I can’t think of a better way to celebrate 4/20 day than with this Afro Futuristic video of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Cosmo Arkestra performing onstage at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 9th, 1976. The set features a silver-clad June Tyson and some dancers.
Regarding this performance, Mrdangerbird7 (who must be named Tony Bunn owing to the clues he leaves) writes on YouTube:
“This video brings back good memories; I played bass (guitar) on this performance. I was wondering if a video would ever surface. This performance was but the 2nd performance of a 3-month tour for the band. Perhaps needless to say, it was a mind-boggling experience for me. No doubt, I would not be the musician nor the person that I am today, had I been anywhere other than there, at the point in time.
From one moment to the next, one never quite knew where things were gonna go, in Ra’s band. “Scripted” would be much too strong a term to use… What happened was more like one having to remain awake and to respond to stimuli from various directions, as they occurred. I guess you could call that improv; although it was different from anything I’d done before (or since).
Actually Sun Ra pretty much delivered as advertised; albeit, he was an incredibly eccentric individual. No doubt, his music was a direct reflection of what was going on inside of him and inside of the members of the ensemble. Life on the most raw terms…”
Leonard Cohen’s former manager and lover Kelley Lynch was sentenced on April 17 to 18 months in prison for breaching restraining orders by sending scores of nasty e-mails and making harassing phone calls to Cohen. Lynch had a history of predatory behavior in her dealings with Cohen. In 2005 she was found guilty of stealing millions of dollars from Cohen and was ordered by a judge to pay the singer $9.5 million.
At the sentencing, Cohen read a statement that only confirms his standing as a world-class poet, Buddhist and a man with an incredible sense of style:
It gives me no pleasure to see my onetime friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the service of darkness, deceit and revenge, [But] I want to thank the defendant Ms. Kelley Lynch for insisting on a jury trial, thus exposing to the light of day her massive depletion of my retirement savings and yearly earnings, and allowing the court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing… It is my prayer that Ms Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion. That a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform.”
Yes, Cohen briefly turned a courtroom into a Tower Of Song.
So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don’t let a woman kill you not in the tower of song
This seems like a good time to enjoy this concert footage from Leonard’s 2008/09 world tour.
You may remember a few months ago I posted about Joyce D’Vision, the world’s first drag queen tribute band to Joy Division (of which I am a member) and our adventures on UK primetime TV with the comedian Harry Hill.
Well, we have finally managed to wrangle Joyce herself into the studio to record some vocals, and the first fruits of this labor are cover versions of “She’s Lost Control” and “Isolation.” Both are iconic, classic tracks, that have been covered before (by Siobhán Fahey, Grace Jones and Wino & Conny Ochs, as featured in yesterday’s Roadburn post) but I like to think we have put our own unique spin on them.
While some people find the idea of Joyce D’Vision highly offensive, to me it’s as Northern English as Eccles cakes and Boddington’s bitter. People in Manchester have a sly, sometimes wicked sense of humor, and they are not above taking the complete mickey out of themselves and the stultifying, retro-based “Madchester” culture industry that seems to have a stranglehold on this town (check the blog Fuc251 for proof.) Unfortunately Joy Division are very much a part of this frozen-in-amber, Manchester music-heritage industry, which goes against the iconoclasm inherent in the band, and is ironic as they were sorely under-appreciated in this town when they did exist.
And that’s where we come in. It’s all in the best possible taste, darling, with hints of Vic & Bob, The League of Gentlemen, Kenny Everett and Frank Sidebottom (a legendary Manc comic who famously covered “Love Will Tear Us Apart” on a Casio). We’re not doing this because we hate Joy Division, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Joy Division have helped us get through as much teen angst as the next wrist cutter, but the band’s hallowed status doesn’t mean they are above a bit of fun poking. Every religion needs its satirists. Because let’s face it, if what we’re doing is somehow ruining your teen dreams or memories of a JD goth paradise, then those dreams and memories were not very solid in the first place.
I am well aware of Ian Curtis’ mental health problems (duh!) and I’m 100% convinced he had that same sly, piss-taking, Manc sense of humor as everyone else who grew up within the city’s grey-and-redbrick confines. I think he would have had a giggle or two at a bearded drag queen singing his songs.
