Tonight I’m off to see the Pixies for the first time (albeit sans Kim Deal, oh well) at the Bowery Ballroom. I thought it would be a good day to offer up this unusual unplugged set they played at the Newport Folk Festival on August 6, 2005. How many concerts have they done in which they don’t play “Debaser”? More to the point, how many have they done in which they don’t play “Debaser” and that seems totally fine?

Also, it’s a Friday and it seems like a nice way to transition into the weekend.

Here’s the setlist:

Hey
Bone Machine
I Bleed
Gigantic
Monkey Gone To Heaven
River Euphrates
Velouria
Ed Is Dead
Is She Weird?
Subbacultcha
Gouge Away
Wave of Mutilation
Cactus
Where is My Mind?
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘loudQUIETloud’: A film about the Pixies
My God this is beautiful: The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’ played on piano

“Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband…”

We forget it now, but back in the early to mid-1980s, Boy George and Culture Club WIGGED PEOPLE OUT. Not many groups who achieved that level of visibility worried right-thinking adults to the extent that they did. The brief, massive success of Culture Club represented a key signpost not only in the mainstreaming of postpunk music but also in the normalization of the gay aesthetic. See, the kids—especially the girls—really dug Boy George, and a lot of them grew up to become right-thinking adults in a different way.

In the meantime, mocking Boy George for being obviously silly and frivolous became a sort of understood joke that all of official culture could take part in—I guarantee that Johnny Carson did monologue bits about him. In retrospect it’s clear that Boy George was simply a master at pushing people’s buttons, in his zen “I’m not really doing anything at all!” way.
 

 
Anyway, all of this overdetermined cultural baggage meant that Culture Club’s 1984 tour of America was going to be a corker one way or the other. They’d been riding high since 1982, with the release of Kissing to Be Clever and the smash hit “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Their masterpiece Colour by Numbers was released in October 1983, jam-packed with indelible ditties—“Karma Chameleon,” “It’s a Miracle,” “Church of the Poison Mind,” “Miss Me Blind,” and so on. As Allmusic.com’s Jose F. Promis put it, “In the 1980s music was, in many cases, flamboyant, fun, sexy, soulful, colorful, androgynous, and carefree, and [Colour by Numbers] captured that spirit perfectly.”

On April 9 they hit the Richfield Coliseum, which was located between Cleveland and Akron (it closed for business in 1994), and ABC affiliate WEWS sent reporter Paul Orlousky over to file a report. Orlousky wastes no time in making it clear that the kids’ way of expressing themselves is invalid in any number of ways. He calls the group’s fans “Culture Clones” and actually repeats a clip of a teenage girl ineloquently explaining that Boy George’s message is to “be yourself,” exposing the, er, unthinking hypocrisy of seeking individuality through mass pursuits—congratulations, man, you are hereby awarded the Honorary Tinpot Walter Benjamin Loving Cup for 1984. He mocks one friendly mom who also claims to like Culture Club (!!!) for not taking pictures of kids playing baseball or something. Orlousky also says, “Boy George looks like Girl George and lives a lifestyle best described as bi-George.” (Burn! Uh, what?) The big moment comes he faces the camera and says ominously, “I guess I can’t avoid it—I’ve got to go in there.” What’s “in there” anyway, dude? Is it a gay dungeon? Maybe you’ll discover—eeeeek!—young people enjoying music!!

Orlousky hits the two themes that always popped up in the freaked-out media coverage surrounding Boy George—the first was simply, “WTF? Boy? Girl? Buh?” The second was, “He is communicating in a way only your children understand—and that’s dangerous!” Just a couple of weeks later, People Magazine would put Boy George on the cover of their April 23, 1984 issue with the following text: “It’s a guy, it’s a girl—IT’S BOY GEORGE! Joke, freak, or pop genius—kids are getting his message….” Or check out this clip (it’s at the very end of the video) from 1985’s (highly entertaining) Schwarzenegger vehicle Commando: “So vye don’t dey chust call him ‘Girl George’? It will cut down all da confusion I think.” (Schwarzenegger always did know how to tap into the petty complaints of the “regular guy,” whatever that is.)

