Among all the pictures of burning cars, buses, warehouses and shops coming from the UK’s capital right now, here’s something from the other end of the spectrum - a great image from Operation Clapham Clean Up (#riotcleanup) proving that Londoners can come together to do something other than destroy.

Via Lawcol888 on YFrog.

 
Respected journalist and broadcaster, Andrew Neil posted an interesting tweet regarding comments made by the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.

Neil points out that last year, Liberal-Democrat Clegg warned of riots if the Conservatives were elected, and wonders if Clegg “ever thought he’d be in government with them when they happened?”
 

 
With thanks to Andrew Neil
 

 
Sad news for fans of independent and alternative music - among the worst hit in last night’s large scale rioting in London were the very popular independent distributor PIAS (né Play It Again Sam) who look to have lost all their stock when the Sony warehouse in Enfield was burnt down. If you are a fan or collector of independent music you probably have a couple of releases brought to you by the company already - they distribute labels like Mute, Rough Trade, One Little Indian, Warp, Ninja Tune, Kompakt, Domino, FatCat, Soul Jazz, Rock Action, Chemikal Undergroud, and lots lots more. It’s estimated that PIAS handle around 30% of independent music in Europe.

PIAS have issued this statement via their website:

There was a fire last night at the SonyDADC warehouse which services the physical distribution for [PIAS] in the UK and Ireland. [PIAS] is working closely with SonyDADC who are implementing their emergency plans. [PIAS]‘s UK offices in London and all other areas of our business are unaffected.
More information will be communicated shortly to all our labels and partners.

A campaign has already begun to help the company, with suggestions that records or downloads from PIAS distributed labels be bought today in solidarity. A Paypal account is also being set up by Twitter user fionchadd (hashtag #labellove) for people to donate money through, which will be distributed among the labels affected by the loss of stock.

Via Drowned in Sound

 
Terry Gilliam shows us the tricks of his trade on British TV’s Bob Godfrey’s Do-It-Yourself Animation Show in 1974.

Godfrey’s show, which made animation accessible to the masses by taking the mystery out of the production process, was vastly influential and inspired an entire generation of kids in England, including Nick Park, who created Wallace & Gromit, Jan Pinkava, who directed the Pixar short Geri’s Game, and Richard Bazley, an animator on Pocahontas, Hercules, and The Iron Giant.

After viewing this wonderful Gilliam video, jump to the next page for a documentary on the marvelous Bob Godfrey.
 

 
BBC documentary on Bob Godfrey after the jump…

 
The above photograph has been making its way around the world tonight via Twitter. As several people have pointed out, it kinda looks like a Pink Floyd album cover.

 
Who’s this fresh-faced New Waver with the asymmetric poodle hairdo? (Hint: It’s not one of the Thompson Twins).

Nope, it’s future Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor back in the early 1980s playing and singing a cover of Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face” with his Cleveland, OH band-mates in “The Urge.”

Both astonishing and completely ridiculous.
 

 
More baby-faced New Waver Trent Reznor after the jump!

Thank you kindly Michael Backes!

 
For your listening and viewing pleasure, a mix of psychedelic tunes from France, India, Britain, Indonesia and The United States.

The mix concludes with two songs from one of my all-time favorite albums, “No Other” by Gene Clark. It’s a masterpiece that has been unheard by far too many people. I hope Clark’s songs included here will be a compelling introduction to those of you who haven’t heard the album and will seek it out. It’s really quite brilliant.

The visuals are comprised of excerpts from global experimental film makers, both contemporary and pioneers of early 20th century movie magic, including Larry Jordan, Jonas Mekas, Toshio Matsumoto, Segundo de Chomón and Maurice Lemaitre.

Songs:

“Aere Perennius” - Docdail
“Karye Pyar” - Nahid Akhtar
“Somebody’s Calling My Name” - Baby Grandmothers
“Don’t Let It Get You Down” - Shadrack Chameleon
“Pemain Bola” - Rasela
“Child Of Nature” - The Beatles
“Love’s The Thing” - Smoke Rings
“Didunia Yang Laing” - Ariesta Birawa Group
“Forge Your Own Chains” - D.R. Hooker
“Milkman” - Ema
“Written On The Forehead”- PJ Harvey
“That Shocking Day” - Ivo’s Group
“Who Can I Say You Are” - Morley Grey
“Heavy Head” - Little Sammy Gaha
“Strength Of Strings” - Gene Clark
“No Other”- Gene Clark
 

 
An appropriate tribute to the late singer by the always fabulous Mr. Jason Mecier.

