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The Happy Dragon-Band: Potent, art-damaged LP powered by a Detroit wizard, 1978
04.20.2023
06:00 am
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Cover
 
In 1978, a wonderfully weird album was released under the name the Happy Dragon-Band. The Detroit outfit wasn’t really a band, but a project steered by a local wizard. The Happy Dragon-Band is an astonishing, art-damaged LP that’s languished in obscurity for decades—but it has returned.

The man behind the project is one Tommy Court—the “Happy Dragon” in the Happy Dragon-Band. Court is a musician, songwriter, and engineer, who built a recording studio on the third floor of Fiddlers Music, a Detroit music store that would become a major hub of activity in the 1970s.
 
Tommy Court 1
Tommy Court behind the board at Fiddlers.

“Tommy recorded everybody you can possibly think of in the Detroit music scene,” renowned drummer Johnny “Bee” Badanjek recently told me. Badanjek is best known for keeping the beat in Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, and the Rockets, but he’s also done tons of session work for other artists, and plays on the Happy Dragon-Band album. Badanjek also said of Court: “He’s like a science guy, when it comes to recording and using all his keyboards and drum machines.”

When he wasn’t assisting others, Court was writing his own material and experimenting with guitars and synthesizers at Fiddlers. He tried to get a band together to perform his unconventional songs, but the results were too vanilla. So, Court ended up playing many of the instruments himself on the Happy Dragon-Band LP, bringing in top players like Badanjek to round out the recordings. 
 
Tommy Court 2
 
The Happy Dragon-Band was released on Fiddlers Music’s own imprint. Limited to just 200 copies, the album didn’t have any distribution to speak of, though it was sold by the Detroit-area record chain, Harmony House (yours truly worked at store #16 in the early ‘90s). The LP received some local and national radio spins, before quietly vanishing. The record has since become sought-after by those who love strange and sensational albums—like you, presumably. It’s been bootlegged (a kind of backhanded compliment for Court), while an original copy could set you back hundreds of dollars, these days.
 
Side 1 label
 
On the Happy Dragon-Band’s album you’ll hear spacey prog rock, psychedelic disco, electro rock, and demented reggae, conveyed with heavy synthesizers, stabbing guitars, and off-kilter percussion. There are a couple of acoustic-based numbers that conjure up loner acid folk and an alternate reality singer/songwriter. One instrumental sounds like the soundtrack to an imaginary horror movie, while on another, lonely synth bombs boil into a bubbling cauldron of sound.

“A Long Time” is a good entry point for The Happy Dragon-Band. The track comes across as an evil blend of Krautrock and Blue Öyster Cult.
 

 
On Saturday, April 22nd—Record Store Day—the Happy Dragon-Band’s amazing, sole LP, will be re-released by Org Music. This marks the first time the record has been legitimately reissued, with Tommy Court’s full involvement, and widely distributed. Pressed on yellow vinyl, it’s limited to 1,000 copies, and features two previously unreleased cuts.
 
Happy Dragon
 
Here’s the original album:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Stellar unreleased music from Michael Rother of krautrock greats Harmonia and NEU! (a DM premiere)
‘Necropolis’: Bob Bell’s heavy duty, mind-blowing prog rock/free jazz cult album returns!
Dig the explosive heavy metal found on White Boy and the Average Rat Band’s obscure LP

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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04.20.2023
06:00 am
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Noise music is for the children: The Shoreditch Experimental Music School, 1969


 
My education in experimental music came in my college years. Between volunteering at the campus radio station and living in a cheap apartment building in a neighborhood that had historically been a freak magnet, I hooked up with a cadre of students from a nearby music school who were into the weird stuff, and were cool enough not just to clue me in on 20th Century classical, the New York School, atonality, musique concrète, et al, they even invited me to make music with them. Over the course of two or three years, we filled up a metric shitload of blank tape and killed a lot of innocent cannabis plants, and it was all time very, very well spent. But seeing this BBC documentary on a late ‘60s experimental music program in the schools of Shoreditch, London, UK, made me wish I’d been from a time and place where I could have had many of those experiences (likely minus the cannabis, or maybe not) in elementary school.

The doc puts student works on display, starting with a piece exploring “heat, radiation, relentlessness, intensity, stillness,” with instructor Brian Dennis (the man who literally wrote the book on Experimental Music in Schools), who then gives a conducting demonstration, and a demonstration of tape effects. There’s a lengthy, edifying, truly wonderful visit to a class of very young children learning the creative use of tape recorders, and a science fiction story by one of the students, scored with music and sound effects made by his classmates. Then we’re treated to a lively and cacophonous student composition, scored with an invented notation. The program concludes with a genuinely creepy piece of drama, written, scored and acted by the students, wouldn’t you know it, about a cholera epidemic.
 

 
The sophistication on display here, even from some of the much younger students, makes me weep for the ultrashitty way US public schools treat arts education. (While athletics, naturally, are the inalienable milieu of young gods…) To keep myself from indulging in a rant about this—and I’d say nothing that hasn’t been said better by others, really—I transcribed my two favorite quotations from teachers in the program. There IS great educational value in difficult music, to wit:

“The children in this school have a great variety of creative experiences, musically, and we do try to make sure that the music is part of activity. All children are very interested in tape recorders, televisions, radios, in fact that is nearer their experience than are a great many nursery rhymes. Creative tape recording teaches them self-discipline, because they soon realize that if they talk at the wrong time it spoils somebody else’s work.”

