An artist was hired to paint scenes from Dostoevsky in a Moscow subway station. Does as asked. Hilarity ensues!

Ivan Nikolayev, the man who painted the murals didn’t understand all the fuss his work caused: “What did you want? Scenes of dancing? Dostoevsky does not have them,” he said. From the Telegraph:

The station, called Dostoyevskaya, is decorated with brooding grey and black mosaics which depict violent scenes from the nineteenth century writer’s best-known novels.

One controversial mural re-enacts the moment when the main character in the novel Crime and Punishment murders an elderly pawnbroker and her sister with an axe.

Another shows a suicide-obsessed character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Demons holding a pistol to his temple. If that was not enough to darken the mood, shadowlike characters are shown flitting across the cavernous new station’s walls and a giant mosaic of a depressed-looking Dostoevsky stares out at passengers.

The new station has been criticised as “gloomy and depressing,” and psychologists have warned that its “negative energy” could make it a favourite spot for committing suicide.

“The deliberate dramatism will create a certain negative atmosphere and attract people with an unnatural psyche,” Mikhail Vinogradov, a prominent psychologist said. He and other experts warned that people who wanted to end their lives by throwing themselves under a train could well choose the new station in future.

Maybe Los Angeles ought to rethink naming those Metro stops after Bukowski, Nabokov and Raymond Chandler, after all.

Moscow’s Dostoevsky station could be ‘suicide mecca’ (Telegraph)

 
In 1978, when I was in the seventh grade, I was a total fanatic for Steve Martin. Comedy was as important to me at that time as punk rock was and Steve Martin, Fernwood 2Night, National Lampoon, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Marx Brothers and (especially) the Firesign Theatre were every bit the equal of the Clash or Sex Pistols in my eyes.

I saw Steve Martin “in concert” on the A Wild and Crazy Guy tour just as his career went supernova. King Tut was in the singles charts (I still have the picture sleeve 45) at the time and his latest album had just gone double platinum. Martin, is of course, still a big star, but in 1978, he was a rock star among comedians, arguable the biggest.

It was the first really big show I’d ever seen, held at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, a venue normally reserved for the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Emerson. Lake and Palmer. The place was huge and we sat in the very, very last row of the section furthest back from the stage. I get vertigo easily and it was acute for me sitting there, but no matter, I was about to see one of my heros in person!

When Steve Martin walked out onto the stage that night, frankly he could have been anybody with a white 3-piece suit (his then trademark attire), grey hair, some balloon animals and an arrow through his head. He was so far away that it was impossible for him to have had any rapport with the cheap seats other than to do the standard “How are we doin’ up there?” banter. But like I gave a shit, I was in heaven. Here I was in the same room with Steve Martin!  Well me and 11,000 other people…

The encore, predictably, was King Tut. Performing to a recorded backing track, at one point an electric guitar was lowered from the flies, Martin grabbed it, attacking it furiously, strumming five chords in the space of about two or three seconds and up and and away it went again. I was buzzing about this show for at least the next three days.

Below are some examples of primo 70s Steve Martin appearances and an in-concert clip of King Tut. I noticed that one guy on YouTube has a 7 DVD set of Steve Martin on TV in the 70s. I might have to get that.

 
Even if you’re a soccer layman who knows the name Pele, you’ve likely also heard the name Diego Maradona. The legendary 49-year-old Argentine player and coach, who captained his national team to win the 1986 World Cup is known as much for his off-field controversies (like his 20-year cocaine habit) as for those on-field, including his “Hand of God” goal.

During this week’s World Cup activity, Diego got handed a true moment when a journalist’s question about the current Argentine captain’s cuddly treatment of his excellent players got mistranslated into an intimation about the way El Diego swings.
 

 
Once again Tony Coulter has drawn my attention to another lovely gap in my knowledge of obscure 80’s post-punk Belgian no wave prog something-or-other music. Des Airs, who released only one E.P. were a co-ed affair, the distaff portion being especially notable for boasting vocalist Catherine Jauniaux of Aksak Maboul (about whom, more later), The Work, etc. and bassist/vocalist Fanchon Nuyens who would later go on to form Zap Mama. The first clip below starts out as a slovenly take on of all things an appropriately perverse Peter Cook and Dudley Moore song! What could at first be written off as a novelty tune turns seriously funky at around 2:30 when the drunken waltz groove turns itself inside out. Surprising ! The second clip is another spartan and funky no wave workout from the same E.P.

 
Des Airs- Lunga Notte E.P. (La Folie Du Jour)

 
How does he manage it ? God, I love this guy !

 
Previously on DM : BRILLIANT YO-YO PRANKSTER K-STRASS

 
“You happy now, bitch?”
 
Thank you Nathaniel Wice of New York City, NY!

