Sonny and Chastity Bono (“in her concert debut”) do “I Got You, Babe” on the TV special Rockin’ The Night Away which aired in 1988.

It’s rare to see Sonny with Chastity after she had grown out of her “cute” phase and become an adult. Chastity told her parents she was gay in 1987 right around the time Sonny was running for Mayor of Palm Springs. This TV appearance may have been a calculated political move on Sonny’s part to create the image of an adoring father when, in fact, he had turned his back on his daughter. Chastity’s gayness alienated one of pop culture’s most visible hippie icons. But Sonny in reality was as much a hippie as Al Jolson was Black.

After a half an hour of searching the Internet, I gave up trying to find a picture of Sonny with an adult Chastity. So this video is some of the only existing footage of father and daughter together. Sonny’s good vibes seem about as authentic as one of his old wigs while Chastity is doing her best to be a dutiful daughter. And she does sound a lot like Cher.

A Youtube premier from our good friends at Bubbling Over.
 

 
Grace under pressure.

While I’m a big fan of The Mothers Of Invention, I am not as enamored with Frank Zappa’s post-Mothers career as some of my co-contributors here on Dangerous Minds. His sarcasm is both his strong point and his weakness. In the context of his music, I dug his snarly, cynical attitude on Freak Out! and We’re Only In It For The Money. But, his wiseass arrogance and disdain for people grew tiresome for me. This interview with Grace Slick is a perfect example of Zappa being a supercilious prick. He obviously agreed to the interview. So why be so difficult? It’s not funny or particularly hip. He has no problem promoting his upcoming album and Broadway project, but he gets all surly and evasive when he’s asked some questions that might have actually resulted in some interesting insights, the Varese stuff for instance.

Slick is wonderfully accommodating and almost Zen-like in the way she handles Zappa’s snide attitude. Sorry Frank, I’m not impressed. But, at least you set a fashion trend for white-framed sunglasses that hipsters today have adopted along with your holier-than-thou emptiness.

This was Grace Slick during her Jefferson Starship period and I could go on about that, but it will have to wait for later. Slick’s credibility was almost deep-sixed by the hideous “We Built This City On Rock And Roll.” But, at least, she never resorted to wearing goofy sunglasses. She opted for pasta optics.
 

 
Hoots mon! Rare film of Neil Young busking in Glasgow city center, April 1 1976, prior to headlining at the city’s legendary Apollo Theater later that night.

Mr Young performed outside Glasgow’s Central Station, on Gordon Street, where he sang “Old Laughing Lady”. Because of the date - All Fool’s Day - it has been suggested that Mr Young was carrying out his own practical joke for the benefit of those lucky denizens of the Dear Green Place.
 

 
With thanks to Neil McDonald
 

 
Linda Perhacs is a California dentist who recorded a legendary psychedelic-folk record titled Parallelograms in 1970. The album was not a success and Perhacs returned to her dentistry practice. In 2000, she discovered to her surprise that 30 years after its release, Parallelograms had become the object of intense cult adulation, championed by musicians like Devendra Banhart and Kim Gordon.

Linda Perhacs will be performing at Cinefamily in Los Angles on August 14th at 7:30p.m.

The twinship between color and sound has captivated artists for centuries. Across film, dance, fine art and music, creators have long sought to convey the harmony between light, movement, and tone that reverberates through nature; it is this synesthetic vision that inspired turned psych-folk songstress Linda Perhacs to record her now mythic 1970 album “Parallelograms”. Crafting transcendental tonal illustrations within the seemingly simple trappings of late-’60s song structures, Linda plumbed the same well of inspiration that drove pioneering filmmakers to eschew representational cinema for a purer way of illustrating the symbiosis of the senses. Join us as we celebrate these visual and sonic explorers, with a rare live set from Ms. Perhacs and her band (featuring selections from “Parallelograms” and new material exclusively debuted at Cinefamily), as well as a selection of boundary-pushing cinema from the masters of the synesthetic form, new video works commissioned for the show, and live dance accompaniment from world-renowned dancer/choreographer Ryan Heffington!

 
There’s very little information to be found on this 1991 “documentary” on Arthur Lee. The three key people involved in its creation are dead or, in the case of Crimson Crout, nowhere to be found. Directed by the mysterious Crout from a concept by Arthur Lee and compiled by Los Angeles writer, deejay and garage/punk/psychedelic promoter Frank Beeson, the video has amateur production values overall but is redeemed by laid back interviews with Lee (conducted by a barely present Beeson) and some decent live footage of Lee performing with latter day Love members Melvan Whittington and Joe Blocker as well as two members of The Knack, Bruce Gary and Berton Averre.

