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LEGO King Crimson album cover
06.29.2012
10:48 am
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Holy cow is all I have to say!

Via Goldmine: The Collectors Record And Compact Disc Marketplace

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.29.2012
10:48 am
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This Week’s Question: Why does the N.M.E. want fans’ photos of The Stone Roses?
06.29.2012
09:56 am
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This week’s question (apart form when will we Nationalize the Banks?) is: why does the N.M.E. want fans to photograph The Stones Roses at their reunion concerts at Heaton Park, Manchester this weekend? Has it anything to do with a certain photographers’ boycott?
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Why Photographers are Boycotting The Stone Roses


 
Via NME’s Facebook page
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.29.2012
09:56 am
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Wu-Tang Bang!: ‘The Man With The Iron Fists’ directed by RZA
06.29.2012
04:38 am
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RZA directs. The legendary Corey Yuen (RZA’s mentor) does the choreography, Russel Crowe does the scowling and Lucy Liu and Pam Grier bring the Yin to the Yang in what looks like a killer martial arts action flick with a shitload of style. I’m so there.

The press release:

Quentin Tarantino presents The Man With the Iron Fists, an action-adventure inspired by kung-fu classics as interpreted by his longtime collaborators RZA and Eli Roth. Making his debut as a big-screen director and leading man, RZA—alongside a stellar international cast led by Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu—tells the epic story of warriors, assassins and a lone outsider hero in nineteenth-century China who must unite to destroy the clan traitor who would destroy them all.
Since his arrival in China’s Jungle Village, the town’s blacksmith (RZA) has been forced by radical tribal factions to create elaborate tools of destruction. When the clans’ brewing war boils over, the stranger channels an ancient energy to transform himself into a human weapon. As he fights alongside iconic heroes and against soulless villains, one man must harness this power to become savior of his adopted people.

Blending astonishing martial-arts sequences from some of the masters of this world with the signature vision he brings as the leader of the Wu-Tang Clan and as one of hip-hop’s most dominant figures of the past two decades, RZA embarks upon his most ambitious, stylized and thrilling project to date.

No exact release date as of yet, but it will be later this year. Word is some time in October.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.29.2012
04:38 am
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‘Dreamin’ Wild’: A 30-year-old album is one of the best of 2012
06.29.2012
01:19 am
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One of the contenders for my top ten records of 2012 is an album that is over 30 years old. Dreamin’ Wild by Donnie and Joe Emerson made zero impression when it was released in the punked-out and discofied year of 1979 and is one of those records that inhabits in its own wonderful world. And in the case of the brothers who created it, they might as well have been from another planet considering how far from the engines of rock ‘n’ roll commerce and fashion they were operating in. Their story recalls The Shaggs: young kids making unique rock ‘n’ roll in a small rural town (Fruitland, Washington) isolated from the epicenters of hip, fueled by passion, dreams of pop stardom and a supportive father who believed his sons were the next big thing.

Donnie and Joe received a further push from their lifelong farmer father, who drew up a contract stating that he’d support his sons lofty ambitions with their very own recording studio as long as they focused on original material, sage advice for a man with zero experience in the music business. After taking out a second mortgage to help cover costs, Don Sr. also built his children a 300-capacity concert hall (dubbed Camp Jammin’) replete with ticket booth, stage, and fully functioning snack bar

While the Emerson brothers did not become the next Osmonds, the eight tracks on Dreamin’ Wild reveal a depth of songwriting and musicianship that is hipper and more sophisticated than one might assume based on first impressions. The album jacket projects an image of a teenybopper lounge act when in fact the Emersons have more in common with the gritty and soulful power pop of Dwight Twilley, the blue-eyed soul of Hall and Oates and a loosey-goosey Lindsay Buckingham. It’s a formidable record and one that will compel you to wonder why it took so long to find an audience.

Seattle’s Light In The Attic Records released Dreamin’ Wild on June 26 and it has already earned a secure spot on my playlist. It’s amazing how smoothly this three decade old beauty segues into new stuff from Ariel Pink, The War On Drugs or Jonathan Wilson. By being so far out-of-the-loop the Emersons were actually deep in it.

Here’s a pretty groovy fan-made video for “Heart” from Dreamin’ Wild. NSFW.
 

 
A short documentary on Donnie and Joe Emerson after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.29.2012
01:19 am
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‘London Calling’: Jools Holland’s personal guide to London’s musical history
06.28.2012
07:49 pm
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Musician, cheeky-chappie, and renowned Boogie-Woogie pianist, Jools Holland takes a personal tour through the theaters, music halls and performance venues, at the heart of London’s diverse musical history.

Unlike Chicago blues or Memphis soul, London has no one definitive sound. Its noisy history is full of grime, clamour, industry and countless different voices demanding to be heard. But there is a strain of street-wise realism that is forever present, from its world-famous nursery rhymes to its music hall traditions, and from the Broadside Ballad through to punk and beyond.

Jools’s investigation - at once probing and humorous - identifies the many ingredients of a salty tone that could be called ‘the London sound’ as he tracks through the centuries from the ballads of Tyburn Gallows to Broadside publishing in Seven Dials in the 18th century, to Wilton’s Music Hall in the late 19th century, to the Caribbean sounds and styles that first docked at Tilbury with the Windrush in 1948, to his own conception to the strains of Humphrey Lyttelton at the 100 Club in 1957.

