Via Deface Value comes this marvelous collection of authentically found and intentionally altered LP sleeves.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
Yes! Feelgood British TV sensation Rastamouse is to appear live, with bandmates Scratchy and Zoomer of the Easy Crew,  at this year’s Gastonbury Festival. From the festival’s website:

Rastamouse, the reggae-playing, crime-fighting mouse who’s become something of a phenomenon since hitting TV screens at the beginning of this year, will make his worldwide live debut at this year’s Festival, with a daily performance alongside his Easy Crew.

I’m guessing they will be performing the single “Ice Popp”. Yes, the show has been so popular that they have released a single. Here’s the video, and you can buy “Ice Popp” here.  
 
Rastamouse and The Easy Crew ft Toots, Gladstone & Ice Popp - “Ice Popp”
 

 
Previously on DM:
New BBC TV kids show Rastamouse

 
Farris Badwan is lead singer of the British psyche-garage troupe The Horrors, and Cat’s Eyes is his new project, co-founded with the London-based Canadian opera soprano Rachel Zeffira. The pair’s debut album, cunningly titled Cat’s Eyes, has just been released on Polydor, following up their debut Broken Glass EP which came out in January, and it’s really rather good.

What the duo are doing is nothing we haven’t seen before, but they do it very well. Take the dark romanticism of male/female duos like Nancy & Lee, Isobel & Mark, even Kylie & Nick, filter it through the girl-group and 60s pop lens of Phil Spector and inject it with occasional jolts of psyche-rock and you pretty much get the picture. What a lovely picture that is too, a balance of light and shade, of anger and tenderness blended to perfection by veteran producer Steve Osbourne.

Cat’s Eyes is not the first Horror’s off-shoot band. That honor would go to Spider And The Flies, which is Rhys and Tom experimenting with analog synths and Joe Meek-esque production techniques. That too is really good, and floats my particular boat very much. I have to admit I was really wary of the Horrors when the emerged about 5 years ago - I took one look at their haircuts and goth-dandy stylings and dismissed them straight away as another “fashion” act. Their music blew me away though, keeping alive the heavy sleaze-garage vibes of one of my favorite bands from the 90s, Gallon Drunk. Their Primary Colours album from 2009 (produced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow) took their sound in a more psychedelic/shoegaze direction and straight to the top of the NME’s best albums of the year poll. Now The Horrors have just announced a short string of UK dates for this summer, and their official website says they are currently in the studio.

I eagerly await what they do next, but in the meantime am more than happy to make do with Cat’s Eyes, who have more info (and some free MP3s) at the Cat’s Eyes website. The album Cat’s Eyes is available to buy on Amazon now, here’s a taste of what’s on offer:
 
Cat’s Eyes - “Face In The Crowd”
 

 
Cat’s Eyes - “The Best Person I Know”
 

 
Cat’s Eyes - “Cat’s Eyes”
 

 
Cat’s Eyes - “When My Baby Comes” (Grinderman cover)
 

 
Steve Moore is one half of the band Zombi, who create excellent synth-drenched soundscapes heavily influenced by prog rock and 70s/80s Italian horror movie soundtracks. But that’s not all he does—no, this incredibly prolific artist also records under a variety of names such as Lovelock, Titan and Gianni Rossi and has worked with a dizzying array of highly respected labels.  He now has another band to add to that list, Miracle, a more vocal-based, almost poppy project which sees Moore working with Daniel O’Sullivan of the band Guapo. Their latest release is the Fluid Window EP on the House Anxiety label (who have previously released music by The Big Pink). Miracle recently made a video for the EP’s lead track “The Visitor” (below) and have made another track, “Sunstar”, available as a free download via Pitchfork.

As synth-pop goes, this is good. I mean really, really good. In the age of lots of pretenders to the synth-pop throne (La Roux, Hurts, Mirrors, Villa Nah, etc) Miracle sound like the real deal. It’s not just because of the synth fetishism on display here (giving Miracle an instant edge over most modern producers’ software based production), but because their music is positively soaked in atmosphere. It’s very easy nowadays to download a free analog synth emulator, sing over an arpeggiator and pretend to be Depeche Mode. What’s much harder is to capture the melancholy longing in those seminal 80s records—the longing to escape gray modernity into a better future, but with a tinge of fear for the darkness that future might hold. Miracle obviously know what they are doing because “The Visitor” sounds like the best Depeche Mode single since around 1988.
 
Miracle - “The Visitor”
 

 
The Fluid Window EP is available to buy here. You can listen to the whole EP on Soundcloud.

 
I have a grudging respect for U2, although I am not really a fan of their music. I say “grudging respect” because A) they are one of the biggest rock bands in history and plenty of people love them. B) I can’t overlook the fact that of any “classic” rock act, they’ve probably been consistently better than almost any band you can name, for a longer period of time, too. (Compare U2 to the Rolling Stones. Their classic period begins in 1966 and is over by 1973 or 74 (arguably). Eight years out of what, 90 or something? Even the towering genius of David Bowie’s peak creative years have got nothing on U2 who have never really been “bad” in over 30 years.  You can’t say that about Paul McCartney, can you? U2 have had a remarkably good run of it. Put them next to any really longterm rock act, and they acquit themselves admirably.

