Wild. Singer/songwriter Joe Henry has co-written (along with his brother David) a biography of Richard Pryor entitled, Serious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him, due out in November. If you’re familiar with Joe Henry’s work, then you already know why this is so cool and appropriate, but if not, then I’ll tell you…

If you don’t know who Richard Pryor was, well then, no wonder you think the universe is kind of boring and tedious. Richard Pryor was Chris Rock before Chris Rock was even born, unleashing his ferocious comedy to both white and black audiences in the 60s and 70s, way before it was “OK” to joke seriously about racial issues and about the experience of being an African American in a nation still trying to suppress the inevitable realization that its cultural roots were about as black as they were white.
 
Here’s Richard Pryor as the first black president of the US. Like a lot of Pryor’s comedy, you can’t quite see where it’s going until it gets there and, prior to arrival it veers into the surreal.

 
Wild, no? That’s from the 1970s and I’m thinking popular culture was actually somewhat less brittle back then. The ghost of left-wing culture hadn’t quite faded away yet, though of course in just a few years Reagan’s jackboots would stomp even that poor pitiful thing into the ground. Even in the early 1980s, after Pryor recovered from a disfiguring freebasing accident that left him badly burned and near death, the nation laughed when Pryor explained: “When I dunked the cookie in the milk, it exploded!”

Joe Henry, meanwhile, dedicated one of his better albums (Scar) to Pryor, and wrote one of the songs (”Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation”) in his voice. Here’s “Stop,” from that same album (If you are a Madonna fan, you may have noticed that this song has the same lyrics as “Don’t Tell Me” from her Music album, and indeed Henry wrote those lyrics. Joe Henry is, bizarrely enough, Madonna’s brother-in-law (married to her sister Melanie) and also wrote the Baywatch theme, but don’t hold that against him.)

Henry operates in a nominally popular idiom by placing scraps of jazz, rock, R&B and even country into the athanor of his songwriting craft and then melting them all down and shaping the resultant amalgam into the odd and sometimes frightening little homonculi that are his songs.

When Henry (or his “people”) made the announcement about Serious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him on Facebook and his blog a couple of days ago, it came as both a surprise as well one of those things that seems obvious in retrospect. I’m stoked for the publication of this book and will almost certainly celebrate this news later with a bottle of Monday-night plonk and the very loud cranking of Joe Henry’s Blood From Stars album.

Here’s a rarity of sorts, of Henry singing (or pretending to be singing) the title track from hisTiny Voices album:
 

 
Waylon Jennings on The Johnny Cash Show in 1969. The country great was still clean-shaven here, but already moving in the direction of his “outlaw” country sound even then.
 

 
Here’s another shit hot live version of “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.” I am currently monumentally obsessed by this song. I could play it on a loop for 24 hours. That fuckin’ guitar solo is sublime city, baby!
 

 
Here’s a link to Linda Ronstadt’s more Flying Burrito Brothers-ish sounding version of the song, rechristened “Only Mama That’ll Walk the Line,” a staple of her live show in the late 60’s.

In case you were wondering (and I know you were) the mega-hottie on keyboards is Jennings’ then newly-wed wife, Jessi Colter. Below, Jessi Colter performs her 1975 pop-country crossover hit, “I’m Not Lisa”:
 

 
Sad to hear this.

Via The Doors’ Facebook page:

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away today at 12:31PM PT at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. At the time of his passing, he was surrounded by his wife Dorothy Manzarek, and his brothers Rick and James Manczarek.

Manzarek is best known for his work with The Doors who formed in 1965 when Manzarek had a chance encounter on Venice Beach with poet Jim Morrison. The Doors went on to become one of the most controversial rock acts of the 1960s, selling more than 100-million albums worldwide, and receiving 19 Gold, 14 Platinum and five multi-Platinum albums in the U.S. alone. “L.A.Woman,” “Break On Through to the Other Side,” “The End,” “Hello, I Love You,” and “Light My Fire” were just some of the band’s iconic and ground-breaking songs. After Morrison’s death in 1971, Manzarek went on to become a best-selling author, and a Grammy-nominated recording artist in his own right. In 2002, he revitalized his touring career with Doors’ guitarist and long-time collaborator, Robby Krieger.

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” said Krieger. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”

Manzarek is survived by his wife Dorothy, brothers Rick and James Manczarek, son Pablo Manzarek, Pablo’s wife Sharmin and their three children Noah, Apollo and Camille. Funeral arrangements are pending. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this difficult time. In lieu of flowers, please make a memoriam donation in Ray Manzarek’s name at www.standup2cancer.org

Below, a post-Jim Morrison Doors do “Love Me Two Times” on Germany’s Beat Club TV show, with Manzarek taking over the vocal duties:
 

 
Stick it up, mister!
Can you hear what I’m saying now, yeah?

