Demo of “Platinum Blonde” produced by Alan Betrock in 1975. It wasn’t released until 2001 as a bonus track on a re-master of Blondie’s self-titled debut album.
I gotta be a platinum blonde!
I gotta be a platinum blonde.
I gotta be a platinum blonde!
I’ll hit the bottle baby.
The video includes some shots of CBGB and the Lower East Side just before they became rock and roll Meccas. I have the feeling that former art student and Blondie founder Chris Stein directed this. But I don’t know it for a fact. Anyone know?
Update: DM reader Michael says the video is a segment from from Amos Poe’s Blank Generation. Been awhile since I’ve seen Poe’s film, but it makes sense to me - right place, right time.
I just wanted to put Joey Ramone, Pearl Jam and “Sonic Reducer” in one sentence. But, this is actually pretty fucking good. Joey Ramone towers over Eddie Vedder (in more ways than one) as they tear into Rocket From The Tombs’, by way of The Dead Boys, “Sonic Reducer.”
Vedder seems like a nice enough guy, but whenever he sings in this clip the energy level diminishes. I give Eddie credit for having good taste in his rock and roll heroes.
Lester Bangs at Coney Island in the early 1970s. Photographed by Chris Stein.
Recorded in the mid-1970s in the offices of Creem Magazine, here’s Lester Bangs and Peter Laughner taking the piss out of Lou Reed in the Velvet Underground homage/parody “G’bye Lou.”
Fuck yeah, this is good! Lots of very cool 1970s era film footage and music in this well-researched BBC documentary on the birth of punk, disco and hip hop in New York City. Directed by Ben Whalley.
With David Johansen, Patti Smith, John Cale, Richard Hell, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Nile Rodgers, Chuck D, Tommy Ramone, Chris Stein, Fab 5. Freddy, Lenny Kaye, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Syl Sylvain, Nicky Siano, David Mancuso, DJ AJ, David Depino, Jayne County, Lee Childers, Nelson George, Victor Bokris and Vince Aletti.
Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Punk.
Are there any readers of Dangerous Minds in France? If you do live there, then I would recommend getting your hands on the next edition of the well known rock magazine Les Inrockuptibles, which comes with a free cover mount CD featuring the best of the renowned post-punk and mutant disco label ZE Records.
ZE has been a longtime favourite label of mine, since I first started getting deeper into collecting disco and realised not all of the genre was dripping cheese with a boner for a chart placing. The releases were smart, weird, original, sleazy, camp, funny and funky as hell. The records came in a distinctive sleeve featuring the label’s iconic logo and a graphic featuring a New York City taxi cab. You didn’t even have to listen to tell that they were dripping in the atmosphere of that place and that time - hell, it may not even have been real, it may just have been the disco/punk New York of my imagination, but it sure did sound great.
Founded in New York in 1979 by British entrepreneur Michael Zilkha and the French publisher Michel Esteban (hence the name), ZE specialised in releasing both “Mutant Disco” for the uptown set, and more downtown experimental sound of “No Wave”, both co-existing side by side in a way that kinda made perfect sense. What united them was an attitude born of not giving a fuck. ZE acts spanned the gamut, from the noise-fests of Mars to the ground-breaking Lydia Lunch, from the proto electro of Suicide to the more rock output of Alan Vega, from the twisted dance punk of James White & Blacks to the sassy boy-baiting of The Waitresses, from the new wave Euro pop of Lio and Garcons to the veteran Velvet drone-meister John Cale, from the geeky freak funk of Was (Not Was) to the dancefloor experiments of Bill Laswell and Material.
My favourite ZE associated act is one August Darnell, better known by his stage name of Kid Creole. He worked with many different acts and under a variety of different names, including Cristina, Coati Mundi, Gichy Dan, Don Armando’s Second Avenue Rhumba Band and Aural Exciters, not to mention being the driving force behind two other seminal disco acts, Machine and Dr Buzzard’s Original Savanah Band. He brought to the music a heavy influence of golden era jazz and Cab Calloway. And it wasn’t just a a sly wink to the past - beneath his sometimes quite strange arrangements lurked classic Broadway songwriting chops and killer one liners (check “Darrio” below). I feel August Darnell has been overlooked in the history of popular music, and I hope to cover him more in depth in the future.
