German TV program Durch die Nacht mit (into the night with) puts together a couple of artists/celebrities and lets the cameras roll as they hang out together and shoot the shit. It’s all rather loosey goosey.

In this show, Asia Argento visits Joe Coleman’s home in New York City and together they take a trip to Coney Island, visit magician David Blaine and eat at Keen’s Steakhouse. The show includes a clip of Coleman in Scarlet Diva which starred and was directed by Argento.

This episode was directed by Berlin’s infamous Jörg Buttgereit, known for his early experimental films and splatter fests like Necromantik. Argento, Coleman and Buttgereit constitute a triad of some the art world’s most fascinating provocateurs.
 

 
Here’s a little snippet from a recent New York Times interview with Iggy Pop:

Many date the birth of punk rock to a show the Stooges played in London in 1972, which was seen by founding members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols. What did you think when the punks started releasing music a few years later?
I reacted to it better than I had to the hippie thing. As it developed, I couldn’t stand the sincere punks. I never believed them. Still don’t.

The sincere punks?
Like the Clash were going to make the world politically correct for everybody’s benefit — but only if you kept buying Clash records. I never really went for the righteousness. I went more for the profligate, sneering groups. I also realized that it was good that I wasn’t doing that sort of music anymore. In penile, postpubescent rock, the generation is five years; it’s not 25 years. It would have been worse if I was still knocking out stuff that sounded like my first record but not as good.

It’s interesting that you call it “penile rock,” because your penis seems central to your image. You’re known for having had a lot of sex.
I wish I could have had more.
 
Read the rest of The Taming of the Stooge: Iggy Pop Isn’t Ready to Give Up the Carnal Life.

Photo: Glen E. Friedman
 
For many years, our Uncle Chuck was an integral part of the band that truly brought the dark, paranoid rage of hardcore punk to the widest possible audience during the early ‘80s.

Within the milieu of formulaic punk rock, Black Flag were truly strange extraterrestrials coming directly from Planet Anger to you. And you’re a better person for it, so watch, learn and appreciate.
 

 
After the jump: Got it? Now watch Chuck put it into action with the Flag…

 
Bob Dylan was and is one of rock n’ roll’s great punk rockers. From being howled at for going electric at Newport to being called “Judas” for turning it up to 11 with The Hawks at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, Dylan hasn’t really given a rat’s ass about what people think. And that continues to be true right up to the present as Dylan re-sculpts his songs into all kinds of weird and fascinating new shapes. A Dylan concert is never without a shitload of surprises, often brilliant and just as often frustrating.

In this clip from a March 1984 episode of the Letterman show, Dylan, backed by L.A. Chicano punkers the Plugz,  gives his tune “Jokerman” a primitive power pop punch that signaled Dylan’s return to the secular world of rock n’ roll. Again, reborn. But this time Jesus ain’t driving the tour bus.
 

 
More Dylan with the Plugz after the jump…

 
Dangerous Minds pal Otto von Ruggins (you may recall him as the keyboard player for the amazing mid-70s occult punk group Kongress or from his TV appearance with Ron Paul in the late 1980s) and intergalactic No Wave druid Von LMO (he was also in Kongress, and is considered a genius by no less of an authority than Julian Cope himself) have returned with their new group Avant Duel:

“Avant Duel displays a multiplicitude of realities where cognitive dissonance rules and there are NO RULES!”

Avant Duel recently played live at the Max’s Kansas City Reunion at The Bowery Electric where Von LMO chopped into his guitar with a meat cleaver and just kept right on playing.

Here’s a link to their Bandcamp page
Follow Avant Duel on Facebook
 

 
More at Noise Park

HT Exile on Moan Street

 
Here’s a couple of tasty new Patti Smith videos for you fans out there…and I know Dangerous Minds has a shitload of readers who have come to expect a healthy dose of Ms. Smith’s magic medicine on this site.

The interview from NY1 cable channel is an absolute delight. It’s a really smart overview of Patti’s history and the bard of Jersey really comes across as the spiritual force she has been and continues to be in rock n’ roll, literature and motherhood.

The second video is a performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where Patti has her photographs on exhibit, and it features her son Jackson on guitar and daughter Jesse on piano. Together they do a righteously rocking version of “Gloria.”

 
‘...I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews.’

Niall O’Conghaile aka The Niallist is talking about the music that inspired him to become a musician, a producer, a DJ, a one-man-disco-industry, and a Performer Extraordinaire.

Niall makes music that moves you “physically, mentally and emotionally. Dance music, for want of a better term!” But it’s always been about more than that.

Let’s turn to the history book…

When Brian Eno was working with David Bowie in Germany, he heard Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” in a record shop. Eno bought the single and ran, holding it aloft, back to Bowie in the studio, where he announced, like a pop John-the-Baptist, ‘I have heard the future.’

Niall is part of that future and his musical output is quite phenomenal and brilliant.

But it’s not just music that Niall has made his own, you’ll know him as a star blogger on Dangerous Minds, and perhaps through his work on the blogs Shallow Rave, Weaponizer, Menergy and his site, Niallism.