Still they are just not my cup of tea. I think I feel guilty about putting them on DM, I guess, because, frankly, I’ve always found them a bit naff and Bono, although he’s undeniably done some good things in the world, strikes me as a man who absolutely loves himself, like Sting does.  For the record, I like Boy (but don’t own it) I like the Zooropa-era material (but don’t own it), and I thought “It’s a Beautiful Day” was… just beautiful. But there are only really two tracks by them that I am absolutely nuts over: “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” from 1995 Batman Forever soundtrack, which just completely blew me away, and the least-known single of their career, 1982’s “A Celebration.”

“A Celebration” does not appear on any U2 album and was deleted six months after it came out. According to a 1983 interview with drummer Larry Mullen Jr.:

“We did a video of it. We went to this prison in Dublin, where the 1916 uprising took place, called Kilmainham Jail, and filmed it with the idea of breaking out. It was very much a look at ourselves. Like when we were in school and everyone was telling us ‘you’re crap’ and we couldn’t get a record dealit was the triumph of breaking through.”

The reason for the record’s cold shoulder from the group who recorded it—and were presumably proud enough of it to shoot a video for the song—have to do with the way Bono’s lyrics were misinterpreted. From a transcript of a 1983 radio interview

Interviewer: I wanna play the other side of that, which is ‘A Celebration’, since we have no hope in the world of hearing this tomorrow, since the band’s forgotten it we’re gonna play that. This is a terrific track, is it ever going to appear on an album?

Bono: No…(laughs) I don’t think so. It ah -

Interviewer: Do you not like it?!

Bono: No I do like it actually, I’m… sometimes I hate it, I mean it’s like with a lot of music, if I hear it in a club it really excites me, and I think it is a forerunner to War and a lot of the themes. It was great in Europe because… A song like ‘Seconds’ people thought was very serious - on the LP War ‘Seconds’ - it’s anti-nuclear, it’s a statement. They didn’t see the sense of humour to it, it’s sort of black humour, where we were using a lot of clichés; y’know It takes a second to say goodbye, blah blah, and some people took it very seriously. And it is black humour, and it is to be taken sort-of seriously, but this song had the lines in it, I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, I believe in the powers that be, but they won’t overpower me. And of course a lot of people they heard I believe in a third world war, I believe in the atomic bomb, and they thought it was some sort of, y’know, Hitler Part II. And Europeans especially were (puts on outraged French accent) Ah non! Vive le France! and it was all like, all sorts of chaos broke out, and they said, What do you mean, you believe in the atomic bomb? And I was trying to say in the song, I believe in the third world war, because people talk about the third world war but it’s already happened, I mean it’s happened in the third world, that’s obvious. But I was saying these are facts of life, I believe in them, I believe in the powers that be BUT, they won’t overpower me. And that’s the point, but a lot of people didn’t reach the fourth line.

It’s too bad, because this is a fucking corker of a song with an amazing guitar riff. I’d have probably never have heard it myself had it not been for the fact that a woman I lived with in the early 80s owned the 45rpm single. I used to play this record over and over and over again back then. MTV on occasion would play the video (and Vh1 Classic probably still does) but it’s still tragically the least known song in U2’s large catalog. Eventually it was released on CD in 2004 on The Complete U2.
 

 
From a one-off collaborative 1979 LP by Italian composer Roberto Cacciapaglia and American born singer Ann Steel, this is a wacky and wonderful clip and the song itself contains much to love. I’m mainly intrigued by her yellow canteen.
 

 
bonus track: Find Your Way

 
Thanks Kurt Ralske !

 
I have to say that I think I love nearly everything about this. Especially the drummer. Wow ! Shades of The Slits and Siouxsie with a convincing swagger. Well Alright.
 

Another toontastic DJing set from Richard Metzger, hisself. Some Spy-fi, a set of Lulu’s greatest hits, some (very) early Genesis, Michael Nesmith & The First National Band, the sonic insanity of the Better Beatles, a funk-jazz-space rock FREAKOUT from Larry Young and… MORE!

 
Download this week’s episode

Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at iTunes

You won’t believe your ears with this latest installment of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour!!!!

1.) Lalo Schrifrin: Murderer’s Row
2.) Tina Turner: Acid Queen
3.) The Better Beatles: Penny Lane
4.) Michael Nesmith & The First National Band: Silver Moon
5.) Lulu: Show Me
6.) Lulu: Love Loves to Love Love
7.) Lulu: I’m a Tiger
8.) Kiki Dee: I’ve Got the Music In Me
9.) Ennio Morricone: My Name is Nobody
10.) An Old Fashioned Love Song: Paul Williams
11.) George Harrison: I’ll Have You Anytime
12.) George Harrison: What is Life?
13.) Genesis: In the Beginning
14.) Genesis: Where the Sour Turns Sweet
15.) Loop: 16 Dreams
16.) Robert Fripp & The League of Gentlemen: Dislocated
17.) Larry Young: Kahdid of Space Part Two (Welcome)

 
Last night TV On The Radio did a special 40 minute set in the Ed Sullivan Theater hosted by Dave Letterman.

Wolf Like Me, Young Liars, Caffeinated Consciousness, Repetition, Province and more!

My gawd, this is great.
 

 
Phil Alvin has been a significant figure in the resurrection and preservation of rock and roll via his solo career and time with The Blasters. In this video, Phil gives an impassioned lesson in music history.

Phil explains that record companies got their start selling furniture and fell into the music business as a way to sell you record players (Victrolas). Musicians meant little to these furniture/record companies. Musicians were a necessary evil in the furniture companies marketing of phonograph systems - big old wooden boxes with electronics in them that looked like…furniture.

“Music lives in bars.”

This is from 1993:
 

 
Thank you Miss Mercy GTO and Chris Campion