It’s a quote almost as delicious as Nigel Tufnel’s “This one goes to 11” from This Is Spinal Tap—and maybe it’s not a coincidence that it’s about the supreme importance of rock music being LOUD AS FUCK.

Todd Van Luling at The Huffington Post ran an article yesterday in which he says he got Young to confirm the sort-of apocryphal story.

The story must have happened in late 1971 or early 1972. Neil Young had just put his fourth album Harvest to bed, and he badly wanted his bandmate Graham Nash to hear it. Here’s Van Luling’s rendition of the story, as it has been told for years:
 

As the myth goes, Nash was at Young’s ranch just south of San Francisco when Young asked him if he wanted to hear something. (That something would become Young’s now famous 1972 “Harvest” album, which features the track “Heart of Gold.”) Nash, of course, said yes and suggested going into Young’s studio. That wasn’t Young’s plan.

“He said, ‘Get into the rowboat,’” Nash explained on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2013. “I said, ‘Get into the rowboat?’ He said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake.’”

The two row out on the lake, with Nash assuming Young brought a cassette player and headphones with him.

“Oh, no,” said Nash on NPR. “He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard ‘Harvest’ coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced ‘Harvest,’ came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil, ‘How was that, Neil?’”

The best part is Young’s apparent response to the situation. As Nash explained, “I swear to God, Neil Young shouted back, ‘More barn!’”

 
One of the odd things about this story is that 20 years passed before Nash told anyone about it, more or less. It purportedly appeared in the liner notes of a 1991 4-CD compilation called CSN—however, my efforts to verify that on Discogs came up short. In 1996 a Neil Young fan named Brad Brandeau created a T-shirt that depicted the story with this image:
 

 
As mentioned above, Nash told the story on Fresh Air three years ago.

Young has a new album to promote, an album called Earth that comes out on Friday. The acclaimed singer-songwriter has been in an expansive mood lately, joining Marc Maron on his podcast WTF as well.

Here’s Young’s account of the barn story, as told to Van Luling:

“Well it’s funny, it’s just a little thing that happened one day and it keeps growing and getting crazier,” Young said over the phone. “But I had the left speaker, big speakers set up in my house with the windows open. And I had the PA system — that we used to rehearse and record with in the barn where I recorded “Alabama” and “Words” and a couple other things — over there playing the right-hand channel. So, we were sitting in between them on a little lake and that’s what we were doing.”

When asked if the kicker of the legend was true — whether he truly did yell back, “More Barn!” — the singer laughed for a bit. Then he said, “Yeah, I think it was a little house heavy.”

“A little house heavy.” Can we get a T-shirt for that one too?

After the jump, Young set at the BBC a couple of weeks after ‘Harvest’ was released…

 
At its best the VHS cassette cover was a mini work of art telling you everything that’s good about the movie inside the box. At worst, well it’s just video clickbait offering up spurious imagery of sex and violence created by (it would seem) drug-addled monkeys left in a room way too long with typewriters and a whole set of day-glo paints to play with.

I could be wrong but it would seem that the VHS cover art genre has consistently offered up the very worst promotional art imaginable. I know there are plenty of self-published e-books out there with ghastly homemade photoshop covers that a five-year-old could do better with their eyes shut—but VHS tape covers were created by the paid talents of an artist—who painted the picture, a graphic designer—who produced the typographer and a sales guy—who obviously had no talent whatsoever, certainly no taste, but apparently the largest say on what went on the label. Rummage through any VHS bin in your local thrift store and you’ll find plenty of these crimes against culture

It should also be noted for the edification of future generations that these lurid retina-burning creations were not just the preserve of the USA—every country in the world had their own taste bypass when it came to the packaging for movies on VHS. This little gallery offers a stocktake of VHS covers from Germany during the 1980s.
 

 

 

No, not a tale of dark and depraved demonic sex but ‘The Howling.’
 
More tasteless VHS covers, after the jump…

 
All who’ve dipped their toes in even the shallow end of early punk lore know the famous trajectory of the early scene in Cleveland By God Ohio: first, there was the proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs. They were weird and combative and completely out of step with normality, and it couldn’t last, so they split. That fissure produced that amazing yin and yang of Ur-punk—the bratty, gutterbound Dead Boys, who burned bright and flamed out fast; and the forbiddingly arty, brainy, and belligerent Pere Ubu, who still exist to weird out the normals today (they’re on tour right now, in fact).

