By the time Pops Staples sang “Papa Legba” in David Byrne’s movie True Stories, the relationship between the Staple Singers and Talking Heads was already well-established. In 1984, the Staples had a minor hit with their cover of Speaking in Tongues’ “Slippery People,” on which Byrne played guitar, and which they promoted with an appearance on Soul Train. I prefer it to the original.

Biographer Greg Kot writes that the idea for the single came from a producer the two groups shared. From Kot’s I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era:

When the songwriting-production team of Gary Goetzman and Mike Piccirillo persuaded the Staples to record “Slippery People,” they enlisted Byrne to play guitar. “Gary was a producer on Stop Making Sense and he was instrumental in helping me get [the 1986 Byrne-directed movie] True Stories off the ground,” Byrne says. “He produced records as well as movies, and he and his production partner had the idea to find contemporary material that the Staples could cover that would also sound like something they might have written. ‘Slippery People’—just the title alone sounds like a song they could have written. Musically, it was definitely influenced by gospel—its very gospel call-and-response chorus made it a natural fit for them.”

Byrne’s Gumby-like dance moves for Stop Making Sense had been in part inspired by the way worshippers in Southern sanctified churches responded when filled with the Holy Spirit, their bodies writhing and undulating while speaking in tongues. “David’s inspiration was seeing people in church, and that’s what I connected with,” Mavis Staples says. “My head went off into the Bible.”

With Byrne’s chattering guitar skipping atop a grid of percolating percussion, the Staples’ version of “Slippery People” cast Pops in the role of the preacher and Mavis as the congregation responding to his sermon. She sounds like she’s scatting in tongues, a brilliant jazzy take on Deep South church tradition.

The single rose to number 22 on the R&B chart and anchored the group’s 1984 Turning Point album as part of a two-album deal with Private I Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc.

 

 
Then 70, Pops talks about emerging from retirement and the success of “Slippery People” in the post-performance interview with Don Cornelius below. On their next LP, the Staple Singers interpreted “Life During Wartime,” with less exciting results—the production makes me picture Chevy Chase behind the wheel of a convertible with a dog in the passenger seat, but I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind.

Slippery People (club version):

Live on Soul Train:

 
Thank you Adam Payne!

 
Yuichiro Tamaki is a 30-year-old artist living and working in Tokyo. He’s produced conceptual installations, including one where he silkscreened an image of his sleeping self onto a bed with his own blood as ink. (I’d love to say “JAPAN, WTF” right about here, but that’s a big old fistful of art school no matter where you live on the globe.) His portfolio can be found at his blog and in this age-restricted YouTube video, and while some of it is NSFW (suggested dongs, ladynipples), there are zero naughty bits in the works that concern us today.
 

 
For about half a year now, Yuichiro has been posting a daily self-portrait to an Instagram account he maintains under the name “Mywar Yuichiro”—as if to combine the enduring tradition of the long term internet time-lapse with the infamous “The Same Photo of Glenn Danzig Every Day” Facebook group, every single photo features him in a Black Flag My War shirt. And he clearly has a lot of them.
 

 

 

 
Way, way more “My War” Instagram fun after the jump!

 
Why this drummer was kicked out of the Cramps: “They guarded their image to the utmost degree – almost to the point where they seemed imprisoned by it .” (Critical Angst)

‘Tapers’ at the Grateful Dead Concerts Spread the Audio Sacrament: It’s the last stand of a dying breed. (The New York Times)

Your Wi-Fi Network’s Soft Underbelly: You probably don’t even think about this easy way for hackers to sneak in. (Slate)

Donald Trump gets into Twitter war with Modern Family writer—is obliterated: Trump’s idea of a “sick burn” is on the level of a Depends-wearing Breitbart commenter. (Daily Kos)

Democrats edge past the GOP in party affiliation. Does it matter? A plurality of American voters identify themselves as Independents, eschewing the two major political parties. Still, more voters are registering as Democrats than as Republicans, which could impact the 2016 presidential race. (Christian Science Monitor)