“The children do have bizarre noise-making sessions as play, but I think this is quite a valuable experience. They soon learn that once they get used to the sounds, they need some other form of organization if they’re going to get more enjoyment. So naturally they progress to electing a leader or conductor, and they find there’s some need for notation of a sort, so they invent one, and they’ve progressed then from play to composition without actually being taught.”

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Langley Schools Music Project: children’s choruses sing Beach Boys, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac
 
With thanks to WFMU on Twitter

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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02.24.2015
09:08 am
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‘People Who Do Noise’: a noise music documentary

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Modified Casio keyboard by Tablebeast
 
Noise may not be to everyone’s taste (in fact by definition noise is classed as “unwanted” sounds) but to the hardcore few it’s a way of life. This documentary follows some of those artists and shows them performing live, often on homemade or radically modified kit, and talking about the philosophy and influences behind their work. You won’t have heard of many of these performers but that’s the point - they are not in it for fame or money, they are simply following their muse in as unhindered a way as possible.

Most of the artists featured in People Who Do Noise are based in Portland, Oregon, and here’s a bit more info via the site filmbaby:

The film takes a very personal approach, capturing the musicians working alone with no interference from a live audience. What often took place in crowded basements or dark smoky venues was stripped bare for the cameras, providing an unprecedented glimpse of the many different instruments and methods used.

Covering a wide range of artists and styles, the film features everything from the absurdist free-improvisations of genre-pioneers Smegma, to the harsh-noise assaults of Oscillating Innards and everything in between. Many of the artists in the film, such as Yellow Swans and Daniel Menche, have performed and sold records all over the world. In spite of such successes, noise music remains one of the least understood and most inaccessible of genres.

OK, so most of this is pushing at the very boundaries of what we call “music”, but that’s pretty much the point. Casual observers (and listeners) may not make it very far into this doc because of, well, the noise, but it’s worth resisting the urge to skip forward as you may miss some very interesting interview footage. While some of these performers come across as pretentious, regardless of what you think of the sounds they create you can’t help but admire their freedom and lack of constraints:
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.28.2011
06:06 am
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‘Russia’s Full of Queers’: free benefit album highlighting Russia’s new anti-LGBT laws

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Compiled by friend of Dangerous Minds Elizabeth Veldon, and available as a free download from the net label Black Circle, Russia’s Full of Queers is a 29 track album designed to highlight the abuse of LGBT people’s rights currently being passed as law in several Russian cities. Elizabeth says:

This album is a response to proposed laws in Russia that would outlaw any discussion of homosexuality, bisexuality or transgenderism.

The artists involved gave their tracks free and in many cases produced work to a tight (24 hour) schedule.

There is a wide variety of styles here from Harsh Noise through weird Jazz Cut-Ups to Hip Hop and Ambient.

We only ask that you sign the online petition against these laws and pass the word on.

Alone our voices are tiny, when raised together we can change the world.

 
You can sign the petition here, and you can download Russia’s Full Of Queers here.
 

 
Previously on DM:
Petition to stop Russian authorities passing “draconian” anti-gay bill

 

‘The Art Of Sounds’ - terrific documentary on the French composer Pierre Henry

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Some more vintage electronic French pop to round out the week on Dangerous Minds. Some folk may not know the name Pierre Henry, but they definitely know his music - well they would know his music, were it not for the fact that what they are hearing isn’t actually him. I’m talking of course about the Futurama theme tune, and how it is a blatant rip-off of Henry’s classic ‘Psyche Rock’ from 1967 (more specifically, the Fatboy Slim remix).

Now, don’t get me wrong I love Futurame, but it’s to Matt Groening’s eternal shame that he did not just stump up whatever cash was required to purchase the original track. What we now have in its place every week is a lame facsimile, that some people even confuse with the original track. Oh well. That’s entertainment!

Regardless, The Art of Sound is an excellent French (subtitled) documentary directed by Eric Darmon and Franck Mallet from 2006 that follows Pierre Henry as he collects unique sounds for his compositions, sets up an even more unique live concert in his house, and generally looks back over a career in music that spans over fifty years. It’s intimate and revealing, and its central figure comes across as quite the character.

No, scrub that - Pierre Henry is the shit. He went from being a pioneer of musique concrete with Pierre Schaeffer in the 1950s to creating psychedelic sound-and-light shows in 1960s Paris that could match anything dreamt up by Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. He composed music for abstract ballets that still sounds genuinely psychedelic and like nothing else today. He may come across as crabby and extremely eccentric in this film, but I still hope I end up as cool as this guy if I get to be his age. I mean, you have to be pretty awesome to attract a steady fanbase to abstract electronic recital shows in your own bloody house, right?
 

 
BONUS!
More psyche-pop magic, this time with Henry & Colombier’s “Teen Tonic” (1967) set to footage of the 1960s German TV fashion Show Paris Aktuel by YouTube uploader Cosmocorps2000:

Pierre Henry & Michel Colombier “Teen Tonic”
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.19.2011
09:14 pm
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X-TG carry on

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The question of whether or not Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has quit Throbbing Gristle remains not fully answered. Despite Thee Deevelopment, TGers Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have gone on to fulfill their early-November live TG obligations in Italy and Portugal as X-TG. The group has uploaded some media from those shows on their new site.

P-Orridge’s ambivalent statement on the matter was offset by “Unkle Sleazy’s” take, and there’s likely debate as to how much value a P-Orridge-less TG holds. I’d think the excerpts below from the two shows speak for themselves.
 

  X-TG ‘XPad’ Live at Porto Casa Musica by Industrial Records
 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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11.14.2010
07:49 pm
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