“Miss Pamela” AKA Pamela Des Barres
 
Tonight’s gourmet fare at Cinefamily (and temperatures in the mid-70s!) once again sees me in my “Los Angeles civic booster” mode. Where else would you be able to watch a new documentary about the great groupies of the Sixties and Seventies, featuring Miss Pamela (Des Barres) of the GTOs and then hang out for a reception afterwards to meet several of the film’s subjects, the director and the still very divine Miss Pamela, too?

Take an emotional journey back to the early Seventies, the Golden Age of Groupies! Some were in it for love, some for the music, and some for their art—and four decades later, these passionate women share their stories of sexual conquest and bitter heartbreak, and finally reveal whether it was all worth it. Told through the eyes of rock and roll historian and super groupie Pamela Des Barres (author of the famous 1987 tell-all “I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie” and the brand-new book “Let’s Spend the Night Together”) this ninety-minute documentary offers memories of her sexual exploits and longtime escapades with such notorious rockers as Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and Jimmy Page—and chronicles her cross-country journey to reconnect with the iconic women who loved and inspired the great rock stars of our time. Join moderator Michael Des Barres as he Q&As (schedule permitting) with Pamela Des Barres, Lori Mattix, Michele Overman, Catherine James and the film’s director Jenna Rosher on the Cinefamily stage after the film—and stick around for a reception on our Spanish patio after the show! Plus, DJ Andrew Sandoval will be spinning tunes both before and after the show!

The Cinefamily / 611 N Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, 90036, 8pm, $10
 

 
Let’s Spend The Night Together: Confessions of Rock’s Greatest Groupies premieres Wednesday December 15 on Vh1.

 
His name is Stevie Riks. He’s a comedian from England and he’s very funny. This impression of Bryan Ferry doing a medley of the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies, Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie’, ‘Pop Musik’, The Wurzels’ ‘I Am A Cider Drinker’ and ‘Two Little Boys’ by Rolf Harris is absolutely inspired.

Riks has a Youtube channel where he does spot on impressions of dozens of rock and rollers and some of them are gutbustingly funny. Check em out here.
 

 
Downtown 81 is more dream than reality, softening the edges and rounding off the corners of a much rougher reality than the film depicts. I was there and I know most of the people involved with the making of the film. We were young, broke and fearless. We flourished below 14th st. in an atmosphere filled with a kind of beautiful dread. You never knew where the city was heading. It was a giant, stinking, drunken beast that clattered, stumbled and lurched but never came to a stop. It’s different now, domesticated and safe. The wildness is gone - the beast shot in the heart with a tranquilizer dart.

The pleasure of Downtown 81 is in watching 19 year old Jean Michel Basquiat gliding past beautifully photographed downtown landmarks to a soundtrack of seminal New York music of the era.  

Downtown 81’ was shot in 1980-81. Originally titled New York Beat’ it was written and co-produced by the well known writer Glenn O’Brien, produced by Maripol, the art director and stylist, and directed by photographer Edo Bertoglio, all of whom were deeply involved in the art, music and fashion scenes of the time. The Director of photography was John McNulty, one of New York’s top lighting men, shooting his first feature.

The film is not a documentary, but presents a slightly exaggerated, romantic and magical version of the reality of the time. The entire cast is composed of the movers and shakers on the downtown scene. In 1981, business problems interrupted the completion of post-production, and parts of the film were lost in Europe. Finally after much searching, the missing materials were located in 1998. Post production was begun in 1999 and finished in 2000, supervised by Maripol and Glenn O’Brien and edited by director/editor Pamela French. Executive producer of the film is Michael Zilkha, whose Ze Records released recordings by severals of the bands in the film.

The cast includes Deborah Harry, and leading bands of the era including Kid Creole and the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, DNA, Tuxedomoon, The Plastics, and Walter Steding and the Dragon People. Also heard on the soundtrack are rap legend Melle Mel, John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, Suicide, Vincent Gallo, Kenny Burrell and Basquiat’s own band, Gray.”

Downtown 81 also features my mentor the legendary Giorgio Gomelsky.
 

 
Sounding like a mashup of Rammstein and Madness, Denver-based D.I.Y. filmmakers The Nix Brothers and euroelectrodiscopop supergroup Total Ghost have created a peppy little number for the holiday season. Diggin’ the sleigh bells.
 

