If you’ve ever considered getting a tattoo on your legs but were a tad concerned that maybe one day you’d tire of its design and would be forever marked with a dubious nautical illustration or a fast-fading love heart, or the name of a long gone ex. Well, fret no more as there is a range of fashion accessories called Tattoo Tights that allows you to change your tattoos as easily as changing your pantyhose.

Tattoo Tights is the idea of Silvana Ilieva—an artist who is passionate about creating “unique, hand-painted items with a soul.” Silvana produces individual pantyhose with tattoo motifs in her studio in Sofia, Bulgaria. Each pair of pantyhose are hand-painted using Silvana’s secret technique which incorporates ancient Asian inking methods.

So far, Silvana has produced around 100 individual tattoo designs for her range of Tattoo Tights—which she sells online. These are more than just beautiful hosiery but delightful works of art to be exhibited on sorry, on top of your skin. More details here.
 

 

 
More beautiful ‘tattooed tights,’ after the jump…

A young Joan Jett and an adorable dog. Jett has gone on to dedicate much of her life to animal advocacy.
 
If you’re a jittery bag of nerves with questionable sleep patterns thanks to the fucking fiasco that is the Presidential Election of 2016, then I hope this post will help restore some of your faith in humanity. At least temporarily.

As the title indicates I’ve culled some images of famous people and their dogs that I’m quite sure will get you to your “happy place” pretty quickly. At the very least it will briefly distract you and keep you from checking the latest statistics over at Fivethirtyeight or wherever it is that you happen to be getting your political updates these days. Until this all blows over (if in fact it ever does) I’d keep this post close by for when you need to talk yourself out of moving to Canada, moving underground or perhaps relocating to the fucking moon. Honestly, if photos of Marc Bolan and David Bowie cradling adorable canines doesn’t help restore your pulse to a more reasonable rate, I’m not sure anything will. Hang in there kittens, it’s almost over!
 

Marc Bolan.
 

David Bowie and a wee little Scottie, 1980. Photo by Duffy.
 

The band Queen and their four-legged canine pal.
 
More after the jump…

 
Here’s an hour of Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh appearing on the Doctor Demento radio show in 1980 playing songs from his own collection. Mothersbaugh is in character the entire time as “Booji Boy,” the “infantile spirit of de-evolution.”

Booji Boy’s taste leans towards Krautrock and a number of songs from “tapes or records that kids gave me when we were touring.” We’re treated to deep-cut selections by Holger Hiller, The Plastics, Crash Course in Science, Neu, Tagmemics, Der Plan, and an unnamed French new wave band, among others.

He also plays rare demo versions of a few Devo tracks: “Workin’ in a Coal Mine,” “I’m a Potato” and “Softcore Mutations.”

Doctor Demento seems politely exasperated with Mothersbaugh’s in-studio antics at points, describing his behavior during one break: “he took our television set and our lamp and was swinging them wildly all around his playpen.”

At about 26 minutes in Booji Boy tells the story of Devo’s live concert staple “The Words Get Stuck in My Throat” and how it was adapted from a song in the 1966 Japanese monster movie War of the Gargantuas and he plays the original version from the film’s soundtrack.

All-in-all it’s a pretty fascinating listen and certainly one of the more interesting Doctor Demento playlists.

Listen to the entire show after the jump…

 
I was at the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University last night to see the much-heralded free “get out the vote” concert for Hillary Clinton featuring Jay-Z and special guest (everyone knew who it was ahead of time) Beyoncé. I had a marvelous time, it was really excellent to see America’s favorite pop stars (pretty much) alongside the soon-to-be-first female president (deep breath) on the same stage. I hadn’t actually gotten the memo that Hillary would be there as well, so it was a wonderful surprise to see her. Wisely, Hillary kept her appearance brief and let the audience enjoy its gift of excellent, free music.

