For a few hours on Thursday, the address “Theodor-Heuss-Platz” in western Berlin reverted to its name during the Third Reich—“Adolf-Hitler-Platz”—at least on Google, anyway.

As is often the case in Europe—think of Leningrad/St. Petersburg—the names of places are themselves a kind of condensed history of the twentieth century. Such is the case with Theodor-Heuss-Platz. From its construction in the early 1900s to 1933, the square was called “Reichskanzlerplatz,” or “Imperial Chancellor Square.” From 1933 until 1945 (BZ, the paper that uncovered Google’s goof, says 1947) it was named after Der Führer. After the war (whether 1945 or 1947) it reverted to Reichskanzlerplatz. Then in 1963 the square was named after Theodor Heuss, who was the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II, from 1949 to 1959. (The position of President is largely a ceremonial one in Germany; the current President is not Angela Merkel—she’s the Chancellor—but rather Joachim Gauck.)
 

 
According to BZ, a spokesman at Google apologized and said that they would look into why this change occurred. So far, they don’t know why it happened. When I first read about this, my first thought was that they had somehow permitted data from an old-timey map to get through—which just goes to show how naive I am. BZ points out that Google Maps permits certain changes from users, to account for short-term construction or changes in traffic. It takes only one disgruntled neo-Nazi to make a change like that.

BZ also points out that Google Maps has a pretty good record in terms of dealing with historical place names. For instance, if you put “Karl-Marx-Stadt,” Google Maps instantly directs you to Chemnitz, as the East German city was known before 1953 and after 1990.

Here is how the square looked during the Third Reich and how it looks today:
 

Note: “im Flaggenschmuck” means something like “In flag mode” or “Done up in flags.”
 

 
via Spiegel Online

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Google map view of the spreading riots in London
Massive pentagram viewable in Kazakhstan on Google Maps

 
It’s the kind of thing you would expect to see in some B-movie horror, where a ravenous cockroach crawls into a sleeping victim’s ear, and starts burrowing towards their brain. It will involve lots of screaming, gore, thrashing about and flying chunks of splattered brain. You get the picture. Well, for one man in Australia this was almost what happened, when a cockroach paid him a nocturnal visit.

Hendrik Helmer awoke one morning from uneasy sleep with a sharp pain in his right ear. At first he feared a poisonous spider had crawled into his ear during the night, and hoped it would not bite him.

Helmer then attempted to suck out the intruder with a vacuum cleaner. When this failed, and the pain became excruciating, he tried squirting water into his ear, but to no effect. As Helmer explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

“Whatever was in my ear didn’t like it at all.”

A concerned roommate rushed Helmer to a local hospital, where a doctor put oil in his ear. Alas, this only forced the 0.8 inch cockroach to burrow deeper, where it eventually began to die.
 

A mutant cockroach from ‘Bug’ (1975)
 
According to Mr. Helmer, it was around the ten minute mark that the cockroach began to stop burrowing and began “the throes of death twitching.” The doctor put forceps into his ear and removed the cockroach.

“She [the doctor] said, ‘You know how I said a little cockroach, that may have been an underestimate.’

“They said they had never pulled an insect this large out of someone’s ear.”

Mr. Helmer said he would not be taking any further precautions to stop any other nocturnal invaders, although his friends have been so perturbed, some are now sleeping with headphones on.

However, cockroaches crawling into people’s ears whilst they are asleep, is not uncommon, as the following video shows.
 

 .

And here are those little critters in the horror movie Bug (1975)
 
H/T the Daily Telegraph

 
Admittedly 99% of the stuff I get sent by publicists and PR firms is worthless to me. I am bombarded with so much shit on a daily basis that I stopped politely replying a long time ago (it’s all I would be able to do all day). On occasion, something sublime gets through the noise of my inbox…

“Jack Name” is an artistic moniker (one of several, apparently) for John Webster Johns, a prolific LA-based musician/producer associated with Ariel Pink and White Fence. His debut solo release is Light Show, a musical “sci-fi novella.” In the artist bio written by John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees and Castle Face Records, Dwyer laments the fact that Light Show is coming out, not on his own label, but on Ty Segall’s new God? Records imprint (via Drag City) before going on to rhapsodize that…

Whiffs of young Brian Eno, Gary Numan, Chrome, ELO, Bruce Haack, even Richard O’Brien (a la “Rocky Horror”) and Stefan Wul stain the sleeves of this story, but it’s still wholly original and cooked at home so it’s as honest as it is good for you. The sounds are a dense and ever-shifting beast—just an absolutely put-you-on-the-floor headphone record. The narrative holds as much significance as the sound; hopefully there will be a lyric sheet so teenagers ripe for a push in the right direction can follow along, pink-eyed , with their index fingers.

