I was never really a massive Cure fan or anything, but I was lucky enough to catch them at a career highlight, at one of the two London concerts taped for their 1984 live album, Concert: The Cure Live. I had a friend who wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with The Cure’s logo emblazoned on the back every day and he’d bought a bunch of tickets that it turned out no one else wanted. Bribed by a free ticket so he didn’t have to go alone, I went along with him to Hammersmith Odeon on May 9th, 1984.

I think it was the perfect time to see them. While it was still relatively “early” in the band’s history, The Cure had actually been around for quite a while at this point. Robert Smith had recharged his creative energies, playing guitar with Siouxsie and The Banshees and recording Blue Sunshine as The Glove with Steven Severin. The Top was an inspired album charting a new and more sonically-varied direction for the group. Certainly Concert features one of the best set lists—probably the very best—of any Cure tour before or since.

There were some super cool darkly psychedelic visuals projected above the band of things like goldfish shot from weird angles and an incredibly long, extremely slow and claustrophobic dolly shot down a long hotel hallway, probably the work of their longtime collaborator Tim Pope. In terms of trippy eye candy and a retina-searing light show, it was truly superb. The Top had just come out and the band were on good form, as you might expect them to be since they were obviously aware that there was a mobile recording studio outside the venue taping the show.

Here’s a concert from a few months later, taped in Glasgow at The Barrowlands on August 25, 1984 with a similar set list. Not nearly as atmospheric as the show I saw—which was much darker, with a lot of strobe lights (more like this clip, which IS the actual performance from Oxford that was used on the Concert album); the back projections are missing here, too, because they wouldn’t have worked for TV—but still it’s a smoking hot vintage set from The Cure.

I would be remiss in not remarking on something that has puzzled a lot of the YouTube viewers: Why is Lol Tolhurst pretending to play on songs where no keyboards are heard?

LOL, Tolhurst!

1. Shake Dog Shake
2. Primary
3. The Walk
4. The Hanging Garden
5. One Hundred Years
6. Give Me It
7. A Forest
8. Piggy in the Mirror
9. Happy the Man
10. Play for Today
11. The Caterpillar
12. 10.15 Saturday Night
13. Killing An Arab
 

Nick Cave watches The Saints perform at the Tiger Room, Melbourne, 1977. Image via Suicide Watch.

A bone found in a garden in Suffolk belongs to what has been described as “the scariest animal that has ever lived in the sea” - BBC News

Patti Smith pays tribute to Lou Reed - New Yorker

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company promoted powerful psychiatric drugs for unapproved uses in children, seniors and disabled patients - Big Story

Starfish are dying in huge numbers from a gruesome wasting disease - The Verge

80-year-old man survives after falling off a cliff while fighting a bear - TIME

Kylie Minogue joins Nick Cave on stage in London for duet - NME

Uncensored Instagrams from North Korea buck brutal trend of secrecy - Wired

Kuwaiti woman arrested in Saudi Arabia for driving her diabetic father to hospital - The Independent

Mass killings can haunt elephants for decades - Science Mag

Billy Corgan in talks to purchase TNA Wrestling - Consequence of Sound

50 incredibly tough books for extreme readers - FlavorWire

Nick Cardy, a revered and influential comic book artist known best for his DC Comics work in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, passed away Sunday at age 93 - CBR

Morrissey’s autobiography audiobook to be read by David Morrissey of The Walking Dead - Pitchfork

Herbal supplements are often not what they seem - New York Times

NSA, GCHQ among worst surveillance offenders, Snowden says - CNN

Dissident poet Joseph Brodsky gives life tips to college grads (1988) - Open Culture

1.8 tonnes of ivory found in Chinese home in Tanzania - Wildlife News

CIA made doctors torture suspected terrorists after 9/11 - The Guardian

Lamenting Madagascar’s last lonely lemurs - Global Post

Even in the dark, brain “sees” its own body’s movement - Vanderbilt University
 

Below, an absolutely wonderful useless dog trick:

Trout Mask Replica painting by Cal Schenkel

Even if the name Cal Schenkel doesn’t quite ring a bell, there is very little doubt that you’ve seen his illustrations, photography and collage work work adorning literally dozens of iconic album covers by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, The Fugs, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. He was basically Zappa’s visual partner for longer than a decade working on the covers for Straight/Bizarre releases and rented a wing of the Zappa family home in Laurel Canyon for his live-in art studio. Schenkel is the guy who hollowed out the carp for Don Van Vliet to wear on the Trout Mask Replica cover—that stinky photo shoot was said to have taken over two hours—and he’s the fellow who realized the Sgt. Pepper‘s goof for We’re Only In It for the Money. He’s got a primitive “ragged” illustration style (which predates punk graphics) that is distinctly his own and Schenkel a master of creating humorous and strikingly surreal images that have intrigued generations of record buyers, inspiring a certain meme in recent years and even Halloween pumpkins.