Joyce D’Vision with Harry Hill on the set of TV Burp
But more to the actual point, I wonder what Peter Hook thinks?
If you’re not aware, original JD/New Order bassist Hook has formed a new band with jobbing Manchester musicians called The Light, whose purpose is to cover the work of Joy Division. He’s the only original member, and now the band are embarking on a tour playing “Unknown Pleasures” in full.
Originally Hooky himself was on vocal duties, but after he shamefully forgot the words at an infamous Manchester show a couple of years ago, he has brought in Rowetta (ex-Happy Mondays and Britain’s Got Talent) to sing instead. Not to mention some of his celebrity-fan pals when they have the chance - The Light have performed JD tracks with Billy Corgan, Moby and Perry Farrell on vocals, among others. They sing from a lyrics book open at the front of the stage.
So is what we are doing with Joyce D’Vision really any worse than what Peter Hook is doing with The Light? In a sense, both are karaoke, but only one has an actual on-stage lyrics sheet. And it’s not the band with the drag queens. Which of the two acts, Joyce D’Vision or The Light, are going to do more to shatter your teen-goth memories of Joy Division?
I don’t doubt that The Light has got something to do with New Order reforming recently without Hook and his iconic bass sound, a massive “fuck you” statement in his general direction. A lot of people in Manchester are happy they did this, but there’s also many people wondering if New Order can properly function without Hook on bass. I’m not sure, but either way, I do wonder now what Barney and Steve (original JD members, remember) and Gillian (a HUGE drag inspiration for our band) make of Joyce D’Vision?
Time will tell. For now, here are our first two tracks:
British artist Gerald Scarfe’s corrosive satire of Nixon-era America Long Drawn-Out Trip: Sketches from Los Angeles is an animated assault on the culture of greed, violence, the cult of celebrity and mass media that managed to piss off a lot of people when it was shown on BBC TV once in 1973. A combination of its harsh (though not inaccurate) depiction of the USA and problems obtaining the rights to the music on the soundtrack has kept this piece of cultural dynamite out of the public eye for four decades.
The subject of Long Drawn-Out Trip is Los Angeles and America itself, the concerns being the same ones that Ralph Steadman was depicting that year in his illustrations for Hunter S. “Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72”: venality, violence, vulgarity and the omnipresent spectre of Richard Nixon, a president who had the good fortune to be drawn many times by two of Britain’s greatest living satirists although he wouldn’t have thanked them for it. In Scarfe’s film we also find Mickey Mouse being reduced to his constituent lines and colours after smoking a joint. The animated sequences for The Wall have their origin in this short film.” John Coulthart.
Scarfe recalls his first contact with members of Pink Floyd:
I did an animated film for the BBC in 1971 called Long Drawn-Out Trip. Roger and Nick (Mason) had seen it independently on BBC2 when it was aired. Roger told me that he rang Nick and said: “We’ve got to have this guy on board. He’s fucking mad.” Then Nick approached me and asked me to do an animation film and that’s how the relationship grew.
I first worked with them on their (1975) “Wish You Were Here” album then Roger came to my house and played me the first tapes of The Wall. He said he wanted to make an album, a show and a movie, all of which he accomplished.”
Scarfe on the genesis of his film:
I did a kind of stream of consciousness drawing everything I could think of about America at that time. Like, the Statue of Liberty, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Black Power, Mickey Mouse, Coca Cola, Playboy Magazine, sort of a million images all melting one into the other. I was supposed to be there for 10 days, but I stayed for about 6 or 7 weeks. Hence the title, Long Drawn-Out Trip. And it was also a kind of a trip, cause it was very much the drug era. And it was a kind of a hallucinatory trip too.
In addition to being a ferociously talented illustrator and cartoonist with an amazing past, Scarfe is married to one of the reigning queens of Sixties’ pop culture, Jane Asher.
In June 2004, Dave Davies suffered a stroke as he was exiting a lift, in BBC’s Broadcasting House.
Suddenly the right hand side of my body seized up and I couldn’t move my arm or leg. Although I didn’t lose consciousness, I couldn’t speak. Luckily my son Christian and my publicist were there, so they carried me outside and called an ambulance.