But that’s only half of the story. Of the first lineup of Pere Ubu, only singer David Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner were Rocket refugees, and Laughner, sadly, didn’t even live to play on Ubu’s debut album. Guitarist Tom Herman and drummer Scott Krauss came Ubu’s way from a now utterly obscure weirdo outfit called the Robert Bensick Band. Bensick was a veteran of a handful of bands that included various future Ubus and members of the under-documented Laughner band Cinderella Backstreet, and in the mid-‘70s he assembled from those sources a band of like-minded rock ’n’ roll misfits to record what he intended as a magnum opus, the never-released French Pictures in London.
 
Keep reading after the jump…

Who knew that wearing Wrangler Jeans could be this much fun? Vintage ad from the 1970s.
 
Every product under the the sun in the 60s and 70s seemed to be coated with LSD. Even mundane items like Wrangler Jeans, acne medication and Plymouths caught the psychedelic buzz. If you weren’t taking drugs at the time, all you really had to do was pick up a magazine and check out some of the colorful (and confusing) ads and get experienced.
 

Vintage psychedelic ad for the Yellow Pages.
 
I was very lucky to have a wonderful art teacher in the sixth-grade who at the end of the year gifted me with a Peter Max poster book as we both shared a love for that type of counter culture artistic expression which I still have to this day (thanks, Mrs. B!). Max’s widespread notoriety began in the 60s and continues to this day (The 78-year-old artist was commissioned in 2012 to paint the hull of a Norwegian Cruise Line ship). It wasn’t surprising to see his recognizable artwork show up in a 1971 ad for the Chelsea National Bank which I have of course included in this post. I’ve also got a soft spot for the kaleidoscopic ads for the vintage cosmetics line sold at Woolworth’s (the land of neverending bins and shelves full of everything including from 45’s to underpants) called Baby Doll. Grab some sunglasses and enjoy!
 

Peter Max’s illustration for the Chelsea National Bank, 1971.
 

An ad for Baby Doll cosmetics sold at Woolworth’s during the 60s and early 70s.
 

Trippy vintage ad for the ‘New-Hope Soap’ Clearasil.
 
More after the jump…

 
David Lynch is like our nation’s super-fun, super-weird uncle, and it’s high time that he decided to get involved with a music festival. To his credit, he’s not riding the coattails of an established festival but has started one up from scratch.

It’s called the Festival of Disruption, and it’s going to happen in downtown Los Angeles on October 8 and 9. Lynch has put together the kind of impressive lineup of guests that you can only muster if you’ve long since become Hollywood royalty (albeit in a surrealist sort of way).

The headliners are Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters. Joining them will be St. Vincent, Questlove, and Rhye, as well as a performance of music from Twin Peaks involving Sky Ferreira, Xiu Xiu, and Lynch’s axiomatic composer Angelo Badalamenti.

There will also be “talks” with figures such as the stars of Lynch’s masterpiece Blue Velvet (Kyle MacLachlan & Laura Dern), Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, and Mel Brooks, who was Lynch’s producer on The Elephant Man. There will also be screenings of Lynch’s films, daily Transcendental Meditation sessions, and more.

The venue is the Ace Theatre Hotel and Theatre, located at 929 South Broadway. Tickets go on sale Friday, June 24th at 10:00 a.m. PST. 100% of the proceeds will benefit the David Lynch Foundation, whose mission is reducing toxic stress and trauma among at-risk populations, including victims of domestic violence, veterans suffering from PTSD, and underserved urban youth, through the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation technique.

More after the jump…

 
Fans of Jerry Lewis are well aware of his interest in technology, even if the stories of his inventing the video assist appear to distort the truth a trifle. For his part, publisher Al Goldstein’s best-known property was Screw, but he also developed a newsletter called Gadgets that sought to test new electronic devices on the market.

Someone had the bright idea of bringing the two men together for a segment of A.M. New York (a local competitor to the morning juggernaut of the Today program) that ran on February 23, 1976, with the assignment of introducing the viewer to a bunch of expensive devices.

The host at this time was named Stanley Siegel, and the devices are pretty amusing for being ridiculous in the era of the iPhone (which they obviously couldn’t help).

And expensive!! You could get a gold watch with a calculator on the face—for $3,900! (That’s more than $16,000 in today’s money.) How many meetings would have to be saved by instantaneously solving some simple arithmetic problem before that kind of thing would begin to pay for itself? Ditto the briefcase with a phone in it, which was priced at a relatively reasonable $2,200 (nearly ten grand today).

