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Even better than the real thing:  Madonna meets the bad trip lady
03.12.2012
04:35 pm
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Let’s get one thing clear before we go any further - this new Madonna single is AWFUL. It’s really is so terrible that I’m gonna call “Girl Gone Wild” Madonna’s Showgirls moment: it’s so bad, it’s good!

And that’s why this video is just perfect.

You’ll have seen the footage before, no doubt, as Tara posted it a few weeks back in its original form: “Skeletons Having Sex On A Tin Roof” by Orphic Oxtra. It works even better here, as Madonna’s insipid, wannabe-edgy lyrics (“girls just wanna have some fun” - er, okay) are juxtaposed by that cheerful-slash-insane-looking dancing lady. The overall half-assed vibe of the song’s production fits the video’s green-screen ethos like a glove. Madonna will have to go some way to top this with the official video.

Also, just for the record, no “808 drums” were used in the making of this song:

Madonna “GIrl Gone Wild” [Official Music Video - NOT!]
 

 
Thanks to Sharon Needles and Matthew Rothery.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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03.12.2012
04:35 pm
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Roddy McDowall: Hollywood Home Movies from 1965
03.10.2012
06:33 pm
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Other people’s homes movies, like their holiday snaps, can sometimes be terribly dull. But Roddy McDowall’s silent home movies are different, mainly because they have a cast list to die for - from Simone Signoret to Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara to Paul Newman, even Judy Garland and Dominick Dunne.  Also, Mr McDowall was a film fan, and there’s a fine sense of his enjoyment and wonder at the Hollywood stars larking about at his Malibu beach home. These are fun artifacts, a last hurrah for a golden age of Hollywood.

The films were uploaded onto You Tube by soapbox, who was personally given the home movies by Roddy McDowall.
 

Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Natalie Wood, Judy Garland, May 31, 1965.
 
Plenty more of Roddy McDowall’s Hollywood Home Movies, after the jump….
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.10.2012
06:33 pm
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Nervous gay teen videotapes ‘coming out’ to his mom
02.24.2012
11:11 am
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Watch as a nervous, real-life teenager comes out to his mother, who doesn’t know that she is being videotaped on a hidden camera. One of the more fascinating things I’ve seen on YouTube:

Finally got the strength to come out to my mom. My Mom has been extremely supportive. I could not ask for anyone else. Love you Every circumstance is different and you will know when the right time to come out is. Stay strong. Babz and I are here for you. Note: I decided to post this so that I could share my experience with you. Hopefully it will give hope to those who do not have such supportive families. Also, I know I am on my phone the whole time. My phone is my comfort blanket. I literally cannot put it down when I’m anxious. I do not mean any disrespect to the content or conversation. OH, and she didn’t know she was being recorded. I put the camera in a tissue box on top of the refrigerator.

The mother’s reaction is fantastic, but by the end, when it’s her son’s stubbornness that she wants to address, I was laughing out loud (“You have a choice, Daniel! You choose to be stubborn!”). She’s absolutely charming. If only it was as easy for all kids to come out as it was for YouTuber “Mallow 610.”

The most hilarious “coming out” story I’ve ever heard was when a friend of mine, then in his early 20s, came out to his parents, with his older brother (who told me the story) there for support. After the big revelation, the father paused and then wryly remarked:

“They say that 10% of the population is gay and that 10% are left handed. At least my son won’t have a problem with scissors!”

If that quip doesn’t deserve enshrinement in some sort of museum of great witticisms, I don’t know what ever would. Tis a line worthy of Groucho Marx, truly.
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.24.2012
11:11 am
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‘One Drop’: The first new Public Image Ltd. song in 20 years
02.14.2012
09:53 am
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Rotten!
 
DJ Steve Lamacq premiered the new PIL song earlier today on BBC 6.
Our John may have lost his upper register, but it is nice to hear him strain at it in such a raw way over the type of back-to-basics reggae-rock bed that’s screaming for a remix/dub-out…

According to the alt-‘80s blog Slicing Up Eyeballs:

The song will be released on a vinyl EP as part of Record Store Day on April 21 in advance of the release of the full-length This Is PiL in May or June.

