Mass culture machines love the status quo—a salesman, after all, is fattest and happiest when he knows what’ll sell and how to sell it. So when a sudden zeitgeist shift catches them with their pants down, it can be illuminating to watch them try to pull them back up. When the reset button got pushed in the early ‘90s and cult figures whose worldviews revolved around aggressive abnormality suddenly became the new rock royalty, things could get pretty damn funny.

One noteworthy moment was when Sonic Youth‘s Thurston Moore guest hosted MTV’s late night alternaghetto 120 Minutes. In the 1980s, that show featured some legitimately outré artists, but by 1994 watching that show was no longer significantly different from listening to commercial radio. Because of Moore’s untouchable underground bona fides, featuring him injected a fresh dose of off-the-path credibility into that show, and his interview with the then newly-rising Beck was pretty hilarious. Watch it here, it’s worth a few minutes of your life.

But weirder still is this bit of insanity from the same broadcast—Moore, Beck, and the Beastie Boys’ Mike D collaborating on a noise jam. This is what happens when you let the freakshow into the big tent—Dada in mass media. Rigoddamndiculous.
 

 
Hat-tip to Mr. Rob Galo for this find.

The one in the middle… he designs wallpaper now
 
And it’s pretty clever and cool! Available in blue or red, the print is done the style of a French Country Toile, but depicts the imagery of Brooklyn. There’s Biggie Smalls, Coney Island’s famous Cyclone Roller Coaster, pigeons, and even a Hasidic Jew!

I’m sure a few curmudgeons will scoff, but come on; Mike D is actually Mike Diamond, a 47-year-old father of two. He’s been married to the same woman for 20 years—a music video director who wrote a vegetarian cookbook. He was born to an upper middle class Jewish family and he went to Vassar. How has he not already designed a wallpaper?

The idea was his, but it was executed by Vincent J. Ficarra and Adela Qersaqi of Revolver New York. Flavor Paper produced the design as wallpaper. The product is eco-friendly, and available for as low as $7 per square foot. That seems pretty affordable for an accent wall, right? (I have no idea, my walls are all crumbling drywall and exposed brick.)
 

 

Here it is in Mike D’s very own hallway!
 
Via Brokelyn

 
Mike D was recently commissioned by fashion label Kenzo to create a soundtrack for their Spring/Summer 2014 collection show. It’s not your normal catwalk music to say the least.

Mike D explains his inspiration via Kenzo:

Talking to [Kenzo creative director] Humberto [Leon], I wanted to honor what he was inspired by: American hardcore like Black Flag, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks but then I wanted to update it, or maybe couldn’t help put to update it… I have been listening to a fair amount of trap records and I think that found it’s way into things on this for sure… I definitely shared Humberto’s passion for American Punk and that raw energy and I think that informs the collection and the soundtrack I did.

Listen to the 10-minute mix, below:
 

 
Via Daily Swarm