Over the weekend I ended up on Cal Schenkel’s website and it occurred to me that many DM readers would probably like to know about what’s on offer there. For starters, his prices are fantastic, more in line with what an Etsy crafts-person might sell their wares for than the price tags something for sale on the wall of an art gallery would have. The work is priced to sell. Schenkel’s a working artist living in rural Pennsylvania and this is how he pays his bills without having to deal with the rigmarole of the art world—he’s had just two solo exhibitions of his art in the past 20 years. More power to him, and to you, especially if you happen to be a Zappa fan—there are rumored to be many of you among DM’s readership—who likes art and getting a damned good bargain.

For as little as $200 you can get a portfolio of thirteen mostly Zappa-related prints. Individual Giclée prints sell for as little as $25. You can get a signed photograph of Captain Beefheart taken by Schenkel. He does hand-painted caricatures of one of your favorite mustachioed guitarists. He does hand-painted versions of some of his famous album covers, too. And like I was saying, the prices are right. Personally I feel like he’s underselling his work, but I happen to be a big admirer of Cal Schenkel’s art.
 

 

 

 

 
See more at Cal Schenkel’s website.

Below, Frank Zappa and Cal Schenkel invent Adult Swim back in 1971 with the “Dental Hygiene Dilemma” animation from 200 Motels:

 
A few of you may be familiar with the WWII-era poster proclaiming that “98% of all procurable women have venereal disease.” Of course, there’s absolutely no way to prove such a figure, since they didn’t have the data necessary to reach those kind of conclusions. In fact, since prostitutes were among the first to embrace safer sex technology, many public health experts actually believe soldiers were the largest transmitters. Note the happy, healthy little servicemen in the bottom corner of the final picture?

Regardless, the epidemic of syphilis at the time generated a lot of materials warning of the dangers of “procurable women,” some thinly veiled, some fairly explicit. Below is a fantastic little collection of propaganda, each piece somehow managing to make venereal disease look totally worth it. Those are some foxy working girls!
 

 
And of course, the classic…
 

 
More after the jump…

 
This ten-minute clip from 1997 is almost excruciating in its sublime awkwardness. The Bee Gees agreed to come on Clive Anderson All Talk (the show was a reworking of a previous incarnation in which it was called Clive Anderson Talks Back), and the lack of chemistry between group and host reached something like an all-time high. Anderson, who was trained as a lawyer before succeeding in showbiz as an odd variant of presenter, is best known in the U.S. as the host of the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Even in the best of times, he is best taken in smaller doses. 

It’s not really clear who comes off worse here, Anderson or Barry Gibb. There’s little argument that Anderson was being annoying that evening, but he’s not much different than everybody else who occupies that kind of role, and it’s unclear why Barry let Anderson get under his skin to the extent that he did. Anderson has a nattering style of humor that can be described as “I take the piss, you take the piss, everyone takes the piss.” So as part of his droll-esque comments, Anderson chose to poke fun at 1970s fashions, Barry’s famous falsetto, Australia’s former status as a penal colony, and who knows what else. It’s not so much that Anderson was making light of the Bee Gees, it’s that his every utterance bought into a kind of superficial understanding of the topic at hand, whether it be sibling rivalries, the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyle, the songwriting process, or whatever. Whether Anderson was a big Bee Gees fan seems implausible but is completely beside the point—he was content to trade in barbs that accepted as a given the punchline logic of every imaginable human interaction.

Be sure to watch the whole video—it’s a slow build, and there’s no big unmistakable infraction that makes Barry’s departure inevitable—this is a case where it definitely takes two to tango. By the halfway point, Barry is visibly annoyed by Anderson’s inanities. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is apparently Anderson’s reaction to the news that the brothers once called themselves “Les Tossers”—when Barry gets up to leave a few minutes later, he takes a moment to call Anderson a “tosser” too.

The poleaxed look on Anderson’s face after the musical trio departed the set is priceless.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Bee Gees: Tales from the Brothers Gibb
Bee Gee Maurice Gibb’s drunken John Lennon impression fooled even Yoko (and many Beatles fans, too)

 
Okay, I feel a bit late to the game with this amusing site Stories About Prince which started in 2012. It’s basically hilarious fanfiction where Prince buys a futon on CraigsList, Prince goes through a Bikini Kill phase, Prince beats the heat, Prince gets in shape, Prince buys tortillas and pretty much every mundane thing in the world Prince could possibly do.

