One more Monkees-related post: a seldom-seen clip of them (sans Peter) performing “Nine Times Blue” in 1969 on The Johnny Cash Show. And let’s not forget that “The Man in Black” was born today in 1932.
 

 
Here’s a fantastic artifact of one of the best shows ever to grace broadcast TV that I remember seeing back in the day but for some reason never picked up. Being ostensibly the tapes we saw Agent Cooper constantly making for his unseen assistant, Diane, quite a bit of this seems to have been created just for this release while other sections could have been lifted straight from the show. In any case it’s a big bundle of vintage and lesser-known Lynch-ian goodness. Below is most of the cassette in Youtube form. Follow the link at the bottom to get the entire thing.
 

 
More audio excerpts after the jump…

 
Filmed on December 9, 1971 in Hong Kong after the release of his first movie, The Big Boss, Bruce Lee’s interview with Canadian journalist Pierre Berton was long thought to be lost. It was discovered in 1994 and aired as a TV special in Canada as Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview.

Berton is unimpressive as a talking head but Lee is both charming and wise beyond his years.

 
Part 2, Part 3
 
Via The Awesomer

 
Somebody’s finally liberated Reggae Britannia, BBC4’s excellent—though by no means not exhaustive—documentary on the origins, growth and influence of British reggae from the ‘60s to the present. Reggae Britannia takes you from the scene’s ska beginnings in the hands of the children of the country’s first post-war wave of Carribean immigrants (known as the Windrush generation), through to the emergence of Bob Marley, the first Brixton riots, the UK sound system phenomenon, the Two-Tone era, reggae’s merging with punk and appropriation by pop, and more. Reggae Britannia is definitely worth a look.

Here’s the trailer…click on any of the title links or graphic above to check the full thing. And please, watch instead of embed so we can hold off our friends at the Beeb from bringing it down for at least a short while.
 

 
When you’re wrong, you’re wrong and it’s always best to face up to the facts and just admit it. Here goes: I was wrong, very wrong… I was OH SO WRONG about Glenn Beck in my post yesterday. I said that Beck was getting boring. Running out of steam. That his rants were getting repetitive.

In a word: HAH!

Oh, man, I really blew it, didn’t I? Turns out that there was merely a brief lull in the monkeyshines. Beck was just tuning up the orchestra before unleashing the grandest, most fucked-up (not to mention “supernatural”) conspiracy theory that he’s yet come up with in that fetid, rancid, over-heated little brain of his.

Last night’s broadcast, well, Glenn Beck made a fool of me.

Watch in disbelief as Beck uses information gleaned from a new crackpot Christian prophecy book called The Islamic Antichrist. Embraced by the batshit crazy WorldNet Daily crowd (natch), The Islamic Antichrist posits the theory that the Mahdi, the end-times Islamic redeemer/Messiah who Muslims believe will come to Earth to rid it of evildoers, the tyranny of kings and despots and, of course, the infidels, is in fact, the same fellow Christians call the Antichrist. (Their good guy = our bad guy. Makes sense so far, right? Except that the Koran says the Mahdi works WITH Jesus, keep that in mind and there is already a direct Muslim equivalent to the Antichrist known as Masih ad-Dajjal, “the deceiving Messiah,” although this character doesn’t actually appear in the Koran itself).

Within Islam, the Mahdi is often conflated or considered to be synonymous, with the 12th Imam (see Twelvers), who is prophesied to set up a worldwide Caliphate. The Islamic Antichrist, written by a guy calling himself “Joel Richardson” (apparently a pseudonym to protect him from seeing a fatwa put on his head—DO watch this video for more on this ass-clown) does appear to have some valid points (the Christian eschaton and the Islamic end-times stuff do have many parallels), but Beck being Beck, he takes what are in fact, “facts” about supernatural holy books from over a thousand years ago (interpreted by a fanatical modern day believer, of course) and then turns around and PARADES THESE “FACTS” ABOUT SUPERNATURAL PROPHECIES AS “CURRENT EVENTS ANALYSIS” ON WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE A “NEWS” NETWORK and not the fucking 700 Club. It would really be stretching it to call a book like The Islamic Antichrist, “non-fiction,” if you take my point, so what value would a “fact” about fiction (or a religious holy book, both are the same to me) have? It’s an empty calorie for most people. For Glenn Beck, it’s a motif whistled by his good old prophetic buddy Joel that he can turn into a conspiracy theory symphony of small-minded (albeit brilliant) religious bigotry that is positively Wagnerian—by way of Jack Van Impe—in its scope.

Fuck me… he’s good! It was a new, fresh low for Fox News, but a triumph, a tour de force, for Glenn Beck, personally.

Incorporating Biblical (and now Koranic!) “prophecy” into a wild-eyed, bughouse crazy conspiracy theory is EXACTLY the trick Beck needed to really draw the faithful back into his drama and shore up his ratings in the middle of a big dip. My hat is off to him: Glenn Beck, you are a MAESTRO of weaving together paranoia, bigotry, misrepresentation of history and wacko religious beliefs, and although the sight of you turns my stomach, I will say this: You are a genius showman. A genius. Your schtick is fucked up, corrosive to American civic life (or what’s left of it because of people like you) and I hope you’ll be raptured soon (on camera, if you can swing it). Still, as a person raised in a family of West Virginia born-agains who all vote Republican (and don’t even know why), I now have a grudging respect for your immense talents.

