When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.
All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the union makes us strong.
Team Print Shop just released this totally ridiculous Justin Bieber/Slayer t-shirt. It made me laugh out loud. You can buy one for a measly $20.00 over at their webstore.
Below, an amusing video of Justin Bieber rocking out on drums with Slayer.
Last year Dangerous Minds featured the Kronenbourg beer ad in which Motorhead play “Ace Of Spades” at half speed (see the link below). Well, here’s a documentary about the recording sessions that led to the commercial.
Here’s the brand new video for Die Antwoord’s “Rich Bitch” with a lot of Yo-Landi.
In additional Die Antwoord news, Harmony Korine will be screening his new short film Wat Kyk Jy (“watcha lookin’ at?”) starring Ninja and Yo Landi at SXSW on March 15. The press release for the film reads:
“Big dreams, big blunts, big rims, and big guns. It’s time to get gangsta gangsta. Ninja and Yo-Landi are wheelchair-bound lovers and real gangstas. They live in the outskirts of civilization, they shoot guns for fun, smoke massive joints, and sleep in the woods. They don’t have any bling to show for their gangsta cred, but the world deserves to know who they are. They’re tramps, and their wheels are starting to fall off. Ninja become despondent over their vagabond existence, but Yo Landi won’t let him give up. What ensues is straight up gangsta mayhem, the realist of the real, true gangsta shit.”
Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang, formerly of cult favorites, Galaxie 500, began recording in 1992 as Damon & Naomi. Their first album, More Sad Hits was produced by Bongwater’s Kramer (who produced Galaxie 500’s albums, too) and is one of my top favorite albums. It’s extremely pretty, has intelligent lyrics and one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard. The great Robert Wyatt said of that album: “Like real water in a world of soda pop.”
Too true! I was actually a silent onlooker in the studio when some of the record was being recorded and mixed, because Kramer and I were collaborating on a screenplay and they, and I, were house-guests at his Demarest, NJ home at the same time. It was a real treat for this fly-on-the-wall “rock snob,” I can assure you.
For their upcoming release, False Beats and True Hearts, the dreamy avant-gardists have just released a new “video” by French artist and filmmaker Chris Marker.
We are delighted to announce a new “video” by visual artist Chris Marker. Consisting of a single still image set to a song from our forthcoming album, the project is being hosted by the Wire Magazine.
“The song, ‘And You Are There,’ is about the way time can compress when you are lost in a memory, something I have learned a lot about from Chris Marker’s work—his films (La Jetée, Sans Soleil), his writing (Immemory), his photographs. When the song was finished, I sent it to Chris with a note—since his work had provided inspiration for the song, I wondered, might he in turn have a visual response to it? He sent back this image, with the note:
“Dunno if it fits your pretty Proustian melancholy, but I thought it could… And thanks for linking me to music, the only real art for me as you know (cinema? you kiddin’...)”
Watch Chris Marker’s “video” for Damon & Naomi’s “And You Are There” here:
Black Lantern Music is a British netlabel that folks in the States probably haven’t heard, but should. Based in Edinburgh, and launched in late 2009, the label deals in hip-hop, electronica, dubstep, breakbeat and jazz. The bastard children of Grant Morrison’s late 90s sigil experiments and early Rawkus, with a healthy love of poetry and politics, It is closely associated with the Weaponizer website (well worth a read when you have a few spare hours). The label mostly centers around the work of artists Texture, Morphamish, Asthmatic Astronaut and Harelquinade, who have a supergroup of sorts called the Chemical Poets, also featuring the producer Gung Who and the MC Tickle. Although they’re not even two years old yet, the catalog has swelled to a very impressive 32 releases. Here’s a selection of what’s on offer:
Texture is Bram Gleiben, the main man behind both Black Lantern and Weaponizer. A talented MC and veteran of the Scottish poetry slam scene (yes, such a thing exists), he addresses the “non-sequitur” of the idea of “Scottish hip-hop” on the track of the same name, which opens the Synaesthesia EP. The production comes from Salem Anders and fellow BL artist Morphamish, and guest vocals come from Little Rock‘s Kid Ritalin.
