Whilst writing the Yellow Submarine blog post, I noticed that a fellow named Lance Percival was one of the voice over artists and I wanted to share this delightful Calypso novelty record Percival released in 1965 called “Shame and Scandal in the Family.”
Lance Percival was well-known in Britain in the 1960s as part of the cast of That Was The Week That Was (he’s in the back in the shot above) where he’d perform improvised topical humor to a Calypso beat.
“Shame and Scandal in the Family,” his only hit record, originally appeared on the soundtrack to the 1943 horror movie I Walked With A Zombie. A young Peter Tosh also covered the song in 1965 and it was later recorded by both The Stylistics (a disco version from 1977) and Madness.
StPaulAtTheEndOfTheWorld seems to be having some fun with 80s arena rock by slowing down the tracks. It appears he just started the project, so I’m assuming there’s more to come. I hope so.
Below, Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” and Alan Parsons Project’s “I in the sky” like you’ve never heard ‘em before.
After playing a series of house parties using whimsical handles like Rabbit Kingdom, Peppermint Majesty and Cookie Mask, Poor Moon finally settled on a name taken from an old Canned Heat song. The band consists of lead vocalist/principle songwriter Christian Wargo (Fleet Foxes, Crystal Skulls), Casey Wescott (Fleet Foxes, Crystal Skulls) and brothers Ian and Peter Murray. Poor Moon began in the form of a long distance collaboration when Christian and Casey were touring the world with Fleet Foxes and the Murray brothers were living in the Bay Area, gigging as The Christmas Cards.
They are joined by Jonas Haskins on bass and Jason Merculief who is playing a floor tom and percussion.
The contribution of their audio engineer, Jared Hankins—who came to the session armed with two road cases of reverb units and other assorted mysterious electronic boxes—needs to be pointed out. The delicate, echo-drenched gossamer that you hear on this recording is not, I repeat, not what was audible to the naked ear in the studio. Each member of the band was plugged directly into the soundboard (no amps, they wouldn’t have fit!) and then into Jared’s gear. Only he knew what the actual sound was like during the recording as he had the only headphones that were plugged into the sound board. Poor Moon’s Christian Wargo told me “Jared brings so much to live sound I wouldn’t consider letting anyone else twist knobs for me. I write music taking into consideration what Jared can do to it live. What he brings to the table really affects the whole experience. A lot!”
In the video below, the six members of Poor Moon and their instruments, audio wizard Jared Hankins, plus our own crew crammed into our bus-housed “TV studio” at SXSW (which was about the size of a large elevator). The songs are “Phantom Light,” “Clouds Below” and “Come Home.”
Poor Moon’s debut EP, Illusion, is due out March 27th. Poor Moon is currently touring with Lost in the Trees.
“Once upon a time…or maybe twice…there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland…”
The Beatles’ classic 1968 animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, has been restored in 4K digital resolution for the first time by Paul Rutan Jr. and his team at Triage Motion Picture Services. No automated software was used in the clean-up of the film’s restored photochemical elements. This was a job painstakingly done by hand, a single frame at a time. The absolutely stunning Yellow Submarine restoration premiered last weekend at the SXSW festival and will be coming on Blu-Ray DVD at the end of May with a new 5.1 multi-channel audio soundtrack. Seeing the film unspool on the big screen of Austin’s historic Paramount Theatre was like watching a series of moving stained glass windows.
Directed by George Dunning, and written by Lee Minoff, Al Brodax, Jack Mendelsohn and future best-selling Love Story novelist Erich Segal, Yellow Submarine, based upon the song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, is a basically incomprehensible series of musical vignettes, groan-worthy puns and lysergically-inspired kaleidoscopic eye-candy that sees John, Paul, George and Ringo saving the world from the evil Blue Meanies.
When Yellow Submarine originally premiered in 1968, the film was regarded as an artistic marvel. With its innovative animation techniques, it represented the most technologically advanced animation work since Disney’s masterpiece, Fantasia. Inspired by the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, Peter Max and Peter Blake, art director Heinz Edelmann’s work on Yellow Submarine is now considered among the classics of animated cinema. Yellow Submarine also showcases the creative work of animation directors Robert Balser and Jack Stokes along with a team of the best animators and technical artists that money could hire. The ground-breaking animation styles included 3-D sequences and the highly detailed “rotoscoping” (tracing film frame by frame) of the celebrated “Eleanor Rigby” sequence. The production process took nearly two years and employed 40 animators and 140 technical artists.