In retrospect it all seems rather harmless, and the young people all seem rather nice. In December of the same year, Prince would bring his Purple Badness to the same arena—history does not record what WEWS thought of that affair.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Don’t want no English glitter prince’: Boy George guest stars on The A-Team
Lipstick and powder: Boy George presents a Top 10 of New Romantics

Larken Rose had libertarianism on vinyl
 
Federal income tax resister and libertarian author Larken Rose is concerned about the ideological purity of the libertarian community. In the video, he laments fair-weather free-marketers with a wishy washy commitment to orthodox dogma. While the most visible libertarians range from Randian anti-humanists to paleo-conservative rugged individualists to your odd college pot-smoker, I really don’t think any of these archetypes screams “trendy.”

As a socialist, I can’t help but feel a little comradery with Rose, despite our antithetical economic philosophies; he seems like a sweet guy, and it’s frustrating to have your politics constantly misrepresented and misunderstood by the public at large.

At the same time, no offense dude… but I really wouldn’t worry about those libertarian poseurs.
 

 
How a panic attack reminded me of the power of music - FlavorWire

Universal Music makes Peanuts-Smiths mash-up Tumblr take down hysterical strips - The Daily Swarm

Nintendo visionary Hiroshi Yamauchi dies aged 85 - BBC News

Idris Elba on Liam Gallagher clash: ‘Fuck that idiot’ - NME

Scientists reviewing biology textbooks urged Texas education officials not to use books questioning evolution lest the state become a “national embarrassment” - UPI

Carole King will be honored as the MusiCares person of the year during the 2014 Grammy Awards week - Billboard

16 kilos of cocaine wash onto St. Augustine beach - Click Orlando

Two men died Wednesday, Sept. 18, in a shootout that stemmed from a road rage confrontation - M Live

Creative costumes of still-practiced Pagan rituals of Europe (19 pics) - Bored Panda

Zimbabwean President wants rapists castrated - Africa Review

The truth IS out there: British scientists claim to have found proof of alien life - The Independent

M.I.A. fights back against NFL’s $1.5 million fine for Super Bowl middle finger - Pitchfork

What would Pussy Riot do? – a Jeffrey Lewis comic strip - The Guardian

A blood test developed by Duke University researchers will help doctors learn whether a patient’s infection is caused by a virus or bacteria - HealthLine

Killed for eloping: Girl lynched by family, boy beheaded in Haryana village - NDTV

Mice lose cat fear for good after infection - Science News

Below, misheard lyrics to The Clash’s “White Riot”:

 
If I am to judge the product purely on the quality of the music and how much I enjoyed it, I would be obliged to give the new box set Live at the Academy Of Music 1971 by The Band a 5/5. It sounds really good. The performances are nothing short of incredible. It blew my doors off.

The four CDs and one DVD are encased in a nice glossy hardback cover with slick embossed lettering, short essays and color photos. It’s a nice thing to hold in your hands and it got me listening to The Band again. Box sets are good that way and I reacted in the expected Pavlovian slobbering fanboy manner.

Oh children, believe me when I tell you that I can rhapsodize about The Band and this is them at the height of their powers, playing their hearts out over the course of a four-night stint at the old Academy of Music on 14th Street in New York, the cavernous venue that would later become the Palladium nightclub, the set of Club MTV and is now… NYU dorms! They were accompanied by a crack horn section arranged by Allen Toussaint that gave their Civil War folk rock a Stax/Volt swing. Bob Dylan even showed up for the encore of their New Year’s Eve set and performed four numbers with them.