We have already covered a couple of ZE Records acts in the past few months here on Dangerous Minds, namely Cristina and Lizzy Mercier Descloux. it seems only right now to introduce the label to people who may not have heard of it, and/or to remind others who have of just how good it is. As I have mentioned before, it is worth signing up to the label’s mailing list to keep abreast of what they are up to (the next release is a remastered re-issue of John Cale’s Sabotage/Live LP recorded at CBGB’s in 1979 and featuring the Animal Justice EP). To sign up, visit the label’s official website. The entire ZE catalog (with info on how to obtain what is available) is on Discogs. This is the Les Inrockuptibles cover mount CD streamed from the ZE Records Soundcloud page - a pretty good summation of the label’s vast and influential output:
John Doe and Exene Cervenka shilling for their latest album, 1987’s “See How We Are,” on syndicated TV show The Record Guide. This almost looks like a SCTV parody.
John and Exene were divorced in 1985 but seem to have maintained a great working relationship over the years. In this clip, they are clearly still quite fond of each other even as they are assaulted by cheesy video effects and a dumb as fuck off-screen interviewer.
“See How We Are” was their first album without the beatific Billy Zoom.
Our new partner in art crimes, Nicole Panter, was involved in the formative years of the Pee-wee Herman Show and that got me thinking about Pee-wee’s punk connections. Here’s a clip from Pee-wee’s Playhouse circa 1986 of Pee-wee pogoing with his pal Larry Fishburne (Cowboy Curtis). Music by Mark Mothersbaugh.
I know 1986 ain’t exactly the year punk broke, but, keep in mind, Paul Reubens started working on his Pee-wee character in L.A. in 1978 in the midst of a very vital punk scene and that anarchic spirit suffused his program.
As a long time reggae fan and an early acolyte of punk rock, I was thrilled when 2 Tone Records appeared on the scene in the late 1970s with its roster of British interracial ska bands that included The Specials, The English Beat, The Selector and Madness (who were all white but alright). Adding a bit of Brit punk into a ska mix, the 2 Tone bands brought the party to the revolution that revivified rock and roll.
Enjoy this document of The Specials in great form at the height of their popularity. Japan, 1980.
A revealing interview with Sid Vicious conducted by Judy Vermorel in August, 1977. In it Vicious rails against “grown-ups” and “grown-up attitudes”, TV host Hughie Green, insincerity, and why “the general public are scum” (his opinion about “99% of the shit” out on the street).
Vicious sounds incredibly young, perhaps because he was, and claims he “doesn’t like anything particularly” and that, “Nobody has to do anything”. There is some interesting thoughts on Russ Meyer’s plans for a Sex Pistols’ movie, which Sid dismisses as a “cheap attempt to get money.”
At the end, he rails against Malcolm McLaren, slightly incredulous to the information that Johnny Rotten and Paul Cook thought McLaren was the fifth member of the Pistols:
The band has never been dependent on Malcolm, that fucking toss-bag. I hate him..I’d smash his face in…I depend on him for exactly nothing. Do you know, all I ever got out of him was, I think, £15 in all the time I’ve known the fucking bastard. And a T-shirt, he gave me a free T-shirt, once, years ago. Once he gave me a fiver, and I stole a tenner off him, a little while ago, and that’s all. I hate him.
..But he’s all right. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could tolerate.
This is the interview where Vicious famously made an eerie prediction:
“I shall die when I am round-about twenty-four, I expect, if not sooner. And why my friend will die soon.”
His friend was “that girl” Nancy Spungen, who can be heard in the background of this interview.
Mohawk mayhem meets Japanese apocalyptic rock as Intrepidos Punks collide with the epically deranged sounds of Yamantaka Eye in this ballistic mashup-up from Z-movie hell.
This not suitable for children, the easily offended or anyone with a scintilla of good taste. The rest of you, enjoy.
Badass music video from Three Souls In My Mind after the jump…