Okay. Let’s stop right here. An “absolutely put-you-on-the-floor headphone record”? I am already a fish on that hook. Those are some pretty interesting names to drop in a press release, too. My interest was piqued, to say the least. Stefan Wul’s name included there made it even more intriguing…

What is this?

Naturally, I read on:

Light Show lifts off over an alien plane—immediate, heavily skimming the surface of the landscape where the story unfurls. A conversation, maybe a dream… it’s a bit cloudy, but it’s just the start and it’s wonderful. So you prepare to soak up the whole story and carry it with you from now on. Looking down you get a stream of conscious view into the heads of the opposing factions constantly at war in this mirror dimension to our own. The wooly bullies are applying leaden pressure on the shadows which they resent for their imagination and lust for art. They use the whip of televised terror and the cell of prescriptions to flatten your creative energies. The shadows, in turn, need time, freedom and space to flourish away from the square oppressors.

 

 
“Jack Name” aka John Webster Johns

Okay. If you are anything like me, you’re probably salivating to hear some of this. Happy to oblige… Here, to whet your appetite for the January 24 release of Light Show is the premiere of “Born to Lose.” This sounds to my ears, in some oddball way, like The Residents meet the Gun Club. The guitar solo even sounds like Snakefinger. This is a very good thing. Dig it:
 

“Pure Terror”

“I was there with the gang the time the telephone rang to say a sleeper bit the leader with his medicine fangs.”

If that isn’t a lyric worthy of Marc Bolan in his prime, I don’t know what the fuck would be.

Pre-order Jack Name’s Light Show at Drag City. More Jack Name on SoundCloud.

Below, a performance of Jack Name’s Fictional Boys, live at the Hyperion Tavern Los Angeles:
 

 
Someone’s created a Tumblr of famous record albums that have been “pixelated” and turned into 40"x40” Lego grids. They’re quite nice.

These Lego albums are so well—one might say perfectly—executed that I find myself wondering about the color choices available to Lego users—these covers appear to use every color in the Pantone universe. I suppose if you’re using Lego Digital Designer, you can use these colors.

Which begs the question: Are these actual Lego constructions or were they made in Lego Digital Designer? And if they were made in Lego Digital Designer, does that make them any less real?

The albums pictured here are so well known that I’m not going to bother identifying them—the Tumblr itself ranges more widely across the musical spectrum.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Inevitably, here’s The White Stripes, “Fell in Love with a Girl”:

 
via Ufunk

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
DEVO light switch plate made of LEGO pieces
Stop-motion LEGO ‘Dr. Strangelove’

 
1969’s brilliant Hot Buttered Soul made Isaac Hayes famous as a soul singer, completing his transition to stardom from his past as a behind-the-scenes songwriter and producer. (Did you know that he co-wrote Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man?” That alone would qualify him for eternal exaltation even if he never did anything else.) 1971’s immortal Shaft soundtrack made him indisputably an icon. How do you follow that up? With shitloads of hubris.

It was Dino Woodward who came up with the “Black Moses” tag. “Dino said, ‘Man, look at these people out there,’” explains Isaac. “Do you know what you’re bringing into their lives? Look at these guys from Vietnam, man, how they’re crying when they see you, how you helped them through when they was out there in the jungle and they stuck to your music. You like a Moses, man. You just like Black Moses, you the modern-day Moses!”

“Somebody got wind of that and when I opened in Philadelphia at the Spectrum, [in front of] eighteen thousand people, Georgie Woods, who was a local radio personality and a promoter, introduced me that night. He said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you the Black Moses of the music world—Isaac Hayes,” and the whole place stood, people just screaming and it caught on. A writer for Jet magazine named Chester Higgins did an article on me and he used the term Black Moses, and then [Stax Records’ creative director] Larry Shaw had the savvy to capitalize on it and entitle the album Black Moses.