Bobby Jindal’s aides complain the governor is being excluded from Koch brothers events, CNN reports: He’s a fucking asshole, who can blame them? (Nola.com)

The Idiot Thug Running Maine: Maine’s ultra-conservative governor might have finally messed with the wrong people: a school for disadvantaged kids. Now, he could get impeached for it. (The Daily Beast)

Holly Woodlawn, the beloved, iconic transgender pioneer and Warhol superstar is very ill: She is undergoing investigative measures to determine exactly the nature of the lesions discovered on her brain and lungs. Holly’s has made it clear that she wants to return home, surrounded by friends and if she must die, she doesn’t want to die in a nursing home. Friends of Woodlawn hope to raise enough funds to continue her care and hopefully bring Holly home with 24 hour nursing care, after she recuperates. (Bring Holly Woodlawn Home)

Greenland’s ice is melting faster this summer under a dome of high pressure: The heat wave in Europe has hogged all the attention, with Germany and other countries setting all-time national heat records. Yet the same weather pattern that has brought the furnace-like heat to France, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland and other countries has also been kicking the Greenland ice sheet melt season into high gear after a slightly delayed start. (Mashable)

‘Bernie Sanders CAN Become President’ Has Replaced ‘I Like Him, But He Can’t Win’: Bernie Sanders has cut the former Secretary of State’s lead in New Hampshire from 38 percentage points down to just 8. (Huffington Post)

Watch The Rejected, the very first TV documentary about homosexuality. Fascinating San Francisco public television-produced time capsule film from 1961, found after being lost for decades. Features famed anthropologist Margaret Mead.

 
Google’s “Deep Dream” artificial intelligence system works (more or less) by subjecting (I guess that’s the right word) an image to a layer of artificial neurons which will build upon certain aspects of said image (like a surface or pattern or edges or color) to turn it into something that it previously wasn’t.

So people are uploading their faces or their dog’s face or… whatever and watching them morph into something… unexpected. It’s fun. Think of it as a kind of a surrealism generator. Or an acid trip you can take during your lunch break.

But what happens when you present Google’s “inceptionism” algorithm with an actual acid trip, or at least the cinematic depiction of an acid trip? Using what’s probably the very best representation of an acid trip ever committed to celluloid, a user on Github fed this dream monster a taste of Terry Gilliam’s 1998 adaptation of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Here are the nightmarish results… Heavy meta!
 

 
Via Gizmodo

 
During Robert Smith’s tenure as the guitarist in Siouxsie and the Banshees (1982-84), a period that yielded the “Dear Prudence” hit single, as well as Hyena and the live Nocturne album, while Siouxsie and Budgie were off doing The Creatures, Smith and Banshees’ bassist Steven Severin formed The Glove, a one-off side-project with vocalist/dancer Jeanette Landray (Smith’s Cure contract forbade him from singing with another group).

The Glove, named after a character in Yellow Submarine produced just one album, the experimental, druggy, yet still quite poppy-sounding goth psychedelia of Blue Sunshine (yes, they copped the title from the cult film about the bad LSD) and two singles, “Like an Animal” and “Punish Me with Kisses.”
 

 
The 2006 reissue of Blue Sunshine as a 2 CD set that features a second disc of Glove demos with Smith singing instead of Landray. (Many fans were annoyed to find that his vocals were only recently recorded.) Both Severin and Smith have indicated that they would like to record together again.

Below, “A Blues in Drag”:

 
Hear “Punish Me with Kisses” after the jump…

Grim markers along “The Death Road” in Bolivia
 
More than 25,000 biking aficionados come from all over the world to ride the North Yungus Road in Bolivia, known by locals as “The Death Road” or in their native tongue, “El Camino de la Muerte.” “The Death Road” starts at a staggering 11,000 feet in the snowy Andes mountains, and takes riders on a 40+ mile, adrenaline-fueled trip through the Amazon Rainforest.
 

