An odd (semi) lip-sync of “Psycho Killer” on French television in 1978 sees the Talking Heads furiously strumming their guitars—including drummer Chris Frantz!—which are not even plugged in.
David Byrne looks as if he is about to burst out laughing any second here. Serge Gainsbourg and Andy Gibb were both on this same show.
Thank you, Adrianna!
New York Shitty spotted this well, shitty pay phone on Wythe Avenue in Brooklyn.
What the heck is that moulded around the phone? Salami?
Who would put this anywhere near their face? Yuck!
Do ladies fart when they are going to have a baby?
Sex questions from 7th Graders, who were too embarrassed to ask them in class, so they wrote them down and posted them to their middle school teacher, who answers their questions in class, and then posts them on Tumblr.
How does it smell when people have sex?
How does the dick grow? Why does the pussy have a whole?
More questions from 7th Graders, after the jump…
Merv Griffin was always known for having slightly more outre guests than most of the other daytime talkshows of his era, but this October 6, 1965 interview with a nearly mute Andy Warhol and a much more talkative Edie Sedgwick must’ve been quite perplexing to American housewives when it originally aired.
Yeesh, this looks pretty hardcore. At least they were “kind” enough to design it with air-holes…
Apparently this copper anti-masturbation device was up for auction on eBay in 2008:
The rare 19th century item is made of copper and was designed to be worn by boys so they could not commit the ‘sin’. Attached to a belt it would have encased the genitalia. The bizarre antique dates back to around 1880 and was used in Catholic France. It is being offered for sale on auction website eBay with a starting price of £750.
Seller David Burns, of Curious Science, says that during a quarter of a century dealing in medical curiosities he has never had one for sale… “This is the first example we have offered for sale in 24 years. The condition is excellent. Three and half inches top to base.”
I wonder how much it eventually sold for?
Via Nerdcore
Frank Zappa’s 1974 album Roxy & Elsewhere captured for posterity one of the most musically accomplished incarnations of The Mothers (George Duke, keyboards; Tom Fowler, bass; Ruth Underwood, percussion; Bruce Fowler, trombone; Walt Fowler, trumpet; Napoleon Murphy Brock, tenor sax, vocals; and Chester Thompson and Ralph Humphrey on drums) onstage and on fire.
Roxy & Elsewhere was recorded primarily over three nights (December 8,9,10, 1973) live at The Roxy nightclub in the heart of the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The Roxy is a pretty intimate club—a performer onstage there could practically make eye-contact with every member of the audience—and the musicianship during these sets was particularly inspired.
The shows were also filmed in 16mm. When Frank Zappa lectured at the Gifford Auditorium at Syracuse University on April 23, 1975, one of the audience members asked him “Can you tell us if anything is going on with your ‘Live at the Roxy’ movie?”
His reply:
“Well, I wish there was…The status of that film is this: I spent about $30.000-40.000 trying to get the thing on film, and I got it on film, and there’s some things that happened down there that were absolutely fabulous. However, they’re too weird to show on television, and I don’t think there’s really a market in the theaters for a straight concert film like that…So right now, it’s sitting in my shelf, being an expensive piece of home movie. Maybe one day, when TV loosens up a little bit, we’ll be able to show the lovely Brenda, doing…(FZ and George Duke laugh)...that was a real nice piece of film, that Brenda…(more laughter).”
A DVD of the Roxy shows has long been promised, but has never come out. Zappa “vaultmeister” Joe Travers was quoted on the Wikipedia entry for the album about the long-delayed DVD release:
“It’s sitting in the vault. Waiting for a budget to do it properly. Basically the film footage, the negatives were transferred by Frank in the ‘80s using ‘80s technology. What we want to do is go back to the original negatives and do it in High Definition and then create a 5.1 mix from the original masters so that we have surround sound as well as Frank’s 2 channel stereo mix. Once we get all that together, then we need to cut the program. Edit the program together, camera angles, what shows, what we are going to include from what shows or include all the shows. I have no idea what Dweezil and Gail want to do. It’s great stuff, but the process of just getting to that point is going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time.”
This tantalizing 32-minute chunk of that film—neither song (“Montana” and “Dupree’s Paradise”) were actually on the Roxy & Elsewhere album—was screened at the Zappa Plays Zappa concerts and posted on the Zappa.com website for a while. George Duke’s solo that starts at about 11 minutes in is a thing of wonder to behold. The Roxy shows were also a fantastic showcase for Ruth Underwood’s skills. (Part of the Roxy performance of “Dummy Up” can be seen in the Zappa doc, The True Story Of 200 Motels).
With the Universal Music Group re-releasing remastered versions of the entire Frank Zappa catalog beginning at the end of August, hopefully a Blu-Ray of the 1973 Roxy shows in 5.1 surround will soon be on the way.
Covergirl are part of a new wave of politically-minded, queer/gay/femme/whatever-core bands that are popping up all over the UK (and the world, in fact) and sowing the seeds of a new, healthy, d.i.y. underground scene.
