Behold the outstanding new short film from the forthcoming Flying Lotus album Until the Quiet Comes. I suggest watching it full-screen and with the sound turned up LOUD for maximum effect.
I’ve had an advance of Until the Quiet Comes for some time now (I interviewed Flying Lotus for a feature—maybe it’s even the cover story—in the next issue of DAZED) and it’s a real winner. Head music to be sure—FlyLo told me that his ideal listener was someone stoned and listening with headphones after midnight—the shimmering, dreamy, tripped out Until the Quiet Comes is one of the most “futuristic” things I’ve heard all year. The guy has reinvented his own (much imitated) sound and loopy beats in a way that is going to delight fans. Delight and leave them flabbergasted, it’s that good of an album. He’s traveled light-years ahead of, well, even his own Cosmogramma here. His innovative new beats this time out will be a lot harder for everyone else to copy, I’ll tease you with that much.
This gorgeous surrealistic short was directed by Kahlil Joseph and was shot on 35mm film by cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd. Shot at the Nickerson Gardens public housing complex in the Watts section of Los Angeles. You seeing Flying Lotus for just a moment, in the car before the 2-minute mark.
The soundtrack is comprised of “See Thru To U” (featuring Erykah Badu), “Hunger” and “Getting There” (both featuring Niki Randa).
The brouhaha about the idiotic letter that Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. (D) wrote last month to Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti regarding Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo’s outspoken advocacy of a Maryland ballot initiative legalizing gay marriage, inspired Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe to pen his own response to Burns.
In recent months, Brendon has taped a web-only video for the Maryland same-sex marriage campaign, written a Huffington Post editorial in support of marriage equality and offered a pair of tickets to tonight’s season-opening game against the Cincinnati Bengals to raise money for the cause. The backlash against Emmett Burns is largely seen as a “win” for supporters of gay rights.
Here’s a pointed excerpt from Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe’s razor sharp open letter to Burns published on Deadspin. Extra points to Kluwe for use of the term “cockmonster” and for calling Burns a “narcissistic fromunda stain”:
What on earth would possess you to be so mind-boggingly stupid? It baffles me that a man such as yourself, a man who relies on that same First Amendment to pursue your own religious studies without fear of persecution from the state, could somehow justify stifling another person’s right to speech. To call that hypocritical would be to do a disservice to the word. Mindfucking obscenely hypocritical starts to approach it a little bit.
Wait, he’s just getting warmed up:
This is more a personal quibble of mine, but why do you hate freedom? Why do you hate the fact that other people want a chance to live their lives and be happy, even though they may believe in something different than you, or act different than you? How does gay marriage, in any way shape or form, affect your life? If gay marriage becomes legal, are you worried that all of a sudden you’ll start thinking about penis? “Oh shit. Gay marriage just passed. Gotta get me some of that hot dong action!” Will all of your friends suddenly turn gay and refuse to come to your Sunday Ticket grill-outs? (Unlikely, since gay people enjoy watching football too.)
I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?
In closing, I would like to say that I hope this letter, in some small way, causes you to reflect upon the magnitude of the colossal foot in mouth clusterfuck you so brazenly unleashed on a man whose only crime was speaking out for something he believed in. Best of luck in the next election; I’m fairly certain you might need it.
Kluwe signs off by telling Burns:
P.S. I’ve also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your “I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing” and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole.
Brendon Ayanbadejo says he plans to continue supporting same-sex marriage and has offered to assist Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley with more fundraising for the issue. Ten of his fellow players on the Ravens have offered their support. He says the change in attitude within the NFL (other players used to joke that Ayanbadejo was gay, but he’s married with two kids) “has happened faster than I ever thought it would happen.”
This morning, Emmett Burns appeared to take a step back from the near universal condemnation his letter has generated, according to The Baltimore Sun:
“Upon reflection, he has his First Amendment rights,” Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Baltimore County Democrat, said in a telephone interview. “And I have my First Amendment rights. … Each of us has the right to speak our opinions. The football player and I have a right to speak our minds.”
