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Kinks Bassist Pete Quaife Dead at 66
06.25.2010
12:30 am
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Founding member of the Kinks, bassist Pete Quaife, who played with the band until 1969, has died. Quaife suffered from kidney disease for many years.
 

 
Original Kinks Bassist Pete Quaife Dead at 66 (Rolling Stone)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.25.2010
12:30 am
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Old Lady GaGa sings ‘Alejandro’
06.25.2010
12:27 am
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I do not like her, Sam-I-am.
 
Let it be no secret I loathe Lady GaGa. Sorry, Richard.
 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.25.2010
12:27 am
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Aliens, bleeding walls and too many cops: The amazing public light art of Madrid’s luzinterrup
06.25.2010
12:22 am
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The global metropolis is seeing a golden age of street art nowadays, as seen in the evolution from spraycan through stencil/wheatpaste and on to other outdoor installations. The Luzinterruptus crew from Madrid has been doing some amazing light-work lately with some compelling underlying themes.
Their latest, Ejército de platillos volantes desechables (above), saw them land an army of disposable flying saucers in Parque del Oeste, the home of the rebuilt ancient Egyptian Temple of Debod.
 
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Before that, the Luz’ers’ Publicidad herida de muerte (Mortally Wounded Advertising) commented on the thick layer of posters that cover the city’s walls by making them bleed fire.
 
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Some months ago, curator Sebastian Buck in Good Magazine surfaced Luz’s Tanta Policía, para tan Poca Gente… (Lots of Cops for So Few People), in which the crew protested the increased police presence in their East Villagesque Malasana neighborhood by decorating 50 random cars with homemade replicas of the city’s official blue siren.

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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06.25.2010
12:22 am
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Ceddybu the Sumo Rapper: Say what?
06.24.2010
09:51 pm
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What the fuck is this guy talking about? Can anyone tell me?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.24.2010
09:51 pm
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Bongwater: The Power of Pussy
06.24.2010
09:26 pm
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Behold the rarely seen music video for Bongwater’s feminist indie rock anthem, The Power of Pussy, from the album of the same title.

When The Power of Pussy came out, in 1991, I became obsessed with doing a music video for this song. I was, and still am, a huge, huge Bongwater fan. Luckily, at the time,  I was working at the studio where Ann Magnuson’s Cinemax special Vandemonium had been produced and one of the partners knew Ann and introduced me to her. Ann and I have been great friends ever since. (Bongwater’s Kramer and I went on to author a screenplay together, a conspiracy theory comedy about homicidal mailmen, called Mailman, which we’re going to adapt into a graphic novel one day).

Partnering with a friend of mine named Alan Henderson, I had been working on various low budget music videos for a couple of years—-mostly for “underground” and indie acts from New York’s East Village. We’d shoot and edit them in the Manhattan-based Windsor Digital Video post production house where we both worked, off hours and on the weekends. The highest budget we ever got was, I think, $3000. (This Bongwater video had a budget of $1000 and $600 of that went to Ann’s hair and make-up, with the remainder going to pizza and videotape stock.). We did videos for John Sex, two for Larry Tee, one for an absolutely brilliant band called The Beme Seed, whose lead singer was Kathleen Lynch, the naked, gyrating go-go dancer from deep within the bowels of Hell who made the live Butthole Surfers experience so deeply berserk in the mid-80s. I’m going to post them all here in the coming week.

I had just left this job at the post house and had taken a new gig downtown at this production studio when this was in the planning stages. One of the principal animators in the studio, Glen Claybrook (who had projects like Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the opening credits for Madonna’s Who’s That Girl film under his belt) came up to me one day and said “Hey, I hear you are going to do a video for Bongwater’s Power of Pussy and I have had a vision….

That, as you will see from the animation Glen produced, was a coy understatement! A vision, indeed! The best thing was, we didn’t pay a single cent cent for any of the animation costs because it was all shot on 35mm short ends and was processed, transfered and charged off to a huge advertising agency’s budget. We probably buried about two grand of the costs in that way. Sometimes you have to be a little creative, right? It never would have happened otherwise.

And speaking of getting creative, we also needed, to be able to pull off the title, as seen above, a woman who wasn’t shy about getting naked. I’ve read on the Internet that she is supposed to be Christina Martinez from Boss Hog (and wife of Jon Spencer) but this is inaccurate. It’s a good guess, it’s just not true. We found the performer for this, a woman with the first name Gina, at the New York Dolls topless bar near Wall Street. As you can see from the video, she was staggeringly beautiful. When she would change stages, as dancers tend to do, the entire gravity of the room would shift as every guy in the house moved across the floor, clamoring to get a better look. She was Megan Fox hot. Probably made $5000 a day in tips, which she spent on putting herself through medical school as I recall.

The feral felines were shot on Elizabeth Street in Little Italy. An eccentric old lady fed dozens of stray cats and someone I knew suggested that I just needed to show up with a few soup bones to see them totally go nuts. And they did indeed (see video). I shot that part on Super 8.