The film was made during Lee’s tentative re-emergence as an artist after a long dormant period during the 1980s. His return to the public eye was interrupted when he was incarcerated in 1995 for possession of a hand gun.

The live footage is taken from a series of gigs in 1989, during which Lee was regaining his footing as a performer.

The documentary, like Lee, is a bit ramshackle. The good news is that a decade after it was shot, a re-invigorated Arthur Lee returned to the stage for some of the best live shows of his incredible life, receiving the accolades he so richly deserved.

I can’t find anything on director Crimson Crout other than he released a 45rpm record in 1975 with two songs, “10,000 Years” and Redneck Ways.” John Einarson, author of the excellent Arthur Lee biography Forever Changes Arthur Lee And The Book Of Love was unable to track down the “elusive” Crout in researching his book. Who is this mystery man? Beeson?
 

 
Photo: Andy Willsher.

 
Per un Pugno di Canzoni (For A Handful Of Songs) is a 1966 Italian film that looks like some weird cross-hybrid of a teen go-go flick and spaghetti western. Here’s three of the several bands that appeared in the film.

Garage rockers I Kings, I Pelati (later known as I Colors) and The Honeybeats released a handful albums between them and a had a few hits in Italy before disappearing into the mist only to re-appear perfectly preserved on Youtube,
 

Willy and his wife Toots
 
In a more perfect world, Willy DeVille (August 25, 1950 – August 6, 2009) would have been a huge star. He had the voice, the look, the chops and the charisma.

I remember seeing Mink DeVille perform at Trax in New York City in 1977. Mick Jagger was sitting at a table near the stage when Willy and his band came out. DeVille was dressed to kill, in snakeskin boots and gravity-defying pompadour. They tore into “Spanish Stroll” and I looked over at Jagger. Mick looked awestruck and, to my eyes, a little bit scared. It was as if he were watching a harder core version of himself. I wondered in that moment if Jagger was thinking that Mr. DeVille might dethrone him as rock and roll’s Satanic Majesty. The band played a scorching set and Jagger’s eyes never left the stage.

I knew Willy and the guy was the real deal.  His whole being radiated a downtown Manhattan vibe that was mythic, romantic and dark. A badass with a sweet side and a sardonic smile, DeVille walked the walk - rock and roll poetry embodied.

DeVille had to leave his beloved New York in order to make a living in Europe. He couldn’t sell records in the States. People just couldn’t figure him out. Punker than punk, but not really a part of any scene, Deville was his own animal, modern and yet rooted in old-school r&b, as comfortable with the music coming off the Bowery as he was with the sounds of Fifties Harlem, doo-wop and Louisiana zydeco. He was a musical shapeshifter that confounded record companies in his pursuit of his own vision and style. The fact that he never “made it” in the States is a commentary on the parochial nature of the American music business and mainstream rock audiences complete lack of curiosity and taste

Mink Deville at Winterland in 1978.
 

W.C. Hardy’s “St. Louis Blues”
 
Between the years of 1946 - 1961 one of the only ways to listen to American blues, jazz and rock’n’roll in Russia was to obtain smuggled records, some made on old x-rays. There’s a long article and back story about these interesting x-ray records on Spiegle.de, but it’s all in German and a little bit difficult to make sense of using Google Translate. 

If you got caught with American popular music back then, you could find yourself in a world of hurt. Apparently it could get you thrown out of school or even arrested in extreme cases, but still the population wanted to hear the music. These x-ray records are physical artifacts from that era of Soviet censorship.
 

Percy Faith’s “Delicado”
 

Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek”
 

Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Sometime in 1974, an unknown, all-girl rock group from Switzerland performed an extremely mild version of Slade’s “Gudbye T’Jane.”  This is very, very Swiss.

Celtic Frost aside, the Swiss are not a people well-known for rocking out, are they? The “Swiss rock” Wikipedia entry is rather short, which is hardly surprising.
 

 
Thank you Douglas Hovey!

 
From Massive Attack’s Facebook page:

In context with the complicit support of the government, the banks looted the nation’s wealth while destroying countless small businesses and brought the whole economy to its knees in a covert, clean manner, rather like organised crime.

Our reaction was to march and wave banners and then bail them out. These kids would have to riot and steal every night for a year to run up a bill equivalent to the value of non-paid tax big business has ‘avoided’ out of the economy this year alone.

They may not articulate their grievances like the politicians that condemn them but this is absolutely political. As for the ‘mindless violence’… is there anything more mindless than the British taxpayer quietly paying back the debts of others while contributing bullets to conflicts that we have absolutely no understanding of?

It’s mad, sad and scary when we have to take to the streets to defend our homes and businesses from angry thieving kids, but where are the police and what justice is ever done when the mob is dressed in pin stripe.

Thanks, Angela!