That man Morphamish again, this time hitting hard with the 3 track Urge Mode EP. This is heavy dancefloor dubstep, with Morphamish showing off his very impressive production chops that equal of anyone else on the current UK mainstream dubstep scene:
Church of When The Shit Hits The Fan is a collaboration between the Edinburgh MC Harlequinade, and the producer Asthamatic Astronaut. Taking its cues from industrial and electro, this is still very much hip-hop, with a political and esoteric bent:
That should be enough to pique your interest - there is lots more where that came from, with releases from Scottish hip-hop veterans Eaters, laidback jazz from Daddy Scrabble, the incredibly named Shit Hop Ninja Terminatorz, and some guy called Metatron.
The existential crisis of a man, a go go dancer and a cage. This Kafkaesque tale exists in a realm somewhere between the Twilight Zone and Shindig, a netherworld where angst goes where the action is.
The dancer is the legendary go go superstar Lada St. Edmund Jr. who had a thriving career frugging in cages on TV (Hullabaloo) and in the movies during the 1960s. She’s still alive, living in New Jersey and teaching dance is a fitness instructor and boxer.
I’ve tried to track down more info on Girl In A Cage but have come up snake eyes. A short clip from it has been used in a fan made Youtube video for the Sonics song “Psycho.” Other than that, I haven’t found anything on the Internet. But given a choice between sharing the rarely seen Girl In A Cage in its entirety with little back story or keeping it to myself, I opted to share.
Watch as a man is driven to the brink of insanity by a frenzied go go dancer in a basement apartment somewhere in pop culture hell.
PJ Harvey receives an award from Mick Jones and Don Letts and performs “The Words That Maketh Murder” at New Musical Express awards show in London, February 23.
In live performance, I prefer PJ in her rock and roll guitar-slinging goddess mode as opposed to the new autoharp-strumming hippie thing. But her new album, Let England Shake, is as satisfying as anything she’s ever recorded. It’s the rare collection of songs that rewards repeated listening.
Last week as I was reading Keep it together! Cosmic Boogie with The Deviants and The Pink Fairies Rich Deakin’s sprawling, exhaustively researched and extremely engaging biography of the ever shifting n’er do well personnel of the bands variously known as The Social Deviants, then just The Deviants, and eventually The Pink Fairies, I was annoyed to find that there was little video footage of the group—little? Try none! WTF?—on YouTube. What a difference a week makes because something amazing was posted there in the few days since I last looked.
After waiting more than an unbelievable forty years to see the light of day or be seen by anyone, glorious grainy black and white footage of The Deviants in Hyde Park in September 1969 has finally been posted on YouTube by a crew called VideoHeads out of Amsterdam, led by the legendary Jack Henry Moore. It makes me very happy for a number of reasons, not least of which – after taking so much shit at the time as the allegedly “worst band in the world” – we actually kicked ass in front an estimated audience of 80 thousand in a manner that would have been wholly acceptable and even lauded some six or seven years later. Russell and Sandy are a rock solid foundation. Paul Rudolph’s guitar is mighty, and, as for me, when did you see jackknife shaman dancing the like which closes the show? Okay, so Rudolph and I engage, at one point, in some the atonal freeform bellowing that we called “mouth music”, but no one seems to have a problem with it. And we always attracted Hells Angels and crazy naked psychedelic women.
What you have up on YouTube right now is two sections of around nine minutes each, which – believe it or not – make two halves of one song – what the Pink Fairies would title “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout”. I guess that was the real difference between the 1960s and 1970s. We could make a thrash last 17 minutes where the Clash or the Pistols would cut it off after three. And, by way of explanation for the opening harangue, the London Street Commune were staging a protest against homelessness by occupying the mansion at 144 Piccadilly at the other end of Park Lane. I’d been warned by the ranking cop at the park concert that my feet wouldn’t touch if I got into any kind of rant about the squatters who were about to be evicted in a massive police action. I just had to test the limits.
But don’t take my word for it. Here are some reminiscences from ukrockfestivals.com
“The most memorable bit for me was when The Deviants were playing and a semi-nude young lady got up on stage and began to dance. As she started to remove the rest of her clothes there was a huge cheer from the crowd. Then a Hells Angel also got on stage and took his leather jacket off to another great cheer but then he put the jacket over the young lady’s shoulders and guided her off the stage, this time to a chorus of boos from the disappointed audience. It was though, another wonderful afternoon in Hyde Park with great music and relaxed atmosphere.” – Steve Trusler
“I remember Al Stewart sitting down on a chair on stage and playing a mellow set of bedsitter folk songs. Quite a few people seemed to like him, but I found him rather wishy-washy (yawn). I remember that the Deviants were absolutely not wishy-washy ~ very aggressive and angry. I’ve heard them described as being the first real punk band. Works for me. But most of all I remember being entranced by the sublime musicality of the Soft Machine. A brilliant band. So totally outside. Imprinted on my memory is the sight of Robert Wyatt singing, and playing amazingly complex drum patterns, wearing just a pair of Y-fronts.” – Jeremy S.