There’s also the most phallic corkscrew you have ever seen and a strange device filled with strips of paper that’s supposed to serve as an oracle of some sort.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
On May 24, 1971, the BBC program New Horizons ran a documentary about the new youth culture under the title “The Alternative Society.” Rather than make jokes at the expense of empty-headed young hippies, the segment, which runs about 22 minutes in this video (although it is missing both the start and the end) chose to seek the validity in the new generation’s need to communicate, experiment with illegal drugs, create new fashions and music, create social services separate from those provided by the state, and so on.

Featured in the show are several important figures from the U.K. counterculture scene who have popped up on DM before. For instance, the man addressing the camera in the opening sequence is Richard Neville, whose groundbreaking underground newspaper OZ has been highlighted at DM several times.

Caroline Coon, an artist, music journalist and activist (who was featured in the documentary She’s a Punk Rocker) is interviewed as the founder of Release, which was a parallel organization to NORML in the U.S., providing legal services to those charged with drug possession. In the years to come she would become romantically involved with Paul Simonon of the Clash (she briefly managed the group) and serve as technical advisor on the cult punk movie Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.
 

 
The narrator of “The Alternative Society” is Harvey Matusow, an extremely interesting fellow who was primarily known as being an FBI informer in the 1950s but worked with people in the Fluxus movement and not long after this documentary got involved with a hippie commune called Brotherhood of the Spirit. Always a joiner (or something), in the late 1970s he became a Mormon and took on the name Job Matusow.

Keep reading after the jump…

 
In spring of 1989, The Residents brought their “History of American Music in 3 EZ pieces” tour to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York for that year’s “Serious Fun” avant-garde music/performance art festival.  It was the second time I would see The Residents live and it was a memorable musical theatrical experience, I can assure you. Either the night before or the night after I can’t recall, I saw Diamanda Galas in the same theater performing her “Masque of the Red Death” trilogy and nearly bringing the walls down with the demonic intensity of her performance. (Ann Magnuson, Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray and Richard Foreman’s production of Philip Glass’s ‘‘The Fall of the House of Usher’’ opera were also a part of that year’s festival)

Alice Tully Hall is a plush, intimate (1086 seats) recital hall that normally hosts the New York Film Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Because of the “classy” setting, the show promised to be “more” than previous live Residents outings. Seeing The Residents at Lincoln Center seemed irresistible, but I didn’t know anyone who wanted to go with me, so I went alone [I’ve never been able to rope in a friend to see The Residents with me, not once! The first time I’d caught The Residents, also alone, was a few years earlier, during their 13th anniversary tour at The Ritz nightclub (now Webster Hall). About ten minutes into the show, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat arrived and stood near me on the balcony. About 20 minutes later they said something to each other and left immediately.]
 

 
The performance consisted of three-acts: “Buckaroo Blues” told the story of America through cowboy music, “Black Barry” via slave songs, blues and jazz and in the final Elvis section, “The Baby King,” The Residents essayed a senile Elvis telling his grandchildren (“Shorty” and “Shirley,” two freaky ventriloquist’s dummies) about his life before the British Invasion killed him. The show featured elaborately choreographed dance numbers and back-lit sets. As you might expect, the acoustics were pretty near perfect in a place like Alice Tully Hall.

More after the jump…

 
Makeup and prosthetics artist Neill Gorton recently showed off his mad skills at the International Makeup Artists Trade Show (IMATS) in London by turning a young woman into an old punk. The young female model, Kelsey-Leigh Walker became totally unrecognizable when the makeup was completed. It’s pretty impressive, eh?

“This was done to promote my make up school Neill Gorton Prosthetics Studio,” said Gorton.

In my opinion, the makeup is just as good or maybe even better than Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa which was nominated for an Oscar in 2014 for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. So I guess what I’m trying to say is this is Oscar-worthy work! Well done!

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Seemingly searching for a new musical identity, Can—Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Holger Czukay—performed their jaunty, jittery disco-fied “I Want More”—their only hit single in the UK, it got to #26—on Top of the Pops in 1976.

Smarmy TOTP presenter Noel Edmonds makes a terrible pun when he introduces them: “I wonder if Can will get into the top tin!” Ouch.

Then afterwards he “jokes”:

“We wanted to have them on at the beginning of the show, but then realized we couldn’t have a Can opener.”

Har har har. It’s tempting to put this into the same category as the Rolling Stones’ “Hot Stuff” from the same year. It’s brilliant and embarrassingly catchy, defying you not to dance, a testament to the talents of one of the greatest drummers who ever lived, Jaki Liebezeit.

“I Want More” is the opening number from their Flow Motion album.