Few albums have been, completely by accident, so aptly titled as Nico’s The Drama of Exile. Its recording and release history is convoluted and rife with drama, suspicion, fraud, theft, and legal recrimination. The album was Nico’s first since 1974’s The End, and features music written over a seven-year period. It was recorded twice in 1981—the first recording was released that year by a paranoid label boss who, convinced that Nico’s manager was going to swipe the master tapes and cut him out of the release, himself did exactly that, cutting Nico out of the release and issuing horrible sounding rough mixes as a finished LP, to the utter horror of the musicians and producer, some of whom went uncredited.
 

 
Another version of the album was recorded only one month after the first, but wasn’t released until 1983, after a legal battle over the first version. The second album has a different track list from the first—it includes the songs “Sãeta” (also sometimes known as “The Line” due to its mistitling on the posthumous Hanging Gardens LP) and “Vegas.” Since neither song was on the first version of Exile, they weren’t tied up in the legal mess, and so were able to be released as a 1981 single—on a different label, we hope it goes without saying.

The single was well-received, and a lot of live versions of “Sãeta” have made their way out there, legitimately or not, even before the YouTube/ETEWAF era. But a previously unheard early version is coming to light. In 1976, to help promote the then recently re-opened and absolutely legendary NYC rock club Max’s Kansas City, talent buyer Peter Crowley compiled a selection of recordings by bands associated with the club, a collection that was released as Max’s Kansas City 1976, an epochal compilation that exposed adventurous listeners to radical new artists like Pere Ubu, Suicide, and Nico’s fellow Warhol Factory alumnus Wayne County, soon to become known as Jayne County. That album is being greatly expanded for re-issue—by Crowley himself—to 25 tracks on vinyl, and 40 tracks on a 2XCD set called Max’s Kansas City: 1976 & Beyond.
 

 

 
The expansion includes plenty of previously unreleased material and rarities by the likes of New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, Iggy Pop, and Sid Vicious, and there’s a really, really great live version of “Sãeta.” I was hoping it was from a performance at Max’s, but evidently recordings made of Nico at that club didn’t survive. For the comp they’ve used a recording made in Europe in 1983, so I guess this falls under the “Beyond” category implied by the re-release’s title. I can live with that, though if there are lost Nico recordings from Max’s in 1976, somebody goddamn find those already. It’s performed in a different key and at a different tempo than the familiar single version, and it’s quite a stunner, with a very prominent guitar part played by the Invisible Girls’ Lyn Oakey. We’ve been permitted to share it with you ahead of the release, and because comparing versions is good dorky fun, we’ve also included the original single version and a live version performed in Manchester with the backing of the Blue Orchids.
 
Listen after the jump…

 
I was a little squicked out when the auction of locks of Marilyn Monroe’s hair was announced last year, so this is just straight up weirding me out.

The same auction house, the legendary Julien’s (“THE AUCTION HOUSE TO THE STARS!”) has announced its latest in a series of Hollywood Legends auctions. this one featuring loads of property from the estate of Patrick Swayze. Especially, um, devoted fans can bid on his hockey uniform from Youngblood which, yes, includes athletic supporters, and on his banana hammock from Keeping Mum.
 

A still from Keeping Mum. Before you go drawing any conclusions just based on that, Rowan Atkinson and Dame Maggie Smith were in the film, too.

In addition, as seems to be the case with practically every celebrity auction they do, there’s a passel of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, much of which is pretty run-of-the-mill, until you get to her chest and pelvic x-rays.
 

 

 

 

 

A Marilyn Monroe pelvic X-ray dated November 9, 1954. Information ghost printed in the upper right of the X-ray reads “Cedars of Lebanon Hospital/Drs. E. Freedman and S. Finck/ Name Di Maggio, Mrs. Marilyn/ No. 50612 Date 11-9-54/ Ref. By Dr. L. Krohn.” Dr. Leon Krohn was Monroe’s gynecologist.

17 by 14 inches

The provenance is interesting—“As a radiology resident at Cedars, a young doctor obtained this X-ray and one other, of Monroe’s pelvis. When he taught students, he used these X-rays to ensure that they were paying attention.“ OK, actually pretty funny, but I’d prefer not to speculate on why else someone would collect something like this. Images of Monroe’s chest have been around since 1947, though this is another level of exposure beyond mere toplessness. As for Ms. Monroe’s pelvis, that remained a bit more demure. But as I’m neither a woman nor a doctor, I’m out of the loop on gynecological techniques and instruments, and so I’m in the dark as to what exactly the apparent device is in the x-ray. Are we seeing an IUD insertion here? (Asking for a friend.)