Ayanbadejo hopes that Pastor Burns will “open his heart” on the issue. In the meantime, Ellen DeGeneres has invited Brendon Ayanbadejo to fly to California for a live appearance on her show. Ravens team president Dick Cass has indicated the team would respond to Burns “in time” and hoped that Brendon would continue to speak his mind about matters that are important to him.
Maryland will be one of four states to vote on same-sex marriage in November. The issue has never been upheld by referendum, which is why what Brendon Ayanbadejo (and Chris Kluwe) and other straight people—this is crucial—are doing and saying is so very, very important.
Emmett C. Burns Jr. has had to endure public mockery for his antiquated views. Public mockery seems appropriate to me in this case—after all Burns is the one who pulled the trigger on this in the first place—but it’s also the sort of experience that might change the man. If everyone seems to be pointing at you and laughing, maybe there’s a good reason for that. Maybe it’s because you ARE the idiot.
Maybe it’s time for a little soul-searching Mr. Burns.
To Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo, you’re good citizens one of the highest compliments I have to offer. I’m proud to share a country with guys like you.
A totally ridiculous (but boy does it work with the video!) metal version of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love” by Andy Rehfeldt. You can almost believe this is real.
It’s a situation not unfamiliar to a lot of New York City musicians: You park your van to grab or unload some equipment and before you know it some meter maid has slapped $150 ticket on your windshield for double-parking, parking too near a fire hydrant or in a bus zone or taxi stand. I myself amassed over $500 in parking tickets in one week on my last visit to New York. The laws are unclear, the signs nearly impossible to interpret. If you become delinquent in paying your tickets, the cops will tow away your wheels without hesitation. The city makes a shitload of money busting drivers for petty non-moving violations that really deserve nothing more than a warning. I got a $175 ticket for parking in a no parking zone while I ran into a deli to get a carrot juice. I left my car for no longer than 60 seconds. Fuck!
Anyway, my good friend Joseph Arthur (a New York-based musician we’ve featured here on DM in the past) had his 2003 Dodge Ram towed for $350 in unpaid parking tickets. When Joseph discovered that his van hadn’t been stolen but towed, critical time had passed and the van had been auctioned off by the city for $1000. The real horror-story though was not losing his vehicle, but what was inside it. The Dodge contained priceless vintage music gear and some of Arthur’s paintings - in addition to being a fine singer-songwriter, Joseph is a highly regarded painter. What a nightmare.
Fortunately, the story has a happy (or at least bittersweet) ending. With the help of a private investigator and Jeff Lebowski’s favorite lawyer Ron Kuby, Joseph tracked down his Dodge and paid $5,500 to get it back, over five times the auction price.
So after all this I got my van back!
I can’t thank y’all enough for your support and help.
It cost plenty, but I’m very happy to have my art and my gear back.
Jose (the guy who had it) drove a hard bargain (Ron calls it a sort of hold up)
and sold it all back to me for $5,500 after he paid a grand for it,
but I’m trying to keep it in perspective,
Things like this can’t be measured strictly with numbers
and the life lessons it taught were of greater value than the dollars and cents.
The main one being the support I got from all of you.
Along with the people,whom without I never would have gotten it back,
Ron, Vic, Lea, Carla, Julie, Peter, Kraig, Ehud and Spencer – THANK YOU!
The list goes on, but now I need to search this four wheel goliath for my tarot cards and try to catch new dreams.
Thanks again everyone and I hope to see you down the road.
I’ll be the one driving a van more famous than me.
much love,
Joseph
Now Joseph is not a wealthy guy. He should be. His albums are among the best released in the past two decades. But the music biz is tough as we all know. So, in order to recoup some of his losses, Joseph will doing a fundraiser at the City Winery in Manhattan on Sunday, October 21st. Joseph will be there with special guests.
I love how Joseph dealt with the bad news of losing his wheels, he wrote a song (which may end up in my top ten of 2012) and made a video. It’s Joseph’s Buddha-nature that keeps him mellow and beautiful.
