Happy birthday to punk goddess Deborah Harry.

Here’s a recently unearthed clip of Blondie being interviewed on Australian TV show Nightmoves in 1978. The band offers a concise mini-history of the term “new wave.”
 

 
This Channel 4 UK program from the mid-80s compiles some incredible performances culled from Tony Wilson’s late 70s Granada TV series, So It Goes. Includes the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop (with horsetail sticking out of his ass and saying “fucking” on 70s TV), The Fall, The Jam, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Penetration, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Tom Robinson, Magazine, John Cooper Clarke, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sham 69 and ending with the classic clip of Joy Division performing “Shadow Play.” Many of the groups represented here were making their TV debuts on So It Goes, a regional tea-time program.
 

 
Negativland’s Mark Hoesler will be delivering the keynote address at the big Everything Is Festival this Friday night at Cinefamily in Los Angeles:

Is Negativland a “band”? Media hoaxers? Activists? Artists? Musicians? Filmmakers? Culture jammers? Comedians? An inspiration for the unwashed many? A nuisance for the corporate few? Decide for yourself in this video & storytelling presentation from founding Negativland member Mark Hosler that uses films and stories to illustrate the many creative projects, hoaxes, pranks and “culture jamming” that Negativland has been doing since 1980. Whether you’re a hardcore Negativland fan, or even unfamiliar with the band (but interested in a highly entertaining and informative jaunt into the evolving landscape of art vs. ownership), Hosler’s EIF! keynote presentation is essential, and we can’t recommend it enough. As well, stick around for a Q&A with Mark Hosler after the presentation!

If you can’t actually make it in person, fret not, Hoesler’s EIF address will be webcast on Stickam! More information on the Everything Is Festival here.

Below, an excerpt from a past Mark Hoesler lecture:
 

 
I’d like to thank Flip2k for uploading this track breakdown of The Clash’s epic “London Calling,” one of the great rock and roll anthems of all time. Released in 1979, the song and the album was an immediate classic. It was urgent, angry, anarchic and everything that is beautiful, relevant, and powerful about rock and roll: it moved your soul.
 

Mick Jones’ guitar sounds like a city in the middle of death throes. The concrete groans. Steel girders grind and shudder. Sirens call out for their lost lovers.
 

Topper Headon, the armies of darkness stomp to a martial beat. Distant explosions. Thunder under the bridge.
 

Paul Simonon’s bass is ominous, rousing, undulating and sexy. One of the most indelible riffs in rock and roll.
 

Joe Strummer’s wail is a warning shot and a call for unity, hope and action, pulled up from the gut of rock and roll. His rasp scratched at reality like a feral cat’s claws.
 
Via Exile On Moan Street

Robert Downey Jr., Jim Carroll, James Spader
 
It’s hard to imagine what Jim Carroll was thinking when he agreed to appear in the teen angst turd-fest from 1985 Tuff Turf.

“It’s Too Late” is a cool tune with a great opening line and it’s nice to see Carroll in any context (even with Judy Garland eyes), but, man, Jim must have been hurting for cash when he took this gig.

By the way, that’s Robert Downey Jr. on drums.
 

 

Photos by Sam Muller

Pretty incredible footage shot by Chris Thiessen for Emerica’s Wild in the Streets 2011 event to celebrate Go Skateboarding Day. From Transworld SKATEboarding:

Cops, tickets, arrests and a sea of skateboarders charging the streets of downtown Los Angeles. This is emerica’s Wild In The Streets 2011. The charge started at Hollenbeck park and continued around the public skateparks of downtown L.A.: Lafayette, Lincoln Park, and more. Andrew Reynolds, Leo Romero, and more set it off at each park. The police tried, but couldn’t stop the fun.

 
(via High Definite)

 
The Great Satan At Large was a public access TV show that lasted one unholy episode in 1990 before being canceled by the deeply offended and seriously freaked-out management of Tucson, Arizona’s channel 49. Faced with obscenity charges and the possibility of 40 years in prison, the show’s creator and diabolical host, Lou Perfidio (the Great Satan), fled Arizona with blood-hungry Feds and rabid Christian dogs nipping at his cloven hooves.

