped out a few feet back from the lip of the stage and danced to a DJ playing the generic rap mix you’d hear at any inner city middle school prom. We were excited as fuck. Of course, as 10 became 10:30, then 11, then midnight, without R. Kelly live and in person wowing us with his R&B styles, that excitement diminished. From time to time, a hype man yelled at the crowd, “You people ready to party?! You don’t seem like you’re excited enough for R. Kelly to come out yet!”

Sometime after midnight, he starts yelling things along the lines of “R. Kelly is in the building!” We’ve been standing around for hours but we muster all the enthusiasm we can. The strip club staff begins to clear out the VIP room for R. Kelly. Wow, okay, now it’s looking like R. Kelly actually will show! Finally, at 12:43 in the morning, R. Kelly and his posse take the stage to a medley of his hits. Kells grins at the cheering crowd, everyone loses their shit and starts taking photos with their phones, while R. Kelly just stands there smoking a cigar. Then he walks over to the VIP area and touches more hands and stands there. He is not singing. This parade goes on for a worrisome amount of time.

Finally, he finds a mic and sings a very brief a capella ditty. This is followed by a lazy rendition of “Ignition (Remix)” sung over the album version with his vocals still on it. Then after he invites all the pretty ladies to the VIP section to party with him, he moves over there and sits down. It becomes very obvious that this is it; this is the R. Kelly “performance” we just waited hours for. A moment later, R. Kelly gets on the mic again and DEMANDS that pretty ladies come party with him in VIP or “he is going to be up out this bitch.” Up out this bitch? But you just got IN this bitch, Mr. Kelly!

With the VIP area packed to the gills by a flood of ladies - so much for those exclusive hundred dollar tickets, I guess - my friends and I decided this was total bullshit and left. We didn’t pay 30 fucking dollars to party in the same room as R. Kelly’s VIP section.

If you pay for an “intimate night” with R. Kelly and it takes place in a public venue, not in a hotel room with a tarp laid over the bed, do you have a right to expect a musical concert? I believe so. When I go to the zoo, I don’t expect the tigers and polar bears to sing “Bump-n-Grind” for me. Thus, when I go see R. Kelly, a man who is famous for performing music, I don’t expect him to stand there sleepily and have his photo taken. If you are a musician and the event does not specifically say “an appearance by” or “autograph signing” or “LIVE… and drunk and not performing, just sitting in VIP,” I believe the audience has a right to expect an actual concert.

In the end however, what really bothers me is that R. Kelly is a musician supported by fans who stood by him AFTER HE PEED ON AN UNDERAGED GIRL. People that like R. Kelly’s music know he peed on a girl and have forgiven him for it! And then how does he repay that loyalty? By tricking people into buying expensive tickets for a Mother’s Day “concert,” making them wait on their feet for over three hours, and then performing a sub-par karaoke at Beerland rendition of “Ignition (Remix)?” Happy Mother’s Day, R. Kelly. I feel like I just got pissed on.

Too drunk to funk? After reading another account of Kelly’s behavior at the club, I wonder if he was too drunk to perform even if he had wanted to.
From Austin360 :

Around 1:30 a clearly loopy R. Kelly came back out and said he wasn’t contractually obligated to sing - so what he had done was a favor, of sorts - and that he was there to get drunk and if the crowd would chill out and let him do so (from the looks of him by that point, no one had had much luck stopping him) he might come back out and do some more.

These photos of Kelly at The Mansion kind of tell the tale. His performance seems to consist of chomping on a big fat Cohiba while blessing the swooning multitudes.

In this video, the crowd starts booing as a surly DJ explains that R. Kelly don’t do shit for less than $250,000.
 

 
Update: Ticket sales website Eventbrite is offering refunds to the folks who bought tickets to R. Kelly’s Austin “show.” They acknowledge that the promoter misrepresented the event. Eventbrite should be given kudos for doing the right thing. What about the event promoters Exit Black? So far, they haven’t been heard from.

