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Kurt Cobain on high school: ‘I always felt so different and so crazy’
10.22.2013
04:41 pm
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A young Kurt Cobain.

“I always felt that they would vote me most likely to kill everyone at a high school dance.”

I know there’s been way too much Nirvana and Kurt Cobain overload going on the Internets lately due to the recent In Utero reissue. But I’m going to post this interview anyway because, well, it’s… special

Jon Savage interviewed Kurt Cobain back in 1993 and a lot of the discussion focused on Cobain’s childhood and teenage years. It’s actually quite a revealing and totally honest interview. Cobain talks about his parents’ divorce, having a homophobic mother, dealing with painful scoliosis, discovering punk rock, why he only had female friends in high school, anger and being a loner. 
 

 
With thanks to David Gerlach!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.22.2013
04:41 pm
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The Holy Grail of electronica: Yello’s Boris Blank selling his original Fairlight sampler
10.22.2013
12:31 pm
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Boris Blank with a Fairlight sampler in the mid-80s
 
Yello are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the most influential acts in the history of electro, techno and electronica. The skillful blend of Deiter Meier’s witty vocals and Boris Blank’s avant garde-but-accessible production chops saw the duo gain critical and commercial success in the early-to-mid 80s, at a time when rock music was still king and electronic dance music was still confined to clubs. 

Well, if you’re an antique gear fetishist with a spare $13K (Aus) then YOU could relive Yello’s glory days, by simply acquiring Boris Blank’s original Fairlight sampler, a fake moustache and an even faker Swiss accent. Yes, Blank is selling his Fairlight CMI III on eBay:

Every Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument has a story behind it. Hugely expensive when new, their unique sounds and legendary user interface were used by music pioneers who changed the sound of music forever.

At a cost around $65,000 in 1985 (which could have bought you a very nice house) the list of Fairlight III owners reads like a who’s who of musical innovation of the time. Peter Gabriel, Tears for Fears, Kate Bush, Thomas Dolby, Hans Zimmer and Pet Shop Boys were owners in the UK, with many studios catering for those who didn’t own one. For a complete list take a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_CMI

The particular system being offered here belongs to Boris Blank, the musical part of Swiss band Yello. One could argue that during the 1980’s Yello used the Fairlight more, and more interestingly than virtually anyone else. Every hit single they had (and there were quite a few) used the Fairlight CMI extensively.

So, if you ever lusted after one of these legendary instruments, here’s a chance to acquire one with some serious street cred! 

Yello Fairlight III. Signed front panel. There will be Boris’s sounds included, as well as all the libraries listed below, in 4 x hard drives. Boris is on holiday at the moment, however his assistant has promised some more photos and goodies when he returns!


The actual Boris Blank Fairlight CMI III that is for sale

I hope those “goodies” include a signed pic, Boris. MUCH more info is available on the eBay listing page.

I LOVE Yello, to me they rate up there with Giorgio Moroder in the development and history of electronic dance music, and I’m pretty sure some of our readers feel the same. Not only were Yello fresh and unique, they had a brilliant, intelligent sense of humor that put them at odds with nearly everything else happening in music at that time.

This Fairlight really is a hugely important part of dance music’s history: some of the noises that Blank managed to squeeze out of this machine were awe inspiring, and become signature Yello (and by extension, 80s dance) sounds. Having said that, I’m sure we’re all familiar with “The Race” and “Oh Yeah,” so instead of one of those classics, here’s a bit of mind-warping Yello electronica from 1981:

Yello “The Evening’s Young”
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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10.22.2013
12:31 pm
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Happy Birthday Timothy Leary, High Priest of LSD
10.22.2013
12:09 pm
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Acid evangelist Timothy Leary was born on this day in 1920. Aside from being one of the prime movers of the sixties counterculture—and a cheerful revolutionary dubbed “the most dangerous man in America” by Richard Nixon—Leary was an early cheerleader for cyberspace and computer technology in the 80s and 90s.

In the curious video below, Leary discusses drugs on a Pepsi-produced 80s “college cable” program with an “all star” panel that includes Dr. Andrew Weil, Papa John Phillips, motivational speaker John Bradshaw, Sarah Jessica-Parker(?) and Richard Kiel, “Jaws” from the James Bond films(???).
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.22.2013
12:09 pm
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List of reasons for admission to an insane asylum from the late 1800s
10.22.2013
10:26 am
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After viewing this list of what could have gotten you admitted to West Virginia’s Hospital for the Insane (Weston) aka Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum back in the late-1800s, I’ve swiftly concluded that the criteria was rather all-encompassing. Who among us is a stranger to what’s on this list?

