Considering that most Björk fans seem to know that she began her recording career at the ripe old age of 11, and that she was once a member of The Sugarcubes, it’s curious why more attention hasn’t been paid to KUKL, the group she was in prior to joining Sugarcubes, especially since much of the membership of the two bands overlaps.

KUKL (which means “witchcraft” in Medieval Icelandic) was a sort of Icelandic super-group, comprised of members of several noteworthy bands and formed, at first, to perform on the final episode of a radio program in August 1983. The following month, KUKL played on the same bill with Crass in Reykjavik, at a punk festival that was the largest crowd that Björk had performed in front of at that point, and made a lasting connection with Crass.

KUKL released both The Eye, their Georges Bataille-inspired first album and the Penny Rimbaud-produced Holidays in Europe (The Naughty Nought) through Crass Records. Although their personal politics, in the main, were sympatico with the UK anarcho-punk movement’s ethos—the Icelanders remained dedicated meat eaters—their music was dissimilar, owing more to acts like The Cure, Killing Joke or Siouxsie and The Banshees and incorporating primitivist ethnographic and free jazz-influenced elements. Like Throbbing Gristle, KUKL took to the stage infrequently, preferring to wait until the time was right and their energy was at its fullest potential, with each show having an element of magic intentionally thrown into the mix.

During 1985, KUKL occasionally played at higher profile Europe concerts, opening for the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten and Psychic TV. Along with The Virgin Prunes, The Mantis Dance Company, writer Kathy Acker and others, they performed at Psychic TV’s “Feast of the Flowering Light” event at the Hammersmith Palais, but in 1986 KUKL split with most of the members going on to reform as The Sugarcubes a few months later.

KUKL left behind a handful of fascinating music videos:

“Anna”

A very pregnant Björk and KUKL on Icelandic television for an extended live performance in 1986.

More KUKL after the jump…

 
Campers told to lock up food and drink after feral pig goes on bender in Western Australia and ends up in altercation with cow - The Guardian

Syria welcomes Russian chemical arms arsenal proposal - Reuters

Dutch media set up their own website for whistleblowers - DutchNews.nl

My Bloody Valentine announce North American tour - Pitchfork

NASA’s black-hole-hunter catches its first 10 supermassive black holes - Science Daily

Blind Iowa man doesn’t see the big deal about being issued a gun permit - Gothamist

Yale in uproar over missing campus squirrels - Gawker

Meat inspector: “We are no longer in charge of safety” - Salon

H.P. Lovecraft’s original sketch of “Elder Things” is precious - ANIMAL

“Heimdall can’t be black!” 14 casting decisions that sparked outrage - AV Club

Showman car salesman Cal Worthington dies at 92 - LA Times

The smaller the better: Size of a man’s testicles is linked to his parenting skills - The Independent

A journalist-agitator facing prison over a link - New York Times

Homes for the taking: How a small debt becomes a big problem - Washington Post

DMX took his bare peen for a run through the hallway of a hotel in Detroit - Dlisted

Mammograms before 50 could save lives, researchers say - ABC News

Apple sued for false advertising after dividing up the final 16 episodes of Breaking Bad into two seasons on iTunes - TUAW

The combination of a gun and a surprise gone wrong left a beloved 18-year-old track star dead - CNN

Drug cocktail that protects monkeys from deadly virus may aid humans - New York Times

A tailgate decal suggesting that a woman is bound and tied in the back of a truck is raising some eyebrows in Waco, Texas - Arbroath

Researchers fabricate new camouflage coating from squid protein - Phys.org
 
Below, Peter Sellers performs “A Hard Day’s Night” by The Beatles, in the style of Laurence Olivier’s interpretation of Richard III:

Video via Open Culture

 
It’s no big secret that before Split Enz became Tim and Neil Finn’s personal MOR hit machine, they were a seriously odd proposition. An alien pigpile of post-punk tropes, they were manic, but in a completely different way from XTC’s early spikiness; arty, but not even remotely in the same ballpark as PiL’s intimidating archness; zany, but never easy kitsch like the B-52s; melodic, but never in a simplistic way. They were unique, and in the middle of that extravagant mess stood one Philip Judd. This is him singing lead on “Sweet Dreams.”
 

