Nice time-lapse video of a Robert Moog mural commissioned by Moog Music for their factory in Asheville, NC. The mural was created by local Asheville artist, Dustin Spagnola.
Thanks, Dustin!
Graham Skipper, Jesse Merlin (and a headless Brian Gillespie). Photo by Thomas Hargis.
After a highly successful premiere run in 2011, director Stuart Gordon’s ultra-gory musical version of his ultra-gory 80s cult film, Re-Animator™ The Musical has just two weeks left in its current Los Angeles engagement before the show travels to New York City and then the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
Dangerous Minds has a pair of tickets to one of the Saturday night late shows (this weekend or next) for a lucky reader who tells us in the most creative way, why the Re-Animator tickets must be theirs.
Re-Animator™ The Musical was the winner of six LA Weekly Theater Awards, including “Musical of the Year.” It’s BLOODY terrific (wear a raincoat, don’t say I didn’t warn you) fun and one of the leads is played by my very good friend, Jesse Merlin, who gives a bravura performance as the villainous “Dr.Carl Hill” who loses his head about mid-way through the show, but keeps right on singing anyway. Cheers’ George Wendt will also be returning to the cast as the zombiefied Dean of the medical school. Chris L. McKenna, Rachel Averym, Mark Beltzman, Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, Marlon Grace and Liesel Hanson round out the cast, with Graham Skipper featured as “Dr. Herbert West. ” Book by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris. Music and lyrics by Mark Nutter. The special effects are being done by the same guys who did them for the 1985 movie.
I mean, it’s a super-smart musical comedy Grand Guignol—with lots and lotsof blood—based on an H.P Lovecraft story... what’s not to love, here, right? See it now in Los Angeles while you still can!
Re-Animator™ The Musical runs nightly Thursdays through Sundays 8:00pm [Thu., Fri., Sun.] with two shows on Saturdays: 7:00 & 10:30pm at The Hayworth Theatre, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057.
More details at: www.reanimatorthemusical.com
This coming Tuesday the 29th, Stuart Gordon will be at Cinefamily, in-person for an in-depth Q&A session about the process of bringing his legendary ‘80s horror film to the stage as a musical with a screening of the original film and appearances by the play’s cast.
Leave your reason why we should give YOU the tickets in the comments. The best answer chosen by us, for no particular reason whatsoever will win. It’s up to you to get yourself there, so this contest is really only for our local Los Angeles readers (In other words, please don’t enter if you won’t be able to actually attend the performance, okay?)
It’s Bob Dylan’s birthday - Happy Birthday Bob. But rather than the usual cake, candles and documentary clip, here’s a slightly different birthday card: 2 versions of Dylan’s “Masters of War” slowed down by 400% and 800% by Angel Musicfication.
Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 400% slower.
Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 800% slower.
In April 1970, as rumors spread of Paul McCartney quitting The Beatles, news reporters hurried to Apple HQ, hoping to make their assumptions fit the story when interviewing Beatles’ Press Officer, Derek Taylor, and the band’s recently appointed manager, Allen Klein. This rare little news clip, seemingly missing a linking voice-over, captures the moment the rumors of a Beatles split were confirmed.
With thanks to Nellym
Horse Meat Disco are one of the most recognisable names in the modern dance music landscape, a four-piece dj unit known for their top quality record selection as well as their rather cheeky “boner horse” logo.
Focusing heavily on disco music, Horse Meat have done much to rehabilitate that maligned genre in the eyes and ears of the club-going public, and have already released three compilations of rare disco gems on the London-based funk and disco Strut label.
Their weekly party in South London’s Vauxhall is a free-for-all of dancefloor intensity and wickedly positive vibes. It’s overtly-gay, yet open-for-all, and its friendly atmosphere has done wonders to re-establish gay clubbing (and clubbing period) as something cool and fun to do in these down-at-heel times. By concentrating, heavily but not exclusively, on music from the 70s and 80s, Horse Meat have reconnected the modern gay audience with their own, often overlooked, history and culture, and serve as a timely reminder that going out, getting out of it and dancing ‘til the wee small hours was not invented yesterday.
In short, they’re legendary. And it’s my favorite club. To me, the best description of Horse Meat Disco comes from the Brixton DJ and label owner Andy Blake, who calls the club “roots music for the gay community.”
For their latest podcast, the second in a new series being made available through Soundcloud, Horse Meat Disco DJs James Hillard and Luke Howard have put together over an hour of their favorite tracks by Donna Summer, who died last week at the age of 63.
It’s a suitably joyous, and touching, celebration of disco’s reluctant female queen, and features much of her work with super-producers Giorgio Moroder and Quincy Jones, including a whole side of the excellent 1977 LP Once Upon A Time. Although generally regarded as a “singles” artist, Summer had some killer album tracks, as demonstrated here. She could also turn her hand to straight-up soul as opposed to icy electronica, and must rank as one of the most sampled artists of all time.
I wonder if any current musical “gay icons” will leave such a lasting legacy?
The fact of Vanessa Paradis (proudly displaying her Jane Birkinesque diastema) and Dave Stewart (a neon Serge Gainsbourg) singing Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” is evocative enough in and of itself. But there’s an added dimension to this video that makes the whole thing kind of spooky and more than a little bit clammy. Watching Paradis performing a duet with Stewart, who looks uncannily like a combination of the future father of her two children, Johnny Depp, and Depp’s frequent collaborator Tim Burton plus his former lover and collaborator Annie Lennox, is like watching a re-tooled version of “Lemon Incest” for the MTV generation…without Gainsbourg’s real incestuous vibe.
As the echoplex of history loops in upon itself, let’s ponder other elements of this time warpy video.