A few thoughts:

1. Big arena rap shows are an awful lot of fun.. I don’t have a big point to make here, just that rap audiences put rock audiences to shame. It may have been an unusual situation because the doors opened around 5 p.m. and nobody actually performed until about 9 p.m. DJ Steph Floss was tasked with keeping the audience engaged for virtually all of that time, and he did so by playing countless rap songs by the likes of Drake and J-Kwon and Lil Wayne and so forth. The engagement of the audience during this whole stretch was impressive. Whole sections were vibrating due to the motion of people dancing, and there were frequent impromptu singalongs when Floss would cut out the volume, and so on. These people were into it. Rock audiences seldom give opening bands, often consisting of several human beings playing actual instruments, the time of day, much less pre-recorded music. This audience treated the pre-recorded music the way a rock audience would treat the Strokes. In general, the role of the audience singing along to almost everything enhanced the show.

2. Donald Trump and his organization could never have organized an event that was anything like this. During his remarks in Pennsylvania the same night, Trump essayed a jab at the Wolstein event, saying that he draws huge crowds and doesn’t need “J-Lo and Jay-Z” to do it. And that’s true enough. Just ask Scott Baio. But Trump’s line sparked another thought, for which it helped to be present in the arena last night.

It is simply this: Trump and his organization have shown no ability to mount a show like this. Hillary Clinton can and did do it. The show featured several high-profile rappers in a boda-fide arena show with a great many specialized voting-specific graphics that were specific to the event. Having been at the Wolstein from about 6 p.m. to about 10:30 p.m., I can attest that the event was very well run.

One of the biggest worries about Trump isn’t so much his terrible racism/xenophobia or the effects his awful policies would have but just his sheer incompetence and inability to execute long-range plans. This insight about the arena show addresses that concern. In a way I’m really complimenting Hillary here, she has high standards that were utterly reflected in every aspect of this event. Trump has shown in this campaign that he cannot manage a large organization (preferring a small one), and his “ground game” and internal polling operations are widely believed to be laughable. Trump may make fun of the Dems’ coziness with creative superstars, but Trump wouldn’t be able to leverage such relationships even if he did have them.

Amusingly, I don’t think the word Trump was mentioned a single time from the stage. It was a kind of game, they’d say “her opponent” or whatever and move on to something else.

3. Beyoncé is the one person in America you want behind you if you are a Democrat. Simply put, Bey is amazing. It’s not exactly an original thought. Before she went on, Jay-Z had occupied the stage for many songs, and had demonstrated why he is considered a rapper of unusual flow, presence, and intelligence. He was very, very good. Chance the Rapper, Big Sean, and J. Cole all had extended turns while Jay-Z rested up, and they all were deserving of the roars of appreciation they received from the audience.

Beyoncé made all of them, including Jay-Z, look like amateurs.

More after the jump…

 
Apparently it isn’t enough for Suroosh Alvi to lord over the highly influential youth media empire he co-founded, he also feels compelled to hurl himself into harm’s way as a foreign correspondent in some of the most dangerous hot spots on the planet.

If I were worth millions, I might be inclined to take up baccarat, but apparently Alvi doesn’t feel that way. In his documentary series VICE News: Terror, Alvi has chosen to investigate some of the most formidable sources of terror in the world, traveling and filming in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Before undertaking this series, Alvi had already gained his credentials as a documentary filmmaker in this region, having co-directed the “rockumentary” Heavy Metal in Baghdad in 2007 as well as making a piece on the gun markets of Pakistan.

In the fourth installment of VICE News: Terror, Alvi traveled to Nigeria in order to investigate the rise of Boko Haram and the military’s protracted efforts to contain it. Frustrated by the strict restrictions on journalists in the country, Alvi manages to conduct in-depth interviews with a female suicide bomb survivor as well as members of Boko Haram itself.

Boko Haram is arguably the leading source of terror in the world today. It killed more people in 2015 than even the Islamic State, with which it recently became affiliated. With help from France and the United States, the Nigerian army has managed to inflict some setbacks on Boko Haram, but the suicide bombing in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri this past weekend is a sure sign that its opponents cannot declare victory just yet. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to eliminate terrorist activities in the country, and has on multiple occasions announced the group’s demise. Boko Haram became a household name in early 2014 when it kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok.

