“Yo, what’s goin’ on?”
 
Fred Durst’s Reality Check, with Scott Weiland, Perry Farrell, Bono and some other assholes, take a heavy metal chainsaw and sonically eviscerate Marvin Gaye’s classic ‘What’s Going On.” This may be the most ill-conceived and disrespectful cover song of all time. I found some appropriately puke-inducing imagery by Shigeru Izumiya to accompany this travesty.

On a lighter note, Captain and Tennille sing one of the most confounding songs of all time, “Muskrat Love.” Exactly what is muskrat love and do we really want to know? Are those squiggly synthesizer sounds in the solo a replication of the erotic dirty talk that muskrats utter when they’re fucking?  I paired this ditty with some bump and grind video that features a stripper who just may be wearing a muskrat g-string!
 

 
Previously on DM: Installment #1 of “Songs To Slit Your Wrists To.”

 
As frequent readers of this blog know, I consider Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont to be a great American and a personal hero. He’s one of the only honest politicians in Washington and a blunt-talking national treasure:

On June 18, 2011 artists Ligorano/Reese presented a temporary monument in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in NYC called “Morning In America.” The installation was witnessed by hundreds and lasted a total of 8 hours throughout the hot day.

...A THOUSAND CUTS is a timelapse video of the event. The soundtrack was inspired by an excerpt from Senator Bernie Sanders 8-hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor against the extension of the Bush tax cuts and the effects on the middle class. It is orchestrated to music by composer/violinist Michael Galasso.

The entire text of Senator Sanders speech is available as a book, The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class, published by Nation Books.

 
Below, Bernie Sanders speaks about his career and the remarkable 8-hour speech he gave filibustering President Obama’s extension of the Bush tax cuts and the disappearance of America’s middle class.
 

 
Phil Lynott was always something special - a hugely loved and respected musician, an iconic figure who was “the original Dublin rock’n’roller and arguably a bigger natural star than any of those that followed in his footsteps.”

As The Philip Lynott Exhibition returns to Dublin, here is Phil leading his band Thin Lizzy through a sensational performance on Rock Palast, at Lorelei, Germany, in 1981.

Thin Lizzy:

Phil Lynott - Bass, Lead Vocals
Brian Downey - Drums
Scott Gorham - Guitar
Snowy White - Guitar
Darren Wharton - Keyboards

Track Listing:

01. “Are You Ready?”
02. “Genocide”
03. “Waiting For an Alibi”
04. “Jailbreak”
05. “Trouble Boys”
06. “Don’t Believe a Word”
07. “Memory Pain”
08. “Got To Give It Up”
09. “Chinatown”
10. “Hollywood”
11. “Cowboy Song”
12. “The Boys Are Back In Town”
13. “Suicide”
14. “Black Rose”
15. “Sugar Blues”
16. “Baby Drive Me Crazy”
17. “Rosalie”
18. “Disaster” (“Angel OF Death”)
19. “Emerald”
 

 
Previously on DM

Thin Lizzy vs. The Pixies - ‘The Boys Are Back In Heaven’

 
Take a look at the amazing stained glass portraiture by Neal Fox. Fox’s work reminds me of the work of many different artists, including Gilbert & George, Roy Lichtenstein, even Joe Coleman (composition, not details, obviously!). I’ll bet this exhibition is impressive “in the flesh.”

Daniel Blau Ltd. is pleased to present Neal Fox’s latest project Beware of the God. Fox’s drawings depict a phantasmagoric journey through the detritus and mythology of pop culture. From a life-long obsession with the tales of his dead grandfather, a World War II bomber pilot, writer and hell raiser, his large-scale drawings have developed into increasingly layered celebrations of the debauched and iconoclastic characters whose ideas have helped shape our collective consciousness.

Fox’s latest project takes many of the recurring subjects of his drawings and portrays them through the medium of the stained glass window. As traditional church windows show the iconography of saints, through representations of events in their lives, instruments of martyrdom and iconic motifs, Fox plays with the symbolism of each character’s cult of personality; Albert Hoffman takes a psychedelic bicycle ride above the LSD molecule, J G Ballard dissects the world, surrounded by 20th Century imagery and the eroticism of the car crash, and Johnny Cash holds his inner demon in chains after a religious experience in Nickerjack cave. One quality in particular binds these characters and the others together; a refusal to conform and conviction in their own ideology.

