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Sean Bonniwell of The Music Machine R.I.P.
12.29.2011
04:11 pm
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Sean Bonniwell lead singer and songwriter for The Music Machine has died of lung cancer at 71.

Dressed all in black, with each member wearing one black glove, The Music Machine appeared like dark lords against the backdrop of the day-glow Sixties. And in songs like their big hit “Talk Talk” their sound was hard-edged, oozing a punk attitude, that would later influence groups like The Ramones and The Dictators.

Sean Bonniwell’s career with The Music Machine only lasted two years. He later formed a group called The Bonniwell Music Machine before selling the name to his record company to be released from his contract. A solo album followed in 1969 before he retired from the music scene for good. He briefly returned to recording in 2006 when he laid down some tracks with L.A. neo-garage band The Larksmen.

For a band that only released one album and had just a couple of hits, The Music Machine left an indelible mark on rock music and it is Bonniwell’s intense presence and tough guy baritone that I’ll most remember.

Here’s the situation
And how it really stands
I’m out of circulation
I’ve all but washed my hands
My social life’s a dud
My name is really mud
I’m up to here in lies
Guess I’m down to size
To size

Bonniwell may be out of circulation but he’ll never be down to size.
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.29.2011
04:11 pm
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The sustaining power of rock and roll: A compendium of rarely seen music vids


 
Revolution is in the air and we’re all feeling the first rumblings of what may become a long hard winter of discontent. Destiny is kneeling at the hem of absolute reality altering the 13 inch pegged pants that Jesus wore to Elvis’s and Priscilla’s wedding. Gene Vincent’s blue suede shoes have turned a whiter shade of pale and Lou Reed is breaching the tight tangle of his own decadent and decaying bunghole only to discover there’s little velvet left in his underground. At the outer rim of what we have come to accept as the entirety of our little world there’s a fluttering of moth-like wings which, to everyone’s surprise, is the hypnogogic light show palpitating on the moist pink plasma of our eyelids. As we lay dumbstruck on a bed of lavender-scented panty shields, a large shadowy figure hovers above us: the ghost of Canned Heat’s Bob “The Bear” Hite in coitus with a giant rubber replica of Timothy Leary’s pineal gland. Our silent awe is violently interrupted by the lower intestinal flubbering of Mr. Kurt Cobain sucking the last sustaining droplets of Lil Wayne’s bottle of drank while Thom Yorke, wearing a thong made of Gypsy foreskins, cowers in a dark, dank, moldering corner cluttered with the remains of Bob Guccione, Miles Davis and Stiv Bators. As a thousand angels weep, Pete Townshend fumbles for his eyeglasses, slaps them to the bridge of his nose, and places his long calloused fingers upon his computer’s monitor screen where an image of a young Bob Dylan in flannel pajamas sullenly strokes the head of a tattered Teddy bear.

At times like these I always turn to music to recharge the cells that fire the cylinders of change, renewal and transformation. Rock and roll is the soundtrack of my life, perhaps it’s your’s as well.

Here’s a fistful of musical dynamite to detonate within the circle that encloses our dreams, hopes and desires. Let the walls dissolve as our flesh extends into eternity like infinite tendrils of meat, sweat and cum.

Squares, you’ve been warned. Stand clear, run for your lives, or loosen your belts and join the party.

Rarely seen videos from The Music Machine, Baris Manco, Steppenwolf, Fleetwood Mac (with Peter Green), Frumpy, MC5 and Iggy Pop.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.03.2011
02:41 am
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