Covergirl take their musical cues in part from post-punk and post-disco, mixing up raw guitars and wailing synths with insistent, driving rhythms. Their outlook comes from Riot Grrrl, punk 7"s and zine-culture, but by way of the no-budget-yet-glamorous catwalking of RuPaul and the queens of Paris Is Burning. Their name, in fact, comes from a RuPaul song, but don’t let that fool you. The band has more in common with the ripped-up-punk-drag of RuPaul 25 years ago than it does with today’s polished TV host.
I was lucky enough to catch Covergirl live in London a few months ago (when they bizarrely asked Joyce D’Vision to open for them) and can report back that they are blinding. Now Dangerous Minds is lucky enough to get a world exclusive from the band, the premiere of their new video “Ice Father Nation”. On top of which, I sent Covergirl’s co-leader Andrew Milk some questions to get his head around for our readers:
Describe Covergirl to me in a dozen words or less:
A post-punk-party band. Serious about having fun.
What was the inspiration to form the band and when did you start?
I think we started in 2010, I guess spurred on by our other bands having recently broken up or being on hiatus at the time and wanting to do something new.
Can you tell me a bit more about Tuff Enuff, the label this is coming out on?
‘Tuff Enuff Records’ has appeared out of the Riots Not Diets collective in Brighton. Our friend Toby runs it and puts on awesome gigs/film screenings and more! ‘Ice Father Nation’ is taken from their first ever release, “Why Diet When You Can Riot”, a compilation 12”. I’m sure they have plans to release more. their website says ‘descended from Irrk’ - which is a legendary, but little known queer/feminist record label some amazing people ran in the early/mid-Noughties. Serious pedigree!
Who else is featured on the release?
Halo Halo, Ste McCabe, Skinny Girl Diet - so many amazing bands, you can check them all out on the bandcamp page.
I’ve heard a lot about Power Lunches, the venue featured in the video - can you tell me more about it?
It’s an independent venue in East London, run by a pal of ours. She’s a musician and wanted a space that worked as an affordable practice room/gig venue where you could get great and healthy food instead of the usual things you’d eat as a cash strapped musician (crisps and a Tesco sandwich.) A pretty specific dream, but what’s the point of putting the hard slog in if it’s not for something you’d really want for yourself? it’s a cafe/bar upstairs and an ‘intimate’ sweat box of a venue downstairs. Lots of bands and promoters have got behind it which is great. it’s our home away from home.
And how is the East London scene in general at the moment? How are the Olympics going down there?
The Olympics are weirdly not affecting us that much, it does feel a little quiet but i think that always happens this time of year, people stay out, drinking in parks, not putting on or going to gigs. Also i think the same amount of people left London as have come in… So if you’re not in the vicinity of the Olympic Village or whatever, it’s pretty empty. The weirdest thing is being able to see this nuclear glow covering Stratford from the balcony of my flat.
Thanks, Andrew!
Andrew also runs the rather fine Milk Records, who have released music by Woolf, Trash Kit, Ultimate Thrush and the mighty Divorce. You can check Milk Records here, but in the meantime, here’s the video for Covergirl’s “Ice Father Nation”:
You can connect with Covergirl on Facebook here. You can listen to, and pre-order (if it’s not sold out) the Why Diet When You Can Riot LP at the Riots Not Diets bandcamp page.
Although best-selling author David Barton is held in high esteem by Republican pols like idiot queen Michele Bachmann (to whom he’s a “national treasure”) and Chick-fil-A booster Mike Huckabee (who calls him “the single best historian in America today”) as well as by conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck (who went even further out on a limb than Huckabee, calling Barton “the most important man in America”!) anyone with half a brain who has followed the career of David Barton knows that he is little more than a shameless rightwing Christian fabulist, making things up out of thin air and then claiming that they actually happened. Some people, who don’t know any better, i.e., his readers, actually believe him.
David Barton, you see, is the historian of the Tea party. There is practically nothing his audience of goofy ignoramuses won’t swallow hook line and sinker from him, even though it’s easily demonstrable bullshit. If you know your ass from your elbow, you would be highly suspicious that there was very little of scholarly value in Barton’s “research.” (Barton says of his critics: “I don’t know if it’s jealousy or liberalism.”)
Some of Barton’s greatest shits include claims that Jesus Christ would have been opposed to the minimum wage and socialized medicine, that the Constitution quotes the Bible “verbatim” and that Thomas Jefferson sent missionaries to convert the Indians to Christianity!
His biggest fib, of course, is that the Founding Fathers were all devout Christians and that America was founded on Christian principles to be a nation for Christians, and governed by Christians.
What percentage of Americans, do you think, would know the truth of the matter anyway? A depressing thought, of course, for most of us. For David Barton, however, these knuckleheads are his bread and butter!