“I had nothing to do with it. I was kicking and screaming all the way. But when I saw the relevance and effect that it had on people, it wasn’t a negative thing. It was a healing thing, it was an inspiring thing. It raised the level of black consciousness in the states. People were proud to be black. Black men could finally stand up and be men because here’s Black Moses, he’s the epitome of black masculinity. Chains that once represented bondage and slavery can now be a sign of power and strength and sexuality and virility.

—From Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records by Rob Bowman, 1997

Though that’s a LOT for an artist to carry on his shoulders, Hayes did it. And not only was Black Moses successful at cementing Hayes’ status as a symbol, it was an artistic and marketplace success as well. Moses was Hayes’ second double-LP of 1971, his second consecutive release to spend several weeks at #1 on Billboard‘s R&B album chart, AND his second consecutive Grammy winner. Who else has released two double-albums in one year that both went on to become classics? I can’t think of anyone. (Also, Hayes pulled that feat decades before he adopted the tenets of Scientology. Suck on THOSE chocolate salty balls, L. Ron.)

But if you’re going to assume the mantle of Black Moses, not only does your album have to be excellent, the cover needs to be at least memorable if not iconic. But Stax’ covers of that period were not so hot.

Ever since he had come to Stax, Larry Shaw felt that the company had severely lagged behind in its cover art department. The nadir for Shaw was David Porter’s Gritty, Groovy And Gettin’ It LP, released in February 1970, where a naked Porter was pictured with an equally naked female partner from the armpits up.

“To me,” confesses Shaw, “it was just a nasty presentation of an artist humping some chick. The disrespect that the designers of it had for the artist and the music was not necessary. It was their translation of guts. It was not appropriate.

Stax artwork had improved tremendously since Shaw, with help from former Bar-Kay Ron Gordon, took over its direction. With Black Moses he outdid himself, designing what has to be the most elaborate album package for a black artist up to that point. The two records were encased in a regular cover that portrayed Hayes from the neck up, shrouded in a caftan against a backdrop of endless sky. The cover clearly signified the notion of Hayes as Moses in the Middle East. Enveloping the regular cover was a multi-panel graphic that unfolded into a cross shape four feet high and three feet wide. Here was the same image of Hayes as Moses, but now it was a full body shot with the artist at the edge of a large body of water.

—Bowman
 

 
A four foot cruciform Isaac Hayes! I wonder, in how many homes did that hang along with an actual crucifix? In how many instead of an actual crucifix? The 2009 CD reissue, charmingly, reproduces the foldout—underwhelmingly but understandably at CD size. That’s certainly better than the first CD version from 1990, which made no attempt whatsoever to address the fact that the album sported one of the single most badass covers of all time.

Enjoy this Isaac Hayes bio/tribute video, produced for the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in Memphis, TN.
 

 
This is so fucking genius: A redneck preacher by the name of Pastor Daniel Castle rails against Wonder Showzen, MTV’s infamously evil twin parody of Sesame Street, but he seems to think that it’s a real kids show, adding a bonkers meta-commentary that had me in stitches. It’s so absolutely perfect that I wondered if the Wonder Showzen producers had actually made it themselves. If they had, it would be like a perfect Russian matryoshka doll of piss-yourself funny multi-layered sacrilegious satire. Eventually I concluded that even those evil geniuses probably couldn’t have come up with this. It’s simply too real.

The top YouTube commenter nails it:

The addition of a sincere & oblivious commentary of outrage by a fundamentalist preacher to crowd of yokels shoves this to a A+ skit.  If I worked at Wonder Showzen I would add this as a special feature on the DVD and double the price. 

What about having Pastor Castle do an entire commentary? I’d re-buy the Wonder Showzen DVDs again in a heartbeat with that added!

The goofball who posted the clip, “savedbyjesusblood” described it like this:

Clips of MTV’s evil TV show “Wonder Showzen” explained by Pastor Daniel Castle. This is one of the most evil shows and spiritual exploitation of children I have ever seen.

He obviously doesn’t get it either…
 

 
Below, the first episode of Wonder Showzen, one of the most perverse and subversive things ever funded by a major corporation
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares/The Daily Banter

 
It is claimed Alfred Hitchcock was so traumatized after viewing footage of the liberation of the Belsen-Bergen concentration camp that the legendary film director stayed away from Pinewood Film Studios for a week.

Hitchcock had been enlisted by friend and patron, Sidney Bernstein to make a documentary on German atrocities carried out during the Second World War. The director was to use footage shot by British and Soviet film units during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. The material was so disturbing that Hitchcock’s complete film has rarely been seen. Speaking to the Independent newspaper, Dr Toby Haggith, Senior Curator at the Department of Research, Imperial War Museum, said:

“It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British. Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there.”