 
Before he went off to make a mint singing about the main market street in Brixton, Guyanese-born London resident Eddy Grant put together the Equals, one of England’s most stomping multi-racial soul-rock bands.

Before the Equals scored their first hit in the UK with “Baby Come Back,” it went #1 in Germany, from which the first clip below originates, featuring a rather bossy 19-year-old Grant. It would take Top of the Pops a full year until they booked the Equals to perform the same tune. Oh yeah, they tossed over the song in clip #2 to a bunch of punks a few years after they recorded it in ’69.

Original North London skinhead psychedelia!
 

 
Dangerous Minds pal Taylor Jessen, the fabulously meticulous archivist for the Firesign Theatre is in the process of putting together the ULTIMATE collection of rare Firesign Theatre radio shows for a limited edition release via www.firesigntheatre.com. I’ve been raving about these programs (all recorded between 1968-72) on this blog for months and now you can hear them yourself, every Tuesday on WFMU radio at 7:00 pm in the New York area over the airwaves and streaming over the Internet on WFMU.org.

Below Taylor writes of what it was like trying to track down the audio cues used by the FST in an online essay on WFMU’s popular blog, with 30 mp3 files and a contest to win Firesign Theatre photographs signed by all four members:

For ten years or so, the Firesign Theatre has been engaging me in a friendly round of “Stump the Archivist.”

Between 1970-1972, Firesign did about seventy hours of original radio broadcasts. The shows were mostly an excuse for them to riff, but they also played a lot of music breaks, sound effects, incidental music, and total dada noise foofaraw. During those original broadcasts of The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour, Dear Friends, and Let’s Eat, they put the needle on the record about 1000 times, and one of the most fun aspects of restoring all those airchecks (soon to be reissued, yes the whole schmear, in remastered digital audio with an accompanying 108-page comic-book-size color fan guide featuring complete show rundowns, an historical essay, new interviews with the 4or5 guys and their engineer & producer, never-published photos, collages, found objects, scripts, and good God make it stop, it’s just too awesome. Please check regularly here and at www.firesigntheatre.com for an official announcement; we’re only making 500 copies and they’ll never be sold in stores) – one of the most fun aspects, I say, of all this obsessive archival work was identifying those 1000 needle-drops.

To play along and try to identify these music cues—-some are easy: Beatles, Stones, Dylan, but others are pretty darn obscure—visit Firesign Theatre is Playing At My House (WFMU’s Beware of the Blog). You only have to be able to identify ONE of the musical mysteries to win!

Below, my recent interview with the Phil Proctor about the vintage Firesign Theatre radio shows being aired on WFMU:
 

 
Firesign Theatre on Dangerous Minds

 
Stories, with lead singer Ian Lloyd performing Brother Louie on The Midnight Special in 1973. This song came out when I was 7-years-old. I wonder if I had any idea what it was about at that age, or if I just thought that it sounded vaguely scary?

We Americans only know this version, but the song was originally a hit for Hot Chocolate, more famous on these shores more for You Sexy Thing. It was written by Hot Chocolate’s Tony Wilson and Errol Brown. The spoken word bit in their version is done by blues great Alexis Korner.

 
Ever found yourself wondering what became of all of Michael Jackson’s exotic pets? Of course you have! From the Telegraph:

Few will need reminding that Jackson’s highest-profile pet was a chimpanzee named Bubbles. After rescuing him from a research centre in the early Eighties he took him on his Bad world tour.

Bubbles wowed fans by mimicking his moonwalk on stage and the two became inseparable. At Neverland, the ape slept in a cot in the singer’s bedroom and used his lavatory.
However, after the birth of Jackson’s son Prince Michael Jnr, Bubbles – who was growing into moody adolescence – was deemed potentially dangerous and moved to a sanctuary for Hollywood animals.

For the past six years he has resided in Florida at the Center For Great Apes. Half of the money needed for his care – which costs £12,000 per year – is still provided by Jackson’s estate.

‘Michael owned Bubbles all these years,’ says Patti Ragan, who runs the centre. ‘He would visit him, but he couldn’t handle him any more.‘Chimps that appear on television are almost always very young. When they grow up they get very big and have huge canine teeth. They become very dangerous so can’t work around actors and entertainers.’

The reporter, Ewan Flectcher, apparently couldn’t resist adding:

The chimp, like his owner, is also very fond of children.

‘There are some youngsters in his group, little kids, and he loves to play games with them,’ she says. ‘He likes to be groomed by the others in his group and sometimes he’ll groom them.’

For more about Jackson’s other pets, including Thriller the tiger, read: Michael Jackson’s menagerie (Telegraph)

Plus video: THE REUNION OF THE CENTURY: La Toya & Bubbles! (dlisted)