This video for ‘Thin Moon’, from James Pants’ album Seven Seals, brilliantly captures the lo-tech weirdness you’d see on Public Access TV back in the ‘80s. I’d say it’s just about perfect. One of my favorite videos of 2010. 

Seven Seals is available here. At times sounding like a mashup of Joy Division, Boney M, The Flying Lizards and Passenger-era Iggy, Pants conjures up intergalactic road trip music and electronic soul for the lounges of Venus. Neo-neo-spaceage bachelor pad music.
 

 
‘Twin Flames’ from Klaxon’s Surfing The Void album.

Director: Saam Farahmand

Klaxons push the edge with this sexually charged and disturbing visual trip that seems to reflect their interest in the surreal and fantastic works of Burroughs, Ballard and Crowley. I detect some of the body horror of Cronenberg.

This didn’t last too long on Youtube before it got yanked.
 

 
Hello, it’s the ninth episode of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour. Allow, if you will, host Brad Laner access to your head space and be rewarded with as many indelible melodies, rhythms and sounds as can be crammed into one Earth hour. Today’s episode features a mini-tribute to the powerful, emotional music of Judee Sill (picture above). Her music is so significant to me, I can hardly muster the verbiage to describe it. Staggering stuff, if you’ve not yet heard it you’re in for a treat.

 
Crispy Ambulance - Deaf
Theatre Of Hate - Rebel Without A Brain
Marvin Gaye - Troubleman
Lady June (with Kevin Ayers and Brian Eno) - The Letter
Judee Sill - Jesus Was A Cross Maker
Judee Sill - The Kiss
Neil Young - Don’t Cry
The Roches - Hammond Song
Wigwam - Fairyport
Frank Zappa - It Just Might Be A One Shot Deal
Things to Come - Come Alive
Prince - New Position
Prince - I Wonder U
The Fiery Furnaces - Mason City
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 
I’m putting together my film and music ‘best of’ lists for 2010. Kicking it off with the number 10 best album of this year: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s Before Today.

L.A. popster Ariel Pink does a masterful job of evoking West Coast sixties vibrations, Zappaesque jazz/ funk grooves, psychedelic soul and 80’s new wave, bringing to mind everything from Shuggie Otis to The Strawberry Alarm Clock and Quicksilver Messenger Service to The Cure and Prince. Pink is an overachiever who hits his mark far more than he misses it. In Before Today, Pink has created a mini-epic that glides thru pop music history like Rollergirl on ecstasy. Beneath the glittering surface, there’s a density and complexity that constantly surprises and never bores. Pink is building castles in Brian Wilson’s sandbox.

In this track from Before Today, Ariel covers the Rockin’ Ramrods’ 1966 song ‘Bright Lit Blue Skies’.
 

 
Before there was Alice Cooper, Rocky Horror, Dr. John the Nightripper, The Cramps or Sabbath, there was Screaming Lord Sutch.

On June 16, 1999, David Sutch was found hanged at his home in London. For his friends and fans the world over it was a terrible and unexpected blow. Sutch’s obsession with horror movies and the macabre was well known, an integral part of his image, but it was strictly for laughs. If he had a dark side he kept it well hidden. True, he had been suffering from depression in recent years, especially since the death of his mother, but no one expected this surprise ending: dead by his own hand at the age of 59. Sutch was well loved by his many friends. He was a household name in Britain—practically a national treasure. He was to make a highly anticipated headlining appearance in Las Vegas at Halloween, only a four months away. Surely he had everything to live for. Lord Sutch in 1969 But when clinical depression wraps its dark cloak around a man, he’s completely alone. Tragically now, he’s gone but not forgotten. David Sutch will be remembered for many things. His colourful, larger than life personality was a fixture of the British political landscape as well as the entertainment world. Certainly his amazing recorded legacy ensures his place in rock’n'roll history in perpetuity: the wild rock’n'roll and horror sides he cut with Joe Meek, the demented mid-‘60s gems like “Train Kept A-Rollin’” and “All Black and Hairy”, the proto-psychedelic “The Cheat”, the hard rockin’ Heavy Friends - for someone supposedly with no discernible musical talent he sure made some great records. And if you make great records you live forever.