According to Patrick McGilligan in his biography Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light:

[Hitchcock met] with two writers who had witnessed the atrocities of Bergen-Belsen first-hand. Richard Crossman contributed a treatment, while Colin Wills, an Australian correspondent, wrote a script that relied heavily on narration.

The director had committed himself to the project early enough to give Hitchcockian instructions to some of the first cameramen entering the concentration camps. Hitchcock made a point of requesting “long tracking shots, which cannot be tampered with,” in the words of the film’s editor, Peter Tanner, so that nobody could claim the footage had been manipulated to falsify the reality. The footage was in a newsreel style, but generally of high quality, and some of it in color.

....

The footage spanned eleven concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Ebensee, and Mathausen. The filmmakers ended up with eight thousand feet of film and newsreel, some of it shot by allied photographers, the rest of it impounded. It was to be cut and assembled into roughly seven reels.

Hitchcock watched “all the film as it came in,” recalled Tanner, although the director “didn’t like to look at it.” The footage depressed both of them: the piles of corpses, the staring faces of dead children, the walking skeletons. The days of looking at the footage were long and unrelievedly grim.

In the end, the planned film took Hitchcock and his team much longer than anticipated, and when it was delivered, the perceived opinion was the documentary would not help with Germany’s postwar reconstruction. Despite protests from Bernstein and Hitchcock, the documentary was dumped and five of the film’s six reels were deposited at the Imperial War Museum, where they were quietly forgotten.

Some later thought Hitchcock’s claims of making a Holocaust documentary were mere flights of fancy, that was until 1980, when an American researcher discovered the forgotten five reels listed as “F3080” in the Museum’s archives. These were screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 1985, and this incomplete and poor quality version was then shown on PBS under the title Memory of the Camps, with its original commentary by Crossman and Wills, narrated by Trevor Howard.

Now, the Imperial War Museum has painstakingly restored all six reels according to Hitchcock’s original intentions. This has led to some “wariness” over seeing the documentary as a “Hitchcock film” rather than as an important and horrific record of Nazi atrocities.

Haggith, who worked as an advisor on the project, has said the film is “much more candid” than any previous Holocaust documentary, and has described it as “brilliant” and “sophisticated.”

“It’s both an alienating film in terms of its subject matter but also one that has a deep humanity and empathy about it. Rather than coming away feeling totally depressed and beaten, there are elements of hope.

“We can’t stop the film being incredibly upsetting and disturbing but we can help people understand why it is being presented in that way.

“Judging by the two test screenings we have had for colleagues, experts and film historians, what struck me was that they found it extremely disturbing.

“When you’re sitting in a darkened cinema and you’re focusing on a screen, your attention is very focused, unlike watching it on television… the digital restoration has made this material seem very fresh. One of the common remarks was that it [the film] was both terrible and brilliant at the same time.”

Work on Hitchcock’s documentary is almost complete, and the film (with as yet to be announced new title) will be shown on British TV in early 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the “liberation” of Europe. The film will also be screened at film festivals and in the cinema.

The following is the 5-reel version of Hitchcock’s documentary. Warning: the film contains horrific and disturbing images, which may not be suitable viewing for all.
 

 
Via the ‘Independent’ with thanks to Tara!

 
This week The Cure’s keyboardist Roger O’Donnell talks about his relationship with Robert Smith, being fired twice from the band, and taking over and locking out an English radio station for twelve hours.

O’Donnell has had a 20 plus year tenure in the influential English post-punk band.

He began his career playing for the likes of Arthur Brown, The Thompson Twins, The Psychedelic Furs and others and has been with The Cure since the 1987 tour supporting Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. He has contributed to 1989’s career-defining record Disintegration—discussed here—among others.

Gregg Foreman’s radio program, The Pharmacy, is a music / talk show playing heavy soul, raw funk, 60′s psych, girl groups, Krautrock. French yé-yé, Hammond organ rituals, post-punk transmissions and “ghost on the highway” testimonials and interviews with the most interesting artists and music makers of our times…
 

 
Mr. Pharmacy is a musician and DJ who has played for the likes of Pink Mountaintops, The Delta 72, The Black Ryder, The Meek and more. Since 2012 Gregg Foreman has been the musical director of Cat Power’s band. He started dj’ing 60s Soul and Mod 45’s in 1995 and has spun around the world. Gregg currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and divides his time between playing live music, producing records and dj’ing various clubs and parties from LA to Australia.