Anyway, the auction takes place on April 28th. If you’re going to bid on these Monroe items, good luck to you, I guess, and please keep your reasons to yourself.

 
Given its highly visual element, 80s glam metal was tailor-made for the MTV age. It was born, matured and died on heavy video rotation, perhaps the first, last, and best musical genre defined entirely by its image. A sexual aggressive splatter of hot pink fishnets, bottle-blonde hair and sweaty black leather, the gender-bending men (seriously, despite all the Aqua Net and mascara, the whole movement was 98% dudes) of Hair Metal Nation loved capering around on video.
 

First he gets tossed out of Metallica, now this…
 
Of course, many countries had their own version of MTV or its metal-centric VHS spin-offs like the Hard N’ Heavy series. Japan’s version was called Pure Rock Digest. And Japan being Japan, they threw in puppets interviewing bands in broken English.

You honestly can’t ask for anything more 80s than a nerdy Japanese puppet (with sorta racist slanty eyes, even) talking to White Lion about groupies or swilling beer with WASP. I mean, holy fuck, people.
 

 
More metal puppet madness after the jump…

 
In 2013 Spike Jonze released a daring and fascinating movie called Her, set in an indeterminate future in which Theodore Twombly, ably played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with the operating system on his phone, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who goes by the name Samantha.

According to recent research undertaken by Mindshare and J. Walter Thompson, a surprising number of smartphone users fantasize about just such a relationship. The report, which is titled “Speak Easy: The Future Answers to You” (does it?), covers a wide array of research into user attitudes about speech recognition and natural language processing with a focus on voice hardware products such as the Amazon Echo.

In a section called “Craving Intimacy,” the report looks at the desire of users to have a “deeper connection” with their “voice assistants.” A majority of users (60%) understandably affirmed that vastly improved comprehension on the part of the devices would greatly increase the propensity to use it.

 
This rapidly becomes a tricky area, the report’s authors point out, because as the abilities of the voice assistants and the integration of services increase, the potential for fraud or abuse also increases dramatically, which means that the services require a significant degree of trust—and trust is an inherently emotional aspect of human life that also requires a willingness to be vulnerable. As one focus group member said, “You can build trust by, hopefully, making sure no one’s ripped off while giving them access to do amazing things.”

Is it any wonder, then, that some users have started to fantasize about a sexual relationship with Siri or Alexa? Not surprisingly, according to neuroscience experiments discussed in the report, “the emotional response to voice assistants is considerably lower than for both a face-to-face human interaction and a touch or text interface,” which is chalked up to the “rudimentary personalities” of Alexa or Siri, but users’ comfort level with their assistants increased with the benefit of further exposure and familiarity with them.

And where familiarity and comfort go, intimacy and sex cannot be far behind:
 

Over a third (37%) of regular voice technology users say that they love their voice assistant so much that they wish it were a real person. Even more astonishing is that more than a quarter of regular voice technology users say they have had a sexual fantasy about their voice assistant.

 
To be precise, “26% of regular voice tech users say they have had a sexual fantasy about their voice assistant.”

In October, the Telegraph reported that personal voice assistants were frequently being used by “some men” who wanted to “talk dirty.” Ilya Eckstein, chief executive of Robin Labs, a company in the UK, noted that the behavior was seen most often in “teenagers and truckers without girlfriends”:
 

This happens because people are lonely and bored…. It is a symptom of our society. As well as the people who want to talk dirty, there are men who want a deeper sort of relationship or companionship.

 
Eckstein also stated that such people “want to flirt, they want to dream about a subservient girlfriend, or even a sexual slave.”

A woman tasked with working on that Microsoft’s Cortana product has said that “a good chunk of the volume of early-on inquiries” addressed the voice assistant’s sex life. 
 
via Dazed
 

 
If you are relatively sane and not prone to low-watt brainwashing, you may be unaware of the vast library of Christian propaganda films out there. One of America’s most profitable and least-known cottage industries, these micro-budgeted religious epics had their heyday in the 70’s and 80’s when Midwest-based Mark IV Productions created their twelve-year Thief in the Night quadrilogy, a series of end times films featuring dead-eyed, polyester-clad actors moping their way through The Rapture. These films were shown to impressionable kids at Bible study classes and probably turned thousands of otherwise normal humans into conservative, sex-negative Jesus zombies. Made for pocket change, these films grossed millions. They are still be shown and sold today and paved the way for the even more profitable Left Behind series a couple decades later.
 