 
Roughly 6 months after their first gig (where they were billed as ‘The Yardbirds med Jimmy Page’) this is Led Zeppelin giving a hint as to why they will dominate venues and stadia across the world during the 1970s.

Recorded at the Gladsaxe Teen Club, Denmark, for TV Byen / Danmarks Radio on March 17, 1969, Led Zeppelin perform “Communication Breakdown”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, and “How Many More Times”. Impressive and tight, this was what I considered as “grown-up Rock ‘n’ Roll” when I was young - the kind of music you studied after achieving good grades in Bowie and Bolan - and forty-three years on, it is still a cracking masterclass.
 

 
Here’s a little-known clip of Martin Denny and his group playing their signature tune, “Quiet Village” on Webley Edwards’ Hawaii Calls TV special. (Host Edwards was the first radio announcer to broadcast news of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese).
 

 
After the jump, more Martin Denny…

Nicky Thomas delivers…
 
The Old Grey Whistle Test was only in its second year on BBC2 when producer Rowan Ayers presented this reggae showcase in Edinburgh in 1973.

The lineup is almost completely comprised of Jamaican artists who had settled in London after touring Europe off of hits they scored in the British charts. The notable exception is the specially flown-in MC Dennis Alcapone, who delivers two of the three original tunes in this collection of excerpts (the other is Winston Groovy’s “I’m a Believer”—the one written by Mulby Thompson of Trojan Records, not Neil Diamond). It’s pretty rare to see footage from this early on of a reggae MC like Alcapone in front of a live band—until the late ‘70s, they were pretty much relegated to chatting over instrumentals at sound system dances.

After the agile Cimarons cover Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” they back nearly all the other artists, until an all-white band pops up to back the Pioneers. The late Nicky Thomas offers up a compelling highlight with his paroxysmal covers of Syl Johnson’s “Is It Because I’m Black” and The Four Preps’ “Love of the Common People.”

The program was hosted by Alex Hughes, who as Judge Dread had just scored three charting British reggae singles of his own—the lewd nursery rhymes “Big Six,” “Big Seven,” and “Big Eight”—and was the first white artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica.

One can imagine how many mods, skinheads, soul boys and other riff-raff this broadcast kept off the street at the time.
 
Part 1
The Cimarons - “Ain’t No Sunshine”
Winston Groovy - “I’m A Believer”
Dennis Alcapone - “Cassius Clay” & “Wake Up Jamaica”

Part 2
The Marvels - “Jimmy Browne” & “One Monkey”
Nicky Thomas - “Is It Because I’m Black” & beginning of “Love of the Common People”

Part 3
Nicky Thomas - end of “Love of the Common People”
The Pioneers - “Higher & Higher” & “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”
All Star Finale - “Freedom Train”

Pt. 1
 

 
Keep yr skank up: check out parts 2 and 3 after the jump…

 
Donald “Duck” Dunn has passed away.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Dunn was the bass player in Booker T. and the MGs as well as a sideman to Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Wilson Pickett and many more. He was a key player for Stax recording studios and an integral component in the soulful funkiness of the “Stax sound.”

I remember seeing Neil Young on his 1993 tour when Booker T and the MGs were his backing band. I was expecting something bluesy and jazzy (you never know with Neil), but the band rocked hard. Dunn stood in one spot, blue jeans perfectly pressed with a crease down the middle, and laid down a groove as deep and massive as the Grand Canyon without ever breaking a sweat or mussing his impeccably coiffed hairdo.

Dunn died in his sleep in Japan after playing a couple of gigs at The Blue Note in Tokyo. He was 70 years-old.

Here’s a great clip of Dunn playing with Booker T. and the MGS on 1960s TV show Shindig.
 

 
Zilla Minx of Rubella Ballet has put together a wonderful documentary that tells the story of the women who pioneered the British punk rock scene. This is a vital film that brings some balance to the lopsided male-centric history of punk.

