Yesterday’s storm in the New York City area was pretty intense and these two guys got caught up in Mama Nature’s frenzy.
One of the things that can certainly be said for Alan Moore’s various projects over the years, is that they tend to be beautifully packaged and published products. Although often pricey, his dedicated fan base clearly appreciate the effort, as these beautiful objects tend to sell out rather quickly.
Dig Unearthing, his latest, a collaboration with noted photographer, Mitch Jenkins: Lex Records produced the package, which includes two deluxe 180g vinyl records of Unearthing, a deluxe 180g white vinyl record Instrumental EP, three CDs, a poster, a portrait of Moore by Jenkins and a printed transcript.
Unearthing is an audio and visual project uniting legendary comic book writer Alan Moore award-winning photographer Mitch Jenkins and a cast of high- caliber musicians. A story written and narrated by Moore with a mesmerising score from Crook&Flail, Stuart Braithwaite, Zach Hill, Justin Broadrick, Mike Patton and more.
Bleep are proud to be the first retailer to present this deluxe, limited edition box set via Lex Records including the full 2-hour audio reading of Unearthing on CD and heavyweight vinyl, a separate EP of instrumental highlights from the score, a dot-matrix printed transcript, photo portrait of Alan by Mitch Jenkins.
Personally, I think he ought to throw in one of those huge “Camberwell Carrot” joints he’s so famous for, as seen in the photo below:
Via Planet Paul
This coming Monday in Los Angeles, The International Documentary Association is presenting a special evening with satirist Harry Shearer at Cinefamily, showing clips from his new documentary on Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath:
One of the nation’s sharpest voices, comic or otherwise, turns his gimlet eye and informed mind on exposing the true facts around the flooding of New Orleans, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Employing an oft-ignored trope in conventional media—science!—Shearer and his impressive assemblage of engineers and whistle-blowers carefully and persuasively show audiences how this tragedy could have been avoided (disaster, yes—natural, no) while also warning of the rebuild, in which the very same mistakes are being made. In this special Doc U session, the multi-talented Shearer will screen extended clips from the film, and reveal the passion and persistence that went into making it, in conversation with Eddie Schmidt, IDA’s Board President and himself an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. This will be an honest, irreverent, eye-opening Q&A with a man who believed in a cause so much he independently set forth to spread the word to the public—keeping the true spirit of investigative journalism alive. For Shearer, a longtime New Orleans resident, this time it’s personal.
IDA’S DOC U: Harry Shearer Takes It “Uneasy”: Conversation & Clips From The New Feature Doc The Big Uneasy.Monday, September 20th | 7:30pm at Cinefamily. Buy tickets here.
The 1930s Pathe newsreel offers Depression-era moviegoers a glimpse at what fashion would look like in the future. Most of the women’s fashions are pretty close to how styles did evolve, but with the men’s fashion predictions, they didn’t do so well.
“Oh swish!”
A lovely vintage psych-bossa dream-popper for the waning days of summer, this is evidently The Critters operating under a suitably groovy pseudonym. The layered harmonies are scientifically engineered to accompany the watching of girls as they walk by dressed in their summer clothes until your darkness goes.
Muchas Gracias, Jimi Hey !
While much of America has devoles to become, as William Gibson put it “Devo’s vision made flesh,” Devo’s own Jerry Casale, obviously a man of “wealth and taste” has revealed to Wine Spectator magazine that he’s taking a more sophisticated approach to life here in the Age of Ignorance, the Tea party and Fox News—the kinds of things he and his band mates were predicting back in the mid-70s.
I was at a dinner party that Jerry also attended a few years back, and I recall that the host was extremely impressed with the bottle o’ vino that Jerry brought.
Wine Spectator: How did you learn so much about wine?
Jerry Casale: When we signed with Warner Bros. Records and moved to California [in the late 1970s], a world opened up to me. We hit California not only when there was an explosion in the music scene, but there was a revolution in cuisine. All the restaurateurs were now famous and had cookbooks out and were new and young and were stretching food consciousness. It stretched from Alice Waters, in San Francisco to Bruce Marder, Sam Clark and Michael McCarty. I met them all, and they were Devo fans! I got to eat and drink in their restaurants and ask a lot of questions. I started from zero and learned and learned and learned. Touring completed the picture. In Europe, I was able to visit vineyards. It was a revelation. I was so into it that I taught wine [at the Wine House in Los Angeles].
Wine Spectator: How long did you teach wine classes?
Jerry Casale: It was in the years that Devo were in some kind of suspended animation, when there was no activity—sometime between 1992 and 1995. [The Wine House] was a serious operation: 1,000 feet of retail space, plus a restaurant and a classroom. I wanted people to strip away all the assumptions they’ve made and things they’ve learned that were wrong like sniffing corks [laughs]. Wine represented some kind of hoity-toity frightening thing to them.
Casale hopes to begin developing his own wine within the next couple of years. Below, “Mongoloid” performed in France, 1978.
Devo Frontman Is Whipped by Wine (Wine Spectator)
I don’t smoke pot, but after watching this, I’m seriously considering eating some.
Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath
Sister Janet Mead
“The Lord’s Prayer’ was recorded in 1974 as a B-side to “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” by Sister Janet Mead and became a huge hit, first in Australia and then internationally. It sold over 3 million copies.