 
Christian propaganda films loved warning teenagers about the dangers of basically everything. Satan lurked on every corner, always looking for a way to break into the lucrative teen market. Sex, drugs, booze and the perils of disobeying your parents were popular subjects, but even listening to the radio was cause for concern. Which brings us to 1982’s awkwardly titled Rock: It’s Your Decision. Directed by John Taylor (not the Duran Duran guy, obviously, but how great would it be if it was?), Rock tells the story of Jeff, your average American teenager who goes to school and church and does whatever society tells him to. His only vice is the bullshit generic MOR rock he blasts on his stereo. But even that is too rebellious for his mom, who snitches on him to his church pastor, who challenges Jeff to give up rock n’ roll for a month. The pastor gives him a few choice tapes from his Christian pop collection to tide him over, though.
 

A glimpse into some of this film’s action-packed moments.
 
Once Jeff gives up rock music, he starts to realize just how fucked up and evil it was all along. How? By misinterpreting Santana lyrics (it goes “You’ve gotta change your evil ways,” dummy) and audience reactions (Jeff thinks swaying along to the music is some kind of thought control). He throws his best bud out of the house for digging Billy Joel and Lynyrd Skynyrd too much, and refuses to take his feather-haired blonde girlfriend to the unnamed “rock show”. He even heads down to the record store to bully people out of buying tasty rock n’ roll jams. What a jerk! In essence, Jeff becomes an insufferable asshole without rock music. He’s even worse to his mother now, accusing her of hypocrisy because of her soap opera addiction, and his climactic anti-rock rant at church even throws some homophobia (and Barry Manilow and fucking Captain and Tennille) into the mix.

Watch this shit, after the jump…

 
Part the First, being the tale of a haunting in rural England in the 1920s.

Almost a hundred years ago now, out on the fields and winding lanes by Curry Rivel in Somerset, there came stories of the ghostly apparition of a woman who walked at night. A woman dressed in black, her face sinisterly veiled. It was said that anyone who ever looked upon this specter’s face, looked into her blackened soulless eyes, would be struck dead on the very spot where they stood.

Who was this ghost?

Some said she was the spirit of an old governess who had lost her charges in some terrible accident—most likely drowned by the old weir—who now roamed the misty meadows and hedgerows looking for their bodies to bring them home once more. Others said she was an evil wraith looking to snare the unwary soul.

When children wouldn’t go to sleep at night, their mothers told them to close their eyes or the woman in black would find them out and feast upon their bones.

Terror gripped the sleepy village. It became so bad that some would ne’er leave their houses after sundown for fear of meeting the dreaded woman in black.

For four years, this ghostly figure was seen by moonlight drifting over fields, wandering brambled lanes, waiting at the crossroads for hellbound travelers.
 

 
Then one night, a group of men gathered in the local pub, the King William Inn. The sightings of the woman in black had been more frequent of late and the villagers said that when the black specter is seen three times in a week someone was going to die….
 
Find the secret of the ghostly woman in black, after the jump…

Robyn on the horn, via KEXP
 
Food isn’t just important for growing healthy teeth, bones, skin, and hair. Where would the Robyn Hitchcock songbook be without food? I’ll tell you where: in the slender-volume, shallow-shelved monograph store, filed under “S” for “short,” that’s where. Every Hitchcock record feeds on food. Whether Robyn’s singing about the demonic scrambled egg in “The Devils Coachman,” the cat hoist with her own petard in “Eaten by Her Own Dinner,” or the meat in “Meat,” you can be sure he’s fattened his farm-to-table verses and choruses on a steady diet of chow.

That is to say: Because Hitchcock knows from eats, readers who observe a strict food diet will want to try this, his all-purpose meal. Ten years ago, Hitchcock gave his recipe for Food Pie to Cooking with Rock Stars, most of whose other guests were too “indie”—in the newfangled genre sense, of course, not the old-fashioned means of production sense—for my taste. From my point of view, these were Emerils of the recording studio, who salted their soggy dishes with tears and larded them with feelings. By contrast, Robyn’s notes leapt off the platter, clean, fresh and flavorful as salade niçoise.

In the words of the Poet, “If food be the food of music, play on.” Do yourself a flavor and have a heaping helping of Food Pie.
 

 
The Food Pie recipe, after the jump…

‘The Singing Citadel’ by Michael Moorcock. Cover art by Bob Haberfield, 1970.

Sci-fi author Michael Moorcock has published a dizzying array of books since getting his start editing a Tarzan fanzine when he was still a teenager. In addition to his extensive literary career, Moorcock has also had some pretty praiseworthy experiences in the world of rock and roll including having played banjo for Hawkwind (as well as writing lyrics for the band) and penning three songs for Blue Öyster Cult. However, as excellent as Mr. Moorcock is, this post is about a man whose art adorned countless covers of books by Moorcock and others in the genre of fantasy and sci-fi for years, Bob Haberfield. If you are of a certain age you will very likely remember being in a store (especially in the UK) catching yourself staring right at one of Haberfield’s many contemplative psychedelic book covers that were staring right back at you.