I must say, though, as happy as I was to be one of the first people to see the restored Yellow Submarine, I couldn’t help be to think that—with all of its merits—the film is just a little bit boring. If you responded negatively to the news of the (now shelved) Yellow Submarine 3-D remake, consider that not only did the Fab Four have precious little to do with the actual making of the original film (it’s not even their own voices) but that today’s kids—your kids—won’t have the patience to sit through it. Nor will they even understand what’s being said onscreen. Yellow Submarine, I hate to say it, was ripe for a remake. Sacrilege, I know, but it’s not like I’m suggesting that they remake A Hard Day’s Night or anything!
Below, a decidedly low res version of Yellow Submarine in its entirety. This isn’t really the way to watch it, of course…
Roky Erickson performing “Bo Diddley” and “Two-Headed Dog” with The Black Angels at The El Rey Theater in 2008.
The man who helped launch psychedelic music is backed-up magnificently by a band whose members were born almost two decades after he released his first single. And they’re all from Austin, Texas, where the The Akashic record of rock and roll is on replay.
If you dig John Howard’s poster featured above, check out his ultra-groovy website Monkeyink.com. The dude’s a fucking genius. His 3-D posters will blow your frontal lobes out.
Now here’s a turn up for the books: last weekend Snoop Dogg dropped a new mixtape via his Soundcloud page called “01 Tekno Euro Mixx”. That Snoop would put together a mix of European techno is in itself surprising—if he did actually mix it himself, and the lackadaisical style makes it seem plausible—but the real surprise here is, in fact, that the mix contains no European techno at all.
What we get instead is a mix of deep house, nu-disco and boogie/disco edits. Artists and remixers featured include Todd Terje, Prins Thomas, Guy Monk, Miguel Migs, 6th Borough Project, Tensake, Crazy P and Michael Jackson (there is no official tracklisting yet.) None of which have much in common with the likes of Benni Benassi or David Guetta, and even less with Dr Dre or Timbaland.
While I wouldn’t have pegged Snoop as a Body & Soul-head, there is a common theme. Back in the late 90s and early 00s, when I was playing a lot of this kind of stuff (hit me up for some mixes, Snoop!), me and my dj friends liked to refer to this type of music as “stoner house”. That did away with slightly tired prefixes “deep” and “disco” while encapsulating the music in simple, understandable terms. This is house music at its most horizontal, yet it remains functional and deeply funky. Snoop gets it, and actually this mix ain’t half bad. Light one up, lie back and boogie:
Some scenes from inside last week’s Dangerous Minds-hosted SXSW party in Los Angeles held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Masonic Lodge. On the big screen were live performances simulcast from the Sub Pop Records SXSW Showcase in Austin featuring Spoek Mathambo, THEESatiscation and Niki + The Dove. The event was produced by Natalie Montgomery and curated by Tara McGinley (ME!), and executive produced by Largetail.
Seen in the crowd were Radiohead, Elizabeth Olsen, members of OK Go, artist Tim Biskup, Amber Tamblyn, Jeff Garland, Aziz Ansari and more. The event was catered by Cool Haus, Grill ‘Em All and Mandoline Grill.
Like us on Facebook or Twitter to hear about the next party.
Inside Masonic Lodge as event is beginning
America’s Funnyman, Neil Hamburger was the event’s MC. His act went over the heads of most attendees—say 80%—but for those more familiar with his unique comedic stylings, the obvious audience discomfort made his shtick even more hilarious that night.
It was summer, I was a young child sitting in the living room drawing pictures when I first heard her voice on the radio. It made me stop and listen to try and understand what it was I was hearing. Her voice was full of a power and emotion that I could feel but didn’t yet fully understand. It gave a hint to some secret, adult world I was still to discover. It was sensual and seductive. The voice was Dusty Springfield. The song, “The Look of Love.”
Dusty was described by Elton John “as the greatest white singer there has ever been.” Never one for understatement, Sir Elton is almost right - though he is a tad forgetful of quite a few others from Maria Callas to Elvis and beyond. Dusty was one of the greats, and certainly the greatest white soul singer there has ever been. No one comes close.
Shown as part of Melvyn Bragg’s always fascinating arts series The South Bank Show, this excellent documentary on Dusty Springfield was first aired in 2006, and contains interviews with Burt Bacharach, Billie Jean King, Lee Everett, Charles Shaar Murray, Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe, Camille Paglia, and Carole Pope.
A new Jeffrey Lee Pierce/Gun Club tribute album, The Journey Is Long features a collaboration between Nick Cave and Debbie Harry on one of The Gun Club’s best loved numbers, “The Breaking Hands.” The album also features Mick Harvey, Cave, Lydia Lunch, Warren Ellis, and Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan performing unrecorded Pierce songs. The Journey Is Long comes out on April 9, 2012.
I interviewed The Gun Club’s Kid Congo Powers (who was also in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, of course) at SXSW, expect that coming up in the next day or two.
Here’s the original Gun Club version from the classic Mother Juno album:
, is due out March 27th. Poor Moon is currently touring with Lost in the Trees.