The recordings of these shows are what became the Rock of Ages album, a 2 LP release from the summer of 1972. That album went to #6 in the album charts and is considered by many to be one of the greatest live albums ever recorded.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to all of the box yet, but the 5.1 surround, mixed by Bob Clearmountain is quite good and discs 3 and 4 with the raw “you were there” soundboard mixes from New Year’s Eve are also pretty cool. But why anyone would require seven of the same songs from the first two discs to be repeated—well same performance, with a different, more immediate, less hi-fi mix—on discs 3 and 4 is beyond me. The 5.1 mix is the same songs (minus the Dylan numbers) from the first two discs. There are only seventeen unreleased tracks here. Most people who would want this already have Rock of Ages and in fact may have purchased it in multiple formats. There have already been several CD versions.
 

 
The problem with reviewing this box is that I like the music, I like it a lot, but it’s so repetitive that the idea of asking fans of The Band to plunk down $109 (Amazon discounts it to $73) and expecting that they’ll do it seems frankly insane to me.

What gives?

The initial Amazon reviews of Live at the Academy Of Music 1971 have been nothing short of brutal, slamming Robbie Robertson for ripping off his biggest fans and decrying the repetitive nature of the box set. They’ve got a point!

What I can’t believe is that the 5.1 mix is just a (lossy) Dolby file on a DVD and not an HD DTS version on a Blu-ray disc. There’s no high-res stereo file, either, just one encoded at 448 kbps/48kHz. For audiophiles, this is a massive turn-off and although this seems to be news to the major labels, they’re the ones who are still buying those round shiny silver things that you can hold in your hand. Don’t get me wrong, I like Bob Clearmountain’s mix, but I’d sure like it a lot more on a Blu-ray disc! It sounds great, but it could sound a lot better. Me, I’d rather have that superior version, especially at this price point.

It stands to reason that the majors would want to appeal to the people—cater to them, kiss their asses—who would *actually buy* what basically amounts to three versions of Rock of Ages by giving them some value for the money. Even those intelligence-insulting Pink Floyd box sets with the drink coasters and Pink Floyd marbles had the surround audio portion on Blu-ray discs. They overlap in the material here, too, is simply so shameless, that you just have to laugh. At either $109 or $73, it’s not a good value for the money.

By comparison, the upcoming Van Morrison Moondance box set has 4 CDs and a high-resolution 48K 24 bit PCM stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound mix on a Blu-ray and this will sell for $56. I reckon that this is still too high of a price to ask when everyone knows that each and every song on those 4 CDs would fit onto the Blu-ray. I think a $35 list price for an expanded catalog classic that’s been plundered for profits over and over again is where the multi-generational sweet spot is.
 

 
Fact is, if I was given the option of buying classic albums on Blu-ray, with either a 176/24 version of some album I love or a 5.1 surround mix (or preferably both) and the list was $35, I’d still be buying the same amount of music that I bought back in 2004. But I’m not offered that option or if I am, it’s not at that price point and I get stuck with a bunch of stuff I don’t want, like a “Dark Side of the Moon” scarf… Go much over $35 and you lose me as a customer.

But this is hypothetical, because seldom does what the accountants at the labels think will sell and what the fans want overlap, it’s just that obvious. Many people have excellent audio-visual equipment in their homes and a desire for quality software products to enjoy on their electronics, but the labels never even attempt to engage these consumers. It’s so completely ass-backwards that it’s… annoying.

There are some rays of hope. For instance Panegyric’s upcoming XTC and Yes reissues done by Porcupine Tree’s Steve Wilson—who has previously worked his magic on the King Crimson catalog—feature a CD and a Blu-ray disc combo with high-res audio, 5.1 surround mix and music videos. There’s also a CD/DVD version that will sell for about $25; the Blu-ray/CD pairing goes for around $30.