Working with traditional methods at the renowned Franz Mayer of Munich manufacturer, Fox is producing a set of twelve 2.5 metre high stained-glass windows; exhibited in a single room – an alternative church of alternative saints.

Neal Fox’s “Beware of the God” at Daniel Blau Ltd., 51 Hoxton Square, London until August 10th.

 
More after the jump…

The Dictators in 1977.
 
Proto-punk rock monsters The Dictators performing live at Irving Plaza, NYC in 1981.

Taking inspiration from The Who and The Stooges and in the same league as no-nonsense asskickers like Earthquake and Blue Oyster Cult with a sardonic, streetwise, sense of humor, The Dictators were punk in attitude and arena rockers in spirit. I saw them on several occasions in 1977 and no matter where they played they blew the roof off the motherfucker. They embodied the power and glory of rock and roll while poking some fun at it at the same time. They had their priorities straight: cars and girls.
 

 
Little-known clip of David Bowie nominally performing “Sense of Doubt” from Heroes on Italian television. The YouTube uploader says this was filmed at Hansa Studio in Berlin, but several people objected, saying that it’s not Hansa. I vote that it’s not. Having seen the interior of the legendary studio in countless documentaries, it doesn’t look like Hansa to me, either.
 

 
I love this photo because I totally understand the use of a wastepaper basket as a hat. You gotta use what’s around you when you’re broke and trying to improvise on the spot. 

In the 70s I wanted to be Wonder Woman real bad, but I was stuck with a shitty Dorothy Hamill haircut my mother had given me. So, I put one of my mother’s dishtowels on my head for the long luscious locks-look and was completely convinced I was fooling the world. 

(via Nistagmus)

 
Another guest essay from Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted here from his essential Of Two Minds blog:

The U.S. is due for another cultural revolution, led by the younger generations, perhaps including a fifth Great Awakening.

There seems to be a 40-year cycle of cultural change in American society. The classic exploration of generational types and cycles, The Fourth Turning, identified a four-generational, 80-year cycle of profound crisis and transformation:

1781 - end of the Revolution and establishment of the nation
1861 - Civil War
1941 - Global war and end of the Depression
2021 - end of the Savior State and debt-based “prosperity,” Peak Everything and geopolitical conflict over resources

In terms of cultural revolutions, these seem to sweep through every 40 years or so, a two-generational cycle within the longer cycle. It’s not an exact cycle, but consider these dates and eras:

1740: The First Great Awakening: The Protestant evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic concepts in the period of the American Revolution and helped foster a demand for the separation of church and state.

1776-1781: Revolutionary War, cultural shift away from the British Empire and toward an American identity.

1820: Second Great Awakening: sparks the rise of the Abolitionist movement which sets the cultural, social and spiritual stage for the Civil War.

1860: the Civil War

1890s: The Gay 90s, a period of American expansion and new freedoms of expression, clouded by the Panic of 1893 which sent the economy into a 6-year depression.

This era was the culmination of the Gilded Age, the industrialization of the U.S. economy between 1865 and 1900. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain. Not coincidentally, the birth of the modern industrial labor union occurred around 1890.

1925-30: The Roaring Twenties, an era “marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity and a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in both daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, and as such the period is also known as the Jazz Age.”

1967-1970: The Counterculture, which included the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement and the birth/expansion of the feminist movement, Eastern spirituality in the U.S., back-to-the-land self-sufficiency, rock music as a cultural force, the nonviolent anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, experimentation with communal living and drugs, Futurist concepts, and a widespread expansion of freedom of self-expression and experimentation. Many observers believe this ear also launched a Fourth Awakening as evangelical denominations expanded and “Jesus freaks” found religious inspiration outside mainline churches.

The book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer makes a strong case that this era set the stage for the ultimate technological medium of experimentation and self-expression, the personal computer, which then led irresistably to the World Wide Web (all the foundational technologies of the Internet were in place by 1969—The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute.)

Which changed the world, of course. Those darn hippies!

1970 + 40 = 2010: That takes us to the present. Right now the nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking that the nation’s bogus, debt-based “prosperity” has crashed and cannot be restored, though Ben Bernanke and the clueless “leaders” the citizenry has fecklessly elected keep trying to glue Humpty Dumpty back back together again.

Unfortunately, all they’ve accomplished is to glue their own fingers together.