The episodes have been coming out on selected Tuesdays throughout October and November; the fourth installment, about Boko Haram in Nigeria, dropped this Tuesday, and the final episode, which examines the brutal tactics used by Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan, is due to premiere on November 15.
 

 
Alvi’s parents were both born in Pakistan, and Canadian Alvi has been visiting extended family members for his entire life, so the concluding installment of VICE News: Terror has special significance for him. In it, he takes up the murderous activities of Tehrik-i-Taliban, which has done so much to destabilize the country. In the documentary, Alvi interviews two survivors of the the Imamia Masjid bombing in Peshawar that took place several weeks after the school massacre, and also joins a dangerous raid searching for members of Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) in Karachi. In December of 2014, Tehrik-i-Taliban killed 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, at the the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
 

 
My personal experience with skinheads—a “run in” you might call it—was brief, lasting mere minutes, but it was a memorable occasion…

The year was 1983 and I was a 17-year-old lovesick dickhead living in a south London squat who wanted to impress this super gorgeous goth chick I knew. My choice of attire has always been more to the preppy side, but I realized that if I was to have any chance with this beautifully morbid creature, I needed to switch up my look from Brooks Brothers to something a lil’ more Peter Murphy. So I hennaed my hair black and spiked it up with hairspray, wore eyeliner and makeup and donned a black trenchcoat. The object of my affections was not in the least impressed with my new look, but that’s beside the point.

Later that night, right after the pubs had shut, I was going home, alone, rejected and dejected, on the London subway, and feeling like an idiot. The goth look I’d worn for all of maybe five hours just wasn’t me. When the train stopped at Leicester Square, a massive rush of people crushed into the train, including a gang of eight very large, very fearsome, very mean and very fucking drunk skinheads. They were with their girlfriends, who were also wearing boots and braces. All had the “Chelsea cut” that female skins wore. The girls seemed even harder than their boyfriends, and just as ugly.

One of the female skins noticed me and pointed out the “goth poofter,” suggesting that her boyfriend and his pals should kick my faggoty ass. They jeered at me, brandished their fists at me and let me—and every other passenger in that subway car—know that they were going to beat me within an inch of my life. If I was lucky. Suffice to say that my life might’ve changed course dramatically that night had things turned out differently.

My first instinct was to piss in my pants or start crying like a baby begging them for mercy, but I decided that hoping for some cops to magically appear and save my quivering hide was probably a better strategy. Then the train conductor announced over the intercom system that we’d be stopping at the next station, and that the train we were on was being taken out of commission so all the passengers needed to exit and wait on the platform for the next train to arrive.

This was not necessarily good news, I thought.

I mentioned how crowded the train was. When this positively bursting-at-the-seams car cleared out a bit, I made to exit in the opposite direction from where the skinheads had been taunting me when the biggest and meanest one of them stomped right over and drew his arm back to wallop me with a haymaker. Had his punch connected, I’ve no doubt that he would have knocked me unconscious and probably broken several bones in my face. But he didn’t connect. He barely grazed my forehead and I felt his fist rush by me like a gust of wind as it just barely missed cracking my skull into several pieces.

The platform at the station was even more densely packed than the train had been. I needed to find some cops—and was frantically trying to push my way through the sardines, followed closely behind by this drunken, bloodthirsty skinhead wolfpack—but there were no London bobbies anywhere to be found. I kept moving, hoping something would happen when the train turned up. Standing still and waiting for them to catch up to me wasn’t an option, and there were several yards between us. I plowed onwards.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
If you need a break from the campaign 2016 madness, we recommend some time with the groundbreaking progressive jazz-rock combo known as the Soft Machine.

On January 10, 1971, BBC One played a segment on the program Anatomy of Pop showcasing the leaders of the experimental Canterbury scene. It’s an 8-minute clip in black & white featuring both interviews and live footage, although not any one song is played to completion (they did tend to go long, you know). These were the Wyatt/Ratledge/Dean/Hopper years of Third and Fourth—Third had come out the previous June, and Fourth was just a month away from release.

