It’s great to see some B-52s lovin’ going on at DM just now. As Richard has mentioned they’re a uniquely American band, and a serious gateway to trashy American kitsch-and-camp like John Waters and Russ Meyers. They’ve been known to inspire some extreme reactions in their fans too. Just take a look at this guy:
Lost and found rock and roll gems meet 42nd street sexploitation, biker movies, Blaxploitation, Euro-sleaze and more!
NSFW unless you work the night shift at a strip joint.
01. “The First Time I Saw You” - The Others
02. “Hot Smoke And Sassafras” - Nite People
03. “You Got Me High” - New Order
04. “Spoonful” - Rats
05. “Psychotic Reaction” - Positively Thirteen O’ Clock
06. “Sha-La-La-Lee” - Small Faces
07. “Satin City News” - Trolls
08. “This Week’s Children” - Twas Brillig
09. “Please Don’t Hurt Me” - Nomads
10. “Hold On” - Rupert’s People
11. “Every Day, Every Night” - Trolls
12. “Reality” - Prodigal
13. “Lawdy Mama” - Cream
14. “Dirty Old Man” - Twas Brillig
15. “Vagrant Writer” - Bob Seger And The Last Heard
16. “Just Wanna Be Myself” - Na-Na-Mees
17. “I Found A New Love” - Ognir And The Nite People
18. “Nadine” - Smokestack Lightning
19. “Facts Of Life” - X-Treems
20. “The Two Of Us” - The Yellow Payges
21. “You Can Make It” - Richard And The Young Lions
22. “Fifteen” - Highway Robbery
23. “Sweet Woman Like You” - Stonehenge
24. “Tiki God” - The Legends
25. “Deathhead” - Punch
Another stellar set with Nate Cimmino on the decks at the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour… Featuring raunchy R&B, rare Zappa, the vocal stylings of Mr. Lou Christie and more. Much, much more!
01. The Psycheground Group: Ray
02. Andre Williams: Humpin’ Bumpin’ And Thumpin’
03. Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James: In The Basement (Nate-O-Phonic edit)
04. King Coleman: Down In The Basement
05. Frank Zappa: Gypsy Airs (mono mix)
06. Nuovo Idea: Svegliati Edgar
07. Lou Christie: The Song Of Lita
08. Dr. John: Dance Kalinda Ba Doom
09. Bob Dylan: Don’t Ever Take Yourself Away
10. Don Ho: Hawaii 5-0/Quiet Village
11. Earl Grant: The House Of Bamboo
12. Van Dyke Parks- Riverboat
13. The Meters: It Ain’t No Use
If you can’t tell from the title, I’m a B-52s fan. A pretty big one. They came into my life when I was 13-years-old and have never left. I’ve seen them live numerous times and they have never failed to bring the house down (in fact, I once nervously wondered if they were going to literally bring down the balcony at Radio City Music Hall due to all the frenzied frugging to “Rock Lobster.” A balcony I was seated under, I might add). The B-52s are so good live that I once stood in one of the worst torrential downpours I’ve ever been caught in, for hours, so that I could get in the front row for a tiny pre-Cosmic Thing warm-up gig at a PAPER magazine party in New York. I was drenched from head to toe, soaked to the bone, but it was still one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had. I was about four feet way from the band as they played. Heavenly!
Over the weekend, I downloaded an absolutely superb live B-52s video from 1983, a show from Dortmund, Germany (it’s easy to find, the quality is perfect) and I’ve watched it over and over again. It’s not like I needed to be convinced or anything, but I was reminded watching it of what an absolutely genius band they are. They’re so original that they fall into a category of one. What they do is a uniquely American art form. They’re a national intergalactic treasure
I intended just to do one big mega mega-post about the B-52s, but instead I’m going to do four or five posts about them because there’s just way too much “good stuff” out there to not share it here. Tons of it. They often made multiple music videos for their songs, so it can be hard to choose the best ones. I don’t want to crash anyone’s browser with the B-52s bounty, so I’m breaking it off into chunks. Here’s a selection of material from their classic first album, released in 1979:
Cindy Wilson stirred my teenage hormones mightily in this godlike performance of “Dance This Mess Around” on a 1980 Saturday Night Live episode. How cute was she back then, right? Be still my heart!
A rousing “Planet Claire” from Dortmund, Germany, 1983:
David Greenfield has amassed a collection of records from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan which are all available for purchase online. I liked going through his collections from the 60s and 70s. It’s a great resource for loopy graphic design inspiration!
The new David Lynch album Crazy Clown Time is exactly what you would expect from America’s greatest contemporary surrealist: crazy clown shit.
Moody, sexy, spooky and hypnotic, this is perfect Halloween music. I fucking dig the way the country-noir voodoo merges with Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation mind trips, riffs on dental hygiene, melting slide-guitars, funereal drum beats and rinky-dinky new wave rhythm tracks that would sound absolutely corny without Lynch’s serial killer vocals. I’m looking for an adjective to describe this tantalizing mix of the ordinary with the mad and all I come up with is “Lynchian.”
It’s streaming right now at NPR. Turn down the lights, pour yourself a glass of wine or fire up your favorite herbal blend and let Doctor Lynch perform his psychic surgery on your frontal lobes.
Fans of Johnny Dowd should really dig the fuck out of this. I’m guessing Lynch has heard a fair share of Dowd.
Crazy Clown Town will be released in the USA on November 8.
There’s something pure and beautiful about Patrick Swayze in this 1979 Pabst commercial. He actually makes the notion of drinking shit beer seem almost spiritual.
Swayze was way ahead of the curve. Three decades after this ad was shot, Pabst became the preferred beer of hipsters everywhere.
With its Bee Gees sound-a-like jingle and Swayze in Tony Manero drag, this was clearly marketed to fans of Saturday Night Fever, the folks who preferred a mug of suds with their cocaine in a Bay Ridge disco than some Studio 54 Dom Perignon with Liza and Andy.
Swayze was cool in the same way Astaire and Gene Kelly were cool, he occupied that gravitational still point where music finds its body, flesh its orbit and center, and rhythm gives birth to grace. Any doubts about Swayze’s Zen mastery of space and time? Check out his Buddha as bouncer movie Roadhouse where he channels The Man With No Name and Sammo Hung.
If beer could make us all as effervescent as Mr. Swayze, I’d be drinking it. Unfortunately, it turns most folks into gaseous slugs.
One other thing, can you believe the quality of this 32 year old video? Where was it stored? In an air-tight vault at the North Pole? This looks as eye-searingly lysergic as Gaspar Noé‘s Enter The Void.
Before there was a Velvet Underground, there was Lewis Reed, Lewis Allen Rabinowitz (aka Lou Reed), who in 1962 recorded a couple of self-penned tracks for indie record mogul Brent Shad. “Merry Go Round” and “Your Love” were written a year before Reed’s residency as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records.
‘Merry Go Round’ sounds like most teen pop tunes of the era. The only thing that distinguishes it is the unmistakable voice of Lou Reed. Kinda sounds like Dion on white crosses.
