Fascinating film about Leonard Cohen the poet/novelist and not yet folk singer of 1965. It’s strange to see him a) so young (he’s 31 here) and b) to see him being funny! Parts of his act back then was straight stand-up comedy. Leonard Cohen funny?

Informal portrait of Leonard Cohen. The film begins with Cohen delivering a comic monologue about his visit to a friend in a Montreal mental hospital. Later he is seen reading poetry to rapt audience and also alone, or relaxing with family and friends, walking the streets of the city, eating in a popular night spot, sleeping in his three-dollar-a-night hotel room, even taking a bath. His poetry readings are principally from “A Spice-box of Earth” and “Flowers for Hitler”. A press conference with Cohen and his friend Irving Layton forms a part of the film.

Filmed and recorded at various locations in 1964, released in 1965 by the National Film Board of Canada. Directed by Donal Brittain and Dan Owen, produced by John Kemeny. Black & white, 44 min.

 
Thank you Nicolae Halmaghi!

 
While my Fall phase stopped completely with ‘88’s still-excellent I Am Kurious Oranj, Mark E. Smith and his rotating cast of band members have continued pumping out albums with almost Woody Allen-like consistency (28 albums, 33 years).  

In yesterday’s NYT article, Mr. Smith Shows His Staying Power, Ben Ratliff calls the new Fall album, Your Future Our Clutter, one of the band’s best.  He also attempts to zero in on just what it is that makes Smith such a fascinating, and yes, endearing, character.

Um, maybe it’s the crank factor?  The 53-year-old singer claims that Pavement, “didn’t have an original idea in their heads.”  He also thinks that Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore should “have his rock license revoked.” 

And while Smith may have written in his autobiography, Renegade, “The Fall are about the present, and that’s it,” what follows below is a considerable chunk of his past, Part I of the ‘05 BBC documentary, The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith (links to the other parts at the bottom).

 
The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith Part II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX

Bonus: Kurious Oranj, Live In Edinburgh

 
Once again Mr. Eddie Ruscha points out a confounding delicacy for our obscure delight in the form of Derdiyoklar (roughly translates as The No Problems): a Turkish self-styled diskofolk duo based in Germany and, as evidenced in the completely unhinged and nicely confusing live clip below, mostly played weddings and other events amongst fellow “gastarbeiter” Turks.
 

 
When not enacting elaborate melodramas in a live setting, the records (check the clip below) rather more live up to their description. There is nothing bad and a whole lot good about electric phase-shifted baglamas over groovy disco beats.
 

 
Yet another essential recent BBC music doc, this time a fascinating glimpse into the history of the seminal indie label/empire Rough Trade. More beloved late 70’s post punk records are touched upon than would be wise to list, but I was particulary awestruck to see footage of the original lineup of Scritti Politti sitting in a dilapidated bedsit earnestly hand-assembling the epochal “Skank Bloc Bologna” single. Founder Geoff Travis comes across as a passive aggressive faux-naif with faultless taste and a talent for the elusive right place/right time nexus. Watch, learn and listen.
above photo : Genesis P-Orridge delivers the 2nd Throbbing Gristle L.P. D.O.A. to Geoff Travis @ Rough Trade HQ, 1978
 

 
Attention New Yorkers, don’t miss Return to the Pleasure Dome, a benefit concert event for Anthology Film Archives with a Life Achievement Honor for Kenneth Anger.

Featuring Technicolor Skull (Kenneth Anger and Brian Butler), Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, The Virgins, Moby & other special guests.

Wednesday, May 19, 8:30p.m at the Hiro Ballroom, New York City, $99 via Ticketweb
 

Video: Kenneth Anger’s 42-second long film, Death. Part of the OneDreamRush project.

 
On a prior Dangerous Minds post, pioneering architect Frank Lloyd Wright was the game show guest on I’ve Got A Secret.  Today’s guest is a pre-Velvet Undergound John Cale.  What’s Cale’s secret?  His participation in an 18 hour and 40 minute piano recital of Erik Satie‘s Vexations.

Cale and a number of performers—including John Cage—all took turns playing the piece that’s just 3 lines long, but needs repeating 840 times.  Cage, it seems, also organized the event, having been introduced to Vexations in Paris in ‘49.

The man sitting beside Cale is off-Broadway actor, Karl Schenzer.  His secret?  He was the only audience member ballsy enough to stick out the entire concert.  Schenzer went on, possibly, and according to the New Yorker’s Alex Ross, to become a bit player for Francis Ford Coppola.

 
Bonus: John Cale live performing Paris, 1919

Yo dawg we herd you like staying up all night so we put some Rhythm of the Night in your night so you can can dance to the beat of the rhythm of the night while you’re up all night

 
Found myself watching last week Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones.  Without wanting to comment too much on it beyond saying it’s no Heavenly Creatures or LOTR, I can say its Brian Eno score was a definite highlight. 

A soundtrack for Bones has never been released, a fact that drove me nuts because I’ve been playing non-stop the above, suspiciously Eno-esque track, “The Moon’s Lament,” attributed to the apparently Google-proof band “Cindy D’lequez-Sage.”

Buried no less in the closing credits, it’s a gorgeous, haunting piece of music with some seriously spooky lyrics.  Is it Eno himself?  Will the real Cindy D’lequez-Sage please stand up?!

Arthur mag’s Jay Babcock takes on Julian Cope, the Archlord of All Pagan Psychedelia and a Dangerous Minds patron saint. (This is a reprint of an LAWeekly article from 2000.)

Because we have our own aural tradition and need for congregation with like minds . . . because we can’t, not all of us, get our knickers in a twist about the muffler-rock of Testosterostock 2000 (Metallica, Korn and Kid Rock at the Coliseum, July 15, mark your calendars!) . . . because the airwaves are clean and there‘s nobody singing to me . . . Because of all that, I find myself here in London, jet-lagged and double-lagered, listening to Julian Cope.

Yes, that Julian Cope. Ex-leader of the Teardrop Explodes, the early-’80s Liverpudlian post-punk group with a sizable cult following. Solo artist with a minor pre-alternative hit (the anthemic “World Shut Your Mouth”). A petulant, paranoid near-rock star freakoid who in true “VH1 Behind the Music” fashion succeeded in alienating his band, his fans, his record label and, finally, himself before a series of revelations in 1989 shifted him in a newly “aware” direction.

Cope went hypernova and deep-historical—from town frier to town crier, from “Saint Julian” to “The Arch-Drood,” from Syd Barrett-esque acid-gobbler to full-throttle goddess-worshippin‘ Mystic Brother No. 1, becoming a self-conscious subscriber to Dadaist artist Hugo Ball’s dictum that “Artists are Gnostics, and practice what the priests think is long forgotten.” Now confident in his role as “Shamanic Rock & Rolling Inner-Space Cadet,” Cope released an extraordinary series of artistically ambitious albums on Island (and, later, American) that, in the music-industry scheme of things, were underperforming commercial failures, and he ended up without a major-label recording contract.

(Arthur: Julian Cope)

(Previously on Dangerous Minds: Julian Cope, Someone Spiked His LSD)

(The Glory of Julian Cope)

 
Off-kilter music video from wonderfully talented Britcom actress-writer Alice Lowe—here playing electro artist Kitty Litta—who’s great in everything she’s ever been in: Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Sharon Horgan’s Angelo’s series, Snuff Box (she played David Bowie), Black Books, The IT Crowd amongst many, many other things. Someone at BBC give this women her own show already!