Would You Know Hitler’s Face if He Settled in Western Canada?
09.30.2010
11:03 am
Topics:
Just answer the question, hippie!
Just answer the question, hippie!
You could say that I’m obsessed with recordings of vintage drum machines. I just love the clunky sounds and the freedom granted to the human players who know there’s a steady pulse no matter how far out their own playing gets. So knowing this, Dangerous Minds pal Ian Raikow was kind enough to point out the below specimen by the wonderful Lee “Scratch” Perry in his crazed Black Ark period and this tidbit of info:
“...the story goes that this recording features the very first drum machine to arrive on the island. Programmed by Familyman Barret and his brother…”
This and other truly mind-blowing dub-plate experiments from ‘73-‘76 are available on the grand new compilation Sound System Scratch. Essential !
Bad Boy of British cinema, Nigel Wingrove, is the only director to have one of his films banned on the grounds of blasphemy. His 1989 short Visions of Ecstasy, was refused certification by the British Board British Film Censors on the grounds of its sexualized representation of Saint Teresa of Avila making love to a crucified Christ on the cross.
The film was based on St Teresa’s own religious and highly erotic writings:
I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it…
When I interviewed Wingrove in 2005, for Channel 4’s Banned in the U.K., he explained the main issue was over Christ responding to Teresa’s kisses. If Christ had been represented by a wooden mannequin or a blow-up doll, rather than an actor, then Teresa could have fucked her brains out, and the film would have been passed uncut. As it was, the BBFC wanted the offending scenes removed, which meant losing almost half the film. Wingrove rightly refused and the film was banned.
In 1996, supported by the likes of authors, Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon, film-maker, Derek Jarman, and musician Steven Severin, who composed the soundtrack for Visions, Wingrove appealed to the European Court of Human Rights under Article 10, which defends freedom of expression, to have the ban lifted. The Court dismissed his case, stating that the criminal law of Blasphemy, as it was applied in England, did not infringe the right to freedom of expression under Article 10. In other words, typical bureaucratic ass-covering.
Wingrove is currently working on his next cinema release Sisters of Armageddon, which as he tells Dangerous Minds is:
A sci-fi nunsploitation film called Sisters of Armageddon - think Planet of the Apes meets The Nun’s Story with a sprinkling of The Gestapo’s Last Orgy and a soupçon of Mad Max.
And here’s a sneak preview.
Bonus clip of the banned ‘Visions of Ecstasy’ after the jump…
Apparently Dr. James Talbott is the man to ask about how to treat cat acne. I didn’t know kitteh pimples were an unsightly problem in the feline world. Now I do and so do you. You’re welcome?
Andrew Shirvell, Michigan Assistant Attorney General, has got to be one of the single most ridiculous people living in America today and that is REALLY SAYING SOMETHING. The guy is a fucking clown. It’s unbelievable that he’s still in his position. You can read the backstory here.
You have to hand it to Anderson Cooper, he’s really sticking it to some people who deserve it this week. This fellow is the very definition of “dickhead.” Watch it for the comedy of it all and laugh until you cry.
Previously on Dangerous Minds: Anderson Cooper vs. Islamphobic Hillbilly Republican congressional candidate
After some time spent with DC’s Vertigo imprint and then Devil’s Due, Fabrice Giger’s fabled Humanoids Publishing house (who’ve put out work by the likes of such prestigious creators as Moebius, Yves Chaland, Igor Baranko, Bilal, Pierre Christin, Philippe Druillet, Milo Manara and others) is back in action with what looks to be a high gloss publication of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’s 1970s series, The Incal.
The Incal came as a result of the proposed Jodorowsky-directed film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune (which was to have starred Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, with music by Pink Floyd) biting the dust. Rather than lose all of their great ideas, the disappointed duo turned out The Incal comics series instead.
Long out of print in this country, the November republication of The Incal series in English comes at the same time as the book’s publication in French. Past Jodorowsky/Humanoids collaborations, such as the incredible Techno Priests series, have been beautiful objects to behold, so I’ve got high hopes for The Incal, which will come in its own custom slip case.
Via Arthur
Toyota Proto, 1957
Nissan Prince Sprint 1900 Prototype, 1963
Toyota EX-II, 1969
Mazda RX-500, 1970
Pink Tentacle currenlty has a great post on Japanese concept cars from 1957-2009. I’m not so sure about the Toyota EX-II from 1969, tho… Yikes!
See a few more concept cars after the jump…
“Hey, you know something people? I’m not black, but there’s a whole lots a times. I wish I could say I’m not white”—Frank Zappa, “Trouble Every Day”
There is a well-written, fascinating—but fucking depressing—cover story (avec an awesome Drew Friedman cover illustration) by Steven Thrasher in the Village Voice today. Not much for me to add to this, I snarked myself into exhaustion yesterday, just read it and weep amongst yourselves:
About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.
It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).
But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.
As with other forms of dementia, the signs weren’t obvious at first. After the 2008 election, when former House majority leader Tom DeLay suggested that instead of a formal inauguration, Barack Obama should “have a nice little chicken dinner, and we’ll save the $125 million,” black folks didn’t miss the implication. References to chicken, particularly of the fried variety, have long served as a kind of code when white folks referred to black people and their gustatory preferences—and weren’t many of us already accustomed to older white politicians making such gaffes? But who among us sensed that it was a harbinger that an entire nation was plunging into madness?
Who didn’t chuckle, after all, the first time they heard that white people had doubts that Barack Obama had even been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president? It sounded like one of those Internet stories in which some (usually white) writer does his best to prove something everyone knows to be true is actually the exact opposite. And you go along with it for a few paragraphs to see how long the writer can convince you that what you know is right is actually wrong.
Seemed like that, didn’t it? After all, what was the beef? Obama’s father was Kenyan, and the kid was born in Hawaii—which is barely a part of the United States to begin with (only a state in 1959!). His mother was white, and after the Kenyan guy left, she married an Indonesian guy, so little Barack lived in Jakarta for a while before coming back to Hawaii to be brought up largely by his white grandparents. . . . And that’s it? Come on, this was after-school-special material, the kind of thing that brings a tear to your eye because little half-Kenyan/half-white Barry made good, not the stuff of conspiracy novels.
But the more you shook your head at it, the more it seemed to have taken root deep in the lizard part of the white nervous system. Obama is not an American. He says he’s Christian, but he has a Muslim-sounding name. He’s not black, he’s not white. . . . Is . . . is he even human?
Today, Newsweek has found, nearly a quarter of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, with barely 42 percent of the nation accepting his claim that he’s a Christian. CNN finds that a quarter of Americans also believe that Obama was “probably or definitely” born in another country.
Harris found in an online poll that 14 percent of Americans believe in their hearts that President Barack Obama is the antichrist, with nearly a quarter of Republicans saying so.
Read more of White America Has Lost Its Mind (Village Voice)
Dangerous Minds pal Brian Tibbetts, a sound designer at Lucas Arts, sent this unusual item my way this morning regarding a literally microscopic instrument called the Micronium, developed by students at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The instrument is about 1/10 of the thickness of a human hair and from what I can gather, is a bit like playing a microscopic comb with tiny, tiny weights.
On Sunday there was a recital for the composition, “Impromptu No. 1 for Micronium” in Enschede, Holland. The music starts at about 6 minutes in and goes from random Fantastic Planet type tone generation to a perfect micro-rendition of Hot Butter’s one-hit Moog wonder “Popcorn,” which I thought was a pretty rad choice to demo this sucker:
Via PopSci.com