Before he got started doing book covers, Haberfield created album art for UK jazz label World Record Club starting in the early 1960s. His first cover for Moorcock—who he collaborated with quite often during his career—appeared in 1970 on the first edition of Moorcock’s book Phoenix in Obsidian put out by Mayflower in the UK. This would be the third cover for Haberfield after his debut in 1968 illustrating the cover for a book written by seven-time Hugo Award-winning author Poul Anderson, The Star Fox. Haberfield would collaborate with a long list of other authors and it’s also not uncommon to see different artwork by Haberfield adorn a later edition of the same book. Another one of Haberfield’s artistic calling cards is his incorporation of religious symbolism—specifically, those associated with Buddhism.

It’s my opinion that the Australian graphic designer’s work is somewhat criminally underappreciated. And for the time that his far-out creations were displayed on a lengthy list of sci-fi/fantasy books, his work really stands apart thanks to his bizarre, thought-provoking imagery and use of color. I mean this is the guy who put Adolf Hitler on a futuristic-looking motorcycle, wearing a Dracula cape hauling what dubiously appears to be a fucking bomb behind him to the backdrop of a blazing red swastika for author Norman Spinrad‘s critcally acclaimed 1972 book, The Iron Dream. If that last bit didn’t quite convince you of Haberfield’s mad, mad genius, then perhaps checking out more of his work, which I’ve posted below, is in order. Much of it is NSFW.
 

An incredible alternate cover by Haberfield for author Norman Spinrad’s 1972 book, ‘The Iron Dream’
 

The grim cover of the first edition paperback by Haberfield.
 
More after the jump…

 
In 1991 Leonard Cohen was on a TV show and he sang a cute song about bananas that Chiquita featured in commercials that ran in movie theaters back in the 1940s. I have no idea how it came up or what inspired Cohen to break into the song, but he clearly wants a close pal of his, Canadian poet Irving Layton, to register how much of the song he knows by heart.

The original singer of the Chiquita Banana song was Monica Lewis, who many years later appeared in two of the Airport movies.
 

 
You probably know that on the cover of his 1988 album I’m Your Man, Cohen is depicted munching on a banana. Bananas were even used in the promotional items produced for the album, as seen at the top of this page.

This page would have you believe that Cohen is the second most banana-obsessed musical artist after, well, the Velvet Underground.

The original Chiquita Banana advertisement from 1947:

 
Cohen’s rendition:

 
For many years now, the Musicophilia blog has been a source of tightly themed mixes showcasing the best of various genres, most notably postpunk, that are mind-bogglingly awesome. The mix for which the proprietor, named Ian Manire, is best known is almost certainly his gargantuan tribute to 1981, in which the music of that year was eventually broken up into nine distinct sub-mixes, those being “Feet,” “Convertible,” “Brain,” “Heart,” “Cassette,” “Computer,” “Fire,” “Amplifier,” and “Ice.”

The easiest way to describe these mixes is that they were all but designed for the Dangerous Minds readership specifically. Sample names from the set include the Cramps, Flipper, Bad Brains, Klaus Nomi, the Birthday Party, Kraftwerk, Magazine, the Ramones, Siouxsie & the Banshees, the Pretenders, Gang of Four, PiL, New Order, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Grace Jones, and Echo & the Bunnymen. If these acts all seem a little bit too “been there before” for you, not to worry: the mixes also have ample room for the likes of the Comsat Angels, the Durutti Column, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Bush Tetras, Cybotron, Crash Course in Science, and the Embarrassment.

The ‘1981’ mixes started out as a physical object, “a 10-disc, 9-mix physical box set that I shipped to whoever wanted it (for the cost of shipping), put together and refined from 2004-2005 as a way of exploring a several-years-gestating obsession with post punk, which, it seemed to me, had reached its maximum depth, breadth and fecundity in the eponymous year.” Eager listeners also received an amazing addendum, a “massive spill-over mp3-CD” known simply as “Briefcase.” The original nine mixes featured 231 tracks and lasted 12 hours—“Briefcase” alone contained a whopping 251 tracks and 13 hours. That material has never been made available for download.

Yesterday, for the first time, Manire made the entire set of mixes available for download. As Manire wrote on the well-known ilXor “I love music” forum, “It likely won’t last long, but thanks to Mediafire doing away with file size restrictions, I’ve finally shared the *truly* complete ‘1981’ box set, with the never-before-shared-online ‘Briefcase’ disc.”

If you have a couple of spare gigs on your hard drive, act now. Download them here. You won’t be disappointed.

More after the jump…