All four members are interviewed, but it’s Robert Wyatt who does most of the talking—he amusingly says that it was “quite hard work” learning to get into Charlie Parker. However, that needn’t suggest a negative assessment, on at least two of his albums (Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981 and Flotsam Jetsam) Wyatt played Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce.”

In between the epic solos, make sure you get out to VOTE if doing so early is an option in your precinct.
 

 
After the jump, Soft Machine on German TV’s ‘Beat-Club’ back in March of 1971…

 
I have to admit I’m a huge fan of Antiques Roadshow. I’ve been watching it for years. So you can imagine my shock when I clicked play on this short segment of the BBC show.

I fell for it hook, line and sinker. This was really well done, in my opinion.

I don’t want to give too much away except, “These are quite collectible, you know.”

Also, totally NOT safe for work. You’ve been warned.

 
via Boing Boing

 
It’s November, and the temperature in my neighborhood in northern Ohio reached 77 just two days ago. It felt like the start of September really, just a lovely day to be outside. Not at all cold.

One of the benefits of the balmy winters brought on by catastrophic climate change is that there’s no risk someone will trick us into donning one of the absolutely amazing sweaters featured in a remarkable book of knitting designs from the fashionable 1980s. Wit Knits, which presented “lively and original” knitted sweater suggestions by George Hostler and Gyles Brandreth, came out in 1986, and the photographs showing off the finished designs are simply jaw-dropping in their silliness.
 

 
There’s a website devoted to these pictures, but its proprietor, rightly sensing that the visual impact of these doozies is the primary appeal, therefore “won’t post patterns, buy the book if you want to make them.” Harrumph. The book is, like everything else, available on Amazon.

The really peculiar thing about Wit Knits is that virtually all of the models are well-known figures from 1980s British television. I don’t know how Hostler and Brandreth were able to sucker such famous personages into agreeing to be involved with this, but perhaps it was simply a paid gig like any other. Maybe they got to keep the sweaters?

For instance: I can remember watching, on WNET Channel 13 in New York back around when this book came out, a delightful British show called Good Neighbors (it was known as The Good Life in the U.K.), and Richard Briers, here wearing the light blue sweater with the “wee Scottie” on it, was the lead actor on that show. Meanwhile, Joanna Lumley—then perhaps best known for her stint in The New Avengers, who later became an icon of decadence in Ab Fab—here is shown wearing a ridiculous sweater with a horsey; she also has a different one with what is most likely an owl on it. Lizzie Webb, who presented morning exercise routines on TV, is wearing a sweater with a kittykat on it. Most of the people here are like that.
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…......

The Pretenders giving zero fucks.
 
If you grew up as a kid in the UK during the mid-70s through to the early 80s it’s a safe bet that you a spent few Saturday mornings glued to the tube watching kids show Tiswas (or “This Is Saturday, What A Show!”, “Today Is Saturday, Wear A (or Wake-up And) Smile!”, or (unofficially) “This Is Saturday, Watch And Suffer!”).

Tiswas had a live studio audience filled with young fans and tried to bring on various musical acts who were popular during the years it was broadcast such as Elvis Costello, Motörhead and in this case, The Pretenders. In 1981 Chrissie Hynde, Martin Chambers and Pete Farndon had the pleasure of participating in a skit called “The Phantom Flan Flinger Challenge.” The title of the segment sounds both delicious and gross but if you’ve ever seen the show you know things are not going to end well for Chrissie and her bandmates.

As it was a common practice to “repurpose” Tiswas’ videotape masters (“tape over” them) only a small number of episodes (according to some sources only 22) actually still exist.

Given the rarity of surviving Tiswas shows, I am happy to report that not only is the quality of this footage pretty great, it also contains a rather startling moment involving one of Tiswas’ hosts, Chris Tarrant, and Chrissie Hynde that will make you wonder if Tarrant ever made it out of the studio alive. I’ll leave you to ponder what that all means while you watch this amusing four minutes of footage.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Brass in Pocket: The Pretenders live in Germany, 1981
Music for Wanking: Brian Eno discusses his porno collection with Chrissie Hynde, 1974