The whole song is pretty cool, but the first 15 seconds is sublime. The bass and drum riff, distorted phased guitar and tambourines meld into a classic slice of vintage sounding sixties psychedelia. This nun rocks!
Describing her success as “a horrible time” in her life that shook the foundations of her faith, Sister Mead managed to overcome her dark night of the soul and continues to record and perform to this day.
This video is from Australian TV show Rage and it features some documentary footage of Sister Mead between gigs.
The Singing Nun
Jeanine Deckers (17 October 1933(1933-10-17) – 29 March 1985), known in English as The Singing Nun, was a Belgian nun, and a member (as Sister Luc Gabriel) of the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Belgium. She became internationally famous in 1963 as Sœur Sourire (Sister Smile) when she scored a hit with the song “Dominique”. Although she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of some of the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine and eventually became an advocate of birth control. She also agreed with John Lennon’s statements about Jesus in 1966. In 1967, she recorded a song entitled “Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill” — a paean to contraception — under the name Luc Dominique. It was a commercial failure
In a last ditch bid to regain some commercial success, Deckers, once again billing herself as The Singing Nun, released a disco version of ‘Dominique”. It bombed. Her poorly managed financial world was in shambles. She was broke and deeply in debt. In 1985 she and her longtime companion, Anna Pecher, checked out with a combination of booze and alcohol. Where was God when she needed it most?
In her suicide note, Jeanine wrote:
“Am I a failure? I try to stay honest with myself. To look for the truth, and try to question everything in my life…
Ten years ago I would have said I was a loser.
Now I don’t think in terms of losing or winning…
Life is a continuum. You’re constantly on your way. One day I feel good, the next I feel bad. Altogether it’s bearable.
Would I do it all over again? That’s not a good question. You can’t.
You can’t do it all over again. Voila”
Watch a trailer for a new film that purports to tell the true tale of The Singing Nun after the jump…
This is exactly what the title says. From the movie Female Ninjas: The Magic Chronicles released in 1993.
Good night.
(via TDW)
The West is in a hell of a mess, facing the worst unemployment crisis in nearly 80 years. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is warning America and Europe that they risk “an explosion of social unrest.” Well, duh! From the Telegraph:
“The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment,” said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s chief, at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation (ILO).
He said a double-dip recession remains unlikely but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis. He called it a grave error to think the West was safe again after teetering so close to the abyss last year. “We are not safe,” he said.
A joint IMF-ILO report said 30m jobs had been lost since the crisis, three quarters in richer economies. Global unemployment has reached 210m. “The Great Recession has left gaping wounds. High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies,” it said.
The study cited evidence that victims of recession in their early twenties suffer lifetime damage and lose faith in public institutions. A new twist is an apparent decline in the “employment intensity of growth” as rebounding output requires fewer extra workers. As such, it may be hard to re-absorb those laid off even if recovery gathers pace. The world must create 45m jobs a year for the next decade just to tread water.
Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time.
“Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression,” he said.
IMF fears ‘social explosion’ from world jobs crisis (Telegraph)
This Friday, September 17th, John Schienfeld’s terrific new documentary, Who is Harry Nilsson? (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5 for week (and maybe longer). The reviews have been stellar—and in my opinion, justly deserved—for this heartfelt and moving tribute to the great singer-songwriter.
With Brian Wilson, Jimmy Webb, Van Dyke Parks, Yoko Ono, Paul Williams, Mickey Dolenz, The Smothers Brothers, and Pythons Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle,
Above, a BBC In Concert appearance from from Harry Nilsson. Nilsson famously hated performing live and on television, but this 30 minute performance is remarkable, indeed. More from the For the Love of Harry blog:
Harry Nilsson’s finest hour on film. Taped for England’s BBC in 1971, this simple and effective set of performances has everything one could ask for when seeing the rarely seen Nilsson live - solo piano & acoustic renditions, tasteful effects, plenty of close ups, unreleased music and even live overdubbing (both audio & video). Special thanks to our friend Patrick from Germany who supplied us with this excellent - now complete - 34 minute video. This live studio performance finds Harry delivering slower, more moving renditions of some of his best work up to 1971. His somber reading of “Life Line” is simply heartbreaking. Harry performs as a live trio with himself on “Walk Right Back” and “Coconut,” where he uses lip syncing gorillas for visuals. The Citizen Kane rafters clip ending is priceless. Harry introduces two videos from The Point! (“Think About Your Troubles” and “Are You Sleeping”). There just isn’t a better, more visually pleasing representation of Harry Nilsson at work. Download the .avi video file HERE. If you want MP3s of the show (minus the two Point! audio/video files), you can get them HERE.
Songs: Mr. Richland’s Favorite Song/One, Gotta Get Up, Walk Right Back/Cathy’s Clown/Let The Good Times Roll. Life Line; Joy, Without Her. Coconut. 1941
You can watch my interview with director John Schienfeld, here.
I’ve always hated “Sweet Home Alabama”, so this extraordinarily weird video pleases me to no end.
Update: “Motorcycle Bill”. More wacky goodness from the double wide Diva.