Also note: “Any factual representation of Prince appearing here is purely coincidental.”

You can follow Stories About Prince on Facebook.

 
Via The World’s Best Ever

 
When De La Soul’s monumentally groundbreaking album 3 Feet High and Rising came out in March of 1989—a few months ahead of The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique, it should be noted—it was a significant moment, a high-water mark, if you will, of the era when the lessons of “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on The Wheels of Steel,” “Rapper’s Delight” and Run DMC had been taken on-board and refined by a younger generation of musicians.

The “sample” wasn’t exactly a new thing by the late 1980s (Faust sampled The Beatles in 1970, and there must be dozens of historical examples prior to that) but knitting together entire songs from parts of other songs was still a relatively “new” thing to do at the time. The way forward pointed out by these earlier pioneers of the form, could be perfected and expanded upon. The gear was there—and was coming down in price—there was a will and there was a way.

The groups who were heavily sample-based could simply wow you with the depth of their musical knowledge, their crate digging prowess and the sheer wittiness of their samples. A Tribe Called Quest, Deee-Lite, the Dust Brothers/Beasties, Public Enemy/The Bomb Squad, and De La Soul/Prince Paul were all doing something so startling and creative in the context of the late 80s/early 90s, that many people—myself included—who were disappointed with the sorry state of music after the post-punk era had tailed-off started to pay attention.

Yes, there was a brief moment there before the lawyers got their teeth stuck in and ruined everything…

Nevertheless, a small handful of classic albums that mostly consist of samples did get made—and released—despite the best efforts of the music industry’s own legal eagles to strangle them in their crib. 3 Feet High and Rising is one of these records and considering that the samples come from Led Zeppelin, Michael Jackson, Jefferson Starship, Kraftwerk, The Turtles, Parliament, Otis Redding, James Brown, Barry White, Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Cash, Steely Dan, The Bar-Kays, The Monkees, Cymande, even Liberace and Richard Pryor, it is something—like Paul’s Boutique—where it’s just a miracle that it even exists.

3 Feet High and Rising is one for the ages. The Village Voice dubbed it “The Sgt. Pepper of hip hop” and the good people of the Library of Congress evidently feel the same way as they inducted it into the National Recording Registry of culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant American creations in 2010. It’s an album that’s been included on practically every “of all time” list known to man.

Enjoy the sounds of the D.A.I.S.Y. Age (“da inner sound, y’all”)...
 

“Me, Myself and I”
 

“The Magic Number”
 
More magic numbers from De La Soul after the jump…

 
Terre des Hommes—an international charity which concentrates on children’s rights based in the Netherlands—has created a virtual 10-year-old girl “from the Philippines” named “Sweetie.” 

Sweetie was designed to track down—and hopefully convict—online pedophiles who use “webcam child sex tourism.”

I’m not sure where Terre des Hommes got these numbers, but they state at any given moment there are least 750,000 pedophiles online. That’s a staggering number of nonces with webcams, IMO.

Warning: This video may be upsetting to some viewers.
 

 
Via reddit

 
Last week, the prolific French author of spy thrillers, Gérard de Villiers, passed away of cancer. According to the New York Times obit, de Villiers was something like the Ian Fleming of France. He invented a hero who, just as James Bond goes by his official designation 007, is identified primarily by the sobriquet Son Altesse Sérénissime (His Serene Highness), or SAS. De Villiers himself called his novels, of which he wrote two hundred (!), “fairy tales for adults,” but they apparently had a second distinguishing feature—they frequently displayed an uncanny knowledge of actual high-stakes geopolitical affairs. Many actual events occurred in fictional guise in his novels, and his high-powered friends were often delighted to see themselves appear in his pages under different names. On a couple of occasions, actual events were closely prefigured in his novels, such as the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat. The books may be pure escapism, but they seem to be a trifle more true to life than Fleming.

The Times also mentioned that “generations of readers have become familiar with the lurid covers of his SAS books—always a scantily clad woman clutching a gun—at supermarkets and railway stations across France.” That description intrigued me, so I decided to hunt down a few for your perusal. They’re pretty silly, but my interest is primarily sociological—it’s fun to see an authentic part of everyday French life in this way. I’ve never read any of de Villiers’ books, but I do enjoy spy fiction, especially John Le Carré, but it seems that very few of his books have been translated into English. Amazon offers only Malko versus the CIA—used copies of which start at $199. I’m not willing to pay that, but maybe a library somewhere can help me out.
 

 

 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Danger 5’: a groovy new Nazi dinosaur espionage spoof serial

 
According to The Sunday Times, these are hipsters.

I’ve got nothing else to add. There is nothing more to say.

Via Boing Boing and Gideon Defoe