DING-DONG, this is the perfect formula. I can’t see why the big labels don’t get that. The majors need to look at what Steve Wilson is doing—and no one else but Steve Wilson—and get him to advise them so they stop falling on their faces so hard each and every time they put out these sorts of releases! DO WHAT HE DOES. HE GETS IT. COPY HIM. When they let bean counters and marketers make these decisions they make them based on faulty assumptions of what record buyers and fans want. Steve Wilson? He knows what I want!

In the case of The Band box, the blame for the list price should probably be laid at the feet (or the ego) of the producer, Robbie Robertson. As one Amazon wag put it, there’s only so much ore in that mine. I expect Robertson understands what he means by that. Anyone paying full retail for this box would. The Band’s vault has simply been plundered too many times. The high list price of Live at the Academy Of Music 1971 turns off the most ardent fans and insures that no new ones will be coming aboard. That’s a shame.

Don’t get me wrong, what’s on the discs, well, it’s fine. It’s magic. It’s like having gold poured into your ears. It’s The Band at their very best.

But it’s overpriced like crazy and I gotta call it like I see it. If this was a Blu-ray disc with the Clearmountain 5.1 mix in HD DTS and a high-res stereo mix, plus the soundboard mix as an extra, at a $35 or under price point, I’d be raving like a lunatic telling all of you to run out and buy it. Now.

Not to be a buzzkill(!) here are four songs (“Time to Kill,” “The Weight,” “This Wheel’s on Fire,” “Up on Cripple Creek”) from The Band performing live at The Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh on November 1st, 1970.
 

 
The following is an exclusive extract from Isle of Noises: Conversations with Great British Songwriters, a superb new book by Daniel Rachel published this month by Picador. Inspired by Paul Zollo’s seminal Songwriters on Songwriting, Rachel has managed to bring together a truly impressive ensemble of British tunesmiths, including Ray Davies, Jarvis Cocker, Mick Jones, Robin Gibb (why the hell not!) and Johnny Marr, among others. The results are hugely enjoyable, and the mind veritably boggles imagining the kind of cajoling and legwork Rachel must have put in to coax this rich and eclectic ensemble out of their country piles—not least the notoriously taciturn, the notoriously notorious Jimmy Page…
 
Daniel Rachel: Do you have any introductory thoughts about songwriting?

Jimmy Page: I know what my contribution is and I know how that kicks off in the early stages. Coming from the guitarist’s point of view, I’ll start with the music first. That’s the essence of the key ideas and then I’ll work on those. Sometimes I’ve written the lyrics myself. For example, on the first Led Zeppelin album I had a number of things where I had the chorus, like ‘Your Time Is Gonna Come’ . . . well, that line gets repeated a number of times so there’s not a lot of lyrics in that (laughs). ‘Good Times Bad Times’ I wrote the chorus. I had the music for it and I was writing for this thing that was going to be put together for the band. The whole thing on ‘Good Times Bad Times’ is recognized by John Bonham’s bass drum, isn’t it? Initially I had a sketch for it and then Robert supplied lyrics to the verses. I was very keen on concentrating on the music, and whoever I was going to be working with, for them to be coming up with lyrics. I didn’t think that my lyrics were necessarily good enough. Maybe they were in certain cases, but I preferred that very close working relationship with whoever was singing, whether it be Robert Plant, Paul Rodgers or David Coverdale. The starting point would always be coming from the music, whether I had written that acoustically or electrically.

Daniel Rachel: It’s very noticeable in your music how song structures seem far more classical than pop in their construction.

Jimmy Page: Well, very much so, because I had very much the view that the music could set the scene. One of the things that you’ll see in the Led Zeppelin music is that every song is different to the others. Each one has its own character; musically as much as lyrically. For example, ‘Ten Years Gone’ or ‘The Rain Song’, which has got a whole orchestral piece before the vocal even comes in. So yes, it was crafted in such a way that the music was really of paramount importance to setting the scene and most probably inspired the singer, in this case Robert, to get set into the overall emotion, the ambience of the track of what was being presented, and then hopefully inspire him to the lyrics.