On the way, Jools meets Ray Davies, Damon Albarn, Suggs from Madness, Roy Hudd, Lisa Hannigan, Joe Brown and Eliza Carthy who perform and talk about such classic songs as “London Bridge is Falling Down”, “While London Sleeps”, “Knocked ‘Em in the Old Kent Road”, “St James Infirmary Blues” and “Oranges and Lemons”.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.28.2012
07:49 pm
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Zimmy Zimmy shock treatment: Bob Dylan and the Plugz
06.28.2012
05:13 pm
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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…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.28.2012
05:13 pm
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New York No Wave: Avant Duel’s return engagement from a parallel universe
06.28.2012
02:32 pm
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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
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.28.2012
02:32 pm
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South Park Throbbing Gristle
06.27.2012
10:35 pm
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.27.2012
10:35 pm
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The Elvis Mouse: The King cloned (sort of)
06.27.2012
03:25 pm
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“It’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready now clone, cat, clone, but don’t you step on my Elvis Mouse… Oh you can do anything but stay offa my Elvis Mouse… “

Koby Barhad explains in the artist statement from his “All That I Am” installation at Design Interactions 2012 graduate show:

From a speck of hair to a mouse model.

A combination of three online services can make this project possible.
Hair samples of Elvis Presley, bought on eBay were sent to a gene sequencing lab to identify different behavioural traits (varied from sociability, athletic performance to obesity and addiction). Using this information, transgenic mice clones with parallel traits were produced. The genetically cloned models of Elvis (in this case) are tested in a collection of various contemporary scientific mouse model environments, simulating some of the significant biographical circumstances of his life.

Is it possible to quantify our life through a series of conditions and events? What are the aspects of life that are responsible in making us ourselves?
Does buying a pre-owned item gives one the legal right to another individual’s genetic data?
Can mouse models of ourselves help us prepare for possible futures or will it impose them on us?
Will we make different choices Re-living the same life?
Can a mouse be Elvis? What makes you believe it can be?

Further explication via We Make Money, Not Art:

In parallel to the works performed by these laboratories, Koby has been studying the scientific mouse model environments that have been used on lab mice over the past 100 years. The cages have been designed to study and manipulate psychological aspects of mice.

Koby then made his own cages. But his were intended to reconstruct some of the most influential moments in the life of Elvis. Each of these cages offers a specific environment that is designed to influence the psychology of the mouse and make it closer to Elvis’.

Some of the main themes that the designer identified as being influential in making Elvis are: his close relationship with his mother (and so the mouse is given a mouse companion), being the victim of bullying when he was a child (in this cage, the mouse is submitted to external stimuli that frightens it), the discovery of his talents, becoming a star (features a distorted mirror that makes the mouse appear bigger), the Graceland period (in every place the mouse pokes nose, it gets a positive reaction in the shape of food or toys and keeps filling the cage to the point making it anxious), the army, the death of mum, the divorce from Priscilla are events that are represented by a cage that functions as an isolation chamber. The last cage embodies the last three years of the life of Elvis, when he worked himself to death, that period is represented by a little treadmill at the top of the cages. The mouse would run, run, run and eventually fall down.

It’s unclear if the Elvis Mouse is only being fed fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches washed down with phenobarbital, when it groggily rings for its cook in the middle of the night.

Also unclear is whether or not there is a mouse equivalent to “Dr. Nick” Elvis’s legendary doctor feelgood, who prescribed the King over 10,000 doses of amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, laxatives and hormones in the final year of his life alone.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.27.2012
03:25 pm
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Circus Magazine commercial from 1978
06.27.2012
03:13 pm
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Circus Magazine TV commercial from 1978.

“The toughest, timeliest, gutsiest magazine around.”

Circus Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Gerald Rothberg (seen in the commercial) stopped publication of the magazine in 2006 and sent the following soul-baring letter to its contributors:

It is with sadness and a deep sense of loss that I must inform you that I’ve experienced great financial loss, which includes Circus Magazine. Over the last year, I’ve tried my best to hold on to Circus Mag, selling all my personal possessions, including my home, pumping the money into the mag. And I’ve lost all. I’ve held off contacting people because of the shame and humiliation I’ve experienced. I’m broke. I feel like Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall.

A rather sad end to a magazine that during its heyday in the mid-1970s to mid-80s featured an editorial staff that consisted of some real rock critic heavyweights, including Lester Bangs, Nick Tosches, Paul Nelson, John Swenson, Jim Farber, Kurt Loder, David Fricke, and Fred Schruers.

Personally, Circus wasn’t a magazine I paid much attention to, it seemed geared to teenage boys and focused on bands heavy on metal and pomp-rock, but its punchy covers (designed by Milton Glazer) always added a splash of color between the racks of the more muted facades of Hit Parader, Creem and Rolling Stone. I later discovered, via my friend John Swenson, that Circus had a pretty dynamic record review section that had little to do with the rest of the editorial content of the magazine. It was there that many of the critics mentioned above were given free reign, under Swenson’s guidance, to write about records of their choosing. Perhaps now would be a good time to unearth some of those reviews for a book or Internet archive. In the meantime you can visit Running Away With Circus, a loving tribute to the magazine by some of writers.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.27.2012
03:13 pm
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