I’m not sure where this clipping is from, but it’s written by the world’s most excellent record reviewer. Plus one!
Of all the people not worthy of a second chance, Chris Brown should have been near the top of the list. And his music sucks and his lyrics are stupid.
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Via Exile on Moan Street
After Cream broke up, bassist extraordinaire Jack Bruce went on to release Songs for a Tailor
Although Songs for a Tailor was well-received by fans and critics upon its initial release, it remained somewhat of an undiscovered gem until its CD re-release in 2003. The best known song from the album, is the gorgeous Theme For An Imaginary Western, but not Bruce’s version, rather the cover by Leslie West’s Mountain.
Bruce went on to re-record and refine every number on Songs for a Tailor throughout his career, save for one.
Below, Bruce performs “Rope Ladder to the Moon” solo, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. If you don’t like this, you don’t like music, it’s as simple as that:
After the jump, a live performance of “Never Tell Your Mother She’s Out of Tune”...
I wonder if anyone has ever seen this film, The Beatles Meet Star Trek, which opened November 5th, 1976 at the Uniondale Mini Cinema in Uniondale, N.Y. From what l can gather, over at Temple of Schlock, this was either a mix of Star Trek bloopers and Beatles’ performances; or a cartoon fest of clips from the Trekkies and Fab Four’s separate animated series. Whichever, it would be good to find out if anyone has seen The Beatles Meet Star Trek, whether it was any good? and was it the first pop cultural mash-up?
Bonus: fan made slash clips of Beatles and Star Trek, after the jump…
With Alan McGee it’s difficult not to be inspired to go out and do something great, something daring, like he did with Creation Records and Poptones and all the bands whose music defines the past 3 decades. His infectious energy glows and inspires, it fills you with his rich enthusiasms for life.
Just now McGee seems to be everywhere: he is making a film called Kubricks with the artist Dean Cavanagh; he’s writing his memoirs; he’s curating a music festival in Japan for 2013; he’s working on an art exhibition with musician Alex Lowe of Gun Club Cemetery; he’s thinking about returning to making records because most of today’s music is “awful”; and he’s also studying Aleister Crowley and Magick.
‘For the last 5 years, I have been studying Crowley / Osman Spare and the Chaos Magickians. I got into Crowley because everybody told me not to go there so, of course, I did and ended up at Chaos Magick.
‘I 100% love Aleister Crowley. The Book of the Law is my Bible. I love him. Anybody that is still demonised by the media seventy years later had to be on it and he was. He was the ultimate libertarian.
‘I believe in the power of will. If I want something to happen it does. It always has and that was before I read Pete J Carroll. I really wanted Creation Records to become massive and to get the biggest band in the world and I did.
‘I wanted to become rich and I did, which sounds crass but I come from Glasgow we had fuck all, so having money interested me and still does.
‘If I really want something it comes to me. That was before I learned you can do it with technique, we all can read the right books and be very accurate in what I want to achieve.
This might sound like arrogance, but it’s not. It’s just said in a matter-of-fact way, without any sense of ego.
‘I am almost a hermit in Wales, then I go and DJ or give a talk or work with Takashi, my Japanese friend on Tokyo Rocks and I become the old Alan/Rock ‘n’ Roll Alan, which I also enjoy.’
Most recently he bought a church.
‘I bought this chapel in Wales, as all the pubs and churches are for sale, so I bought it for 33K, has its own graveyard, it’s pretty posh, so that should be fun. I live on a ley line in Hay-on-Wye, everything that happens here is charged. The chapel is more for doing stuff that local people can interact with long term. I know Primal Scream want to do playbacks there etc. so, it’s going to be fun.’
Last month he was producing his first feature film Kubricks, written and directed by Dean Cavanagh, starring Joanna Pickering, Matt Berry, Gavin Bain, Anton Newcombe and, of course, McGee.
Dean and Alan became friends around 2008, after working on the hit on-line comedy series Svengali, which has now been made into a movie.
‘We formed Escalier 39 as a film company to shoot some DIY films. We talk a lot on the phone and have a lot of the same political and spiritual views on things so the film company seemed obvious to us. It’s an experiment really, to see if we can make films together.’
He pauses when asked what his role is in Kubricks.
‘Good question. Maybe as agent provacateur.’
Kubricks was shot over an ‘exhausting’ 5 days and is currently being edited. It’s tag-line is ‘Everything Is Synchronicity…Even Chaos!’ and is a new map to the world Kenneth Anger once filmed (‘I love Kenneth Anger…he’s an amazing dude’) of Magick and Art. Though McGee puts it more bluntly:
‘I could say meta-physics, but the truth is we don’t really know, which is why we did it.’
Kubricks will released next year, which brings us to McGee’s next project, his return to music after his “retirement” five years ago, which led him to believe he had given muisc up completely. But the cancer of mediocrity spread by Simon Cowell and the piss-poor quality of current chart music has led McGee to rethink things, especially after an offer to organize music festivals in Japan.
