The Looters. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Ray Winstone, and Paul Simonon. Photo: Caroline Coon.
Here’s a little something from the DM archives:
These are fictional music groups or solo acts that were created for film or TV. Some are quite excellent.
1. The Mosquitoes - “Gilligan’s Island”
2. Android - “Buck Rogers In The 25th Century”
3. The Looters -“Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains”
4. The Flowerbuds - “Carry On Camping”
5. Drimble Wedge And The Vegetations - “Bedazzled”
6. Steven Shorter - “Privilege”
7. The Bugaloos - “The Electric Company
8. Tom Monroe - “SCTV
9. The Queen Haters” - SCTV
Here’s a very cool documentary about mods that aired on French TV show Seize Millions Des Jeunes in March of 1965. Includes live performances by the Who as well as interviews with the band and their managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.
You may have seen segments of this documentary on Youtube over the years, but this one is complete and has subtitles. If you want to own it, buy the Blu-ray version of the newly and beautifully restored Quadrophenia. While I’m not a big fan of the movie, Criterion deserves accolades for doing a brilliant job (along with the Who) of polishing the sound mix (in its original stereo and a fresh 5.1 version) and cleaning up the original film elements and transferring them to digital. The results are stunning.
GRIMMS was a like a collision between a busload of musicians, a van full of comics and a mobile library. As Supergroups go, GRIMMS was certainly the most original, literary and possibly hirsute, with their mix of poetry, music, comedy and theater.
“I don’t know what attracted the Scaffold to the Bonzos; we were incredibly anarchic, which was probably something shared by the Scaffold as well. Hence Grimms, this leap in the dark.”
We all know about the genius of The Bonzos, so let’s jump to The Scaffold, that strange hybrid pop band made up from John Gorman (who would go onto star in the children’s show Tiswas, and its adult counterpart OTT with Chris Tarrant and Alexei Sayle in the 1980s), Mike McGear (Paul McCartney’s brother), and poet Roger McGough, who had been one of the 3 Mersey Poets, and was a member of The Liverpool Scene. The Scaffold had chart success with their novelty records “Thank U Very Much”, “Lily the PInk” and “Liverpool Lou”, the last recorded with Paul McCartney and Wings
Liverpool Scene was the Liverpool Poets: McGough (works include Summer With Monika, After The Merrymaking), Brian Patten (works include Little Johnny’s Confession and Notes to the Hurrying Man) and Adrian Henri (The Mersey Sound), and musician Andy Roberts.
GRIMMS changed shape over the years as band members left, moved on or lost hair. These were quickly replaced by hats, wigs and some very special talents, including Keith Moon (The Who), Jon Hiseman (Colosseum), Michael Giles (King Crimson), John Megginson, Gerry Conway, David Richards, Zoot Money, and future Rutles John Halsey and Peter “Ollie” Halsall.
Their first album Grimms was a lucky bag of comedy, poetry and music released in 1973, which included Innes’ songs “Humanoid Boogie”, “Short Blues” and “Twyfords Vitromant”, which was followed later the same year with Rockin’ Duck and in 1975 their final album the 5 star Sleepers.
Unlike most list documentaries today (which miss out on such diamonds as GRIMMS), the seventies was an incredible time of experimentation and risk-taking. In 1975, around the release of Sleepers, the BBC (gawd bless her and all who fail in her) produced a strange series called The Camera and The Song. It was like a collection of early pop promos, with a film-maker interpreting songs by different artists - some good, some bloody awful. Into this mix came GRIMMS, and here are 2 clips from the show (opening titles and songs) featuring the genius talents of Neil Innes and co. Lovely!
More from GRIMMS plus bonus track ‘Backbreaker’, after the jump…
As if it wasn’t already patently obvious to everyone paying even the slightest bit of attention, last night at the Republican National Convention, 82-year-old actor Clint Eastwood took to the stage and showed America and the rest of the world what the Republican Party is REALLY all about: Senile old white gits yelling crazy, incoherent shit.
