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Iconic heavy metal album covers turned into coloring book for kids
12.05.2011
12:21 pm
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Image via Nerdcore.
 
German artist Christopher Tauber created this fantastic heavy metal children’s coloring book just in time for the holidays. I like how he puts his own spin on popular metal album covers so that they’re more kid friendly.

Check out Christopher’s Flickr set here.
 

 

 
More metal madness after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.05.2011
12:21 pm
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A Brief Guide to Class Conflict in America
12.05.2011
12:07 pm
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Another masterpiece of political satire from Tom Tomorrow. That close to 100% of his output remains firmly in the “genius” category after so many years, astonishes me. He defines our era.

If you don’t want to squint to read it, there’s a larger version at Daily Kos.

Tweet and FB share the shit out of this one, won’t you? It’s just too good.

Buy a signed print of this from Tom Tomorrow.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2011
12:07 pm
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The Velvet Underground: Under Review (full film)
12.05.2011
11:36 am
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If you have ever seen any of those low-budget “Under Review” made for DVD rockumentaries, then you know that they follow a fairly tried and true formula: Almost no music by the group or performer the doc is about, approx 5 minutes of archival film clips in the course of 90 minutes and usually a bunch of crazed loner rock critics you’ve never heard of, yakking it up about their favorite rock groups. Often the interviewees are fairly tangential to the subjects, but not always. The range from awesome (the one on the early days of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was excellent) to awful.

In The Velvet Underground: Under Review, they managed to nab TWO actual members of the Velvet Underground, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule—both Reed and Cale, predictably sat this one out—which elevates this way above most of the others ones. Even longtime VU fans might learn something new here. For instance, I’ve listened to the VU for 36 years now and I didn’t know that Maureen Tucker didn’t play drums on Loaded because she was pregnant. Every copy of that album (and the CD) credits her on the back—your copy and mine—but it’s not her drumming, it’s Doug Yule, studio engineer Adrian Barber, a session drummer named Tommy Castanaro and Billy Yule, who was still a high school student (It doesn’t sound even remotely like Mo Tucker on Loaded as I found listening to it the day after I watched this doc). You also hear Mo talk about how she stripped down her drum kit to get a more primitive, less busy, sound. And Yule, who always gets short shrift in the VU saga, gets plenty of onscreen time to discuss his role in the band (How many of you reading this know it’s him singing “Candy Says” and not Lou Reed?). I’ve never seen an interview with him and I was very pleased to see his participation in this film. If you’re a VU fan, this film is absolutely worth your time.

Get it on DVD.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2011
11:36 am
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Herman Cain’s political ‘moment’ explained in one sentence by a sane Republican


 

“That Cain’s candidacy was taken seriously for longer than a nano-second in a time of genuine crisis for the country raises fundamental questions about the health of the political process and the Republican party,”

—Steve Schmidt, campaign manager for Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid.

There are other things one could add to that, but why bother?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2011
09:20 am
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Grinderman rocks Serbia: This is what rock and roll looks like
12.05.2011
02:58 am
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nnnniiiccckk
 
Grinderman perform “Kitchenette” at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Serbia during the Exit Festival

Pro shot video captures a stunning performance.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.05.2011
02:58 am
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Pepper Spray Cop-themed Christmas sweater
12.04.2011
03:17 pm
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Abbie Heppe wearing her homemade Christmas pepper spraying-attire at the G4 holiday party. 

(via The Daily What)

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.04.2011
03:17 pm
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The 99% for Dummies: The GOP must think its base are complete idiots


 
I posted about longtime Republican strategist Frank Luntz and the rhetorical tips he gave to GOP governors the other day (say “economic freedom” instead of “capitalism,” for instance) but until I heard Ed Schultz mocking it on his MSNBC program, it didn’t really jump out at me how incredibly offensive and insulting Luntz’s OWS talking points truly were… for Republicans!

It’s long been obvious that the GOP leadership in Washington has had a condescending attitude towards the loonier/lower IQ members of the party’s Fox News-watching base, but when you get right down to it, reading between the lines of what Luntz said, the Republican elite must hold them in utter contempt. The entire context of the remarks Frank Luntz made indicates strongly that there is an a priori assumption on the part of the GOP that their supporters fall into the category of “low information voters.” That’s breathtaking in its cynicism!

“Hey dumbshits!” they seem to be saying.“Vote for us!”

When will these people learn? Or are these tactics, once so effective, becoming too threadbare to matter much anymore?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.04.2011
01:40 pm
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Don’t Need You - The Herstory of Riot Grrrl documentary


 
As an introduction to a brief but important music movement, or even just a simple nostalgia piece for people who were around at the time, Kerri Koch’s 2006 documentary Don’t Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl makes for interesting and compelling viewing.