Though he had warnings signs - waking up one morning to find he couldn’t move his right hand or speak when he opened his mouth - and was examined by a doctor, nothing indicated the imminence of his stroke. As Dave later wrote in the Daily Mail in 2006:
I was told I’d had a stroke - or, in medical terms, a cerebral infraction. An ‘infarct’ is an area of dead tissue and there was a patch of it on the left side of my brain - the bit that controls movement on the right side.
The doctors told me I had high blood pressure and that this was what had caused the stroke. They thought I’d probably had high blood pressure for at least ten years….
...Two weeks after my stroke, I finally plucked the courage to pick up my guitar. I held it across my lap, pressing on the strings. I could feel everything but the hand itself was virtually immobile.
I knew I was going to have to work very hard if I was to get better, and I started using meditation and visualisation. I thought if I could visualise myself running, walking and playing the guitar, it might prompt my brain to remember how I used to be.
It took Dave 18 months of physio, determination and hard work, to get “about 85 per cent back to normal”.
I believe my stroke was meant to happen to slow me down. I’d like to write and male films and start a foundation where I can help people be more spiritual…
...For now I appreciate my slower pace of life. I feel I have discovered an inner strength which I know will see me through any adversity.
Made in 2011, Julien Temple’s pastoral documentary Kinkdom Come is a touching portrait of the other half of The Kinks, Dave Davies.
Opening with Davies in the wilds of Exmoor, where he revels in the desolation and the quiet, Temple’s film moves through Dave’s life story, examining key moments in his childhood, his career as guitarist with The Kinks, his openness about sexuality, his (some would say torturous) relationship with his brother Ray, and the damagingly high cost of that all of his fame, success and position as “iconic Sixties figure” has cost him.
Throughout, Dave comes across as an honest, gentle soul, slightly lost, beautifully innocent, almost ethereal, as if he is a visitor from some other galaxy.
Originally named The Debutones, England’s The Liverbirds (aka The Liver Birds) moved from Liverpool to Hamburg, Germany in 1963 where they became a popular band on the Star-Club circuit. Although they never became big stars their contribution to rock and roll is historically significant in that they were the first serious all-girl rock band to play their own instruments and do it on the same turf as male rock n’ rollers.
“Girls with guitars? That’ll never work”. John Lennon.
Well, it did work for The Liverbirds who managed to record two albums, achieve a Top 10 hit in Germany with their single, “Diddley Daddy,” and last four years before splitting up in 1967.
“This train with grey tubes that houses people’s thoughts. Their very remains and belongings!”
After being promised a while back, and then delayed a few times, the Zappa Family Trust have given the world the original Bat Chain Puller album by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. It’s only for sale at Zappa.com.
Stuck in the vaults due to legal limbo for some 35 years, this is the 1976 vintage Bat Chain Puller of legend (and furiously traded bootlegs of varying quality). Van Vliet re-recorded the Bat Chain Puller tracks for Warner Bros. Records in 1978 and that album was titled Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).
This official release sounds pristine and has far less tape hiss compared to all previous versions. Apparently Beefheart himself didn’t want these recordings released. There are three bonus tracks.
Don Van Vliet died on December 17th, 2010 of complications from MS.
The title number, “Bat Chain Puller,” was based upon the rhythm of Van Vliet’s car windshield wipers.
An awe-inspiring live “Bat Chain Puller” from French TV, 1980.
Dirty Duck (aka Down And Dirty Duck) released in 1974 was a low-budget attempt to cash-in on the success of Fritz The Cat that manages to stake out its own turf in the X-rated cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals genre. Directed by Charles Swenson and featuring the voices and music of Flo and Eddie, as well as Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston and other members of The Mothers Of Invention, Dirty Duck is to Daffy what Charles Bukowski is to Ogden Nash.
Willard Eisenbaum (Voiced by Howard Kaylan) is a day-dreaming insurance worker who thinks he’s about to have the day of this life when he expresses his love to a fellow worker. When Willard’s intentions fail to materialize, he’s told by his boss to investigate an insurance claim from the elderly Martha (Lurene Tuttle). When Martha suddenly kicks the bucket during Willard’s visit, her will says that the one who causes her death (Confirmed by a Ouija board) will have to overlook her duck…Make that a grown, talking Duck! (Voiced by Mark Volman) Within seconds, both Willard and The Duck are hitting the streets, brothels, and tons of indescribable locations to get laid. By the time the film ends (Which is rather quickly) Willard will appear to be in love…But with whom? Or What?”