Last night, without much effort, Eastwood’s loopy “skit” turned the house full of extremely Caucasian Republican convention goers “every which way but loose.” The rest of the country was just deeply embarrassed for the octogenarian Hollywood legend. The RNC apparently wanted Clint there as the embodiment of modern Republicanism, a stand-in for Ronald Reagan, if you will. Eastwood inadvertently delivered in spades, coming off like a sad, old, spaced cowboy, giving the, uh… strong impression, that the GOP is full of crazy elderly folks suffering from senile dementia.
At least they were happy to loudly cheer one on. As Michael Moore wrote at The Daily Beast this morning:
Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year’s Republican National Convention: “We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us!”
With his cringe-worthy word salad performance on the same level as Sarah Palin’s, someone close to Clint Eastwood should have said “NO” and said it firmly and hung up the phone when the RNC came a callin’. Looking at the evidence of last night’s pathetic televised fiasco—and his loathsome wife and spoiled daughter’s execrable E! network reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company—Clint seems to be going the route of Charlton Heston, a once legendary Hollywood star, who now comes off like a cranky, punch-drunk fighter who has taken far too many blows to his noggin.
I’m sure Clint being offered the presidency of the NRA isn’t far behind!
The best part? How NO ONE is talking about Mitt Romney today. They’re all talking about how crazy old Clint Eastwood went on national tee-vee last night and shit in his diaper!
NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson put it succinctly when she described the cut-aways to Ann Romney during Eastwood’s skit as like watching “the mother of the bride listening to a drunken wedding toast.”
The Clint Eastwood memes are proliferating like Tribbles today. You’ve already seen the “Eastwooding” meme, here are a few more:
A 19-year-old Alan Cumming makes his first television appearance in a BBC TV Director’s training course in 1984.
Never intended for broadcast, this is probably Alan’s first performance in front of a camera, though he did have a very fleeting appearance in episode 6 of Traveling Man the same year. However, he is billed here, along with his fellow performers, Forbes Masson and David Lee Michael, as final year students at Glasgow’s Royal Academy of Music and Drama.
Here Cumming is cast as one of 3 dead (or possibly war-weary) soldiers, where he lip-synchs pop songs and recites a poem by Wilfred Owen. This was Justin C Adams’ Final Project for his director’s course. Adams went onto a career as a director of quiz shows at BBC Scotland, before establishing his own highly successful production company.
It’s well-known to be the only weekly TV series that President Obama watches with his daughters and on Tuesday, Ann Romney told Entertainment Tonight that Modern Family is her favorite show, too.
Modern Family co-creator Steven Levitan responded on Twitter:
“Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.”
Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.
I really hope to fuck that this is true! Via Raw Story:
A revised Republican National Committee schedule released Monday showed a mystery “To Be Announced” speaker would take the stage just before Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday night. Even the Romney campaign said that they didn’t know who it would be.
During a Wednesday report, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher speculated on some of the possibilities. They included Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Clint Eastwood and NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.
But Gallagher also threw out the name of the former president as potential speaker.
“Maybe a hologram of… Ronald Reagan,” he predicted. “They could do it now with technology. And the word is, maybe they just put Ronald Reagan up on the screen using a little bit of media magic to have Ronald Reagan endorse [Mitt Romney].”
“Is that actually a theory that’s out there?” host Megyn Kelly wondered.
“Yes!” Gallagher replied. “That’s a total theory. They could do it.”
You have to love it if someone at the RNC was inspired by the hologram Tupac at the Coachella Festival to reanimate the Gipper. Life in the 21st century sure is great ain’t it? Guy DeBord would puke in his mouth to see such a spectacle, but I still hope this will come to pass. If Reagan fails to materialize like a demon onstage in Tampa tomorrow night, I shall be bitterly disappointed!
(Another theory is that the mystery speaker is Clint Eastwood. Have you seen the reality show Mrs. Eastwood & Company on the E! network with his awful wife and spoiled brat daughter? Tell me that he’s not going senile. He’d have to be!)