See more of Jason’s pill portraits here.

 
This lovely silk scarf from designer Rick Owens is from his summer 2011 collection.

“The scarf represents Rick’s dark ideology and sense of imagination, using a mixture of fine silk and hard-hitting, emotive imagery.”

Interested? You can buy one now while they’re on sale for a couple hundred bucks at Oki-ni.
 
Via Constant Siege.

 
Via Comics Alliance:

Just what the headline says, people. Grant Morrison performed this song during a recent event at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles, thanks to the urging of My Chemical Romance frontman (and Umbrella Academy writer) Gerard Way. As Way explained, Morrison was given this song by the spirit of John Lennon, which Morrison communed with in a magic ritual while writing The Invisibles.

I think it says a lot about the wonderfully enigmatic Grant Morrison that the only reason this surprised me at all was that I didn’t know he played guitar. It actually sounds a great deal like a Beatles song…

Recorded at “An Evening with Grant Morrison” at Meltdown Comics in LA on 7/28/11. I’ve had two private performances of this tune, it’s quite something! Enjoy!
 

 
OK, so this is getting serious - very serious. The riots in London have now spread across an area roughly 40km by 30km. To see the actual Google map page, click here.

Thanks to Paul Shetler.

UPDATE: 5:06 PM PST

Scrap that - the rioting has now spread beyond the confines of the city, past the N406 ring road and into suburbs like Ealing, Romford and Croydon. And that’s not to mention riots breaking out in Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds. Keep looking at the Google Map for updates (zoom out if you want to see the chaos spreading around the country). This is going to be one interesting night…

 
Torn Lives is a new photo-blog “that collects torn pictures along with something reflecting back on the missing parts.” 

I have a few of these torn-type photos in my own collection. My grandmother used to cut her own face out of family photos because she hated her nose. 
 

 
Thanks, Lea!

 
Here is a rare and rather wonderful piece of Kenneth Williams’ archive: his brilliant interpretation of Nikolai Gogol’s farcical short story Diary of a Madman .

In 1963, Kenneth Williams agreed to narrate an animated version of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman for film-maker Richard Williams. The pair had previously worked together on the short cartoon Love Me Love Me. According to the splendid biography Born Brilliant: The Life of Kenneth Williams by Christopher Stevens:

Gogol’s story gave lunatic scope to [Kenneth] Williams’s voices. It told of a lonely clerk, who is driven out of his wits by unrequited love until he succumbs to delusions that, as the uncrowned king of Spain, he is spied upon by talking dogs.

In a recording session that stretched for more than six hours without a break, Williams read from the clerk’s diary in a halting voice, like a man on a window-ledge who cannot will himself to suicide. Other personalities pierced the reading - the sadism of the office supervisor, the contempt of the boss’s daughter, the shrill proclamations of King Ferdinand VIII. ‘I was pretty hard on him, and made him read passages again and again to get the right effect. It freaked him out,’ Richard Williams recalled. ‘At one point he walked out of the studio and I had to run after him. It was a block and a half before I caught up and persuaded him to come back.’ Full of repetition and bitter nonsense, the piece is almost nauseating as the clerk slops and flounders towards insanity. While no recordings exist of Williams in his most unsettling stage roles, Diary of a Madman is proof of his merciless gift for sustained, upsetting performance.

Sadly the animation was never completed, but this incredible recording was later re-edited by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 in 1991.

Dramatization by James Burke
Music by Peter Shade
Directed by Richard Williams
Produced by Ned Chaillet
Re-mixed for radio by John Whitehall
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kenneth Williams: Stop Messin’ About

 
Bonus - Kenneth Williams reads a classic ‘Just William’ tale, after the jump…
 

 
The Your Name Here Story produced by the Calvin Company in 1960, longtime makers of “industrial films,” is the ultimate generic 16mm industrial film, built around every script and visual cliche in the Calvin arsenal. It’s wonderfully droll commentary on the process of making industrial films and of working with “budget conscious” (read “cheap”) clients. The Calvin Company made hundreds of industrial films from the 1930s until the early 1980s when they closed after more than four decades. Famed director Robert Altman got his start as a Calvin Company director in the 1950s.

The by-now legendary satire, The Your Name Here Story was apparently made for a yearly company workshop seminar to humorously instruct new employees on Calvin production tropes and poke fun at what they were doing. Read more about the Calvin Company at Archive.org.
 

 
Thank you Taylor Jessen of beautiful downtown Burbank!