The “too big to fail” banks and Corporate Cartels effectively own the Federal machinery of governance, the Savior State’s fiefdoms are expanding their reach and power like uncontrollable cancers, and the “leadership”—mostly self-glorifying. grossly incompetent, self-absorbed, greedy Baby Boomers, but with a few equally clueless 40-somethings present just to prove that age is no protection against self-delusion and supreme greed—has resolved to surrender to the Financial Power Elites and State fiefdoms, and fiddle around with “extend and pretend” strategies until they can exit the stage with bulging bags of swag.

Their only goal is to not be the one blamed when the whole corrupt contraption finally collapses under its own weight. If there was ever a more pathetic, corrupt, cowardly and incompetent set of “leaders” in the nation’s history, they must have done their skimming during periods of relative prosperity. Now we need real leaders, not TV-ready simulacra spouting bloated slogans that contain the magic word “change.”

Gen X and Gen Y, this is your “lights, camera, action!” call, if not for political power, then for a cultural revolution. I for one am ready for a Fifth Awakening, a Cultural Revolution, and a restoration of self-rule and the real, non-financialized economy.

I hope that you all had a happy Bastille Day, yesterday. It’s time we tore down the Bank Bastille that’s imprisoning us all.

Another guest essay from Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted here from his essential Of Two Minds blog:

 
Charlie Gilmour, the adopted son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, admitted violent disorder in court today in London, after joining thousands of students demonstrating in London’s Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square last year.

During the riots, Gilmour was seen hanging from a Union Jack flag on the Cenotaph memorial for Britain’s war dead. He was also seen leaping on to the hood of a Jaguar that formed part of a royal escort convoy and throwing a garbage can at the car. Gilmour was one of approximately 100 students who attacked a convoy escorting the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall during last year’s student riots. The Prince and his wife were on their way to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium theater when the mob surrounded their car shouting “off with their heads,” “Tory scum” and “give us some money.”

The Royal vehicle’s back window was smashed and lime green paint was thrown on the car, although there is no evidence that Gilmour had anything to do with that. He was, however, also photographed attempting to start a fire outside the Supreme Court by lighting a bunch of newspapers on fire.

Gilmour, a 21-year-old Cambridge University student, was told he must serve half of his 16-month jail term behind bars. From The Telegraph:

Shouting slogans such as “you broke the moral law, we are going to break all the laws”, the 21-year-old son of the multi-millionaire pop star went on the rampage during a day of extreme violence in central London.

Video captured by police officers outside the Houses of Parliament showed Gilmour, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, waving a red flag and shouting political slogans. The judge watched one clip in which he was shouted: “Let them eat cake, let them eat cake, they say. We won’t eat cake, we will eat fire, ice and destruction, because we are angry, very f———angry.”

As the clip was shown in court on Thursday, Gilmour sat in the dock giggling and covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

On another occasion he could be seen urging the crowd to “storm Parliament” and shouting “arson”.

In addition to attacking the Royal cars, he was also part of a mob that smashed the windows at Oxford Street’s Top Shop as staff and customers cowered inside.

What most of the reporting on this matter wants to remind you is that young Mr. Gilmour is the son of a multi-millionaire pop star. Fair enough, we wouldn’t be reading about him if he wasn’t, but from reading this article and some of the others—his swinging from the Cenotaph aside—I couldn’t help feel that his actions a) took guts and b) the students were right.

I don’t think Gilmour should feel like he has to hang his head in shame at all. It’s the job of intelligent young people to behave this way from time to time, if you ask me!

Something that’s often getting left out of this story is that Gilmour’s biological father is none other than anarchist poet, actor, playwright and graffiti polemicist, Heathcote Williams. Williams, who once served as the anarchist “Albion free state” of Frestonia’s ambassador to the UK, is a rabble-rouser of the first rank. His grandmother was a Major in Mao’s Red Army. Rebellion is in this kid’s DNA. Although he and his son are supposed to be estranged, given his own past, surely Williams must feel some paternal pride in his son’s anti-establishment hijinks?

 
You know what? As a woman, I’m not even going to try to pretend I understand this. Nope! Not gonna do it.

The standard female Realdoll costs $5,999.00. If you want to add elf features, it will cost you an extra $150.00.

Bonus: There’s a bald and blue Realdoll with white eyebrows available if that’s more to your liking.

 
Realdoll, The World’s Finest Love Doll (NSFW)