Often we just had working titles. A good example of this and how it would change and mutate was ‘The Song Remains The Same’ leading into ‘The Rain Song’. The original idea I had for that was an overture—as ‘Song Remains The Same’ is—leading into an orchestral part for ‘The Rain Song’. I had a mellotron and I’d worked out an idea—John Paul Jones did it much better than me—coming into the very first verse. If it’d worked that way there wouldn’t have been any vocal until the first verse, you would have had this whole overture of guitars and then into the orchestral thing that opened up into the first verse. But as it was, when we were rehearsing it then it actually became a song; the structure changed, there was another bit put in and then Robert started singing.That wasn’t a bad idea to have an overture, a whole musical segment that took you into ‘The Rain Song’, but it worked out really well as it was (laughs). Whatever it was you were constantly thinking all the time about it.

Daniel Rachel: Writing in movements was a very unusual step to take as a songwriter, considering Led Zeppelin was preceded by predominantly verse, chorus structures to suit the three-minute single format.

Jimmy Page: Although I’ve already said on the first album there were some choruses there, it got to the point where some of the things didn’t have what you’d call the hook. The reason was we weren’t actually writing music that was designed to go on the AM stations in the States at the time. You had FM, that were called the underground stations, and they would be playing whole sides of albums. Well, that’s a dream, isn’t it?—because people are going to get to hear—it’s not necessarily a concept album—the whole body of work that you’re doing on one side of an album and on the other. That was really a nice way to be able to craft the music into that. It was going to go like that anyway, but it was just really useful. The essence of the contents of these albums was going contraflow to everything else that was going on, and again this was intentional. Whereas on Zeppelin II you’ve got ‘Whole Lotta Love’, on Zeppelin III . . . with other bands it’d be something very close or reflective of if they’d got some sort of hit, and we just weren’t doing that. We were summing up the overall mood and where we were on that musical journey at each point in time.

Daniel Rachel: Did you write songs in sections and then join together collated ideas?

I worked very much in that way. I’d be working at home on various ideas and when we were working on something in a group situation I’d think, ‘Oh, I know what I’m going to put in this,’ if you hadn’t already put it together. Some things, I had them really mapped out, and other things—this is as the group goes on—would be on the spot. ‘Ramble On’ and‘What Is And What Should Never Be’: I had those structures complete.

Daniel Rachel: Can you explain how a riff comes to you?

Jimmy Page: A riff will come out of . . . this whole thing of do you practise at home and all that. Well, I play at home and before I knew where I was things would be coming out and that’s those little sections or riffs or whatever. At that stage it’s selection and rejection. It’s whether you continue with something or you go, ‘No that’s too much like something else,’ and then you move into something else. If you’ve got an idea and you think that’s quite interesting then I’d work and build on it at home. ‘Rock And Roll’ was something that came purely out of the ether. We were working on something else and John Bonham happened to play—just as you do sometimes, because we were recording—this intro from ‘Keep A-Knockin’’ from Little Richard and I went, ‘Oh, that’s it!’—I did this chord and half a riff that was in my head – ‘Let’s do this.’ It was really quick to do and we could write like that.

Get yourself a copy of Isle of Noises right here
 

 
Below, Jimmy Page gets his Chopin on at the ARMS Concert:
 

 
Yesterday I blogged about an amazing music mix from ‘70s Sexploitation films. This cinematic compilation is a lovingly curated mixtape of soundtrack and spoken word work which includes Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, John Cale, Neil Young, Sonic Youth and many others. From Fluid Radio on SoundCloud.

Do enjoy!