Read a fascinating and funny interview with the Lord at Ugly Things.

Here’s a documentary from 1964 of which there is little information to be found on the Internet. It’s filled with wonderful footage of Sutch performing live and that’s enuff for me.
 

 
Parts 2 - 4 after the jump…

 
With all the Apple fanboy media attention paid this past week to the fact that the Beatles catalog was finally showing up on iTunes—like this is some kind of big deal to the man on the street—one nifty lil’ bit of news that most certainly was worth perking up for, got left out of a lot of the coverage: Until the end of the year, you can watch, for free on iTunes, the most amazing complete Beatles show you’ve ever seen. A show that was literally their first American concert, shot just two days after their Ed Sullivan TV debut, at the Washington Coliseum on February 11, 1964.

It’s amazing to see this. As the story is told, when they began to play, they had no idea what to expect. Recent concerts in Paris were played to unenthusiastic audiences. The between song banter assumes that the audience is not familiar with certain numbers, although this is seen to be demonstrably untrue, as the band, of course realize. And they are lovin’ it. The energy is palpable, and the entire set is one big 35-minute long adrenaline shot, as exciting to watch today as was then, but the added meta-historical layer of seeing the Beatles do an entire concert the very week they went from being up and comers to the most important musicians of the later half of the 20th century and beyond, is kinda cool, too.

The performance here is way better than the one captured in color at Shea Stadiumd a year later. That film was more about the insanity of Beatlemania than the music, anyway. Here, musically, they are tight as hell. This has been bootlegged forever, but never seen in good quality like this. Trust me, if you’re a Beatles fan, this will blow your mind… out in a car.

When you go to iTunes, you’ll be confronted with a box of Beatles related information. Click on “Play the Concert.” Do it. Do it now.

 
Here’s the first in a series of obscure (at least to me) international rock and roll videos that I’ll be sharing over the course of the next few months. I hope you enjoy them.

Hungarian band Bergendy formed in the late 1950’s as a jazz group and went through a bunch of personal and artistic changes through the 60’s and 70’s. When these two videos were made, the band, fronted by Demjen Ferenc (the man with the exploding hair-do), were playing a poppy mix of rock and latin-tinged funk with a some oompah and little bit of Queen thrown in. Bergendy and Ferenc are still recording and performing.

Nothing groundbreaking here, but the videos are an interesting window on Hungarian pop culture and the flesh-flecked shores of Lake Balaton.
 

 
A song of mine was used in a car commercial. At first, I refused to sell the rights to it. I hate when rock music pimps for big corporations. The ad agency who wanted to use the song told me, in so many words, that they’d create a sound-a-like version if I didn’t relent and let them use the tune. I relented. I made money. It’s the only real money I’ve ever made from my music. Do I feel unclean? No.

Despite what’s said in the ‘Music House’ video, it’s not illegal for an ad agency to create a song that sounds exactly like someone else’s. A slight change in structure is all it takes, a change most people wouldn’t even notice.

The Wojahn brothers, composers of TV jingles/music for Taco Bell, AT&T and Home Depot, made this video and I give them credit for satirizing with merciless honesty the bullshit within their own industry. Hipster commercials make me gag.
 

 
Here’s a perfect example of the faux indie band at its absolute skincrawling worst. They’re ripping off Moldy Peaches. The Freecreditscore.com Band rockin’ out:
 

 
One of the commercials that started it all after the jump…

 
Far better than average documentary on punk rock and the punk/reggae connection. Researched and written by the very fine rock journalist Robert Palmer (r.i.p.), this is smart and comprehensive. Broadcast on PBS in 1995 and currently unavailable on video or DVD. Enjoy.
 

 
Parts 3 - 6 after the jump…

 
Radiohead performing at Glastonbury, 2003. The entire 90-minute set in excellent quality. An amazing Hail to the Thief-era show.

“The gig of a lifetime.”—The Guardian