Reading Keep it together!, I was listening daily to the music that Mick Farren has made over the years, primarily Ptooff! and the best of selection, People Call You Crazy: The Story of Mick Farren. Some of it’s pretty amazing stuff, but sadly unheard by many of the music fans who would appreciate it the most. The Deviants’ sound was quite obviously influenced by early Mothers of Invention, The Fugs and The MC5. It could be menacing and leering (“I’m Coming Home”), proto-punk protest (“Garbage”) and sometimes they just wanted to rock out with a Bo Diddley beat. Although I do like the Pink Fairies and also some of Twink’s solo material, I’m really mostly interested in the era when Farren was providing the radical, intellectual lyrics and fronting the group. The Deviants were the first British band who were true anarchists. “Street Fighting Man” was just fashionable pose, these guys lived and snorted their politics. Agitprop bands like The Clash, Crass and the Manic Street Preachers would most definitely tread in their ideological footsteps, whether conscious of it or not.
I also returned to Mick Farren’s autobiography, Give The Anarchist A Cigarette and spent some time looking over the issues of The International Times that are online. When I was in my teens, maybe 15 or 16, I found a whole stack of old issues of IT magazines (which Farren wrote for) in a used bookstore where I’d normally buy old National Lampoons, comics, Rolling Stone and Creem. How they got there, I will never know, but Mick Farren’s political rants and commie/anarchist screeds really resonated with me. Finding these underground papers demonstrated for me the existence of a world outside my hometown—an underground—that I had to become a part of myself. It was an amazing score for a kid like me, as you might imagine and I would read then over and over again. I’m sure that stack of mags had a lot to do with me picking up and leaving home when I was 17 and moving to London, where I lived in a succession of squats for a couple of years. Reading Keep It Together, I became much more aware of what a big influence Mick Farren had on me politically during my formative years and that influence, I think was major. Extremely important to me, thinking back on it. (Whenever I see that one of my own political rants makes it to Mick’s Doc 40 blog, I always get a kick out of it).
About that same time, I was a subscriber to The Trouser Press magazine, which Mick wrote a lot of each issue. Via that publication—which I would wait by the mailbox for each month, willing it to show up—he was probably the rock writer second only to the great Lester Bangs in turning me on to good music.
If ever there was a figure of 20th century counterculture who should be lionized and treated as a respected and revered elder statesman whilst he is still with us, it is the one and only Mister Mick Farren. Farren left sunny Los Angles to return to the UK late last year. People of Great Britain, a legend drinks amongst you! Where the hell is Mick Farren’s Guardian column already? Come on let’s pick up the pace.
“This is British amphetamine psychosis music and if you don’t like it you can f*ck off and listen to your Iron Butterfly albums”—Mick Farren
As intense as the MC5 and The Stooges and as irreverent as The Fugs, here are The Deviants, LIVE:
was produced by Bongwater’s 
Rich Deakin’s sprawling, exhaustively researched and extremely engaging biography of the ever shifting n’er do well personnel of the bands variously known as The Social Deviants, then just 
, and eventually The Pink Fairies, I was annoyed to find that there was little video footage of the group—little? Try none! WTF?—on YouTube. What a difference a week makes because something amazing was posted there in the few days since I last looked.
and the best of selection, 
. Some of it’s pretty amazing stuff, but sadly unheard by many of the music fans who would appreciate it the most. The Deviants’ sound was quite obviously influenced by early Mothers of Invention, The Fugs and The MC5. It could be menacing and leering (“I’m Coming Home”), proto-punk protest (“Garbage”) and sometimes they just wanted to rock out with a Bo Diddley beat. Although I do like the Pink Fairies and also some of Twink’s solo material, I’m really mostly interested in the era when Farren was providing the radical, intellectual lyrics and fronting the group. The Deviants were the first British band who were true anarchists. “Street Fighting Man” was just fashionable pose, these guys lived and snorted their politics. Agitprop bands like The Clash, Crass and the Manic Street Preachers would most definitely tread in their ideological footsteps, whether conscious of it or not.