Over the weekend, Toots and The Maytals were doing their version of John Denver’s “(Take Me Home) Country Roads” at the Dominion Riverrock festival—a song you’d think would go down a treat in Virginia—but an intoxicated moron identified by Richmond police as William Lewis, 19, had to go and ruin everyone’s good time by hurling a glass bottle at Toots Hibbert, hitting him right in the head. Hibbert was able to walk off the stage without help, but was rushed to the hospital where he was given seven stitches.

From Jamaican’s Music:

Speaking with The Gleaner, Andrea Davis, a member of Toots and the Maytals’ management team, noted that this was a first for the artiste but he remains in high spirit continuing the tour.

“This is the first ever. We have never had an incident like this. We have been travelling around the world for over 40 years and this has never happened,” she said. “It is a most unfortunate and unprecedented incident for an artiste of this stature.”

Lisa Sims, with Venture Richmond, the group that helps run Riverrock, explains that it’s mysterious as to how Lewis smuggled the bottle in the venue but measures have been taken to tighten loose ends.

“There are bag checks regularly,” Sims said. “You can’t just bring a big backpack in here full of stuff, and people aren’t looking at it. If there is any sort of incident or anything that gives us pause at any time, we obviously look at ways we might tighten things up,” she continued adding that the venue is reviewing its security procedures.

Police have arrested William Lewis, 19, and charged him with public intoxication and a felony count of aggravated assault.

A felony conviction for a class 6 assault in Virginia can mean one year in jail and a fine of $2500, on up to five years in a state prison. That this act of senseless violence was perpetrated in public, with literally dozens of witnesses able to finger him, and plenty of video, leaves William Lewis, 19, the “alleged” bottle-throwing tosser (see what I did there?) with quite a future ahead of him.

I hope it was worth it? Of all the people in the world worth having a bottle hit them over head, this dummy thought attacking the great Toots Hibbert, the hardest working man in reggae—now 70—was a good idea?

Here’s a link to the regrettable incident, caught on a cell phone. Hibbert went on the perform the next night in New York. Anyone with who witnessed the bottle throwing, or who has video of the event, is urged to contact Hibbert’s management at his Facebook page.

Below, Hibbert and his Maytals sing the classic, “54-46 That’s My Number” about his own time spent in prison for cannabis possession in 1966. Young Mr. Lewis needs this tune on his fucking iPod:
 

 
Henri le Chat Noir wishes he could get this kind of artistic cred

This beautiful 1944 silent film from husband-and-wife team Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid is quite possibly the only evidence we need that cats are the ultimate well-spring of creativity.

Deren and Hammid were both staples of the 1940s Greenwich Village avant-garde art scene. Deren, in particular, is considered a pioneer of film (and about 1,000 other artistic pursuits). Using their own cats in their own apartment, they chronicle the interior world of a cat “family,” and it’s just insanely compelling, even outside of the cat-lady milieu! A few short title cards loosely structure the trials and challenges of (and for) the new kittens. The tightness of the shots and attention to movement creates an intimacy with the viewer and the “performers.” While Deren and Hammid are most known for their first avant-garde film, Meshes in the Afternoon (which David Lynch cited as a major influence for Lost Highway), this lovely and weird little short is not to be overlooked.

Although credited solely to Hammid, it’s thought that Deren was more the director of the film, while Hammid did the shooting and the editing.
 

 
Via The Atlantic

 
I can still remember where I was the first time I heard Daft Punk’s “Da Funk.” It was the summer of 1996 and my brother had taped a 1995-end-of-the-year-round-up show by Annie Nightingale off BBC Radio 1. Well, I say “first” but actually it was the second, as I had previously heard it in a dj mix, but at that point I had no way of knowing what it was. Thankfully Ms Nightingale was forthcoming with information, meaning I could track the tune down myself (in a shop and by word of mouth, remember the days?)

To say that “Da Funk” blew my mind is a bit of an under-statement. As a piece of music it referenced both the genres I was loving the most at the time, house music and hip-hop, but far from being some tawdry “hip-house” jam, “Da Funk” was the perfect summation of the best elements of both genres without compromising either. Everything about the record was perfect, including the feeling of “what the fuck was THAT?!” I got after hearing it. A year later Daft Punk released Homework, and it became the record that, more than any other, defined the late 90s for a whole generation of kids who were sick to death of grunge and Britpop and looking for something new and exciting that wasn’t about the past.

So there you have it. My Daft Punk background. I was there the first time round, and young enough for it to be absolutely MY thing. Does that make me an old fart now? Does that make my opinion on Random Access Memories, Daft Punk’s new album and the most hyped music product ever since the last most hyped music product ever, irrelevant?

Answer in the comments if you like, but to be honest, I don’t really care. Having grown up with Daft Punk, and had them make an immense influence on my own music production and song writing, I feel a personal connection to what they do that makes a review of their new album more than just another Internet commentariat bleating along with the herd (though I can’t stop anyone from shooting it down by calling it that).