Barton specializes in pulling “facts” out of his ass to bedazzle the folks who show up for his WallBuilders sermon/lectures around the country with amazing things they never knew about American history. Amazing things that never actually happened! But. again, what do they know? When David Barton is introduced to them as a best-selling author—and indeed he IS one—he would have certain presumed bona fides to an audience that is almost always comprised exclusively of white, evangelical Christians who vote Republican. Even when what Barton has to say is complete nonsense, his audience, taking their cues from the solemn heads nodding in agreement all around them, have no way of knowing that what he is telling them is bunk and so Barton’s “assertions” becomes history to them.
It’s pathetic. No wonder Glenn Beck holds Barton in such high regard. They’ve got similar shticks.
As with Beck, Barton’s entire career of telling historical lies, is predicated on the necessary ingredient of an audience of Billy-Bobs Bojangles who “don’t know much about history” (as in next to NOTHING) who just want to hear their “ideas” about stuff confirmed in a room full of people who look and think just like they do. Barton’s talent is telling an audience of not very bright people (I’m not being unkind here) who are predisposed to want to hear something that sounds like something they already believe (like the Founding Fathers were religious) so as to confirm that not only are God and Jesus on THEIR side, the Tea party, Christian team side, but George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams as well.
The Jefferson Lies was recently voted the “Least Credible History Book in Print” by the readers of the History News Network. There’s no surprise why “fact improviser” Michele Bachmann likes it so much, is there? Sen. Marco Rubio and Newt Gingrich are also fans.
However, it’s been a very bad couple of days to be David Barton. First there was the hilariously brutal—yet strangely polite—takedown of Barton yesterday on NPR’s “All Things Considered” program.
Several Cincinnati-area African-American pastors announced that they were boycotting the Thomas Nelson company—the world’s largest Christian publisher—for publishing David Barton’s Jefferson book, claiming he “whitewashes” Jefferson, a well-known slave owner.
Then World, a Christian news website, ran an article sharply critical of Barton as well. From “The David Barton Controversy”:
Jay W. Richards, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, and author with James Robison of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It’s Too Late, spoke alongside Barton at Christian conferences as recently as last month. Richards says in recent months he has grown increasingly troubled about Barton’s writings, so he asked 10 conservative Christian professors to assess Barton’s work.
Their response was negative…
And then the unthinkable happened: Thomas Nelson dropped The Jefferson Lies, as World reported today in a follow-up:
The Thomas Nelson publishing company has decided to cease publication and distribution of David Barton’s controversial book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, saying it has “lost confidence in the book’s details.” (See “The David Barton controversy,” Aug. 8.)
Casey Francis Harrell, Thomas Nelson’s director of corporate communications, told me the publishing house “was contacted by a number of people expressing concerns about [The Jefferson Lies].” The company began to evaluate the criticisms, Harrell said, and “in the course of our review learned that there were some historical details included in the book that were not adequately supported. Because of these deficiencies we decided that it was in the best interest of our readers to stop the publication and distribution.”
Ouch, ouch and double ouch.
David Barton will be a special delegate from Texas to the Republican National Convention. Of course!
The person or persons responsible for the Tumblr called Famous Album Covers Recreated With My Socks must have an awful lot of time on their hands or else a lot of laundry. Sock it to me…
Last year an alarming article (”Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies”) appeared in the pages of Britain’s Independent newspaper that alerted the rest of the world to Russia’s home-made heroin substitute, Krokodil.
When we posted an excerpt from the article on DM, along with some photos we found on Google images, many of our readers thought it was a hoax.
It’s not a hoax.
Krokodil—or desomorphine—is approximately 8x stronger than heroin, yet costs just a tenth of the price and is easily synthesized, even by amateur “chemists” from codeine, gasoline or paint thinner, iodine and red phosphorus. The ingredients can be bought in any Russian drug store (cough medicines, paracetamol, even certain kinds of eye drops). The toxic chemicals in krokodil rots the flesh—and eventually even the bones—of its users. Limb amputation is not uncommon, although such an occasion is usually not enough of an excuse to actually quit taking the drug. Krokodil causes such horrific tissue damage that the life expectancy of a krokodil addict is but two to three years.
It’s a nightmare strait out of an early David Cronenberg film. I mean seriously, fucking limb amputation? Krokodil appears to do the same sort of violence to a junkie’s body that a flesh-eating bacteria would if left untreated… for months. It’s some seriously grim shit and once someone is hooked on the drug, the only known cure seems to be a young death.
Although the US DEA has issued field alerts about Krokodil, there have been no reported instances of finding it anywhere in this country. Sadly, the opposite is true in Russia, the former Soviet satellite states and parts of the Middle East. In Russia, where the krokodil epidemic is by far the worst, authorities have confiscated 65 million doses of the deadly street drug and have even found pregnant women addicted to the drug in these squalid shooting galleries.
Not sure who took these, they were posted on Imgur without attribution.
The krokodil high lasts only 90-minutes, so there needs to be a “cook” working full time in a krokodil house.
More after the jump…
