This is a fine interview with Allen Ginsberg taken from the BBC series Face to Face, in which Ginsberg opens up about his family, loves, identity, drugs and even sings.

The series, Face to Face originally started in 1959, and was hosted by John Freeman, whose skill and forthright questioning cut through the usual mindless chatter of such interview shows. Freeman, a former editor of the New Statesman was often considered brusque and rude, but his style of questioning fitted the form of the program, which was more akin to an interview between psychiatrist and patient. The original series included, now legendary, interviews with Martin Luther King, Tony Hancock, Professor Carl Jung, Evelyn Waugh and Gilbert Harding.

In 1989, the BBC revived the series, this time with the excellent Jeremy Isaacs as questioner, who interviewed Allen Ginsberg for this program, first broadcast on 9th January 1995.

Watching this now, makes me wonder what has happened to poetry? Where are our revolutionary poets? Where are our poets who speak out, demonstrate, make the front page, and tell it like it is? And why are our bookstores cluttered with the greeting card verse of 100 Great Love Poems, 101 Even Greater Love Poems, and Honest to God, These Are the Greatest Fucking Love Poems, You’ll Ever Fucking Read. O, for a Ginsebrg now.
 

 
Animated by Gary Gutierrez, the first 7 minutes of The Grateful Dead Movie feature some of the trippiest visuals you’ll ever see. This is to cartoons what DMT is to psychedelics.

“The Grateful Dead Movie”, was largely the brainchild of Jerry Garcia. It was designed to be a memento for the fans, documenting five days of concerts at Winterland in San Francisco in October 1974.

 
Thanks to Marty Weinstein

 
Marianne Faithfull looking stunningly gorgeous in 1967 French musical comedy Anna starring Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy. In this scene Marianne sings ‘Hier Ou Demain’ written by Serge Gainsbourg.

Oh, Marianne. My knees are trembling, my upper lip quivering, my groin is vibrating like a tuning fork struck by the hand of God and storm clouds are bursting in the skies hovering above my feverish head. My dog is slapping me silly and begging to come to my senses. Could this be love? .
 

 
Having spent my early teen years in France, I was exposed to alot of French rock singers. Of course I was in love with Francoise Hardy and I owned a bunch of singles by Johnny Halliday and Sylvie Vartan. The Yé-yé scene was my scene. Michel Polnareff became a star after I left France but I was still following French rock close enough to appreciate his distinctive style, which was more Brit poppish and American West Coast hippie than his French peers.

English recording studios offered more advanced technology than Paris, so Polnareff went to London to record La Poupée Qui Fait Non. It was released in 1966 and immediately became a huge hit. Great French rock songs are rare and this one hovers at the edges of greatness.

La poupée qui fait non translates as ‘the doll who says no’.

She is a doll who says “no, no, no no”
All day long, she says “no no no no no”
She is, she is so cute
That I dream of her all night
She is a doll who says “no, no, no no”
All day long, she says “no no no no no”
No one has every taught her
That one can say “oui”
Without even hearing, she says “no no no no”
Without looking at me she says “no no no no”
However I would give my life
for her to say “yes”
However I would give my live
That she would say “yes”
But she is a doll, who says “no no no no”
All the day long she says “no no no no”
No one has taught her
That it’s possible to say “yes”
Oh no no no non no
no no no
She says no.
 

 
La Poupée Qui Fait Non has been covered by many artists, including Saint Etienne and Jimi Hendrix. This version by Mylène Farmer and Khaled is the loveliest in my opinion.
 

 
Hendrix does La Poupée Qui Fait Non after the jump…

 
Princess Hijab is a graffiti artist who daubs hijabs and burkas on advertising posters in the Paris Metro, as today’s Guardian reports:

Princess (Hijab)winds through the corridors of Havre-Caumartin sizing up the advertising posters lining the walls. She has agreed to meet as she scours stations for targets for her next “niqab intervention”. In Spandex tights, shorts and a hoodie, with a long black wig totally obscuring her face, one thing is clear; the twentysomething doesn’t wear the niqab that has become her own signature. She won’t say if she’s a Muslim. In fact, it’s more than likely that Princess Hijab isn’t even a woman. There’s a low note in her laughter, a slight broadness to her shoulders. But the androgynous figure in black won’t confirm a gender. “The real identity behind Princess Hijab is of no importance,” says the husky voice behind the wig. “The imagined self has taken the foreground, and anyway it’s an artistic choice.”

“I started doing this when I was 17,” she says (I’ll stick to “she” as the character is female, even if the person behind it is perhaps not).

“I’d been working on veils, making Spandex outfits that enveloped bodies, more classic art than fashion. And I’d been drawing veiled women on skate-boards and other graphic pieces, when I felt I wanted to confront the outside world. I’d read Naomi Klein’s No Logo and it inspired me to risk intervening in public places, targeting advertising.”

The Princess’s first graffiti veil was in 2006, the “niqabisation” of the album poster of France’s most famous female rapper, Diam’s, who by strange coincidence has now converted to Islam herself. “It’s intriguing because she’s now wearing the veil,” the Princess muses. Intially she graffitied men, women and children and then would stand around to gauge the public’s response; now she does hit-and-runs. “I don’t care about people’s reactions. I can see this makes people feel awkward and ill at ease, I can understand that, you’re on your way home after a tough day and suddenly you’re confronted with this.”

 

 
Via the Guardian
 
More work by Princess Hijab after the jump…
 

 
Life was candy-colored in the eighties.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik performing ‘Success’ with a bunch of cheerleaders on Brazilian TV in 1988. When I saw SSS in NYC they had a great stage show, but no cheerleaders.
 

 
Alan on Youtube has taken the ‘Strawberry Fields’ episode of the Beatles cartoon television series and added a stereo mix of the song to the video. Quite nice.
 

From 1967, with the song dubbed in a new stereo remix I made to expand the orchestral section! (...unlike the newly remastered “Magical Mystery Tour” CD!) This episode was inspired by the fact that the “Strawberry Field” of the song had been based on a real-life Salvation Army orphanage in Liverpool. When the Beatles stop by a dilapidated orphanage, the hostile attitude of the children (who are drawn in muted colors like the downtrodden Pepperlanders in “Yellow Submarine”) is explained by the Beatles’ driver, James, as being being due to their “sociological environment”. So the Beatles set about to create an Elysian playground with song! John’s “Musketeer Gripweed”, of his film “How I Won the War”, has a cameo!

 
Last night at Sotheby’s Andy Warhol’s black and white Coke bottle on canvas sold for $35 million. Warhol’s Campbell’s vegetable soup can is on the block at Christie’s tonight with an estimated sale price of $30-50million. I guess some things are recession proof.

 
Hatsune Miku, the holographic J-Pop superstar from Japan, commands legions of fans who go totally nuts for her, almost exactly the same way fans of Miley Cyrus do for her.  As cool as this technology is (and it’s very cool), I just can’t imagine an audience going so crazy for something like this on these shores. It would be like freaking out over The Archies.

 
Thanks, Juan Monasterio!

 
Lucha VaVoom tonight at Webster Hall in NYC and the Park West in Chicago on Thursday. Miss them at your peril.

Lucha VaVoom combines burlesque and Lucha Libre-style wrestling with a post-modern spin. The wrestlers are experienced in the art of grappling as well as other things. In the words of Lucha Vavoom superstar Cassandro:

“I’m just a gay guy, and I wrestle in my hair and makeup and my feathers and the glamour — I’m like the wrestling Liberace. One of my moves is the lip lock. I like to kiss people, so you better watch it if you’re around there.”