In the end, as will come as no surprise to anyone, this video got played very, very, very few times in public: twice on Playboy’s Hot Rocks (a music video show hosted by Jenny McCarthy and produced by my old friend Eric Mittleman) and once on Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue cable access program when Bongwater’s Kramer was a guest on the show). It’s in the permanent collection of 17 museums around the world (mostly in former Soviet client states, believe it or not, but one is in California).

Ann threw a big party to premiere the video and it was the first time I was ever in Los Angeles. There were tons of TV and movie stars there (Albert Brooks, Richard Lewis), rockstars (members of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone) Russ Meyer actress Kitten Natividad and even Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, who asked me for a copy for his personal collection, which was a thrill. (When his wife arrived at the party he even made me play it a second time). The party was written up in the LA Weekly. It was my first evening in Los Angeles and that night I decided I wanted to move here and did, six months later.

I haven’t seen this video in years, but today Eric made a digital copy for me from the sole tape I have of this piece—a 3/4” tape, I might add—and I laughed my ass off watching it. Now it’s your turn… Enjoy!

Credits, as I recall them after 19 years… Directed by Alan Henderson and Richard Metzger. Animation directed by Glen Claybrook. Produced by me, and shot and edited by Alan. Billy Beyond did Ann’s make-up and Danilo did that ‘leaning tower of wig’ that Ann’s wearing (she had worn this same wig the week before in London, giving an award to ZZ Top(!) with Justin Hayward and John Lodge of Moody Blues on the Brit Awards program). Thanks would be appropriate also to Peter Rosenthal who helped shepherd this through the production process as cheaply as possible via his former production company.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.24.2010
09:26 pm
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Hollywood Ending: Metzger on digital piracy, the Mediapunk interview
06.24.2010
06:35 pm
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Klint Finley conducted an interview with me last month about digital piracy, the death of the Hollywood business model and right-wing fucktards:

So your position is that piracy is going to completely undermine these businesses models?

Well, it’s not just piracy. It’s also changing consumer habits and what consumers will put up with. Price points that make sense and are viable in the consumer’s mind are not going to be the same sorts of numbers that sustain big Hollywood blockbusters. Shrek 4 was just released this weekend and in New York City the ticket prices edged north of $20. And it didn’t do that well. Because I think what they found is that there’s a pain threshold above which the consumer is saying “Fuck it!” Who the fuck is going to pay that much to see a Shrek movie instead of something else? It’s utterly ridiculous.

And then the other news, which shows that the Hollywood studios are ready to throw the theatrical distribution industry under a bus, is that they’re going to shorten the distribution window between theatrical release and DVDs in stores. Day-and-date releasing is something that Steven Soderbergh and Mark Cuban have done with their movies, but they got a lot of push-back. Hollywood studios are embracing this now. What does this do effectively? It’s like burning down the only grocery store in town. It doesn’t make any sense to do this from a selfish point of view –or an accounting, cash flow viewpoint–given current business realities. Yet they can’t not do it either!

There was one really compelling thing we found that stood out amongst all the facts about where the entertainment business is inevitably headed. Domestic box office basically pays for 15% towards what is goes to make tentpole motion pictures profitable these days. 85% is home viewing, including 59% for DVD sales. Hollywood is doomed, or at least the current way of business is doomed. That much is certain.

Read the entire interview at Media Punk

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.24.2010
06:35 pm
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Kevin Blechdom’s righteous performance of Song to the Siren
06.24.2010
06:26 pm
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Here’s an astounding clip of theatrically-leaning electronic producer/performer Kevin Blechdom (also a past collaborator of mine, truth be told) showing off her considerable vocal prowess in a spot-on yet original take on Tim Buckley’s deathless hymn “Song to the Siren”. Superb !

 
Bonus clip (couldn’t resist): Tim Buckley his own self playing said song on The Monkees final TV show in 1968

 
Get Gentlemania by Kevin Blechdom
 
thx Dominique Leone !

 

Posted by Brad Laner
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06.24.2010
06:26 pm
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Free jazz drum titan: Tony Oxley
06.24.2010
01:03 pm
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And difficult listening hour continues today with British free jazz giant, drummer Tony Oxley. Being a pioneer in the introduction of electronics and found objects into the standard traps, the man is a self contained orchestra. This however doesn’t stop him from being an MVP collaborator with the likes of Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. The below clips of the man in typically furious action cause your humble blogging muso much happiness, I must say.

 

 
Tony Oxley - Ichnos (1969) (jizz relics)
 
It Cuts Through: A Tony Oxley Mixtape (Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches)
 
Derek Bailey previously on DM

Posted by Brad Laner
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06.24.2010
01:03 pm
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Moms with Guns
06.24.2010
02:27 am
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From a YouTube commenter: “This is a great commercial, but it sort of makes me want to buy a gun to protect my kids. And I don’t even have kids.”

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.24.2010
02:27 am
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Video: Freaky old women lip-sync to Miss Kittin
06.24.2010
01:28 am
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Super creepy video for Felix Da Housecat’s “Madame Hollywood,” directed by Guy Sagy.
 
Everybody wants to be Hollywood
The fame, the vanity, the glitz, the stories

 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.24.2010
01:28 am
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