Irish Elvis impersonator James “The King” Brown does a sultry version of Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’. I was never a Nirvana fan, but I like this alot. Brown’s take on Nirvana was a hit in Europe back in 1999.
The Flaming Lips were absolutely stunning this past weekend at their Austin City Limits Show, at moments reaching cosmic heights. Along with ACL performances by Muse and Sonic Youth, the Lips reminded me that the best rock and roll is passionate, magic and mystical. A welcome antidote to the blah shoegazing mope rock of the past couple of decades.
The Flaming Lips’ lead singer Wayne Coyne made limited edition posters for the Austin City Limits show using some of his own blood.
The Flaming Lips performing ‘Do You Realize’ live after the jump…
I visited The Liberace Museum in Vegas and loved it. Too bad it’s closing. Las Vegas is no longer the Vegas I dig.
For Immediate Release:
LIBERACE MUSEUM TO CLOSE ITS DOORS OCT. 17
Las Vegas – After 31 years of operation, the Liberace Museum will close its doors Sunday, Oct. 17, 2010 to focus its monetary contributions on the Liberace Foundation.Due to the economic downturn and the decline in the number of visitors, the Museum is forced to close the space and focus primarily on its dedication to the Foundation and the donation of scholarships.
“On behalf of the Board of Directors, we feel it is important to close the Museum to ensure the future of the Liberace Foundation and to keep the legacy of Liberace alive through its continued scholarship program,” said Jeff Koep, chair of the Liberace Foundation. “Since the inception of the foundation 34 years ago, more than $6 million in scholarships have been awarded to 2,700 students, and we will continue to award scholarships to deserving individuals.”
The memorabilia at the Liberace Museum will be maintained. A national touring exhibit is planned, and details will be announced at a later time. The board will also continue to research options for a location change to make the Museum more accessible to potential patrons.
“The traveling exhibit is an exciting way to share the life and legacy of Liberace while providing an income stream for the Foundation,” said Koep. “In no way do we intend to close the doors and not continue to explore options that will allow us to reopen at a later date.”
Terrific entry in the BBC series The Seven Ages Of Rock.
The story of how artistic and conceptual expression permeated rock. From the pop-art multi-media experiments of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground to the sinister gentility of Peter Gabriel’s Genesis, White Light, White Heat Place traces how rock became a vehicle for artistic ideas and theatrical performance. We follow Pink Floyd from the fated art school genius of Syd Barrett through the global success of Dark Side of the Moon to the ultimate rock theatre show, The Wall. Along the way, the film explores the retro-futurism of Roxy Music and the protean world of David Bowie.
Last night Tara and I attended the Hollywood premiere of Jackass 3-D at Graumann’s Chinese Theater, and, predictably, we laughed our fucking heads off.
With a four-year absence in cinemas since their last outing, the advent of widespread 3-D movie screens has provided some irresistibly low-hanging fruit for the Jackass gang, and unsurprisingly, they went all out with it (bodily fluids, bodily, uh, solids, and projectile dildoes make several star turns). The ante has been upped considerably in this installment. Think you felt the pain before? Trust me, it’s TEN TIMES more visceral when someone gets whacked in the nuts in 3-D. Ten times more painful, ten times grosser and tens times funnier.
Not that they’ve altered their classic crowd-pleasing formula all that much, it’s more that the 3-D technology takes their cartoony Buster Keaton meets Tom & Jerry antics to a different level, not to mention pain threshold. They’ve also grabbed the gross-out factor knob and cranked it (much) higher than ever before. Sure, I’ve felt queasy watching past Jackass shenanigans, but there was one point in Jackass 3-D where I (literally) found myself reaching for the popcorn bag to puke in (I didn’t but it was a very close call). Not that I minded, it’s what I came for, I’m just thankful they didn’t use John Water’s “Odorama” gimmick for this one.
Let there be no doubt, Jackass 3-D is a berserk and hog-wild nihilistic joyride, taking the audience places that they would NEVER, EVER want to visit in real life. The whole 3-D thing normally leaves me cold, but to truly appreciate the genius comedic craftsmanship behind the cheerful insanity of Jackass 3-D, you really do have to see this one in the cinema. I’m already a huge fan, but last night I was continuously wiping the tears of laughter from my 3-D glasses. This film is going to be a huge, huge hit.