Before being drawn to the Zef-side and morphing into Die Antwoord, Ninja and Yolandi were a couple of writers and actors known by their birth names Watkin Tudor Jones and Anri Du Toit. While not as conceptually outrageous as the ultra-freaky and fabulous Die Antwoord, they still managed to create some surreally weird videos and performance pieces for their multi-media project known as Max Normal.
Here’s a faux documentary from 2004, Picnic, directed by “Waddy” Jones and starring Ms. Toit. On the surface, the intent of the film seems to want to present a warmhearted slice-of-life story showing viewers how important family reunions are, psychologically and emotionally. But in Picnic we don’t ever see the family actually bonding, we just hear the steady, chattering, drone of a young girl who is clearly living inside her own head, where memories have perhaps become ghosts. As the music on the soundtrack gets weirder and weirder, the disconnect between the subject and tone of the film takes on a mildly unsettling vibe that feels like a prelude to some bad shit.
Anri Du Toit briefly slips in some Yolandi-like moves at the end when she does a weird little dance.
I’m not sure Picnic works as satire (of reality TV), social commentary, a ghost story or much of anything. I’m not sure what it intends to be. It reminds me a bit of Harmony Korine’s Gummo , which may explain Die Antwoord’s collaboration with Korine in recent years. Whatever it is, there’s little indication in Picnic of the radical imagery and energy to come when Waddy and Anri eventually find The Answer in Zefness.
Update: DM reader S. Bonelli writes that Picnic is a: “satire of white privileged church going south african society and their normalization of what is correct is actually max freaky - all they needed was to record reality and boom- zef is in it all the way…” This makes a lot of sense to me.
You can never judge a man by his knitwear, as Jack Bruce proves in this documentary Jack Bruce: The Man Behind the Bass, in which the legendary musician returns to his homeland of Scotland, to give a guided tour through his life and career, and re-interprets 6 of his classic songs. Here are the ingredients:
Jack Bruce fronted the Sixties supergroup Cream alongside Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, and has played with everyone from Marvin Gaye to Jimi Hendrix and from Lulu to Lou Reed. ArtWorks tells the story of his life, from childhood in Scotland to global superstardom, through some of Jack’s favourite songs and with contributions from Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Adam Clayton of U2.
The story encompasses some of the biggest riffs and rifts in rock, taking in family tragedy, drugs and near death. A specially chosen set of six songs mark crucial moments in Jack’s life, including Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love”. Jack rerecorded the tracks with some of Scotland’s finest musicians including folk trio Lau, percussionist Jim Sutherland, keyboard player Andy May, guitarist Taj Wyzgowski, drummer Chris Peacock, his nephew Nico Bruce on bass and string ensemble Mr McFall’s Chamber.
This is an excellent documentary, which showcases some of the best of the brilliant Jack Bruce.
David Bowie having fun at the Beat Club in May 1978, dressed in what looks like a pimp’s pajama top and those kind of pants he made famous, which were later sold via adverts in the NME and The Face. I once nearly bought a pair but opted to have my ear pierced instead. As always, Bowie is more than ably supported by his superb backing band, which here includes Adrian Belew on electric guitar; George Murray on bass guitar; Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar; Dennis Davis on drums; Simon House on violin; Sean Mayes on piano and strings; and Roger Powell on keyboards and synthesizers.
Track Listing:
01. “Sense of Doubt”
02. “Beauty and The Beast”
03. “Heroes”
04. “Stay”
05. “The Jean Genie”
06. “TVC15”
07. “Alabama Song”
08. “Rebel Rebel”
Unquestionably one of the tightest punk bands to assault the airwaves, Elvis Costello and The Attractions tear through a solid set of tunes on German TV in 1978 and it’s fucking exhilarating.
01 Mystery Dance
02 End Of The World
03 Lip Service
04 Two Little Hitlers
05 The Beat
06 Night Rally
07 This Year’s Girl
08 No Action
09 (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea
10 Lipstick Vogue
11 Watching The Detectives
12 Pump It Up
13 You Belong To Me
The band is awesome but man the audience is feeble, which may explain why Elvis and the boys are ripping through the set…they can’t wait to get to the nearest bar.