In this century, it looks more like a “wish list” for Dr. Phil’s guest bookers!

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is still open, but only for tours.


Sources: Appalachian History, Grateful Web, West Virginia State Archives, West Virgina Encyclopedia, Steampunk


h/t Richard Swanson!

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.22.2013
10:26 am
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Langley Schools Music Project: Children’s choruses sing Beach Boys, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac
10.22.2013
09:38 am
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langley lp
 
What is it about children’s choruses in pop music? Is it a nostalgic response? Is it a nod to ephemerality, an awareness on some level that the exact same kids a year later would have totally different voices? Whatever impulse drives producers (cough cough Bob Ezrin) to deploy that move, it’s enough of a cliché that when it’s used, it’d better be done effectively, like in “School’s Out,” or hit the unsuspecting listener like a bomb as in “Another Brick In The Wall Part II.” If it’s treacle like “Toy Soldiers,” you’re making the world a worse place. (I’m not going to link that one. If you don’t know it, count your blessings and move on. If you do know it and I just earwormed you, I am sincerely sorry for that.)

A great example of getting it spectacularly right dispenses with the pop singer and producer altogether and just leaves the whole job to the kids. The celebrated Langley Schools Music Project was undertaken by novice music teacher Hans Fenger, who eschewed typical children’s fare for his chorales, favoring instead the recent radio pop of the time - the mid ‘70s, with a lot of British Invasion and Beach Boys in the mix. Two vanity-pressed LPs were made, both recorded live in school gyms. Those albums would have gathered dust on proud parents’ shelves or languished in Vancouver thrift store bins had they not been brought to the attention of WFMU’s longtime champion of outsider music, Irwin Chusid. Chusid arranged for the release of the albums on Bar/None Records, and the CD Innocence & Despair was released to acclaim in 2001.

The temptation to chalk up the kudos to hip irony should be resisted here. These recordings are just flat out incredible. The kids ranged in age from 9-12, and so were recorded before the pressures of adolescence and high school had a chance to stifle their expressiveness. As Fenger put it in the liner notes from Innocence, quoted here from Wikipedia,

I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal—they had élan.

Élan, absolutely, and, it must be added, a seeming total lack of pretension. Though these songs were radio staples of their day, most of the ‘70s tunes have fallen from favor for their hokeyness, bombast, or their reflection of an acutely mid ‘70s complacency. But hearing stripped down arrangements of the songs sung by naifs who just really love to sing them is transformative. Check out the Langley kids’ take on that most eye-rollingly douchey of Eagles songs, “Desperado:”
 

 
It’s so much better sung by a novice kid than by a bunch of satisfied, self-mythologizing, dick swinging millionaire Laurel Canyon coke-fiends, is it not? The kids’ version of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” is so emotionally resonant that it could well be the only possible remake that doesn’t fall conspicuously short of Carl Wilson’s golden-voiced canonical performance.
 

 
I don’t care how grizzled and jaded a hipster you are—shit, I don’t care if you’re a 400 pound biker who’s killed a half dozen Aryan Brotherhood guys in prison—if you aren’t a little moved by that, you’re a fucking robot.

Can you imagine such a thing happening now? I don’t see it, myself. This was an era during which, aside from the eternal handful of canny nods to Tiger Beat-ish female juvinilia like Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, et al, there was no massive tween entertainment niche as we know it today. Junior high kids, for the most part, listened to the same pop radio fare as high schoolers and, before the advent of the Adult Contemporary radio format, grownups alike. Can you imagine 9-12 year olds in 2013 opting to sing Blitzen Trapper over Justin Bieber? The band Gomez over Selina Gomez? Mazzy Star over Miley? There’s just no way.

Individual tracks made rounds of the Internet as hey-check-out-this-goofy-cover sharity on some of the more oddity-oriented sites during the mid-oughts’ heyday of MP3 blogs, but Bar/None has recently uploaded the entire album to YouTube as individual tracks. This may well be the first time the entire collection has been legitimately available for free listening. The entire compilation is posted here. In the interest of preserving the CD order, I’ve reposted the two songs already shared above, I hope you’ll pardon that redundancy.
 

Paul McCartney and Wings, “Venus & Mars/Rock Show” - a good start, but it gets better
 

Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations” - I love the two-note xylophone solo standing in for the original’s famous theremin freakout.
 

Beach Boys, “God Only Knows”
 

David Bowie, “Space Oddity” - shit gets HECTIC at 1:04.
 

The Beatles, “The Long And Winding Road” - this is lovely, and renders moot the overwrought Phil Spector version on Let It Be.
 