Jackass 3-D opens this weekend. It’s already a part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Below an interview I conducted with Johnny Knoxville in 2008.
Jayne Mansfield’s exotic dance from the 1964 mondo documentary Primitive Love. The blissed-out dude playing the plastic bucket embodies everything I aspire to be: Buddha nature in overdrive.
Dead Or Alive’s Pete Burns has gone through quite a transformation since his early days of pop stardom. This video is of a recent London performance by the plastic fantastic Burns.
Pete Burns, rock and roll Lion Lady…
Filipino campfest Alyas Batman En Robin was made in 1993 on a zero budget, though it was considered a major release in the Philippines and starred three of that countries most popular comedians. Goofy, cheesy and fun, this flick is filled with crappy costumes, bad action sequences, inept choreography and a soundtrack that is cringe-worthy. But, it’s epic crappiness is what makes it such a blast. Here’s the grand finale featuring a blatant ripoff of Danny and The Juniors’ ‘At The Hop’.
Directed by Tony Y. Reyes and starring Rene Resquiestas, Dawn Zulueta, Vina Morales, Kempee De Leon, Joey De Leon
Watch the jawdroppingly silly trailer for Alias Batman And Robin after the jump…
Speculating on how an 85-year-old Lenny Bruce would be celebrating his birthday today is as fun as it is pointless.
But it’s pretty easy to guess that edgy comedy’s patron saint would not have been able to stretch out casually on TV for 25 minutes in conversation with a legendary publisher and lifestyle creator like the Hef.
That’s what happened in 1959 on the first episode of Playboy’s Penthouse, Hugh Hefner’s first foray into TV, which broadcast from WBKB in his Chicago hometown. This was the first mass-market exposure of the erstwhile club-bound Bruce, and its high-end hepness set the tone for the show’s two-season run, which featured a ton of figures in the jazz culture scene.
Of course, the dynamic between the eloquent snapping-and-riffing Long Islander Bruce and the perennially modest Midwestern Hefner is classic as the comedian covers topics like “sick” comedy, nose-blowing, Steve Allen, network censorship, tattoos & Jews, decency wackos, Lou Costello, integration, stereotypes, medicine and more.
“I think I’m going to puke.”
Blowhard asshole Lee Siegel continues to thrash around in the low end of the journalistic cesspool with this utterly idiotic essay in the New York Times comparing the Beat Generation to the Tea Party movement.
The counterculture of the late 1950s and early 1960s appears to be everywhere these days. A major exhibition of Allen Ginsberg’s photography just closed at the National Gallery in Washington. A superb book, by the historian Sean Wilentz, about Ginsberg’s dear friend and sometime influence Bob Dylan recently made the best-seller list. “Howl,” a film about Ginsberg and the Beats, opened last month. And everywhere around us, the streets and airwaves hum with attacks on government authority, celebrations of radical individualism, inflammatory rhetoric, political theatrics.
In other words, the spirit of Beat dissent is alive (though some might say not well) in the character of Tea Party protest. Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.
Comparing the sexy, druggy, life embracing, progressive culture of the beats to the fascistic, xenophobic, racist, fearful and life-negating Tea Party is absolutely absurd. It’s like comparing fucking to a case of serious blue balls.
The following comment by Siegel not only posits an idiotic argument, it’s morally disgusting:
the Tea Partiers’ unnerving habit of bringing guns to town-hall meetings would have repelled the Beats. But William S. Burroughs fetishized guns, accidentally killing his wife while trying to shoot a glass off her head. Violence, implicit or explicit, comes with the “beaten” state of mind. So does theatricality, since playing roles — and manipulating symbols — is often the first resort of people who do not feel acknowledged for being who they really are.
What the fuck does Burroughs’ wife’s death have to with “manipulating symbols” or some kind of identity crisis?
Read the entire steaming pile of bullshit here.