Experimental film and video pioneer Jud Yalkut made Turn! Turn! Turn! in 1966 with input from his frequent collaborator Nam June Paik.

In addition to Paik, Yalkut credits various sources and artists for the imagery in the film:

“cybernated light-refracting sculptures (Nicholas Schoffer), moving reflected ‘lumia’ light (Julio LeParc), electronically controlled and strobed light (USCO), and the ‘pure’ electronic light which the cathode ray tube emits (Nam June Paik).”

Turn! Turn! Turn! was created at a time in which film makers believed that cinema had the power to raise consciousness or to be a part of, in Yalkut’s’s words, a “spiritual transformation.” His vision resonated with the psychedelic culture of the moment and his films made the rounds of be-ins’ concerts and happenings. The alchemical power of his work is still pretty mindblowing.
 

Count the clowns in this picture. Hint: They’re all wearing suits and ties.

During last night’s epic Rachel Maddow piece about the Republican party’s mind-boggling real-time implosion, she described the GOP as a dog being wagged by the tail of the conservative movement and pondered why some of the movement’s most powerful pols, like Jim Demint, are picking up their toys and leaving Congress:

“[A] huge internal fight including screaming matches in their own caucus… they’re just turning off the light and abandoning what they’re doing and nobody really knows why.”

Obama has all the leverage now. If he can’t manage to negotiate a modest tax increase for the wealthy without limiting future cost of living increases for poor and middle class Social Security recipients, he’ll have proven himself to be one of the worst—if not THE worst—presidential negotiators of all time. He’s already offered up more than he had to (WHY?) and also demonstrated that his promises made during the campaign were nothing but bullshit.

Frankly, I never thought Obama was offering lefties all that much to begin with—he just wasn’t named Mitt Romney—but these guys are pathetic, why bargain with them at all? Now’s the time to shove it up their asses, if for no other reason, just on principle.
 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
Earlier this year, Lester Chambers posted a photo on his Facebook page that went viral. It showed the septuagenarian singer holding up a statement that explained how the record business had ripped him off for 5 decades:

I AM the former Lead Singer of a 60’s BAND. I performed before thousands at Atlanta Pop 2, Miami Pop, Newport Pop, Atlantic Pop. I did NOT squander my money on drugs or a fancy home. I went from 1967-1994 before I saw my first Royalty Check.

The Music Giants I recorded with only paid me for 7 of my Albums.

I have NEVER seen a penny in Royalties from my other 10 Albums I recorded. Our Hit Song was licensed to over 100 Films, T.V. & Commercials WITHOUT our permission. One Major TV Network used our song for a national Commercial and my payment was $625. dollars. I am now 72, trying to live on $1200 a month. Sweet Relief, a music charity is taking donations for me.

Only the 1% of Artist can afford to sue.

I AM THE 99%

Like nearly everyone else I was moved by Lester’s plight and posted his picture on Dangerous Minds. Co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian was also moved by Lester’s photo, but he was inspired to do something even more positive about it - to help Lester record a new album.

Alexis contacted Dangerous Minds and explained how he ‘wanted to reach out to tell you about a new project we’ve been working on together.’ I wrote back, asking for more information, and Alexis kindly obliged.
 

 
Paul Gallagher: When and how did you first hear about Lester Chambers’ problems?

Alexis Ohanian: I heard about it when that photo he posted made the #1 spot of r/Music.

Paul Gallagher: What did this inspire you to do? Why?

Alexis Ohanian: At the time, not much. We were planning and running other campaigns for breadpig like this one for the novel Trial of the Clone as well as keeping up the heat on DC to fight for internet freedom, which included an awesome bus tour across the heartland. Things calmed down a bit this fall and we reassessed our ‘wishlist’ and tried reaching out to Lester. I want to make the world suck less and I’ve tried to help promote all the awesome people (like Lester) who are doing the inspirational work the internet is so perfect for sharing. It’s one thing to talk about how important internet freedom is to all Americans, it’s another thing to actually show it. He’d been robbed and I thought there was a chance the internet public could make it right.

Paul Gallagher: What happened?

Alexis Ohanian: Kat (who works with me) and I reached out and we were on a conference call with Lester and his son within a day or two. They were incredibly hospitable and opened their home and lives to me and my video crew for a day of shooting with only the promise that we’d do our best to help them make a successful kickstarter.

Paul Gallagher: How important has the internet been in all of this? Why?

Alexis Ohanian: Extremely. The internet is an incredible network that cuts out the middle man by connecting supply with demand—in this case, artists with their fans. In the worst cases, these middlemen, the record labels, have abused artists like Lester, but this new technology is forcing labels (and there are good ones!) to work for their artists and settle for a much smaller (more reasonable) percentage since artists have more and more options every day to find an audience. Look at the hundreds of musicians on kickstarter alone who get funded for rather esoteric albums that never would’ve gotten in the door of a traditional record label. For instance, I love living in a world where a Daft Punk tribute via New Orleans brass band gets $20,000 to make their art. That only happens in a world with the open internet.

