With the current uprising in Egypt, and the recent events in Tunisia, it is timely to have a look at Videograms of a Revolution, which documents Romania’s popular revolution that led to the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Complied by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica from over 125 hours worth of amateur footage, news footage, and excerpts from a demonstrator-controlled Bucharest TV studio in late December 1989, their documentary tells the story of “how the mediated image not only records but engenders historic change.”
Nick Cave, the Jimmy Swaggart of punk, leaps into the pit as Grinderman sets the night sky on fire over Sydney. This raw and electrifying fan video was shot last Wednesday at the Big Day Out festival in Australia.
This is the sign that more or less got me pushed out of Wholefoods. I apparently offended a lot of people with it. One older white lady didn’t like the angry black man yelling at her. And a Vegan didn’t like that Mr. T. pitied her because she wouldn’t eat meat.
Still, it was a blessing in disguise for Paul Maybury, who has moved on to far greener pastures than an over-priced yuppie grocery chain as an award-winning artist and writer for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Heavy Metal, Ubisoft, Metro, Image, Criterion and Mirage Studios. WTF was Whole Foods thinking firing a talent like this? This guy rocks!
See more of Paul’s awesome Whole Food signs after the jump…
Even better—the whole album is offered for FREE download.
Mutamassik (meaning “stronghold” and “tenacity” in Arabic) is the nom de tune of Giulia Lolli, a half-Italian/half-Egyptian composer and DJ with a background that’s reflected in her splintered internationalist musical style. Born in Italy and raised in the American Rustbelt, Lolli went to New York City in time to swoop quickly in and out of the illbient scene of the mid-‘90s before heading out to Cairo, and finally landing up in what she terms a “CAVEmen-style” existence with her husband, Brooklyn guitarist Morgan Craft, and child in Tuscany.
Lolli has described her music as “Sa’aidi Hardcore & Baladi Breakbeats: Egyptian & Afro-Asiatic Roots mixed with the head-nod of hip-hop & the bass and syncopation of hardstep.” (The term “Sa’aidi” can refer to people of Upper [central-eastern] Egypt, and can also be interpreted as “ascending”; “Baladi” refers to traditional, oft-rural Arabic folk music.)
With that said, That Which Death… sees Lolli lay down a ritualized heavily percussive base over which she smears rumbling bass tones, cranky cello, evocative samples and scratches, various electronic instrumentation, and her own subliminal vocals to create an otherworldy brand of liberationist marching music.
It’s A Revolution Mother also known as Biker Babylon is a 1968 mondo documentary about bikers, peaceniks and hippies.
The motorcycle club that is the subject of this shocking expose is the New York-based Aliens. Some of the footage looks like it was shot on the Lower East Side near the Hell’s Angels’ headquarters on East Third St. But the Angels are much classier than this lot.
The hippie music fest looks like a low-rent Woodstock as imagined by Herschell Gordon Lewis -2000 Maniacs on acid. It took place somewhere in Florida. There’s no band footage, so it’s hard to tell exactly what festival this was. I guess the film makers didn’t have it in their budget to pay for any music licensing. The mud was free.
Beyond the lurid biker shit and anthropological shots of hippies in their natural habitat (swampland), what makes this ripe chunk of schlock worth watching is the hardboiled prose of the narrator. Sounding like a combination of Sgt. Joe Friday, Philip Marlowe and Raoul Duke, this guy is more fired up than an amphetamine-crazed frog on a hotplate.
Here are some highlights and lowlights from the end of the sixties.
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.
Amanda Palmer and Peaches celebrate the power of pussy, body hair and letting it all hang out in this new club mix of “Map Of Tasmania.”
Soft and sweet and shaped like a triangle
Some girls want no shape and they shave it all
That’s so whack, it hurts with the stubble
Walking ’round and look like an eight-year-old
I say grow that shit like a jungle
Give ‘em something strong to hold onto
Let it fly in the open wind
If it get too bushy, you can trim
These ladies have got to cover Musique’s “In The Bush.”
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.
