An uncredited photo taken of William S. Burroughs and an “up and coming” young Madonna during the author’s big 70th birthday bash at the Limelight nightclub in New York, February 1984.

You have to love this example of her insane chutzpah. He probably had no idea who she was, but there she is, right in the middle of it! I also like the detail of the joint being passed. What a great photo.

 
Composer Milton Babbitt died yesterday at the ripe old age of 94. I have always adored his piece Ensembles For Synthesizer, composed from 1962-64 on the guargantuan RCA Mark II synthesizer for which he was an official composer/consultant. I include that piece here from the 1967 album New Electronic Music from Leaders of the Avant-Garde which is a toweringly great slab of classic experimental music. Seek it out !
 

Part One
 

Part Two
 

 
And because it’s so totally great, here is the John Cage piece from the same LP: Variations 2 as performed with brutal precision on amplified piano by the great David Tudor.
 

Part One
 

Part Two
 

Part Three

Hynde and Kent wearing Vivienne Westwood.
 
Journalist Nick Kent not only wrote about rock and roll, he lived it. And it almost killed him. In his new memoir Apathy For The Devil: A Seventies Memoir, Kent describes his crash and burn lifestyle among London’s rock royalty and some of punk’s royal assholes during the 1970s. Like Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson, Kent was not content to merely observe the action, he had to become a part of it.

From snorting massive amounts of blow and heroin with Keith Richards and witnessing David Bowie screw a groupie in full view of Bowie’s wife Angie to being revived from a drug overdose by Rod Stewart and almost dying in Iggy Pop’s arms, Kent seemed to have a knack for infiltrating scenes few journalist could get close to and few would have had the guts to.  Perhaps it was his own rock star good looks, mod fashion sense and druggy excess that made him appear as glamorous and dangerous as some of the rockers he wrote about. While Bangs was mastering the slob aesthetic, Kent was wearing threads from boutiques like Sex.

Kent also managed to piss alot of people off. After writing a tell-all piece for NME in which he quoted some less than flattering remarks Page made about film maker Kenneth Anger, Kent was confronted by Anger who lived up to his name by shouting “I just have to crook this little finger and Jimmy Page will automatically be transformed into a toad!”

Even though Kent was an early member of The Sex Pistols and introduced them to American punk, his relationship with Malcolm McClaren and the band took a very nasty turn.

Kent ended up playing guitar for two months in an early line-up of the Sex Pistols, whom he taught the songs of Iggy Pop’s proto-punk band the Stooges. Distrustful of Kent’s growing influence over the Pistols’ main guitarist Steve Jones, McLaren got the group’s bassist Glen Matlock to fire him, a departure Kent didn’t mourn at the time — because “I was a middle-class druggie fop and they were working-class spivs who would steal the gold out of their mothers’ teeth” — but which had murderous consequences. A year later while attending a Sex Pistols gig at the 100 Club, Kent was the victim of an unprovoked bicycle chain attack by Sid Vicious, sustaining a terrible head wound that he was too stoned to feel at the time but that, he later realized, nearly killed him.”

In 1973 Kent fell in love with Chrissie Hynde, who had yet to find her rock and roll muse and was working in a boutique on King’s Road. The relationship ended badly in 1974.

While she was working at Malcolm McLaren and Viviene Westwood’s Sex Shop, Hynde later told Jon Savage - in his essential history of British punk, England’s Dreaming - a jealous Kent came into the shop looking to whip her with his belt, causing her to flee to Paris.

Nick takes some credit for inspiring Hynde to pick up a guitar and form a band. He claims to mentoring Hynde, which sounds arrogant or possibly delusional until you listen to Kent’s musical output.

In 1975 Kent formed a band called The Subterraneans with Rat Scabies and Bryan James, who both later moved on to spearhead The Damned. In 1980, The Subterraneans (with Scabies on drums) recorded “My Flamingo” and “Veiled Women.” It was the same year that Chrissie’s band The Pretenders released their debut album and there’s a remarkable similarity in feel, attitude and sound between Kent and Hynde’s music. Is this the result of two lovers absorbing each other’s style? Or mentoring? Whatever the case, Nick’s tunes are every bit as good as most of the music coming out in the late 70s/early 80s. You can hear both tracks in the video below.

A new edition of Apathy For The Devil: A Seventies Memoir is being released in February. You can snag a copy here.
 

 
Thanks to Exile On Moan Street for the turn on and the photo.
 
Nick Kent talks about Apathy For The Devil after the jump…

 
Here’s a tasty little documentary from 1979 on the British mod movement of the 60s and its revival in the late 70s. It was obviously created as a tie-in with the release of The Who movie Quadrophenia.

Includes an interview with venerable rock journalist Roy Carr, sporting a combover that looks like roadkill, and London’s short-lived neo-mod band, The Chords.
 

 
In this Scopitone from 1963, The Tornados play their Joe Meek produced hit “Robot” dressed as… robots. One of the stranger entries in the endlessly fascinating world of Scopitones.
 