So in as brief a nutshell as I can possibly put together, here is my review of Random Access Memories: potentially amazing production let down by really lacklustre songs. Now you know what I think. Feel free to ignore the rest of this piece if you want. For the rest of you, here are my gripes…

Daft Punk “Random Access Memories” full album stream:
 

 
Read the full review after the jump…

 
A letter from Charles Bukowski to journalist Hans van den Broek in response to Bukowski’s book Tales of Ordinary Madness being removed from the Public Library in Nijmegen in 1985.

Tales of Ordinary Madness was described by the library as “very sadistic, occasionally fascist and discriminatory against certain groups (including homosexuals).”

7-22-85

Dear Hans van den Broek:

Thank you for your letter telling me of the removal of one of my books from the Nijmegen library. And that it is accused of discrimination against black people, homosexuals and women. And that it is sadism because of the sadism.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is because of these who I met were that. There are many “bads”—bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even “bad” white males. Only when you write about “bad” white males they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are “good” blacks, “good” homosexuals and “good” women?

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of “sadism” it is because it exists, I didn’t invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds. In my writing I do not always agree with what occurs, nor do I linger in the mud for the sheer sake of it. Also, it is curious that the people who rail against my work seem to overlook the sections of it which entail joy and love and hope, and there are such sections. My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the “light” and never mentioned the other, then as an artist I would be a liar.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.

I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else’s book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.

I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying that in our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it’s damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven’t written about them, I should, maybe have here, and that’s enough.

may we all get better together,
yrs,

Charles Bukowski

 
Via Letters of Note

Frippercakes?

They’d only just met a second time in 1985, but within a week, Robert Fripp asked singer/actress Toyah Wilcox to marry him. They did so on Robert’s 40th birthday in 1986, when the pint-sized “force of nature,” to hear him describe his wife, was 28.

That they are still very happily wed decades later—and the fact that they’re both famous, of course—qualified them for an appearance on All Star Mr & Mrs, the ITV game show where celeb couples compete for charity. In this episode, which aired on May 8th, 2013, Toyah and her crafty guitarist hubby squared off against BBC sports presenter Gabby Logan and her husband and EastEnders actor, Jake Wood, who is best known on these shores as the voice of the GEICO gecko and his wife.

I can’t imagine that this was Robert’s idea, but it’s absolutely adorable that he went along with it. Who would have thought the fiercely intellectual Fripp could be this cute???

His adoring wife, obviously. This IS cute, make no mistake about it, and it shows a side of Robert Fripp—quite a big part of his personality, I’d say, from the looks of things here—that few outside of his immediate circle are likely to have seen before.
 

 
Via Richard Lindsay and WFMU

 
Amusing t-shirt design in response to all those gazillion Tumblr images of Joy Division’s iconic album cover for Unknown Pleasures.

The t-shirt is by Adam J. Kurtz and it’s available to purchase for $25.00 here.

Via Post Punk Tumblr

 
Future Sci-Fi great Ray Bradbury looks fresh-faced (he was but 15 years old) and diva’s diva Dietrich, as ever, is just looking fierce when the pair were photographed together outside the gates of Paramount Pictures in 1935.

I tried to figure out how these two would have known each other. All I could find was an interview Bradbury did with Playboy in 1995 which might explain the circumstances of how they met:

Playboy: What brought you to Hollywood in the first place?

Bradbury: The Depression brought me here from Waukegan, Illinois. The majority of people in the country were unemployed. My dad had been jobless in Waukegan for at least two years when in 1934 he announced to my mom, my brother and me that it was time to head West. I had just turned 14 when we got to California with only 40 dollars, which paid for our rent and bought our food until he finally found a job making wire at a cable company for $14 a week. That meant I could stay in Los Angeles, which was great. I was thrilled.

Playboy: With what aspect of it?

Bradbury: I was madly in love with Hollywood. We lived about four blocks from the Uptown Theater, which was the flagship theater for MGM and Fox. I learned how to sneak in. There were previews almost every week. I’d roller-skate over there—I skated all over town, hell-bent on getting autographs from glamorous stars. It was glorious. I saw big MGM stars such as Norma Shearer, Laurel and Hardy, Ronald Coleman. Or I’d spend all day in front of Paramount or Columbia, then zoom over to the Brown Derby to watch the stars coming or going. I’d see Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Allen, Burns and Allen—whoever was on the Coast. Mae West made her appearance—bodyguard in tow—every Friday night.

There’s also this snip from a 1991 LIFE interview:

I still have my autographs and a few roller skate ball bearings left over from those days so long ago. Almost all of the people I met then are gone, but miraculously Marlene and George have survived. The light that comes out of these pictures is a constant rerun of my life as a somewhat silly but always loving boy, terribly reluctant to enter manhood.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
A Writer’s Life: Ray Bradbury on writing and the importance of the subconscious