Paul McCartney and Wings, “Band on the Run” - the most ambitious arrangement here. The percussionist plainly had a fine time.
 

Beach Boys, “In My Room” - does this song not make much more sense sung by kids than by five grown men?
 

Herman’s Hermits, “I’m Into Something Good” - you just know if this were today, some dick parent would sue the school over the “one night stand” line.
 

Bay City Rollers, “Saturday Night” - it’s fun to hear the kids keeping up the chanting between 2:30 and the end, though it strikes me that the fade-out may have been cover for encroaching sloppiness.
 

Beach Boys, “I Get Around” - yay, more Beach Boys…
 

Barry Manilow, “Mandy” - see, his songs have capabilities when you strip out the Broadway/Vegas chintz.
 

Beach Boys, “Help Me, Rhonda” - how much money did Mike Love get from this album?
 

The Eagles, “Desperado”
 

Beach Boys, “You’re So Good To Me” - last Beach Boys song. If you’re not a fan you can relax now.
 

Neil Diamond, “Sweet Caroline” - why couldn’t this have had six Neil Diamond songs instead of six Beach Boys songs? I want to hear them do “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show!”
 

Teddy Bears, “To Know Him Is To Love Him” - speaking of Phil Spector.
 

Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon” - another one I didn’t know I liked until I heard someone other than the original artist singing it.
 

Michael Martin Murphy, “Wildfire” - one of the more acutely ‘70s songs here. I went back to listen to the original on this one, as I haven’t actually heard this song since I was a kid in the ‘70s. I expected it to hold up poorly, but to my surprise, it sounds a lot like the current Texas band Midlake, whom I’ve quite liked. Still, the kids again crush the original here.
 

The Carpenters, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” - this is probably the finishing move for a reason. It’s the most whatthefuckishly lysergic song choice, but it turned out REALLY great. I’d like to think the kids knew this was originally a Klaatu song, but that strikes me as doubtful.

A documentary on how Innocence & Despair was made, discovered, and released.
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.22.2013
09:38 am
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Turntables of terror: A bloody good mix of goth rock and horror movie trailers
10.22.2013
09:20 am
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Here’s a little pre-Hallloween gothic fright fest featuring some dark rock and roll and spooky clips from Hammer films and more.

Reptile - Creaming Jesus
We’re So Happy - Danse Society
Pagan Love Song - The Virgin Prunes
Black Madonna - Theatre Of Hate
Now I’m Feeling Zombified - Alien Sex Fiend
Propaganda - Play Dead
Preacher Man - Fields Of Nephilim
Snake Dance - The March Violets
Monkeys On Juice -  Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Aere Perenium - Docdail
Time Machine - Satori
After Dark - Seraphim Shock
Romolus And Remus - High On Fire
Sonic Reducer (live) - Dead Boys
Orphans - Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.22.2013
09:20 am
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Andy Warhol paints Debbie Harry on an Amiga computer, 1985
10.22.2013
09:10 am
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When Commodore released the Amiga (which was the highest-quality desktop computer out there for a little while), they got a really good get for the product launch press conference in late July of 1985: none other than Andy Warhol. Rather remarkably, according to Technologizer, the launch event was “a black-tie, celebrity-studded gala at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center.”

The Amiga always was a funny duck, but at the time, it offered better graphics than Apple or PCs, and it also offered a fantastic thing called multitasking. People who owned Amigas were known to be evangelical about the subject. As New York Magazine told it, Warhol murmured into a microphone, “It’s such a great thing. I’ve always wanted to be Walt Disney. I’m gonna tell everyone to get one.” (The bulk of that article is a rave review of the newly unveiled Amiga.) It’s apparent that the pixelated version of the Blondie lead singer qualifies as a “Warhol” “original” on the strength of Warhol executing the fill function a couple of times, but still.
 
Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry
 
Warhol isn’t exactly synonymous with forward-thinking technophilia, but in a lot of ways, computer-generated art fits in perfectly well with his sunny, democratic, and somewhat automated take on the world. After all, this is the guy who in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, penned, in what is one of my absolute favorite quotations of the twentieth century, “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
 
Amiga World
 
Warhol also made the cover of the third-ever issue of Amiga World (blurry PDF), which also scored an interview with the pop art master. In the introduction to the interview, it is made painfully clear how entirely crazy it was that the magazine got Warhol to agree to it. The interview is predictably amusing, and Warhol is epigrammatic and opaque and inscrutable in his oddly accessible way, but what does shine through is his genuine enthusiasm for the Amiga and computers in general. Also, out of nowhere Warhol uncorks this pithy gem: “Mass art is high art.”  It’s definitely worth a read.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
John Waters and Divine on a rarely seen episode of Andy Warhol’s TV show
Warhol Polaroids of Sports Legends

Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.22.2013
09:10 am
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Robert De Niro selling cars in 1970
10.21.2013
08:09 pm
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Before Robert De Niro was wishing for a rain to wash the scum off the streets, or considering offers that couldn’t be refused, he was selling gas guzzlers to families in the ‘hood.