Brave bikers traveling the Death Road
 

 
While at times it may appear to be an idyllic trip full of waterfalls and mythical, untouched vistas, the road lives up to its name, claiming approximately 300 victims a year. The grim reminders of those who lost their lives on the Death Road are marked by crosses. And there are entirely too many of them along the treacherous route. Originally constructed by Paraguayan POW’s that were captured during the Chaco War (1932–1935), the road was formed using only picks and shovels. Some ravines along the one-lane route plunge more than 1,500 feet straight down. Naturally, as it is a road of death, there are precious few guardrails, if any at all, to protect those brave enough to ride the road.
 

 

 

Base-jumper on the Death Road
 
Some of the braver (if not brainless) bikers are also known to “base jump” off the road into whatever lies beneath.There are loads of tour companies that offer guided excursions of the road and people who run them have told stories of young tourists showing up to ride hungover (yikes), or of overzealous bikers armed with GoPro cameras on their helmets that only aid in distracting them from the very real dangers of the road.

Of course not every biker that tries their luck on the Death Road are foolhardy or unprepared for the intimidating trek. Many who take on the Death Road are legitimately skilled thrill-seekers in search of their next challenge. While base jumping into a blissful looking rainforest may be appealing those who live to die another day, I’d just rather watch people doing it. So if you just nodded your head in agreement to my last statement, please enjoy the following video of a guy base jumping off the Death Road. Viva la DEATH!
 

POV video of a base jumper on the Death Road

Nishimatu Nisei, 1996
 
Nonsuch, or “Nonsvch,” as the album cover technically rendered it, was XTC’s final record for Virgin. It was released in 1992 with an arresting medieval cover concept (one might also surmise that this extended to the album’s songs as well). I don’t know anybody who counts it among XTC’s strongest efforts. In fact, last year, when Robert Ham of Stereogum endeavored to undertake a full ranking of all of XTC’s albums, the only XTC album he rated worse than Nonsuch was Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2). Christgau gave the album a bomb, which might be a little harsh.

An advertisement for the album in Alternative Press featured a cute little poem with the title “Subscribe, A Poem,” the idea being that subscribing to AP would enable you to receive a CD sampler of Nonsuch and also enter the subscriber in a raffle. The poem went:
 

It slices not.
It dices not.
It belches not.
It squelches not.
It lives for you.
It lives by you.

 
Meanwhile, in what today seems like an agglomeration of dropped names that were extra certain to identify the year as 1992, an ad in the August issue of SPY claimed that “George Bush doesn’t get it. David Duke thinks it contains communist codes. William Kennedy Smith just wants to know if it gets chicks hot.” (Ahem, the “George Bush” in question here was George Herbert Walker Bush….)

Chalkhills, the XTC fan mailing list that later became one of the most exhaustive XTC fan websites, at some point noticed that the attractive woodcut-looking back cover art lent itself to, well, a coloring book (or a “colouring book,” depending). So they asked XTC fans to send in their best “coloured” versions of the various images. Naturally, this became known as The Nonsvch Colouring Book. The results, mostly executed in MS Paint or similar programs, aren’t half-bad.
 

 
Here we present a few of the highlights from the colored-in gallery and then the entire panels in their original b/w form.

 

Jeff Parker, 1998
 

“Jen,” 1998
 

Molly Fanton, 1998
 
After the jump, the uncolored versions as well as the album’s first video…...

Dee Dee Ramone and one of his Fender Precision basses
 
According to the folks at musical gear auction site Reverb, some posh punk has paid $37,995 to become the proud owner of one of Dee Dee Ramone’s personal bass guitars (like the one pictured with Dee Dee above).
 