Enjoy…
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
PiL : Design
Public Image Ltd: The infamous riot at the Ritz gig

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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02.14.2012
09:53 am
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Elton John and Michael Caine having a knees-up on ‘Parkinson’ from 1976
02.03.2012
06:43 pm
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If you want to know what British TV was like in the 1970s, well, apart from watching the repeats on BBC4, this will give you a fair idea. Elton John and Michael Caine getting all “Knees-up Mother Brown” round the olde joanna on Michael Parkinson‘s show.

All this the same year The Sex Pistols released “Anarchy in the U.K.” on EMI, The Ramones singled “Blitzkreig Bop” and Patti Smith “Pissing in a River”. Cor blimey, guvnor.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.03.2012
06:43 pm
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An hour of Leonard Cohen performing live in Austin in 1988
01.27.2012
05:03 am
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Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is being released next Tuesday. The critical reception has been ecstatic. Which thrills me because I have loved Cohen from the moment I heard “Suzanne” when I was 15 years old. He’s been a massive influence on my own music. My debt to him is deep.

Here’s something to hold you Cohen fans over until Old Ideas release: a brilliant performance by Mr. Cohen on Austin City Limits from 1988.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.27.2012
05:03 am
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‘Brigitte Bardot Sings’: Documentary featuring Bardot, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin
01.06.2012
12:06 am
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This French documentary from 1992 is an enjoyable overview of Brigitte Bardot’s forays into pop music. It features insightful interviews with Bardot, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, as well as dozens of clips of Bardot’s appearances in TV shows, Scopitones and movies.

Needless to say (though I’m saying it), Bardot was not much of a singer. But her willingness to poke fun at her sex kitten image and serve as a comedic and visual foil to the gruff machismo of Gainsbourg makes it easy to forgive her limitations as a vocalist and appreciate her sassy self-awareness. She’s having fun and so are we. One gets the impression that Bardot was perfectly content with her status as a pop icon, leaving the existential Sturm und Drang to her chain-smoking, brooding co-star.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.06.2012
12:06 am
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Of obliteration and polka dots: films on the vividly obsessive art of Yayoi Kusama
01.03.2012
04:46 pm
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Kusama
“As an obsessional artist I fear everything I see. At one time, I dreaded everything I was making.”—Kusama interviewed in BOMB magazine in 1999.
 
You may have seen some of the lovely, now-viral shots of renowned Japanese Pop/Minimalist/AbEx artist Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room installation at the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art, in which children are handed colored polka dots stickers at the museum’s entrance with which to deface a pure-white-painted living-room.

Whimsical as those images are, it’s important to remember that Kusama’s pattern-obsessed work reflects her career of art-as-therapy in response to a life marked by childhood abuse early on and mental illness throughout. As someone who’s both seen a measure of fame in New York City’s underground art scene in the ‘60s that rivaled Warhol’s, and lived in a mental institution in Japan for the past 34 years, Kusama strikes a remarkable figure. The raising of her profile in the US has been a long time coming for the 83-year-old.

Heather Lenz’s forthcoming documentary, Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots, promises to more fully flesh out the story of Japan’s most popular living artist. The film’s slated for a summer 2012 release to coincide with the arrival of a Kusama retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
 

 
After the jump: check out Kusama’s Self Obliteration, a portrait of the artist at one of her peak periods…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
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01.03.2012
04:46 pm
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The only known film footage of the inside of Max’s Kansas City
11.02.2011
03:02 pm
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Ciao! Manhattan director David Weisman claims that this is “the only known footage of the inside of Max’s Kansas City.” Of course, he’s not including all the films and videos of performances shot at Max’s. But those don’t reveal what the club as a whole looked like.

A brief glimpse into New York’s epicenter of cool when everything and everyone seemed larger than life.

Viva, Richie Berlin, Ara Gallant and Paul America make fleeting appearances. This was shot in the late Sixties. Weisman narrates.
 