 
As this posts, despite an evening curfew falling on the cities of Cairo, Suez and Alexandria, some of the biggest popular showdowns yet between the Egyptian people and the regime of President Hosni Mubarak continue. That remarkable unrest has been explicitly inspired by the recent historic and ongoing revolution 2,100 miles west in Tunisia, which has led to the ouster of the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years of repressive rule.

One little-known aspect of the Tunisian uprising is the role of hip-hop. As in most of the Arab world and Iran, and despite Ben Ali’s draconian rule, Tunisia’s hip-hop scene has grown. Artists like Afrock, T-Shibo, and Killah Rector have carried on the work first laid down by pioneers like Wled Bled, and the arrest for questioning of 22-year-old MC Hamada Ben-Aoun, a.k.a. The General, for his track “President, Your People are Dying” happened a few days before Ben Ali fled the country.

Watch and listen closely. This is the epitome of music culture against repression.

I asked Tunisian rapper Firas Louati for a few words on the unrest in his home country:

I grew up in Tunisia. For me, like I’m sure each country is for every kid, it was the center of the universe. I truly believed that everything revolved around Tunisia. People from all over the world literally did pilgrimage to it, whether for religious reasons (during Lag Ba’omer, a Jewish holiday that takes place after the celebration of Passover, Jews from all over the world come in masses to Ghriba synagogue, home of the world’s oldest Sefer Torah), or more commonly for touristic reasons during the summer when Tunisia becomes a Mecca for beach-goers and sun-lovers.

As I got older I realized it wasn’t really the center of the universe. I discovered we were categorized as a Third World country, and since both my parents are revolutionary syndicated journalists (my father was jailed during the 1978 manifestations), I learned pretty quickly that we were living in a dictatorship, that the media is censored and freedom of speech is virtually non-existent. Sure we ranked highly among African and Arab countries, and women enjoyed a freedom unheard of in the neighboring countries, and for decades that was the thread of dignity we, people of Tunisia, hung onto. But that wasn’t enough, not if we wanted our kids to be proud of being Tunisians.

It took long enough, but Tunisians rid themselves of their fears—fears of the government, but most importantly fears of leaving their comfort-zone and the apparent safety and security our country was famous for. And they marched into the streets simultaneously, first to express their anger and discontent, then to ask for reforms and, well…jobs! Then, finally, to demand and ultimately impose a radical change—a historic one, too. For the first time in history, an Arab people has ousted its president and dictator without foreign help or the use of force.

And on that Friday, the 14th of January, the eyes of the whole world were on Tunisia. On that historic day, Tunisia was and forever will remain an idol and an inspiration for the tired and the poor, the weak and the oppressed, anyone who has ever dreamt about liberty while living under dictatorship. On that historic day, Tunisia WAS the center of the universe. I couldn’t help remembering all those revolutionary rap songs I wrote, all those cliched phrases that even I was starting to get tired of: “Power to the people,” “We can change our destiny,” etc.—and smile. Finally it was relevant, finally it made sense.

The battle is far from won, but we know the challenges awaiting us, and we will work them out as a united free people in a democratic way. Because now that we tried the taste of freedom, we are never giving it up again.

Thank you people of Tunisia for making her once again the center of the universe.

Here’s the video for Firas’s recently released tune, “Tunisian Revolution,” with a translation from the Arabic below:
 

 
Tunisian Revolution

CHORUS
[The chorus is sampled from “Homma Min Wehna Min” (“Who are They and Who are We”), a song by revolutionary Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam.]

1st verse:
If the people one day decided to live*
then it’s as if they decided to walk on water.
Hands are cuffed, my “masters”’s needle has sewn our lips
nothing left but the weaponized pencil
and my fist.
The night they arrested my heartbeat…**
Long live my country
he who betrayed it will live in it
and he who isn’t among its wealthiest won’t.
The people have been subdued, robbed,
heroes been put down, burnt down,
riches have been accumulated and disappeared.
Underneath us the fire is burning,
and above us the wealthy are living,
and we’re stuck in the middle.
If the people one day decided to live,
start digging graves and preparing burial shrouds.
Blood is screaming inside our veins,
we die and they live, dear country.
If the people one day decided to live,
then destiny has to obey
and the shackles have to be broken
and the dark night has to end.