 
Judd left that band for a spell in 1977, and again, for good, in 1978. After a time spent kicking around New Zealand producing and playing with various bands, including Aukland punk pioneers Suburban Reptiles and a project with lo-fi kiwi psych champ Chris Knox, Judd formed The Swingers with two fellow Suburban Reptiles refugees, drummer Buster Stiggs (replaced later by Ian Gilroy) and future Midnight Oil bassist Bones Hillman. Forsaking the artiness Judd had brought to bear on Enz, The Swingers favored a tight, hooky new-wave popcraft, upbeat yet seriously anxiety-ridden, not at all out of place in its time but amazingly durable in retrospect.

Their wonderful 1982 US debut, though it differs significantly from its 1981 Australian counterpart, opens with three amazing songs in a row, effectively crafting the kind of brilliant statement of purpose that can snare a receptive listener for life, making it all the more unfortunate that Counting The Beat got remaindered and deleted so swiftly after its release. It opens with their debut single, the catchy-as-chlamydia title track.
 

 
More from Phil Judd and The Swingers after the jump…

 
There’s precious little that I could find out about Las Dilly Sisters, a singing duo comprised of two young Mexican girls who often appeared on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. As readers of a certain age will recall, the Mariachi moppets chirpy repetitive songs were used on the program like maddening musical water torture.
 

 
But when Las Dilly Sisters wanted to rock, they could rock out like the best of ‘em, as heard here on their curious—but freakin’ genius—cover of The Standells’ “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White”(!)

Whoever had the idea for them to sing this, I salute you. This song appears on volume 3 of the legendary Girls in the Garage comps.
 

 
A young, pre-Soft Cell Marc Almond and friends made this amazing and amusing short college film at Leeds Polytechnic in 1978.

It’s equal parts Pink Narcissus, Modesty Blaise, Barbarella and (very) early John Waters. You might even say it’s like a (super) low-budget Matthew Barney film.

Marc’s precocious preoccupations with sleaze and S&M bondage gear were in full evidence here.

Dig that space-age hookah.
 

 
Part II after the jump…
 

 
The book Bad Graffiti by Scott Hocking is a celebration of craptastic graffiti spotted in and around abandoned properties in Detroit, Michigan.

“Bad graffiti can be vulgar, juvenile, poorly scrawled, misspelled, ignorant, sexist, racist and ridiculous,” Hocking writes in the prologue from the book. “Yet, it can also be… so bad, it’s good.”
 

 

 

 
More photos after the jump…
 

 
And yea, Bob said unto the unbelievers, “Herb is the healing of the nation,” and it is “cool.” For those that smoke the herb shall bring their heads together to think one way. And Bob decreed that the herb was like a man drinking water, and though it be illegal, recall that the man who made the law was a baby once. For when you smoke the herb it reveals unto you yourself. Here endeth the lesson from the book of Bob.

Vintage interview with Mr. Bob Marley, in which he discussed his thoughts on Rastafari, the use of the “herb” and why alcohol is far more dangerous drug than marijuana. The video quality is slightly trippy, but there is much here to relish.

Check here for Bob’s interview with High Times from 1976.
 

 
It’s always a treat to see Henry Rollins interviewing anyone, even more so when it’s one of the early architects of rock ‘n’ roll. Hank’s hosting skills are exceptional. Clearly a fan, he’s very proficient in the relevant rock history, and he knows how to keep an interview interesting. But Jerry Lee Lewis? I mean, hey I love Jerry Lee Lewis’ music, but Jerry Lee Lewis is just as well-known for being a dirtbag as he is for his amazing music.

I don’t expect Rollins to give a damn about petty ethics, of course, but he’s a man with a reputation for being just a teensy bit self-righteous and rigidly moral. It’s weird to watch him interview an artist who very publicly married his 13-year-old cousin, as if there’s not a giant pervy elephant in the room. (And before you go all cultural relativist on me, cousin-marrying was not more common in the south than anywhere else in the US, and while marriages average younger in poorer communities, I can assure you, an adult marrying a 13-year-old would still be considered fucking creepy by every old redneck I know.)

Still, Lewis has great stories about Sun studios, and intergenerational rock ‘n’ roll kibitzing is always a fascinating thing to watch.
 

 
A friend of mine put this under my nose.