Niall also DJs / organizes club nights with Menergy and Tranarchy, and is the keyboard player with Joyce D’Ivision. All of which, for my money, makes The Niallist one of the most exciting, talented and outrageous DJ/producers currently working in the UK. Not bad for a boy who started out spinning discs on one turntable at school.

Now, it’s strange how you can spend much of your working day with someone and yet never really know that much about them. Wanting to know more about the extraordinary Niallist, I decided to interview him for (who else?) Dangerous Minds, and this is what he said.
 
DM: Tell me about how you started in music? Was this something to moved towards in childhood?

The Niallist: ‘Yeah, music is something I remember affecting me deeply as a kid. My sister, who is older than me, was a huge Prince fan and naturally that teenage, female, pop-music enthusiasm rubbed off on me. I would read all her old copies of Smash Hits and create my own scrap books from the magazines, even though the bands were, by then, either non-existent or pretty naff.

‘My brother was into more serious, “boy” music, which I didn’t like as a child, but which I really appreciated when I hit puberty. He had a big box of tapes that was crucial to me, even though he didn’t like me borrow them, but he had pretty much all Led Zep’s albums in there, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bowie, The Stone Roses, and I particularly remember him getting a copy of Nevermind when it had just come out, which was a key discovery. That box smelt of Dettol and musty cassettes, and to this day the smell of Dettol still takes me back!’

What were your early tastes in music? What were those key moments when a song a record made you realise this was what you wanted to do?

The Niallist: ‘Well, Nevermind was definitely one. I think that record started a lot of people on a musical journey. But also, I really identified with Kurt Cobain, as he was an outsider in the pop music landscape who spoke up for gay and women’s rights, which really struck a chord with me. He was a man, but he also wasn’t scared of being seen as feminine. He was a pop star, he looked scruffy and spoke with intelligence and passion. He was different. As someone else who was different, and a natural outsider, I guess I saw music as maybe a place where I could fit in and still fully express myself.

‘Call me hopelessly naive if you will, but I’m from an old school that believed that music and musicians could change things - maybe not radically and maybe not quickly, but that the seeds for change could definitely be sown with songs and videos and shows and interviews. Looking back on the early 90s now, it seems like an incredibly politically-charged time for music and pop culture. Public Enemy, NWA, Ice Cube, Huggy Bear, Bikini Kill, The Prodigy with “Fuck ‘Em And Their Law”, Pearl Jam telling Ticketmaster to fuck off, Spiral Tribe, massive illegal raves, Back To The Planet, Senser, Rage Against The Machine, the fact that RuPaul was a pop star, even Madonna’s Sex book and Erotica album for God’s sake! If you weren’t politically active or at least aware back then, you were terribly uncool. That spirit seems to have disappeared from music altogether now, which is sad.’
 

 
More from Niall, including his Top 5 picks, after the jump…
 

Fassbinder and Neon.
 
Debbie Neon (Petra Jokisch) had a brief career as a German disco queen before settling into minor roles in films like Wolf Gremm’s stylish mess Kamikaze 1989, which stars Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a hard-living alcoholic cop perpetually clad in an ultra-groovy, sweat-stained, leopard-print suit. A new-wavish noir, Kamikaze 1989 will never be mistaken for a good movie but it does feature Ms. Neon and provided me with a hook to lure you into listening to her 1979 cover of Talking Head’s “Psycho Killer,” which as covers go ain’t all that bad.
 

 
If you haven’t seen the recent BBC4 3-part series, Punk Britannia, it’s pretty good, although I found my attention flagging during the well-trod 76-78 era in part two. Still the first and third installments, covering “pre punk” pub rock (Dr. Feelgood, Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe) and “post-punk” respectively, I liked quite a bit. Apparently The Weinstein Company is sending take-down notices to YouTube over some of the Joy Division content used in the series, but you can still find parts of the show streaming online (and on the torrent trackers, natch).

The “post-punk” entry, which we watched last night, had some great footage of The Pop Group, Crass, the Gang of Four, The Fall, Siouxsie and The Banshees and Orange Juice, but inevitably the centerpiece in any “post punk” piece would have to be Public Image Ltd., without question the greatest, most influential band of the era.

I was lucky enough to see PiL on Staten Island at the absolutely decaying and decrepit Paramount Theatre on March 26th, 1983 (also the final Mission of Burma show). Sadly by then the band was minus Jah Wobble (Pete Jones took over on bass) and the set list featured percussion heavy numbers from The Flowers of Romance. Watching John Lydon onstage was like watching a fucking demon having convulsions. Alternately, he’d just glare at the audience or turn his back and sing (I was right up front, a new pair of leather shoes were destroyed by the end).

I thought Keith Levene was astonishing to watch as well, but not just what he was doing with his hands. He was obviously smacked out of his skull and for much of the show Levene stared slack-jawed directly into the bright white lights that illuminated the band, like he was staring at the sun, practically drooling. Still his idiosyncratic guitar playing was always perfect. It was, without a doubt the single best, most powerful concert I have ever seen in my life, although it’s worth mentioning that it was but a few months later that Lydon sacked his band mates and took up with that awful New Jersey bar band as heard on the horrendous Live in Tokyo album.

Never mind the Sex Pistols, that story has been told so many fucking times that no one really cares anymore. When will BBC4 commission a proper documentary on the first three PIL classic albums?