Paradis’s cover of “Walk On The Wild Side” appeared on her 1990 album Variations sur le Meme T’Aime, the same year that Depp and Burton’s first collaborative effort, Edward Scissorhands, hit the big screen. 1990 was also the year that Lou Reed re-united with John Cale and the other members of The Velvet Underground to play a charity gig in Paris. The last time they had played together was 1972, the year that Paradis was born. Add up the numbers in 1990 and you get 19. Paris 1919 is the title of John Cale’s third solo album.
Exactly 19 years after singing her duet with Stewart, Paradis covered the Serge Gainsbourg song “Ballade de Melody Nelson” with Johnny Depp.
Sigmund Freud was 19 years older than Carl Jung. Flight 19 disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The Qur’an teaches that 19 angels are assigned to guard the fires of Hell. Which brings up the question: “where were those angels when this video was made?”
“Walk on the Wild Side” is 40 years old. So is Vanessa Paradis. Jesus fasted 40 days and nights….
Here’s the world premier of a video I just finished editing last night for “The Sound,” a song from my forthcoming album, Tantric Machine.
I wrote the lyrics for “The Sound” after a night of drinking, walking 47 miles of barbed wire and listening to Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love” and some Petey Wheatstraw records.
It’s an old song (writ in 1999) that I resuscitated after years of ignoring it. I didn’t like it at the time I recorded it but I’ve had a change of heart and decided to unveil it (or allow it to escape) for all the world to hear, particularly folks who frequent Dangerous Minds.
After three decades of making records, I still can’t get a handle on my own music, which in some ways is a good thing. If a song takes me by surprise it generally means it has something to say to me. In the case of “The Sound,” I was playing around with the kind of over-the-top, often funny, boastful lyrics you hear in old blues and rock tunes like the aforementioned “Who Do You Love” to which I added a dose of noirish Peter Gunn guitar and a Morricone-esque wail from a Casio keyboard. I’m not sure the song has anything to “say,” but it certainly draws from my history of loving the dark shit.
The Sound
This is the sound
Of big love come to town
In the nightThis the beat
That crawls up the street
In the nightI’m the mighty soul brother
The mighty machine
That generates love
In your groovy love scene
In the nightThis is the sound
Deep and profoundWell young Aphrodite
Was hung from the trees
When I rode though the town
With a bitch on my knees
In the nightThe Portuguese mother
With albino twins
Gouged out her eyes
When she saw me walk in
In the nightWomen love men
With money and wit
Some will respond
To the crack of a whip
In the nightI’m the mighty soul brother
And Lord there’s no other
Go ahead ask your mother
She knows what this brother can do
In the nightThis is the sound of big love come to town
Thanks for indulging me. This is like undressing in public.
“Girls have got balls. They’re just a little higher up that’s all.” Joan Jett
Yesterday’s Interstella Zappadrive: When Frank Zappa jammed with Pink Floyd post led me to some more footage from the Actuel Rock Festival, held in late October of 1969 in Amougies, Belgium, of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.
Zappa was supposed to be the MC of the festival, but when the language barrier made that impossible, opted to jam with a few of the groups on guitar, including, of course, The Magic Band.
Bill Harkleroad (“Zoot Horn Rollo”) told Hal’s Progressive Rock Blog:
“All I can remember is playing in front of thousands of people huddled together in sleeping bags at three in the morning in this huge circus tent. It’s 27 degrees out, and there’s frost on my strings! It was Don, Victor, Mark, me and Jeff Burchell on drums. Frank was sitting in with us, because he was supposed to be the festival MC - a difficult job when he spoke no French and most of the audience spoke no English. Having Frank play with us made me a little more nervous than normal. I think we played five tunes - the five tunes Jeff knew and that was it. Pretty weird flying us all the way over there and playing one gig!
Don Van Vliet’s recollection of the festival:
“We had a good time. I don’t know, what they were doing; they were throwing what looked like birds nests at us, and then one fellow out of the audience - between one of the compositions - said my name was Captain Bullshit, and I said: “well, that’s all right baby, you’re sitting in it.” You know what I mean? I don’t know if he was an American; I’m not sure, because he was using early Gary Cooper movie talk. Like “yep,” things like that. I think they did well in five days and moving it from France to Belgium. But it was awfully cold… the people in the audience, I don’t know how they did it. I think it was probably pretty nice for them to leave their bodies… but the amplifiers were blown out by the time we got to them, and we need clarity for that, and there wasn’t any. I don’t know. I hope they enjoyed it. I enjoyed it.”
Naturally, as with the Pink Floyd footage that has slipped out of the vault to collectors (and YouTube) there’s no Festival Actuel footage of Zappa actually jamming with Captain Beefheart! Fwustrating! Was Zappa strapping on a guitar the signal to turn the camera off? Of course not, so where is this priceless footage?!?!?
In any case, there’s 5:32 seconds of sync-sound footage of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band in 1969 on my computer screen, so what am I complaining about? They do “She’s Too Much For My Mirror” and “My Human Gets Me Blues.”
The lineup for this concert was Don Van Vliet, vocals, tenor & soprano sax, bass clarinet; Victor Hayden (“The Mascara Snake”) bass clarinet; Bill Harkleroad (“Zoot Horn Rollo”) guitars; Mark Boston (“Rockette Morton”) bass; and Jeff Burchell (“Imposter Drumbo”) drums & percussion. Frank Zappa sat in on guitar on “When Big Joan Sets Up’” at the end of their set.
From Hal Wilner’s 1988 tribute Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films
Some enterprising person decided to sync the Sun Ra version up to the scene in the film. It’s highly enjoyable.