- CHORUS -

2nd verse:
Who are they?
U won’t see them but u will feel their shackles
Who are they?
The ones that deafened hearing people
and muted the talkative until we became like statues,
steered like a herd.
Who are they?
They’re the ones who dried the ink out of our pens,
imprisoned speech.
Who are they?
They’re the ones that made the flag cry.
Who are they
and who are we?
Where are they?
In fortified castles.
Where are we?
In destroyed shacks.
Their sons enjoy our misfortune,
our sons get beaten in universities,
get burnt.
Their sons get the highest positions,
our sons hang from coffee shop to coffee shop, from bar to bar
are unemployed, with diplomas…

*A take on Tunisian national anthem by Abul-Qasem Alchebbi:
“If the people one day decided to live
then destiny has to obey
and the shackles has to be broken
and the dark night has to end”

**Refers to the famous 1984 Egyptian TV film The Night They Arrested Fatma, a drama about a young woman who became radicalized during the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

After the jump: the video (with English subtitles) that helped get Tunisian rapper The General arrested…

 
“Horizontal Ascension” is an early recording by Television from a 1974 rehearsal, when Richard Hell was in the band. It appears on the bootleg Poor Circulation.The title “Horizontal Ascension” was ” ...lifted from an Elevators album’s esoteric notes,” and as Richard Hell recalled:

“I was in the band for a year…But the peak of my participation in it probably came at about three or four months…It sounds more like what the Neon Boys sounded like than like Marquee Moon-era Television. As great as the guitar playing is on Marquee Moon, the original band was more to the point. It’s more like…it came at a time when music was really…boring, you know? It was a return to the values of the Kingsmen and the Sonics and Them and the Velvet Underground. It still had this really beautiful guitar talent — ecstatic, explosive guitar — going on as well as this lyrical quality, but it was more driving and crazed.”

For more early Television recordings check here.
 

 
Founding member (along with his partner Cosey Fanni Tutti) of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey (now Carter Tutti), inventor of the Gristleizer and seminal influence on both the electronic and industrial scenes, today is Chris Carter’s birthday.

Which gives me the perfect excuse to mention his recent The Spaces Between album re-issue. His first ever solo album, it was originally released in 1980 on cassette only. In 2010 it was issued on vinyl for the first time ever by Optimo Music (the same Optimo who supplied the excellent ambient-not-ambient mix I posted at the start of the week). It has been trimmed down from 15 tracks to 6, and now includes the track “Climbing” which was not on the original album.

Here’s what Optimo Music have to say:

Originally recorded between 1974 and 1978 at Industrial Records studio in London ‘The Space Between’ album was first released as a 90 minute cassette in 1980 on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records label. It wasn’t until 1991 that it was again released by Mute Records on CD. Although tracks from ‘The Space Between’ have appeared on numerous compilations since its release, the album has never been available on vinyl until now.

This new vinyl edition on Optimo Music, now retitled ‘The Spaces Between’, doesn’t include all the tracks of the original album but has been enhanced and remastered from the original two-track master tapes and has new cover artwork especially for this release. All tracks have been remastered by Chris Carter in 2009 for this release.

Chris Carter - Interloop
 

 
Chris Carter - Solidit

 
The Spaces Between is available to buy on vinyl and download from Boomkat in the UK. Chris & Cosey are in the middle of re-issuing their back catalog too, but I will save that for another post.

 
Ah, nothing like a bit of hyper-kinetic thrash punk to kick off your weekend! Lightning Bolt are rumored to be bringing out a new album this year, but seeing as it took four years between their last two (2005’s Hypermagic Mountain and 2009’s Earthly Delights) I wouldn’t hold your breath. I love these guys anyway, it’s like pure energy in a can. One drummer, one bassist, and Krakatoa erupting under your feet.

 
If you’ve never been to one of their shows (or even if you have), then watch this clip to get a taste of how truly insane they can be. Setting up on the floor, in the round, the audience are just as much a part of the show as the band. Both feed off each other’s energy, and while it seems basic, the band members (both called Brian) are incredibly skilled musicians. This clip should be watched in its entirety for full effect, but if you can’t take the thrash, just skip to 1:50 for the magic flying glasses moment.
 

 
Bonus: here’s one of my favourite LB tracks “Two Towers” - talk about raw power! It takes a minute to kick in…

 

Thanks to YouTube commenter pizzaROX for the headline!

 
In 1973 when I first heard The Wailers’ debut album “Catch A Fire” my world shifted on its axis and I started loving rock and roll again. Reggae resurrected something in me that had lay dormant since Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison died - a sense that music was mystical, transformative and sexy. The Wailers created powerful songs with infectious hooks delivered with passionate energy and the spirit of rebellion in under five minutes. I was inspired to start my own reggae band, The Ravers: five white guys playing reggae in country bars in Colorado.

Bob Marley and Peter Tosh changed the course of my life. Patti Smith, The Clash and The Ramones sealed the deal. The Ravers were now the only reggae playing punk band in the Rocky Mountains. Yeah, it was strange. In 1977 we relocated to New York City and never looked back. I had caught the fire.

In this soulful video, The Wailers rehearse “Stir It Up” during their “Catch A Fire” recording sessions in L.A. in 1973.

Bob Marley : vocal, guitar, percussion
Peter tosh : vocal, guitar, percussion
Joe Higgs: Harmony vocal and percussion
Carlton Barrett: drums
Aston “Family Man” Barrett : Bass
Earl"Wya” Lindo Keybords

“I’ll push the wood, then I blaze ya fire, then I’ll satisfy your heart’s desire.”