Paul Gallagher: What’s happening with Lester now? What’s your involvement?

Alexis Ohanian: We just released his two Christmas tracks (early!) to all of his backers and he and his son are getting things in order to go into the studio to record this album! I’m just helping drive awareness while the kickstarter campaign is still running. This is all Lester—at last, he’ll have an album that’s all his.

Paul Gallagher: What can we do?

Alexis Ohanian: If you can afford to, contributing to his campaign is the best thing you can do for Lester, but even if you can’t, you have power in your network—please spread the word! Every upvote, tweet, and like counts.

For more information on ‘Lester’s Time Has Come Today by Lester Chambers and Alexis Ohanian’ check here.

Check here for Lester’s Facebook page and here for Alexis Ohanian’s website.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

The Legendary Lester Chambers and the Reality of the Music Business for the 99%
 

 
This is fascinating, an extended interview with Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung conducted by the BBC’s John Freeman in October of 1959, when Jung was 84-years-old. The format of this program, Face to Face, is fascinating, almost like an interrogation. The camera zooms in on the subject and they rarely cut away.

Face to Face was the first program on British television to unmask public figures and show what lies beneath the surface. Harsh lighting and close-up camera angles were employed to capture each flicker of emotion, a method critics referred to as “torture by television.” Among those who submitted to Freeman’s remorseless scrutiny were Evelyn Waugh, Henry Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Carl Gustav Jung.

When Carl Jung consented to be interviewed, the medical community was surprised that this very private figure was suddenly willing to allow an interviewer into his personal space. When the program was first aired in 1959, Jung himself was taken aback at the unexpectedly positive response from the general public. This strong interest in his work inspired Jung to write his final work, Man and His Symbols, his theory of the symbolism of dreams, explained in lay terms so as to be accessible to all who would come seeking answers.

 
Thank you Jesse Merlin!

 
Can the Osmonds ever really be considered truly rad? Is there a point, historically speaking, when the twee songs of the Bros Osmond flip over into “good” bad musical territory? Good question (even if I do pose it myself!).

Many people—-most, probably—would argue “no” that it’s not possible for the Osmonds to be truly rad, no matter what I might think—they were a freakin’ Mormon rock band comprised of biological brothers to begin with, two bigger strikes would be hard to think of—but have these close-minded naysayers ever seen the Osmonds dressed like pimps straight off the Parliment-Funkadelic Mothership performing “Crazy Horses” and driving the crowd absolutely wild?

Feast your eyes on this clip of the Osmonds, in outfits that would cause Huggy Bear to blush, on German television in 1972 doing their classic almost heavy metal single, “Crazy Horses.” Admittedly this song is an anomaly in their repertoire, but tell me this tune ain’t rad! It’s as rad as fuck and you know it is.

Imagine if Run DMC had sampled this song instead of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and all of a sudden, The Osmonds would have been hip. It could’ve happened. And in a least one alternate universe, it probably did…
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Armageddon rock: The very metal sound of The Osmonds

Spacerock druids Lumerians performing lysergic Osmonds’ cover

 
Sassy Lou Reed interview shot during the Sally Can’t Dance/Rock & Roll Animal phase in Australia, 1974.

Reed is clearly having fun toying with the reporters on the topics of drugs (he’s all for them), transvestism (sometimes) and what he spends his money on (drugs).
 

 
Here’s a new and very Dangerous Minds-sympatico psychedelic mix originally made for the 716 music blog by my good old friend and maker of literally hundreds of records, Mr. Kenneth James Gibson.
 
716 Exclusive Mix - Kenneth James Gibson : One Drunken Sailor’s Curse From Deep Psychosis Introducing Past Levels Of Musical Existence vol.2
 
01) Intro….The In Sound
02) Ennio Morricone _ La Banola - Morricone High
03) Faine Jade - Stand Together - Introspection
04) Tangerine Dream - Sequent C - Phaedra
05) Roland Vincent -  L.S.D. Partie - Orchestral Party Act 1
06) 39 Clocks - 39 Explosion Heats - Pain It Dark
07) Joe Meek - Track 27 - Meeky Meeky Random Flakes Vol 2
08) Jerry Garcia - Eep Hour - Garcia
09) Eroc - Abendfieden - Eroc 1
10) Adelbert von Deyen - Silverrain - Atmosphere
11) David Wiffen - Coast To Coast Fever - Coast To Coast fever
12) Popol Vuh - Dream Part 4 - Affenstunde
13) Madrigal - Tambula - Madrigal
14) Jim Sullivan - U.F.O. - U.F.O.
15) Sandy Bull - Last Date - Demolition Derby
16) Agitation Free - You Play For Us Today - Malesch
17) Aphrodite’s Child - Aegian Sea - 666
18) Black Cat Bones - Four Women - Barbed Wire Sandwich
19) Bobby Jameson - Palo Alto - Working
20) D.R. Hooker - Weather Girl - The Truth
21) Daevid Allen - Song Of Satisfaction - Good Morning
22) Manu Dibango - Ceddo End Title - World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love’s a Real Thing
23) Bernard Parmegiani - Le Temps Remue - Questions De Temps
24) Maxwells - Esther - Maxwell Street
25) Ergo Sum - All’s So Comic - Mexico
26) Limbus 4 - Kundalini - Mandalas
 