Airing at the family hour of 6:00 p.m. on a channel known for its Christian programming, The Great Satan At Large featured dinner-time filth for the whole Satan-worshiping family. While chroma-keyed videos of Adolf Hitler, under-age strippers, titty twisters and masturbating jesters intercut with celluloid transgressions by Richard Kern and Nick Zedd glistered in the background like freshly slung wads of pixilated cum, the chain-smoking, beer-swilling Perfidio assaulted the viewer with every vile thought his unfiltered id could extrude. He was Johnny Carson re-incarnated as G.G. Allin with a twisted pinch of Anton LaVey and a schmear of Al Goldstein.

When he wasn’t incarnating Satan, Perfidio was a Temple University graduate, self-proclaimed “Greatest Pinball Player of All Time,” a contributor to Vending Times magazine, sportswriter, and raging alcoholic. His former friend Jim Goad of ANSWER Me! magazine described Lou “as a fat, bearded, farting, filthy-mouthed, passionate punk rocker” who drank so much that “in his twenties, he had the body of a sixty-year-old.”  Despite being perpetually hammered, Perfidio could write and did so on his blog I Love Misery.

Lou died at the age of 43 in 2006 of MRSA, flesh-eating bacteria, pneumonia and high blood pressure - a hellish end for a man who would be God of darkness.

Is there cable TV in Hell?
 

 
In 1978, the founders of D.I.Y. magazine Art-Rite, Edit deAk and Mike (Walter) Robinson, collaborated with video artist Paul Dougherty in creating this eerie film and video montage for Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” in which ordinary images are suffused with dread.

“Frankie Teardrop” is a homicidal Punk epic. It’s a working-class ballad about Frankie who’s working from nine to five and can’t survive. His solution is to kill off his family and then himself. But it’s not done in an angry way. It’s done in a frustrated way so the film implies this frustration.”  Edit deAk

Shards of New York in the 1970s flutter like the wings of dying birds.
 

 
This Sunday night at 9p.m. on the USA network crime drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent, poet/rocker Patti Smith makes her acting debut. Smith will portray a Columbia University mythology professor. It was actor Vincent D’Onofrio’s idea to cast Smith in the role.

Via Nippertown:

Titled “Icarus,” the episode, which also features guest star Cynthia Nixon, concerns the investigation of a Broadway musical after an actor dies on stage while performing a stunt. (Can you say, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”?)

“I’ve never really acted, but I highly respect the craft,” says Smith. “I knew that it wasn’t going to be simple, but it was a little more daunting than I expected.”

I can’t embed it, but if you’d like a quick look at Smith’s performance, click here.

Below, a terrific live “Horses” on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1976:
 

 
Thank you Douglas Hovey!

 
“We’re the skate witches and we don’t take NO crap from NO one.”

Punk rock auteur, Danny Plotnick shot his YouTube classic “Skate Witches” in one afternoon in 1986 on Super 8 film at a cost of $60. In it, a group of teenage female skatepunks (and their pet rats) terrorize boy skaters.

Mark Reiss interviewed the “Queen Witch,” Jenny Parker on his Bullshitting Meets Plagiarism blog:

Reiss: So, are the Skate Witches still around?
Jenny Parker:…Hmm?

Are the Skate Witches-
Noooooooo…no. We haven’t talked since Slutty Sarah slept with my boyfriend at prom.

You guys went to prom? I figured that would be the last place you’d go to in High School.
Yeah, I mean, we were going TP the parking lot while everyone was dancing in the gym. Sarah and David lived on the same side of town so they came together. When I showed up they were screwing in David’s car.

Harsh. And that was the end of the Skate Witches?
Sorta. I had to repeat senior year. They graduated and moved on and I had to stay behind. It was a rough year.

I bet.
I mean I caught those bastards cheating on me, and my rat died. It was a lot of stress no wonder I failed.

What was your rat’s name?
Willow. She was my best friend. I accidently sat on her.

Read more of the interview with Jenny Parker at Bullshitting Meets Plagiarism.

“Skate Witches,” with commentary is available on the DVD Warts & All: The Films of Danny Plotnick.
 

 
Thank you, Tara McGinley!