‘Recently I have been helping curate stadium festivals in Tokyo for 2013, and I am enjoying it. So maybe I am moving back towards music. I don’t know, to be honest.
‘I do like films and books more than working with music but I find music easy to do, I sort of understand the music process and always have done.
‘I think music is awful at this point and it’s deliberate. Music is such a strong thing, with the message and the vibration and they want it now to be shit so it loses its impact on people. They are great bands around but they just are basically marginalised till they give in.’
Next up, is an exhibition with Alex Lowe, and another film with Cavanagh set in the recently acquired church..
‘Dean is already writing a script about the chapel, but to be honest we both have too many ideas.’
Long may that continue.
Lou Reed performing at the Houston Music Hall on November 13, 1974.
This multi-generational copy of a fan shot video looks like shit, sounds okay, but given there’s so little performance footage of Lou from this period, I’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers.
The Houston show was part of the “Sally Can’t Dance” tour and Reed’s band was comprised of former members of the hugely underrated and deeply funky Rhinoceros: Danny Weis [guitar], Michael Fonfara [keyboards], Eric “Mouse” Johnson [drums] and Peter Hodgson [bass].
“Sweet Jane”
“Vicious”
“Heroin”
“New York Stars”
Reed is gettin’ on the good foot Long Island-style.
One of the best Bowie bootleg videos that’s been floating around for at least 25 years is the professionally shot recording of six numbers from his 1978 tour. I’ve read variously that this came from one of the shows recorded for the Stage album, but I’ve also seen claims that it was shot either in Dallas or in Norway. Tony Visconti, who produced Stage, mentions nothing in his liner notes for the 2005 reissue of the album about the shows he recorded also being videotaped. I’m pretty sure that this was taped at The Dallas Convention Center performance of April 10th, 1978
Wherever it was shot, and no matter the short running time, this is one of the finest live Bowie documents we’ve got and it hails from one of his most creative and fertile periods as a mature artist.
It’s incredible to me that neither this nor the “1980 Floor Show” (Bowie’s Midnight Special special from 1973) have been made available for the home market. There were also German and Japanese television broadcasts of the 1978 tour. Surely Bowie fans would rather have one of these programs on DVD than another bloody Ziggy anniversary release! Enough’s enough, already, EMI…
Well, until that day, here’s a great quaklity YouTube upload.
SET LIST: “What in The World,” “Blackout,” “Sense of Doubt,” “Speed of Life,” “Hang On to Yourself,” and “Ziggy Stardust.”
(Note, forget what the uploader says about this being “part one”—this is the whole thing. Parts 2-4 are from the NHK Hall show in Toyko later that year)
I’d imagine that no matter what this poor girl was thinking when this photograph was taken, the morning after realization must have been enough to induce a deep, deep psychosis.
With thanks to Scott Mclaughlin
One of Boy George’s best pieces of music—well, in my book, anyway—is 1988’s seldom-heard slice of fierce, dance music protest, “No Clause 28.” I picked it up, neither knowing what it was about, nor having actually heard it, because of the amazing cover artwork by Jamie Reid depicting Boy George as Enid Blyton’s “Noddy.” It’s a pretty amazing record of its time, in more ways than one.
Clause 28 or Section 28, as it was also known, was an addition to the Local Government Act of 1988. Clause 28 stipulated that local government councils in the UK “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”
This was the end of the Thatcher era and due to newly widespread awareness—and fear—of AIDS, then considered a gay disease, homosexuality was frowned upon in such a way that it was thought necessary to officially condemn it and protect children from it. The matter was largely a symbolic issue, but it caused many gay and lesbian groups at high schools and universities to close shop.
The night before Section 28 became law (May 24, 1988) a lesbian chained herself to the desk of BBC Six O’Clock News presenter Sue Lawley. Parliament was also invaded by lesbian activists scaling the building like rock climbers.
In many ways, Clause 28 is what saw the cohesion of Britain’s modern gay rights movement. Aside from Boy George, many big name celebrities spoke out about Clause 28, such as Ian McKellen, beloved One Foot in the Grave actress Annette Crosbie, Helen Mirren, Jane Horrocks and comics great, Alan Moore.
The Section was repealed on June 21, 2000 in Scotland, and in the rest of Great Britain in November of 2003. It’s worth noting that Prime Minister David Cameron was vocally in support of keeping the Section intact, although he thought better of this later and apologized in 2010.
I’d like to wish Mick Jagger a happy 69th birthday by sharing one of the most electrifying rock ‘n’ roll moments in cinema: the “Memo From Turner” scene in Donald Cammell’s mindbending masterpiece Performance.
This is something from our archives with improved video.
“My mom thinks that where I’m living down here the Hippies are a bunch of dirty, filthy, infectious people. This is my bag and I found my place here and I scream and I holler and I’m happy.”
CBS TV documentary from 1967 exposes the shocking truth about America’s drug-addled youth. Prepare yourself for a terrifying descent into an LSD hellhole. 50 minutes of hippie hedonism with Harry Reasoner.
With the Grateful Dead and Canned Heat.