For a brief while in the early 90s it seemed Riot Grrrl was everywhere. It was a breath of fresh air in the male-dominated grunge landscape, though some of those grunge bands did their best to promote it and more pro-feminist ideals (the ghost of Kurt looms into view in a flowing, floral-print dress). But Riot Grrrl was met mostly with derision in the mainstream media, what with its core values of fanzines and localised press, not to mention of course feminism, self-expression and the forcing through of female self-determination in a male-oriented world.

Looking back now It’s hard to believe how much of an uproar some female musicians simply being angry could cause, but then as has been mentioned numerous times no-one wants to see women being angry (supposedly). Pretty soon Riot Grrrl was reduced to a simple concept of being merely “angry girls”, and made easy to dismiss. UK Riot Grrrl contingent Huggy Bear famously got ejected from the studios of tacky yoof program The Word (on which they had just performed) for heckling the presenters about their Barbie doll-imitating porn star guests. This got the band into the national media, but also sealed their fate as mere rabble-rousers while ignoring their efforts to create alternative spaces and dialogs. But still, Riot Grrrl was oppositional, it was dramatic, and it was fucking exciting. 

Just as quickly as it bubbled up however, Riot Grrrl seemed to fizzle out. I guess my perception of this was skewed hugely by the mainstream UK music press, which was my only port of access to alternative music and culture in those pre-internet days. It was a mutual love/hate thing (more hate/hate I guess) with the performers and the scene itself withdrawing from the mainstream attention and the negative associations it brought. In a very interesting read called Riot Grrrl - the collected interviews on Collpase Board, Everett True (the editor of Melody Maker at the time, and the person chiefly responsible for breaking the scene in the UK music media) explains his own role and that of the press:

Riot Grrrl was basically about female empowerment – females doing stuff on their own terms, separate from men, making up their own rules and systems and cultures. Sure, men were welcome, but they had to understand that for once they weren’t going to be automatically given first place. (One of the reasons my own role in the gestation of Riot Grrrl as a popular cultural movement became so confused was that after a certain period of time I began to listen to those around me – female musicians, activists, artists, human beings – who felt that having such a high-profile male associated with a fledgling female movement was absolutely counter-productive. This is almost the first time I’ve spoken to anyone since then.)

Don’t Need You - The Herstory of Riot Grrrl is important because it lets the creators of the movement speak for themselves. The editing may be rough in places, and the story may jump around in chronology a wee bit, but you get to hear first hand from the original Riot Grrrls themselves what informed their third-wave feminist views and what inspired them to start their own scene. Featured interviewees include Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, Alison Wolfe of Bratmobile, Corin Tucker of Heavens To Betsy / Sleatter-Kinney and Fugazi’s Ian McKaye:
 


 
That’s part one - part two and part three are after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.04.2011
01:01 pm
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Godardloops: Guns and poetry at 24 frames per second
12.04.2011
04:41 am
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gooooodard
 
Michael Baute and Bettina Blickwede have taken moving imagery from 47 films directed by Jean Luc Godard and created loops based on recurring motifs in the director’s work. These include automobiles, guns, color, faces, sound and more.

Using split screens, the loops act as a kind of optical music in which themes and colors riff off of each other in a Godardian eye view of the modern world.

For the story behind the creation of these loops and to see more of them visit Fandor’s website.

Godard is one of the prime architects of cinema as language, a language in which vowels and consonants find their counterparts in color, light and movement. Rimbaud spoke of this derangement of the senses a century ago. Godard acted on it, but without Rimbaud’s symbolist lyricism or surrealism. Godard, like Warhol, let the images speak for themselves, without embellishment. And speak they do, as clearly as any alphabet based on the interaction between teeth, tongue and breath. If Gertrude Stein had made films instead of books, she would have found in Godard a kindred spirit. “A gun is a gun is a gun is a gun.”
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.04.2011
04:41 am
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‘You are the Crown of Creation’: Jefferson Airplane, 1968
12.03.2011
08:23 pm
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The Jefferson Airplane do “Crown of Creation” on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968.

“In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our minds.

In loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction.”

You have to hand it to the Smothers, what other TV show in 1968 would have allowed Grace Slick to sing the above lyrics, wear black-face and give the “Black Power” salute (as she does at the end of the song)? Such an insane thing to do! Considering what a political hot potato that show was for CBS at the time, it’s odd that THIS number passed by the censors, don’t you find? What were they thinking? What was she thinking? (And what did the rest of the band think???)
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.03.2011
08:23 pm
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