Dee Dee Ramone’s Fender Precision bass guitar that just sold for $37,995
 

Dee Dee Ramone’s hard shell Fender bass case that sold along with his Fender Precision
 
According to the listing, the Fender ‘75 precision bass (with black pickguard pictured above) has been hanging out in a private collection since the 80’s, gifted to its owner by the Ramones themselves. The bass is said to still be in playable condition and even came in the original case (with a Ramones stencil on the back). Also included was a letter from Monte Melnick, the band’s former road manager, validating the instrument’s authenticity. Dee Dee played the Fender Precision for most of his too-short career and used them pretty much exclusively from 1974-1988, favoring the model with the black pickguard from 1975-1977.
 

 
Another of Dee Dee’s Fender Precision basses (the all-white one you can see Dee Dee playing in the video below when the Ramones performed on the Old Grey Whistle Test on February 26, 1985), sold at a 2014 auction for a cool $37,694.48.
 

The Ramones perform “Wart Hog” (with Dee Dee on lead vocals) and “Chasing the Night” (from 1984’s Too Tough to Die) on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 1985

 
If you’ve not seen the definitive anime Akira, I highly suggest you make the time to watch it. If you’ve not read the comic it’s based on, I demand you get on that shit, like, yesterday. Set in post-nuclear Tokyo (well, technically “Neo-Tokyo,” an artificial island in the bay), Akira is a sort of post-apocalyptic coming-of-age story—just with telepathy, gang wars and terrorism. The first of the six volume series was released in 1982, but the decrepit futurism and universal themes have made it a timeless classic.It’s difficult to imagine anyone collaborating with or updating it, but the Akira/Simpsons mash-up, Bartkira, is positively inspired.
 

 
Hundreds of cartoonists are collaborating to re-create all six volumes of the series, panel by panel, recast with characters from The Simpsons—you can see the cast list (pre-determined for consistency) here. The project will run until the series is reproduced in its entirity, and you can actually submit your Bartkira fan art to the Tumblr (which has a ton of great art), or send samples of your work to bartkiracommittee@gmail.com if you want to contribute to the actual Bartkira comic.
 
As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, over fifty animators have actually produced a video trailer for the project, and it’s dead-on. If you’re wondering if this is legal, so are the artists involved:

We’re not sure. We kind of just leapt into it. To be on the safe side, we’re keeping Bartkira as an entirely non-profit operation and we’re giving all the proceeds from sales of books, shirts and so on to charity. If you’ve made merchandise from your Bartkira artwork, we encourage you to do the same. We suspect the project occupies a legal grey area protected by parody laws. Regardless, as of writing we’re a year in and we haven’t received our cease-and-desist yet.

Supposedly, Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo got a kick out of the project, and while Matt Groening hasn’t been reached for comment, he’s got a huge collection of bootleg Simpsons merch, and likely wouldn’t care. And who wouldn’t be flattered by a project this formidable? The scope and artistry of the parody is positively sublime.
 

 

 

 
H/t Jason Clarke

AK-47 blunt

It’s hard to tell how much actual weed master “bluntsman” ValleyRec420 packs into his blunts, but after looking through his mind-boggling Instragram, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s A LOT.

While his smokable designs run the gamut from animals like sharks and turtles, to helicopters and airplanes, I was most switched on by VR420’s collection of weaponized blunts. According to VR420 himself, his first attempt at a blunt that also doubles as a weapon was a revolver (pictured below) that looks like it was packed with about a half-ounce of the good shit.
 

Revolver blunt

VR420 will occasionally note how much weed (and even the strain) he packed into his fantastic cannabis creations, as well as how many “swishers” (blunt papers) he had to use for each project. The results are pretty incredible, especially when you consider that VR420’s weapons of choice are fully functional. In other words, if you got a blunt that looks like a sweet sawed-off shotgun, then you can actually smoke said sweet blunt. If this post has sent you running for your stash and a pack of old-school Tiparillos, then I highly (zing!) encourage you to paw through ValleyRec420’s Instragram.
 

Double barrel shotgun blunt
 

Sawed-off shotgun blunt
 
More after the jump…