 
Writers need stability to nurture their talent and unfetter their imagination. Too much chaos dilutes the talent and diminishes the productivity. Writers like Norman Mailer squandered too much time and effort on making his life the story - when in fact he should have been writing it. J. G. Ballard was well aware of this, and he had the quiet certainty of a 3-bed, des res, with shaded garden and off-street parking at front. Yet, Ballard’s seeming conformity to a middle class idyll appeared to astound so many critics, commentators, journalists, whatevers, who all failed to appreciate a true writer’s life is one of lonely, unrelenting sedentary toil, working at a desk 9-5, or however long - otherwise the imagination can not fly.

That’s why I have always found suburbs far more interesting places than those anonymous urban centers. Cities are about mass events - demonstrations, revolution, massacre, war, shared public experience. Suburbia is about the repressed forces of individual action. It’s where the murders are planned, the orgies enjoyed, the drugs devoured, the imagination inspired. Suburbia is where dysfunction is normalized.

And J. G. Ballard was very aware of this.

Future Now is a documentary interview with J G Ballard, made in 1986 not long after he had achieved international success with his faux-biographical novel Empire of the Sun. Opening with a brief tour of his Shepperton home, Ballard gives an excellent and incisive interview, which only reminds what we have lost.

Simon Sellars and Dan O’Hara have edited together a brilliant collection of interviews and conversations with J G Ballard 1967-2008, in one volume called Extreme Metaphors, which is a must-have for anyone with an interest in Ballard.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Postcards from J. G. Ballard

 
With thanks to Richard!
 

 
Novak’s Kapelle (Erwin Novak, Walla Mauritz, Peter Travnicek and Helge Thor) was an Austrian band that formed in 1967. They released the single “Hypodermic Needle” in 1968 and appeared on Austrian TV show Countdown in this jaw-droppingly cool performance from 1969. There’s some Freudian madness at the end. It’s Vienna after all.

Other than on compilations and expensive collectible vinyl (a 7 inch of “Hypodermic Needle” goes for $400), Novak’s Kapelle’s music is hard to find. Time for a nice CD release I say.
 

The idiot face of the Fox Nation

Randolph Linn, an Indiana man who pleaded guilty to arson charges today in a Federal Court in Ohio, revealed his motives to the judge in a plea bargain for the Sept. 30 incident at a Perrysburg Township mosque. Linn, drunk on 45 beers by his own estimate, poured gasoline on the second floor prayer room of the Greater Toldeo Islamic Center and started a fire. Luckily no one was there. Linn could clearly be identified in security cam footage and was caught swiftly by the FBI after a tip came in from a woman who knew him and was aware of his hatred for Muslims. He was in possession of three guns when he was arrested.

The 52-year-old truck driver claimed that he’d become “riled up” after seeing images of wounded soldiers on television. “Every day you turn on the TV, you see Muslims trying to kill Americans,” said Linn, who settled on the mosque in Toledo that he knew from his truck route.

When a federal judge asked Linn if he thought all Muslims are terrorists, Linn answered: “I’d say most of them are.”

When the judge then asked him if he knew any Muslims or what Islam is, one member of the mosque who was present at Linn’s hearing told WNWO-TV:

“And he said, ‘No, I only know what I hear on Fox News and what I hear on radio.’”

Predictable, but that still doesn’t make it any less sad. At least no one was hurt.

Linn also said:

“Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up. Most Muslims are terrorists and don’t believe in Jesus Christ.”

Linn apparently had second thoughts during the drive home. “Coming back, I thought, `What in the heck did I do?’

He added “I feel bad I did it,” and “It’s a little too late now.” Ya think?

Fox News had this asshole’s head so twisted up that he actually believed in his tiny little mind that he was a good patriotic American performing an heroic act. Fox News whipped up so much hate and rage in this poor buffoon that he literally couldn’t handle it and now he’s going to spend the next two decades rotting in a Federal penitentiary.

This isn’t the first time Fox News has inspired some loser to do something potentially homicidal (‘memba Byron Williams, the obsessed Glenn Beck fan and Oakland freeway shooter? What about good old boy, Kenneth B. Kimbley Jr., another ardent Glenn Beck follower?).

With a guilty plea like Randy Linn’s, well, that ‘s a gift: it’s time for American Muslims to take Fox News to task in some sort of very expensive class action suit. They slander Muslims with impunity, convincing killer dum-dums like Randy Linn that all Muslims are terrorists and providing a forum for folks like that hateful harpie Pamela Geller. We know what motivated this lunatic—he told us—hatred, ignorance and Fox News, not necessarily in that order.