“Hey, Richie, get the sneakers off the seat, will ya please?”

Or Bobby will throw you in the trunk…
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.21.2013
08:09 pm
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Dangerous Finds: Poachers kill 300 elephants; Rare Godard posters; Morrissey is ‘humasexual’
10.21.2013
07:45 pm
Topics:
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Cat with tweezers. Photo via Arbroath
 
Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide - The Telegraph

New website tracks how many people have died in your house - Gothamist

Sign the petition to publish Delia Derbyshire’s music from the BBC Sound Archive! - The Petition Site

Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski to one-legged beggar: “Get a job.” Kawczynski told amputee: “I know it’s hard but I’ve struggled too.” - The Independent

Charles Darwin’s son draws pictures on the manuscript of On the Origin of Species - Open Culture

Seattle police want to remind everyone that thrift stores can’t resell donated bags of marijuana - Arbroath

Chemical ‘clock’ tracks ageing more precisely than ever before - Nature

Leslie Lemke: blind, savant piano player on That’s Incredible! (1981) - Boing Boing

Brazilian activists have stormed a laboratory in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo and freed some 200 Beagle dogs used for drug testing - The Journal.ie

Finnish team makes diabetes vaccine breakthrough - YLE

Beatles’ “Get Back” Mariachi-style - YouTube

Despite end of U.S. shutdown, Antarctic research projects still getting canceled - Science Insider

UK Wikipedia editors have expressed “shock and dismay” at the discovery of hundreds of user accounts set up to make paid-for entries - BBC News

The lesser-known posters of Jean-Luc Godard - MUBI

Morrissey comes out as a Humasexual - Dlisted

OH YEAH! ‘80s Kool-Aid blooper reel is a treasure trove - Deadspin

Scientists say they have moved a step closer to banishing bald spots and reversing receding hairlines after human hair was grown in the laboratory - BBC Health

Totes Adorbs: Kids pose as if Banksy is smashing their wittle heads - ANIMAL


Below, a ghost robs a liquor store:

Posted by Tara McGinley
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10.21.2013
07:45 pm
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‘In Search of Ancient Astronauts’: The Outer Space Connection
10.21.2013
07:00 pm
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In Search of Ancient Astronauts is a 1973 TV movie that’s an edited down and re-dubbed (by Rod Serling) version of a 1970 German documentary titled Erinnerungen an die Zukunft (“Chariots of the Gods”). The film explores Swiss author Erich von Däniken “paleo-contact” and “ancient astronauts” theories that space aliens landed on Earth in prehistoric times and were responsible for many of mankind’s oldest mysteries and religious myths, including Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, the Nazca lines and the Moai of Easter Island.

Erich von Däniken’s books were absolutely huge best sellers throughout the 1970s, but his work has always been shunned by establishment archaeologists, historians and religious scholars. Carl Sagan referred to his work as “object lessons in sloppy thinking.”

What was not widely-known about him then is that at the time of his first book’s success, von Däniken was in prison on fraud and embezzlement charges. Over a period of twelve years von Däniken had falsified records and credit references of his employer, the Hotel Rosenhügel in Davos, Switzerland, in order to take out loans totaling $130,000 to pay for his book’s research expenses, which included world travel to exotic places. His second book, Gods from Outer Space, was written while he was in prison and with the money earned from publishing—his books sold in the millions—-he was able to pay restitution on his crimes and get out early.

And although he apparently went legit—and seems to believe what he espouses—many feel that this hotel manager cum “expert on the ancient world” is still on the make and accuse him of lying and falsifying evidence. Erich von Däniken’s theories have been debunked conclusively over and over and over again, but never mind that, von Däniken is still being taken semi-seriously to this day on TV shows like History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series.

This is what really set off the whole Erich von Däniken craze of the 1970s. In Search of Ancient Astronauts was the blueprint for producer Alan Landsburg’s long-running In Search Of… TV series narrated by Leonard Nimoy.

“This may be the most startling and controversial film you’ll ever see…”

At least it’s campy fun.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.21.2013
07:00 pm
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