Within the raunchy confines of Dirty Duck’s universe lurks many pop culture references, including several that conjure up the spirit of Frank Zappa.
There are a few Zappa references peppered throughout the movie. For one, the duck is roughly the same character that Jeff Simmons morphed into in 200 Motels. At one point the main character and the duck are lost in the desert, and the duck is explaining how he came to be a duck. He says he used to be a TURTLE, but that wasn’t too happening, so he got some advice from his MOTHER and he just sort of FLO’d from there. If by any chance these references are too subtle for the more chemically aided members of the audience, at this point a cartoon version of Frank Zappa’s grimacing visage is looming over the entire scene, having just risen like the sun over the horizon. Hereupon Willard says: “Oh, Eddie, you have GOT to be kidding”, in reference to Zappa’s song Eddie Are You Kidding?. Later, 200 Motels is specifically namedropped. It’s almost as if this movie is a sequel to 200 Motels, sans Zappa involvement.” P. Neve
“You can’t do this to me! I was at Woodstock in ‘69. I saw “200 Motels”! I know who I am!” Dirty Duck.
Its not surprising that Dirty Duck evokes 200 Motels. Both films were produced by Murakami-Wolf Productions, who also produced the Harry Nilsson flick The Point.
Dirty Duck is a foul fowl so be prepared for some freaky, offensive and politically incorrect humor. This is one fucked-up duck.
So Coachella is happening. Everyone with even a passing interest in live music knows this (and most likely from the holographic Tupac performance that has become quite the meme already.) And yeah, Coachella looks cool and all, but what if that’s not your kind of thing? What if you want music that’s a bit darker, a lot heavier, basically more extreme? Well, while you are definitely in the minority there, don’t worry because you are not alone.
Happening over the same weekend as the first part of Coachella, but thousands of miles away (both literally and metaphorically) Holland’s annual Roadburn Festival is a celebration of all things doom, drone, experimental, noisy and heavy. This years festival saw performances from Michael Gira, OM, Voivod, Doom, Sleep, Kong, Yob, GNOD, Bongripper, The Obsessed, Jucifer, Black Cobra, Urfaust, Electric Orange and the very fun-sounding Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation.
Roadburn takes place over four days in the Dutch town of Tilburg, and has been steadily attracting a growing fan base over the last few years, enough to start its own record label (affiliated with Burning World Records.) Next year’s headliners have already been confirmed, and it will be industiral legends Godflesh performing their classic album Pure in its entirety.
Here’s a statement taken from the Roadburn website (which also features details on travel and booking tickets):
Holland’s very own Roadburn Festival has become Europe’s leading underground festival for psychedelic, avant-garde, doom or any other variation of leftfield sonic pleasures that push the boundaries of music.
Originally a spin-off of the Roadburn website, the Roadburn Festival has emerged as an event in its own right. It brings together bands, fans & media from around the world. Despite it’s international acclaim, Roadburn Festival retains an underground vibe and ethics, but with seriously big-league production values.
In addition to the music, Roadburn has earned a reputation as having a unique camaraderie between the festivalgoers, bands, organizers and staff, and ranks as one of the best and most laid-back festivals to be experienced. It is one of the festival’s primary goals to make the Roadburn experience second to none, not only for the fans but for the artists as well.
Check out the Roadburn website too for video and audio streams of past performances, and details on travel and tickets.
And while, ok, an extreme music festival is definitely not going to be to everyone’s taste (I think I’d have trouble listening to non-stop doom and drone for four days solid), it warms the cockles of the heart to know that something like this exists. Or maybe chills the cockles would be a better phrase?
Super 208 Productions have uploaded a series of video reports on the festival, one for each of its four days. Here’s part one, featuring music from Aggaloch, Michael Gira, OM, Red Fang, and Voivod:
After the jump, Roadburn video reports parts 2-4 featuring live music from Sleep, Celestial Season, Bongripper, Purson, Kong, Valiant Thorr, Barn Owl, GNOD, Wino & Conny Ochs, Nachtmystium, Urfaust, Black Cobra, more Voivod and many more…