I miss Tony Wilson. I miss the idea of Tony Wilson. Someone who had an enquiring mind and was full of intelligent enthusiasms, like Tony Wilson. And who also didn’t mind making a prat of himself when he got things wrong. Or, even right.
I met him in 2005 for a TV interview. He arrived on a summer’s day at a small studio in West London. He wore a linen suit, sandals, carried a briefcase, and his toenails were painted a rich plum color - his wife had painted them the night before, he said.
Wilson was clever, inspired and passionate about music. He talked about his latest signing, a rap band, and his plans for In the City music festival before we moved onto the Q&A in front of a camera. He could talk for England, but he was always interested in what other people were doing, what they thought, and was always always encouraging others to be their best. That’s what I miss.
You get more than an idea of that Tony Wilson in this compilation of the best of his regional tea-time TV series So It Goes. Wilson (along with Janet Street-Porter) championed Punk Rock on TV, and here he picks a Premier Division of talent:
Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Iggy Pop, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Penetration, Blondie, Fall, Jam, Jordan, Devo, Tom Robinson Band, Johnny Thunder, Elvis Costello, XTC, Jonathan Richman, Nick Lowe, Siouxie & the Banshees, Cherry Vanilla & Magazine….. The tape fails there!
The uploader ConcreteBarge has left in the adverts “for historical reference” that include - “TSB, Once, Cluster, Coke is it, Roger Daltery in American Express, Ulay, Swan, Our Price, Gastrils, Cluster & Prestige”.
So, let’s get in the time machine and travel back for an hour of TV fun.
We seek to write the perfect sentence. The one that opens the paragraph, like a key in a door, to places undiscovered. It was how to begin this story on Duglas T Stewart, the lead singer and mainstay of BMX Bandits, whether with a fact or a quote, or oblique reference that would set the scene to unfurl his tale.
Duglas has written his fair share of perfect sentences - in dozens of songs over his twenty-five-year career with BMX Bandits. From the first singles in 1986, the debut album C86 in 1989, through to Bee Stings in 2007, Duglas has been at the center of an incredible family of talented musicians who have together created some of the most beautiful, toe-tapping and joyous music of the past 3 decades.
In the early 1990s, when Nirvana was top of the tree, Kurt Cobain said:
’If I could be in any other band, it would be BMX Bandits.’
It was a tip of the hat to a man who is responsible for singing, writing and producing songs of the kind of beauty and fragility Cobain aspired to.
Not just Cobain, but Brian Wilson and Kim Fowley are also fans, with Fowley explaining his own definition of what it means to be a BMX Bandit:
’It means a nuclear submarine floating through chocolate syrup skies of spinach, raining raisins on a Chihuahua covered infinity of plaid waistcoats, with sunglasses and slow motion. It sort of means, pathos equals suburban integrity of loneliness punctuated by really nice melodies.’
But let’s not take Kim’s word for it, we decided to ask Duglas to tell Dangerous Minds his own version of his life and love as a BMX Bandit.
DM: What was your motivation to become a musician?
Duglas T. Stewart: ‘Initially it was two things. I heard Jonathan Richman in 1977 and it sounded so human and full of warmth and humor and beauty. It also seemed to fly in the face in the punk ethos of DESTROY. It really made a connection with me and I thought I’d like to try to do something that hopefully might make others feel like I did listening to Jonathan. Listening to his music gave me a sense of belonging. I felt less alone.
‘The other thing was I met Frances McKee, later of The Vaselines, and I thought she was incredible. I loved everything about her from her mischievous sense of humor to her slightly overlapping front teeth. She said to me one day she thought it would be fun being in a group, and so I thought I would start a group and she could be in it and that way I could spend more time with her and have a vehicle for expressing how she made me feel.
‘Also I had a lot of self belief so I knew if I started a group it would be way better and more interesting than any other local groups at that time.