BOSS: Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies, First Issue

full name / name of organization:
BOSS: Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies
contact email:
Springsteenstudies@gmail.com
BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies is a new open-access academic journal that publishes peer-reviewed essays pertaining to Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen’s immense body of work and remarkable musical career has inspired a recent outpouring of scholarly analysis. BOSS will create a scholarly space for Springsteen Studies in the contemporary academy. We seek to publish articles that examine the political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that have influenced Springsteen’s music and shaped its reception. The editors of BOSS welcome broad interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to Springsteen’s songwriting, performance, and fan community, as well as studies that conform to specific disciplinary perspectives.

Please submit articles between 15 and 25 pages that conform to The Chicago Manual of Style to Springsteenstudies@gmail.com

by January 1st, 2014. Authors will be notified of acceptance by March and the first issue of BOSS will be published in June, 2014, which marks the thirtieth anniversary of the release of Born in the U.S.A.

Contact: Please address all inquiries to Jonathan D. Cohen (Managing Editor) at Springsteenstudies@gmail.com

Scholars: The obvious place to start is the Bruce Springsteen archive at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Bruce Springsteen not too cool for school
Bruce Springsteen in a video he’d probably prefer you didn’t see
Bruce Springsteen’s keynote address at SXSW

 
Here’s how the cameraman, Dennis GIlman, an AZ pro-immigrant rights activist described what happened:

“This was filmed on the public lawn of the Arizona State Capitol on September 7, 2013 where the “We Are America Tour” added Arizona racist, former State Senate President President Russell Pearce. Pearce is famous for SB1070 and his association and endorsement of neo-Nazi JT Ready, who killed an entire family before killing himself in 2012. The local racists have worked closely with FAIR for years. I was there to film the speakers.

It’s a safe guess that if Minute Man founder Chris Simcox wasn’t sitting in jail for multiple counts of child molestation that he would’ve been a speaker at this event also. Is it any wonder why they didn’t want the “liberal Media” filming them? For my own safety, I refused to leave without a police escort. It took over 7 minutes for any law enforcement to arrive. The video is edited only for length.”

The speaker is Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a failed former Republican candidate for the Arizona Senate who said such outrageously racist shit that even Jan Brewer had to distance herself from her last year. She tells the (obviously) low IQ crowd that she’s against amnesty and that immigrants should do things the legal way when they want to come to America, just like she did (Apparently what Mrs. Mercer means by that is that—hey, hey—they should all marry wealthy men!). These fucking brain-damaged numbnuts cheer her on.

Although the video pretty much tells the whole story here, as there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of nuance to what transpired, here’s some additional information via The Phoenix New Times:

All of it was unprovoked. It’s almost funny when, after they surround Gilman like a pack of wild dogs, they tell Gilman to “stop pushing.”

Fortunately, playwright James Garcia was on hand, taking pictures of what was going on. He recently posted some of these to Facebook, with an eyewitness account of what transpired. Garcia writes:

“He was exercising his First Amendment right as an independent journalist to document a news event when he was literally surrounded by several people who alternately tried obstructing his view to keep him from videotaping, while a few of them began pushing and shoving him around—apparently intent on trying to provoke him….

“At one point, some of protesters who had surrounded Dennis began to yell out that he was assaulting them. These were blatant lies. The most aggressive thing Dennis did was turn his camera on his aggressors in hopes of documenting their abuse, while he pointedly insisted that they not touch his camera equipment. “

To be fair, assuming the group had a permit for the rally on the state Senate lawn, they could ask Gilman to leave. And if he chooses not to, they could wait for the police to show up to ask him to leave.

Having a permit does not give you license to harass and assault someone. Gilman says that when the authorities showed up, he agreed to leave if they would escort him all the way to his car. Smart move, considering the nature of the crowd, and the fact many of them were packing.

The best thing the nativists could have done is ignore Gilman’s presence. By singling him out and acting like a bunch of schoolyard bullies, they not only revealed their true colors, they ruined a chance to convey their intended message. Now they have to defend themselves by blaming the victim, which makes them look even worse.

Here’s a little free PR advice for them that they won’t take: Apologize to Gilman and promise to ensure his safety at the next demonstration they hold, whatever that is. This would be the smart thing to do, a way of mitigating the damage. But they won’t, largely because they are filled with rage and must attack anyone who disagrees with them.

And also because they are really, really dumb.

For some time, members of the neo-Nazis affiliated “Remember 1986” group (co-sponsors of the event) have been known to show up and harass Mexican day laborers at a spot in Phoenix where they congregate.
 

 
Via reddit/r/politics