Doctors from local hospitals in Kingston, Jamaica, report that they’ve been seeing a record number of broken dicks in the past few months. They attribute this to the increased popularity of daggering. Dr Alverston Bailey advised men to seek medical help if they suspect their penises have been broken. Signs of a fractured penis include a loud popping noise, followed by excruciating pain, swelling, and sometimes blood.
Reggae dance craze daggering has been banned in Jamaica, but no amount of banning can keep a good thing down…unless it gets broken. As a public service to Dangerous Minds readers, here’s an instructional video from Major Lazer that could save you from unwanted suffering.
Meh. If he sang on it, it might have been something. As the man himself has stated: Anyone with some free software can make noisy/interesting post-rock soundscapes these days but there is no software for writing lyrics and human vocals (yet). That takes time and effort; something Herr Eno has evidently decided not to invest in this record. Too bad, as that would most certainly have taken this promising track from just OK to great.
Brian Eno - 2 Forms Of Anger (taken from Small Craft On A Milk Sea) by Warp Records
Buy Brian Eno’s new album Small Craft on a Milk Sea
Today is Marc Bolan’s birthday. The father of glam rock would have been 63 today if he was still among us.
Below, the complete footage of Bolan’s interview on the Russell Harty Plus television program. Might be the best interview I’ve ever seen with him. At the end he says “I don’t think I will live that long.”
You could say that I’m obsessed with recordings of vintage drum machines. I just love the clunky sounds and the freedom granted to the human players who know there’s a steady pulse no matter how far out their own playing gets. So knowing this, Dangerous Minds pal Ian Raikow was kind enough to point out the below specimen by the wonderful Lee “Scratch” Perry in his crazed Black Ark period and this tidbit of info:
“...the story goes that this recording features the very first drum machine to arrive on the island. Programmed by Familyman Barret and his brother…”
This and other truly mind-blowing dub-plate experiments from ‘73-‘76 are available on the grand new compilation Sound System Scratch
Dangerous Minds pal Brian Tibbetts, a sound designer at Lucas Arts, sent this unusual item my way this morning regarding a literally microscopic instrument called the Micronium, developed by students at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The instrument is about 1/10 of the thickness of a human hair and from what I can gather, is a bit like playing a microscopic comb with tiny, tiny weights.
On Sunday there was a recital for the composition, “Impromptu No. 1 for Micronium” in Enschede, Holland. The music starts at about 6 minutes in and goes from random Fantastic Planet type tone generation to a perfect micro-rendition of Hot Butter’s one-hit Moog wonder “Popcorn,” which I thought was a pretty rad choice to demo this sucker:
Via PopSci.com
Take a look at Brandon “N2ition” Riley’s video for rising Gary, IN rhymer Freddie Gibbs’s tune “The Ghetto” below, and you’ll notice that you’re looking at something different. The flossy clichés—bling, cars, cash—are absent. Instead, we see high school running tracks, lake beaches, and theatres. We see kids, grannies, murals, dirty piano keys, and broken basketball backboards.
In short, we see real atmosphere, an element that can take something as commodified and played-out as a hip-hop video into a profound direction. Says Riley:
I’m trying to take the hip-hop music video into a more cinematic direction. And I don’t mean cinematic as in ‘Let’s add dialogue at the beginning of the video and then jump into the club scene.’ It takes a real commitment from the artist and their team to believe in a track enough to come up with a unique concept and follow it through. To plan on taking 2-3 days to shoot it. To audition actors to play key roles, etc. You have to be inspired by the music first.
After making videos for his own rap group in college in Charleston SC, Riley started shooting for other acts and building his aesthetic. One of his vids became a top-20 finalist in a YouTube rap video contest judged by Common, 50 Cent and Polow The Don.
Since then, Riley’s made Chicago his home and has shot for local talent like Lungz, LED, Nascent, Big Law, Jay Star and others. His N2ition Productions continue to specialize in videos that eschew the vapid, party-up paradigm for a gritty tone that almost seems inspired by the ghosts of Midwestern blues.
Riley notes a bounty of video talent in his territory:
There are some other great directors in Chicago. Guys I’ve worked with like Travis Long from Ike Films and Noyz from Da Visionaryz and GL Joe from HYSTK. These guys are going to be national names in no time. They really have the borderline genius talent.