Featuring women punk rockers from bands of the era including Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, Vi Subversa of Poison Girls, Eve Libertine & Gee of Crass, Gaye Black of The Adverts, Michelle of Brigandage,Ruth & Janet of Hagar The Womb and journalists, authors and photographers Julie Burchill and Caroline Comb and more. This film includes interviews with the following women & rare footage of their 1980 s live punk gigs. Poly Styrene: Lead vocalist, X-Ray Spex. Gee Vaucher: Art Work, Crass. Eve Libertine: Vocals, Crass. Gay Black: Bass Player, The Adverts. Vi Subversa: Lead Vocalist & guitarist, Poison Girls. Julie Burchill. Author, Journalist. Lou Moon: Lead Vocalist, Evil I. Caroline Coon: Manager, Slits & The Clash, Journalist/Artist Zillah Minx: Lead Vocalist, Rubella Ballet Michelle: Lead Vocalist, Brigandage Helen Of Troy: Actress and Vocalist, FU2 Justine: Violinist, Grechen Hoffner Olga Orbit: Keyboards, Youth in Asia Nettie Baker: Author. Ruth & Janet: Vocalist & Guitarist, Hagar The Womb Rachel Minx: Bass player, Rubella Ballet Kara Minx: Child ballet dancer, Rubella ballet Mary: Bodyguard to Poly-Styrene.”

Watch it on Dangerous Minds and then buy it here. Support D.I.Y. films.
 

 
Here’s a 35 minute recording of Roxy Music playing live at the Paris Theatre, London in 1972, which was broadcast on BBC radio in September of the same year.

Thanks to Vibracobra23 for the upload, and author and musician Stephen Thrower, who adds that:

[this was] previously available only on dreadful, tinny bootleg LPs but is now in pristine sound quality, and with an extra track - a fantastically intense version of The Bob (Medley.)

Tracklist:

1. The Bob (Medley)
2. The Bogus Man Part 2
3. Sea Breezes
4. Virginia Plain
5. Chance Meeting
6. Re-Make/Re-Model
 

 
My co-conspirator here at DM Paul Gallagher covered this last year, but I found a nice new high quality upload of the video in full and thought I should update the article and share it with you all once again. I’m sure our new readers will appreciate it.

Here is David Bowie in the BBC production of Brecht’s play Baal, from 1982. It was directed by Alan Clarke, the talent behind such controversial TV dramas as Scum with a young Ray Winstone, Made in Britain, with Tim Roth, and Elephant.

Baal was Brecht’s first full-length play, written in 1918, and it tells the story of a traveling musician / poet, who seduces and destroys with callous indifference.

Bowie is excellent as Baal and the five songs he sings in this production were co-produced with Tony Visconti, and later released as the EP David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht’s Baal.
 

 
The audio is a bit rough but this fiery performance by The Patti Smith Group on Cinco de Mayo at the Diego Rivera Museum in Mexico City immediately taps into something mystical. Patti seems completely possessed by the magic of the moment and the place. And the place is possessed of some serious mojo:

The unique museum was conceived and created by muralist Diego Rivera, who, motivated by his own interest in Mexican culture, collected near 60,000 pre-Hispanic pieces during his life and projected a building to place and exhibit them. It was completed after his death by architects Juan O’Gorman and Heriberto Pagelson and Rivera’s own daughter, Ruth. Built of black volcanic stone, it takes the form of a pyramid. The museum articles are collected from almost every indigenous civilization in Mexico’s history.

The building forms a teocalli with means “house of energy”, its design notably influenced by the Teotihuacan culture as can be appreciated in the building’s boards, recreating the image of the rain god Tlaloc. Wikipedia.

Patti is 66 fucking years old and she continues to amaze. And on the night of this performance, Patti had the help of Tlaloc the rain god, the good vibes of Cinco de Mayo and the Supermoon! - a rare and powerful convergence of place, energy and artist. Plus, it was The Patti Smith Groups’ first ever concert in Mexico. A good night for rock and roll.

Audio is real loud. You might want to turn down the volume.

 
Patti talks about punk rock at the Frida Kahlo Museum after the jump…