 
Via Nix

 
On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated. The following day mayhem erupted in cities all across America. Riots and looting had broken out in Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C. and L.A.. Boston was a powder keg on the verge of exploding and Mayor Kevin White was considering canceling all public gatherings, including an April 5th concert by James Brown at the Boston Garden. When White realized that canceling Brown’s show might actually trigger the very riots that he was attempting to avoid, the Mayor made a profoundly smart and historic move. He met with Brown and discussed ways in which they could keep the peace. They decided to proceed with the concert and broadcast it live on local television. Unfortunately, the Boston network affiliates refused to broadcast the concert. But, public station WGBH agreed to air the show and it turned out be a historically significant decision that altered the course of Boston’s history. Brown’s concert would be seen by far more than 14,000 concert goers. It would be made available to everyone in the Boston area with a television set. And it might just quell some violence. As it turned out, it did.

Brown’s performance was absolutely epic. He dedicated the concert to Dr. King and through his music managed to calm the anger and frustration of a community in deep mourning. Boston stayed cool while other cities burned.

Here’s 150 minutes of footage aired by WGBH on that extraordinary night when the hardest working man in show business became a force of healing, peace and Black pride.
 

 
If you’re a hardcore Debbie Harry fan, you probably already knew about this claim made back in 1989. It’s news to me, tho…

From The Sun:

The singer, 65, said she accepted a lift in the early ‘70s from the maniac - who bludgeoned, strangled and raped 30 women.

But Debbie sensed something was wrong when she saw the car had no door handles on the inside.

She said: “The hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.

“I pulled the door handle from the outside. He tried to stop me by spinning the car, but it helped me fling myself out. Afterwards I saw him on the news. Ted Bundy.

Here’s what Snopes had to say about the matter: “Call Me!” Disbelieving Blondie

Debbie Harry: I escaped sex killer Ted Bundy

 
Hard to fathom that none of us has put together a Bruce Bickford post before now, but here ‘tis. Like most geeky nerds, I was first introduced to the entirely stupendous and obsessively detailed, not to mention extremely demented claymation of Bruce Bickford via his extended sequences in Frank Zappa’s late 70’s concert film Baby Snakes. There’s also an excellent doumentary film about the man, Monster Road  which I couldn’t more highly recommend. Here then is a batch of excerpts from Bickford’s huge and ever growing body of work. This stuff’ll inform your dreams after you see it for better or worse. The complexity herein is truly staggering and more than likely, highly unhealthy. But like most unhealthy things, it’s fucking fun !
 

 
Much more after the jump…

  Cage Against the Machine..‘4.33’ Mr. Scruff Remix! by Mr Scruff

Three silent cheers for Dave and Julie Hilliard! They’re the couple behind Cage Against the Machine, the grassroots Facebook effort to bring a new recording of composer John Cage’s famous “silent” piece 4’33” to #1 in the UK charts this Christmas over whichever bullshit song wins the UK TV pop contest X Factor this year.

The Hilliards named CATM in hat-tip to last year’s successful Facebook campaign to boost Rage Against the Machine’s raw 1992 tune “Killing in the Name” into the Christmas #1 over whatever crappy tune won the ’09 X Factor. This year, indie-ish artists like Imogen Heap, Fyfe Dangerfield, Scroobius Pip, The Kooks and Heaven 17 popped into the studio to not play their instruments, and the single will be released by the Wall of Sound label. And instead of one single charity, the proceeds from sales of the new 4’33” benefits FOUR. Factor that in, Simon Cowell, you tit-head.

The race to #1 starts December 13. Here’s where you can sign up for a reminder and chart-eligible link to download the single.

Here’s an added plus: the wonderful conceptual flexibility behind 4’33” has allowed CATM to solicit remixes from both some innovative producers and you:

So go to it, give us a four minute thirty three second audio snapshot of your life. Record it on your phone, your Mac, PC, recorder, dictaphone, walkperson, whatever and share it here.

Check some out…
 

Latest tracks by RemixAgainstTheMachine

 
We’ve been having alot of fun here at Dangerous Minds sharing deconstructed songs from many of our rock and roll heroes. And in our neverending search to bring you the best isolated tracks we can get our music loving hands on, I present to you one of the more unusual discoveries I’ve come across: Lemmy’s vocals for ‘Ace Of Spades’. 

I have the feeling that Lemmy usually goes with the first take.

Have we hit the threshold yet?

Nah.
 

 
All 9 tracks from Metallica’s ‘And Justice For All’ played at once. First Billy Joel, now this. All hail the new meme.

Heavy metal thunder.
 

 
Via HYST
 
Previously on DM: Billy Joel track collision.