 
Thanks to Leee Black Childers for the photo.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.02.2011
03:02 pm
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Art from Chaos: The Sweet and the story behind ‘Ballroom Blitz’
09.12.2011
11:33 am
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It was art out of chaos. Pop art. The Sweet‘s “Ballrooom Blitz”, Glam Rock’s catchiest, trashiest, most lovable song, came from a riot that saw the band bottled off the stage, at the Grand Hall, Palace Theater, Kilmarnock, Scotland, in 1973. Men spat, while women screamed to drown out the music. Not the response expected for a group famous for their string of million sellers hits, “Little Willy”, “Wig-Wag Bam” and the number 1, “Block Buster”.

Why it happened has since led to suggestions that the band’s appearance in eye-shadow, glitter and lippy (in particular the once gorgeous bass player Steve Priest) was all too much for the hard lads and lassies o’ Killie.

It’s a possible. Priest thinks so, and said as much in his autobiography Are You Ready Steve?. But it does raise the question, why would an audience pay money to see a band best known through their numerous TV appearances for their outrageously camp image? Especially if these youngsters were such apparent homophobes? Moreover, this was 1973, when the UK seemed on the verge of revolution, engulfed by money shortages, food shortages, strike action,  power cuts and 3-day-weeks, and the only glimmer of hope for millions was Thursday night and Top of the Pops.

Another possible was the rumor that Sweet didn’t play their instruments, and were a manufactured band like The Monkees. A story which may have gained credence as the band’s famous song-writing duo of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, preferred using session musicians to working with artists.

The sliver of truth in this rumor was that Sweet only sang on the first 3 Chinn-Chapman singles (“Funny, Funny”, “Co-Co” and “Poppa Joe”). It wasn’t until the fourth, “Little Willy” that Chinn and Chapman realized Sweet were in fact far better musicians than any hired hands, and allowed the band to do what they did best - play.

True, Chinn and Chapman gave Sweet their Midas touch, but it came at a cost. The group was dismissed by self-righteous music critics as sugar-coated pop for the saccharine generation. A harsh and unfair assessment. But in part it may also explain the audience’s ire.

In an effort to redefine themselves, Sweet tended to avoid playing their pop hits on tour, instead performing their own songs, the lesser known album tracks and rock covers. A band veering from the songbook of hits (no matter how great the material) was asking for trouble. As Freddie Mercury proved at Live Aid, when Queen made their come-back, always give the audience what they want.

Still, Glam Rock’s distinct sound owes much to Andy Scott’s guitar playing (which has been favorably compared to Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck), Steve Priest’s powerful bass, and harmonizing vocals, and Mick Tucker’s inspirational drums (just listen to the way he references Sandy Nelson in “Ballroom Blitz”). Add in Brian Connolly’s vocals, and it is apparent Sweet were a band with talents greater than those limned by their chart success.

So what went wrong?

If ever there was a tale of a band making a pact with the Devil, then the rise and fall of Sweet could be that story. A tale of talent, excess, fame, money, frustration and then the decline into alcohol, back-taxes, death and disaster. Half of the band is now tragically dead: Connolly, who survived 14 heart attacks caused through his alcoholism, ended his days a walking skeleton, touring smaller venues and holiday camps with his version of Sweet; while the hugely under-rated Tucker sadly succumbed to cancer in 2002.

The remaining members Priest and Scott, allegedly don’t speak to each other and perform with their own versions of The Sweet on 2 different continents. Priest lives in California, has grown into an orange haired-Orson, while Scott, who always looked like he worked in accounts, is still based in the UK, and recently overcame prostate cancer to present van-hire adverts on the tube.

This then is the real world of pop success.

I doubt they would ever change it. And I doubt the fans would ever let them. So great is the pact with the devil of celebrity that once made, one is forever defined by the greatest success.

Back to that night, in a theater in Kilmarnock, when the man at the back said everyone attack, and the room turned into a ballroom blitz. Whatever the cause of the chaos, it gave Glam Rock a work of art, and Sweet, one of their finest songs.
 

 
Bonus ‘Block Buster’ plus documentary on Brian Connolly, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.12.2011
11:33 am
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