Upcoming N2ition projects include a video for “Linen” by Mikkey Halsted and Twista (“Some amazing shots of Chicago in the summer”), and another with LEP and Gucci Mane that he says “should be a nice Chicago anthem.”
And I’m supposed to be working some more with Freddie Gibbs in the near future. I also shot a documentary on Twista that should be out in November. But I’m just as excited about moving into more feature length projects. I just completed a feature with Ike Films and Ill be shooting something in early 2011 with Noyz from the Visionaryz…everything I learn on those shoots only makes my music videos that much better.
Bonus clips after the jump: Another N2ition production starring Gibbs working with Mikkey Halstead, plus some workingman’s-blues-style hip-hop from Jay Star.
“Think of a sound—now make it.”
Here is a very cool doc by Ian Collie about London’s Electronic Music Studios, the pioneering synthesizer company formed in 1969 that created such items as the voltage controlled synth (VCS3) and the Synthi A.
These and other machines changed the way we listened to music forever. They were used by some of the first pop artists to experiment with electronic music, including Pink Floyd, The Who, Eno & Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Hawkwind.
Collie puts together a very human and warm exploration of what sound synthesis meant to the lives of EMS principals Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell. And in a segment that involves Hawkwind’s David Brock, he also takes on how well sound synthesis meshed with the psychedelic age.
After the jump, catch parts 2 & 3…
Does the name Monti Rock III ring a bell for any of you? How about Disco Tex?
Monti Rock III was one of the first quasi-openly gay men that I ever saw on TV. He was a frequent talkshow guest, first on Merv Griffin’s show starting in the mid-60s and then he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show A LOT in the 70s and 80s. (He was probably on the tonight show as often as Steve Martin was during that era). I was really too young to have consciously realized what Monti’s flamboyant persona meant, but I think with a character like Rock (not to mention Paul Lynde, or Kenneth Williams in the British “Carry On”), you just kind of got it by osmosis. Or via the eyeliner and glitter. (Or your dad’s grumbling every time Monti appeared on his TV set, perhaps!)
I must admit that the name Monti Rock III has not crossed my mind often in the past, I don’t know, maybe… three decades, but I was happy to read this fun article from Paisley Dalton at Zeitgeistworld (via World of Wonder) indicating that Monti Rock is indeed alive and well and living in Las Vegas:
NYC in the 70s would have been just another cesspit had it not been for the sparkle provided by the head queen himself Monti Rock III. Having scored two top 40 hits Get Dancin’ and I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo, produced by Bob Crewe (The Four Seasons, Frankie Valli, early Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack), under the group name Disco Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, Monti provided the soundtrack for many gay men who were celebrating newly found sexual freedom on the enfranchised dance floors in New York’s underground disco scene. After fame and notoriety hit from over 80 appearances on talk shows like Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and a feature spot in mega movie Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, Rock exited stage left with an addiction to booze, a severed relationship from Bob Crewe and a self-imposed moratorium on anything having to do with the glitz, glamour and gayness that made him beloved and in his words ‘a joke’. Now at 72, Monti is talking again…about life as a hustler, endowment (not talkin about money here!), the effete glitter years and… a new life as an ordained minister?
Zeitgeistworld: Hey Monti! What’s up with you?
Monti Rock III: First of all, I thank you for searching me out. I guess most people think I’m dead. Right?
Zeitgeist: To be honest, I don’t think most people under 40 have any idea about you and your contributions. I was a bit surprised that your still doin’ it in Las Vegas.
Monti Rock III: I’m working on a movie. The focus of the film is ‘hope and never giving up’. I see it as a guy, the first openly gay man in the 5os and 60s that got on television. The story should start with that. How being openly gay was very romantic in that era. What it was like to be a trailblazer. Everyone knew I was gay. I was very over the top, darling! If you donned long hair and beads and wore pancake make up in 1961, if that wasn’t openly gay, what was it? The ‘queens’ didn’t do that back then.
Read more: Monti Rock III is Not Dead, Darlin!!! (Zeitgeist World)
Below a fascinating clip of Monti Rock III on the Merv Griffin in 1966 (with Jayne Mansfield). Monti likes chicks with long hair, or so he says…
This lovely synth/psych single from 1968 is a collaboration between former Left Banke, future Woodstock performer Bert Sommer, the then Walter (soon to be Wendy) Carlos and the band Childe Harold. Dig those signature Clockwork Orange pre-cursors ! This is nearly too good to be true. A really dark and woozy bad trip.
Hear the flip side after the jump…