You’re an artist. No, an artiste! But you are no political scientist, Glenn. On that count you’re not much better than a tinfoil hat-wearing Ham radio conspiracy theorist living alone in a trailer somewhere in the Nevada desert with a cache of automatic weapons, saving his pee-pee in mason jars, but boy oh boy are you a master at coming up with plot-lines that Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsay and Jack T. Chick would envy and turning it all into a personal fortune on prime time America tee-vee!  When it comes to taking crazy, fucked-up religulous bullshit and making it sound plausible for an audience of low IQ dolts who should be asked to take a test in critical thinking skills before they vote (or are issued a driver’s license), you are DA MAN!

The thing the kept going through my mind, though, as I watched this (other than wondering what Kirk Cameron thought of it all) is that Beck really seems to be setting himself up to become the next Salman Rushdie by explicitly welding Islamaphobia with Christian Eschatology in an insecure time. Who knows, maybe that would be appealing to his pathologies and his oft-admitted martyr complex?
 

 
Over 300 hundred companies who refused to advertise on Glenn Beck’s show by Chris Piascik.

(via Certified Bullshit Technician)

 
Here’s a compilation of video clips made in the 1960s for French television. Most of these videos were new to me when I discovered them and the quality is impressive.

The Spencer Davis Group, The Equals, Vince Taylor, Tom Jones, Jacques Dutronc, Johnny Hallyday, Francoise Hardy and Marianne Faithfull.

If you love this stuff and must have more, it’s available on import DVD here. It ain’t cheap and you’ve got to have an all-region DVD player, but man what a goldmine.

 
When I was growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Top of the Pops was essential, nay compulsory viewing. You see, for a certain age group TOTP was the only music show on British TV. Yes, there was the excellent Old Grey Whistle Test with “Whispering” Bob Harris, which had Zappa, The New York Dolls, Deep Purple and alike, but that went out long after sundown and well past most young uns bedtimes. It would really take until the arrival of the pop promo for music shows to become ubiquitous, which meant back in the days of mop tops, glitter and platform boots, Top of the Pops was King.

Top of the Pops was the BBC’s legendary, Top 40 chart run-down show. It ran between 1964 and 2006, when it was pulled by the Beeb bosses due to a lack of viewers or, too much competition - depending who you read. It was an inevitable demise for music had changed after Rave, and the diversity and choice available meant what most youngsters listened to was rarely reflected by a show centered around the record sales of bland and talentless groups squeezed out by music industry execs.

Moreover, because TOTP was a chart run down show, you were likely to see David Bowie in the same studio as The Osmonds or, The Sex Pistols on the same show as Hot Chocolate. Even so, there was always moments to treasure from Jimi Hendrix, to Bowie’s “Starman”, Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”, The Smiths with a gladioli-waving Morrissey singing “This Charming Man”, to Blondie “Dreaming”.

And yes, there was The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Move and so on, right up to The Damned, The Jam, Marc Almond, and even Nick Cave. But for all the great and the good, there was always a lot of shit. Something that is more than apparent in this 2-hour compilation of forty years of Top of the Pops. It’s an odd mix with some great, and some inexcusable songs, and a lot of brilliant ones missing. Yet, for all the good, the bad and the ugly, it does tell a story of how music has changed for better and worse over the past four decades.

Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964 - 2004

1964: Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas - “Little Children”
1965: Sandie Shaw - “Long Live Love”
1966: The Seekers - “The Carnival Is Over” (Performance was from 1965)
1967: Procol Harum - “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
1968: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - “Fire”
1969: The Hollies - “Sorry Suzanne”
1970: Free - “All Right Now”
1971: T.Rex - “Get It On”
1972: Roxy Music - “Virginia Plain”
1973: Slade - “Cum on Feel the Noize”
1974: The Three Degrees - “When Will I See You Again”
1975: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)”
1976: The Real Thing - “You to Me Are Everything”
1977: Queen - “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy”
1978: The Jam - “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”
1979: Ian Dury & The Blockheads - “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”
1980: Adam and the Ants - “Ant Music”
1981: The Human League - “Don’t You Want Me”
1982: Culture Club - “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”
1983: UB40 - “Red Red Wine”
1984: Wham! - “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”
1985: Eurythmics - “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)”
1986: Pet Shop Boys - “West End Girls”
1987: Bee Gees - “You Win Again”
1988: Yazz And The Plastic Population - “The Only Way Is Up”
1989: Lisa Stansfield - “All Around the World”
1990: Sinéad O’Connor - “Nothing Compares 2 U”
1991: Seal - “Crazy”
1992: Stereo MCs - “Connected”
1993: New Order - “Regret”
1994: Blur - “Parklife”
1995: Take That - “Back for Good”
1996: Oasis - “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
1997: Spice Girls - “Wannabe”
1998: Manic Street Preachers - “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”
1999: Ricky Martin - “Livin La Vida Loca”
2000: Sophie Ellis-Bextor & Spiller - “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”
2001: Texas - “I Don’t Want a Lover”
2002: Status Quo - “Rockin’ All Over The World”
2003: The Darkness - “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
2004: Michael Andrews Featuring Gary Jules - “Mad World”

 
Oh dear…  
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cable gets synopsis of ‘The Dark Crystal’ very, very wrong

(via The High Definite )

 
To celebrate Bertolt Brecht’s birthday, here is David Bowie in the BBC production of Brecht’s play Baal, from 1982. It was directed by Alan Clarke, the talent behind such controversial TV dramas as Scum with a young Ray Winstone, Made in Britain, with Tim Roth, and Elephant.

Baal was Brecht’s first full-length play, written in 1918, and it tells the story of a traveling musician / poet, who seduces and destroys with callous indifference.

Bowie is excellent as Baal and the five songs he sings in this production were co-produced with Tony Visconti, and later released as the EP David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht’s Baal.
 

 
More of ‘Baal’ starring David Bowie, after the jump…