Set list:

Intro
“Love Me” - The Phantom
“Hey Luciani!” - The Fall
“Dum Daro Dum” - Asha Bhosle and Chorus
The Cure - Roger O’Donnell Interview PT 1
“Grinding Halt” - The Cure
“Can This Be” - The Wipers
LA Nocturne Intro
“Baby Please Don’t Go” - Them
“Another Girl Another Planet” - The Only Ones
“Outdoor Miner” - Wire
“Ye Ye” - Elko Syuri
The Cure - Roger O’Donnell Interview PT 2
“Romeo’s Distress” - Christian Death
“Erase You” - ESG
“There but for the grace of God go I” - The Gories
“Don’t you want my Lovin’” - The Orlons
“Black Soul” - Bo Diddley
“Stereo Freeze” - Jackie Mittoo
The Cure - Roger O’Donnell Interview PT 3
“Mushroom” - CAN
“Mr.Pharmacist” - The Fall
Outro
 

 
You can download the entire show here.

 
As I mentioned in the post yesterday about the great 1979 Tom Waits interview, at the moment I am all about Rickie Lee Jones. Her music is the only music I want to listen to lately. To the exclusion of all else. I’ve been working my way up to a longer, more considered post on Rickie Lee Jones, but that’s not for today—and there is a timely nature to this—so I will keep this one brief.

This morning, clicking around Twitter, I happened upon the news that Jones was raising money to make a new album on Pledge Music. She’s currently 73% of the way towards her goal—with some extremely good premiums like original paintings, house concerts and she was even offering some of her signature berets—with nineteen days left.

Rickie Lee Jones is one of the most important living American musicians, even if the vast majority of the nation doesn’t actually seem to realize this. She’s always been a notoriously difficult talent to describe, fitting into no easy genre or label. Unfortunately in our karaoke culture, a true original like Jones is going to fall through the cracks of what the music industry can do for her. Although I’m sure she must make a decent living touring, at her age, the normal channels won’t be open to her to create and promote new work, so she’s taking it to her fanbase directly.

I thank you in advance for your support, for going with me down this new road.

I think sometimes of the times of Amadeus and the prince or cardinal whose wealth supported him and his work. I’m so much luckier. I have you.

One thing that a deep-pocketed fan/benefactor might be interested in: For the sum of $10,000, the multiple Grammy award-winning musician will write a song about your life. Would make an extravagant, but memorable, wedding anniversary gift, too, I’d think…

Rickie Lee Jones on Pledge Music

Listen to this one time and try—just try—to get it out of your head. From her 2007 masterpiece, The Sermon On Exposition Blvd., here’s “Falling Up”:
 

That’s a lot of butch in one photo

My favorite Hemingway anecdotes always revolve around him being absurdly macho—like when he mocked F. Scott Fitzgerald for his monogamy, or when, in an attempt to prevent sharks from eating the tuna he had just caught, he opened fire with a Thompson submachine-gun directly into the water. This, of course, was pretty counterproductive, since it only produced more blood, attracting more sharks and exacerbating the feeding frenzy.

It only makes sense that Hemingway would tire of shooting fish at some point, and settle himself down for a nice, slow-moving animal like a cow, and it turns out that he had very interesting (and totally delicious-sounding) specifications for his burgers. Below is his recipe for an ultra-manly, super-robust burger. Apparently, Mei Yen Powder is no longer on the market, but you can approximate the rich, umami flavor with nine parts salt, nine parts sugar and two parts MSG. For 1 teaspoon of Mei Yen Powder, use 2/3 of a teaspoon of the mix, plus 1/3 of a teaspoon of soy sauce. (And don’t believe the hype about MSG—it’s harmless and delicious.)

Ingredients–

1 lb. ground lean beef

2 cloves, minced garlic

2 little green onions, finely chopped

1 heaping teaspoon, India relish

2 tablespoons, capers

1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage

Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning — 1/2 teaspoon

Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder — 1/2 teaspoon

1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork

About 1/3 cup dry red or white wine

1 tablespoon cooking oil

What to do–

Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible. Now make your fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying pan hot but not smoking when you drop in the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy.

That is one hell of a specific hamburger is it not???
 
Via Open Culture