Tracklist:

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) by Andrew Dominik
Gilles Deleuze on cinema
Bernard Hermann - Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorcese
Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle - One From The Heart (1982) by Francis Ford Coppola
Antoine Duhamel - Méditerranée (1963) by Jean-Daniel Pollet
Jonny Greenwood - Bodysong (2003) by Simon Pummell
Maya Deren on the creative process
John Zorn - In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2002) by Martina Kudlacek
Mihály Vig - Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) by Béla Tarr
Carmine Coppola - Apocalypse Now (1979) by Francis Ford Coppola
Mogwai - Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2004) by Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno
Tindersticks - Trouble Every Day (2000) by Claire Denis
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks (1990) by David Lynch
Arvo Pärt - Je Vous Salue Sarajevo (1995) by Jean-Luc Godard
Elysian Fields - Sombre (1998) by Philippe Grandrieux
Hilmar Hom Hilmarsson - In the Cut (2003) by Jane Campion
John Cale - Le Vent de la Nuit (1998) by Philippe Garrel
Neil Young - Dead Man (1995) by Jim Jarmusch
Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason - Solaris (1972-2012) by Andreï Tarkovski
Lech Jankowski - Institute Benjamenta (1995) by The Brothers Quay
Popol Vuh - Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog on the jungle
Sonic Youth - Pola X (1999) by Leos Carax
Danny Elfman & Elliot Smith - Good Will Hunting (1997) by Gus Van Sant
 

 
Via Boing Boing

 
The rich are different from you and me. First off they have lots and lots of money, mansions, boats, castles, summer homes in the Caribbean, nice cars and STUFF. They get to own politicians—entire countries even—and stack the deck in their favor so that capitalism works just for them!
 

 
Their parties are certainly better catered than ours are…
 

 
...and the wealthy get their fancy dress costumes from couture houses in Paris, not Target.
 

 
These shots were taken at Marie-Hélène de Rothschild’s famous Surrealist Ball held at Château Ferrières on December 12 1972.

Another cool thing about rich people is that they know all the right people, like Audrey Hepburn…
 

 
... and Salvador Dali…
 

 
... supermodel Marisa Berenson…
 

 
...and famed perfumer Hélène Rochas
 

 
Obviously we know where hostess-with-the-mostess Marie-Hélène got her money from. The Château was already in the family and owned by her husband, Guy de Rothschild. Convenient, that!
 

 
The requirements for the fancy dress party were “Black tie, long dresses & Surrealists heads” and the invitation had to be held up to a mirror—it was printed backwards—to be read. Guests walked through a forest of black ribbons, meant to be cobwebs, and a maze before entering the ballroom.
 

 
Marie-Hélène, with husband Guy de Rothschild, seen here wearing a mask crying tears of diamonds. But of course!
 

 
What would David Icke make of these lizard people???

Via So Bad, So Good/HT Rupert Russell

 
It’s probably a wee bit early to post about Halloween-themed stuff, right? But hey, it might give you plenty of time to practice and master the skills that it took Shawn Feeney to carve this awesome Trout Mask Replica pumpkin. 

Feeney carved Beefheart in 2011 and writes:

Every Halloween, I carve into a pumpkin the likeness of a musician who died since the previous Halloween. The tradition began in 2008, and each jack-o-lantern is carved in 3D-style. Like those represented, the jack-o-lanterns soon decay and disappear, but the artifacts remain.

Last year he carved an Adam “MCA” Yauch pumpkin.
 

 

 
I have no idea what this song is all about, but I really like it. I like that it’s hilarious, which it is. I like the stoopid nerdy self-confidence. I like the nifty appropriation of Prancercise lady Joanna Rohrback. I even approve of the triumphant use of Comic Sans. No one can touch Jerry’s “Tampa realness.”

I don’t know diddly squat about “alternative hip-hop” but to me it sounds a little like Das Racist, and that’s got to be a good thing.

Champagne Jerry did the lyrics, Ad-Rock did the music, so technically you might say it’s a Beastie Boys side project. Sell your friends on it that way, I don’t care. I just want to listen to it again:
 

 
via WXN&MLKN

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Beat This!: A hip hop history
H1N1 Flu rapper has new hip hop hit with ‘The Gap Rap’