Hank Williams Jr. should learn to shut his fucking mouth before he puts his foot so far down his throat he’ll dislodge the impacted turd called Ted Nugent that’s lodged in his lower intestinal tract. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, he accuses President Obama of hating America and in a fit of Tea Party-style paranoia (probably induced by an overdose of chewing tobacco and Jim Beam) fears that the President is out to strip Americans of their Christian names.
Here’s a tidbit of hillbilly wisdom from Bocephus as featured in the RS interview:
On “Keep the Change,” you sing, “I’ll keep my freedom / I’ll keep my guns / I’ll keep my money / and my religion too/ I will keep my Christian name and you all can keep the change.” What did you mean by that?
Exactly what I said, cousin.
Yeah, but when you talk about your Christian name …
You know, we’ve got a President that does a call to the Koran or Mecca or whatever. That’s what I meant. That’s exactly what I meant. I won’t be changing my name to whatever. That’s exactly what I meant.”
Why do you think he (Obama) hates America?
Oh, you know I don’t know. I don’t know about that but it’s kind of obvious. I guess when you take a tour, a world tour, to apologize for America. He did that, you know?”
Hank Jr. is an asshole with the soul of a nasty drunk. And if there’s any doubt about that, just listen to the mean-spirited prick recorded in Kansas some time in the early nineties during an alcohol-fueled performance of his ode to guns, booze and pick-up trucks, “Country Boy Can Survive.” This is not the country music of his father. This is music to kick shit by.
Check out Timewriter’s great new William S. Burroughs audio mix:
A tribute to ‘El Hombre Invisible’. It features some of my favourite readings, to which I’ve added music by John Zorn (from his Burroughs-inspired work), Tod Dockstader, Arne Nordheim and others. Also in the mix are radio recordings and vocal cut-ups by the man himself.
This is a post from our guest-blogger, Peter Choyce of KXLU radio in Los Angeles
One of the most enduring mysteries of my generation is the great Cat Stevens saga. The controversy resonates to this day like a modern version of a Greek drama or the OJ trial. It has everything; celebrity, the pitfalls of being a celebrity, walking away from being a celebrity and the millions of dollars that he made in the music industry and then giving of it all away. Altruism, God, devotion, complete surrender. Blasphemy, poor judgment, bad excuses and the search for forgiveness.
I was always impressed at the part where a huge rock star gave up all his earthly possessions, only to become unceremoniously derided as an international pariah overnight a few years later. Everyone knows the story, or thinks they know. What really happened?
Let’s first go way back to 1967 when a budding young singer, born Steven Demetre Georgiou, hits the UK charts at #7 with a song which can only be heard for what it is: a rage filled revenge song of murderous intent sung apparently without irony. This debut, “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun,” may unwittingly hint at things to come?
Cat Stevens was warmly welcomed into the world of pop rock just as the 60’s were finishing up and racked up eleven consecutive top 40 hits. Throughout the 70s, on the radio, sandwiched in between all of the bad bubblegum music and the banal disco hits a profound voice of gentle urgency and contemplation. Stevens hit big with songs like “Father and Son,” “Wild World,” “Oh Very Young” and he scored a #1 with “Peace Train.” The hits were supplemented by a string of stellar LPs, three that went platinum. His all-time classic, Tea for the Tillerman, was an ambitious album of songs that blended eastern thought with western rock music. Teenagers and grownups could agree about Cat Stevens.
Then, all of a sudden, everything changed.
In 1977’s Izitso album, Stevens sings “I Never Wanted to Be a Star.” It was always obvious from his music that he had an abiding interest in matters beyond this world. Having always been toying with this and that spiritual philosophy, like his brother before him, Stevens converts to Islam after a near-death drowning experience in Malibu. He jumps in head first, learning to read and write Arabic so he can get a first-hand crack at the Qur’an, and changes his name to Yusuf Islam. He then goes boldly where no rock star has ever gone before: donating all of his worldly wealth to charities from Mozambique to Morocco. Yusef Islam settled down in a modest London flat to live a private, humble existence devoid of material distractions in the 1980s and was mostly forgotten outside of oldies radio and die-hard fans.
Interested only in making the world a better place to live, the former pop star opens the Islamia Girls’ Secondary School one of the top secondary girls schools in London. This is where our hero is found and when his self-imposed exile ends oh-so abruptly.
The world was made a little worse, however, when in 1988, The Satanic Verses gets published and sets off a hailstorm in the Muslim world. Salman Rushdie’s controversial book was declared to have mocked the Prophet, and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwā (death sentence) upon his head. Numerous killings, attempted murders and bombings resulted. Yusuf Islam, no longer a pop star, was present at a conference at London’s Kingston University where he was asked about the fatwā.
There was little ambiguity in his response:
“He must be killed. The Qur’an makes it clear - if someone defames the prophet, then he must die.”
That’s what he said and it was shocking to hear the man who once sang “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” and “Sad Lisa” say such a thing. The next morning the headlines screamed “Cat Says Kill Rushdie!” Now back on the world stage, but in a much different light, Yusuf tried to take it back. He issued a response that declared he was merely translating what Rushdie’s “blasphemy” meant to Muslims to an English audience and what the legal punishment would be under Sharia law. A subsequent BBC TV appearance also showed him supporting the fatwā.
On Cat Stevens’s website, in the FAQ section and in subsequent interviews, he has said he was joking and the BBC had improperly edited him and the print media misquoted him. Dangerous Minds readers can watch the clip and decide for themselves.
In any case, the damage was done. All around the world, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens was branded an ISLAMIC TERRORIST. From piety to pariah, all in the matter of a heartbeat. I remember how huge this all was at the time. Cat Stevens was suddenly target numero uno for aged adolescent “morning zoo” disc jockeys. In almost every radio market, “record burning parties”’ were held. People brought in their Cat Stevens vinyl so they could joyously hear them being smashed live on the air. There was a legendary LA radio broadcast of a steamroller crushing hundreds of Cat Stevens albums. Yep, the same guy who sang “Wild World.” I felt so sorry for him. To me and a few others, it smelled exactly like the infamous nationwide Beatles boycott in the mid-60s where the same treatment was ingloriously accorded to John Lennon when he famously quipped that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” (In fact the Nazis-like record burning tradition is as old as rock and roll itself: Southern DJs in the late 1950s often held rock and roll record burning parties with their Christian fundamentalist friends and KKK members to show that rock was “the devil’s music.”).
Did he really say it? Yeah, he really said it. He claimed that he was being sarcastic during the BBC program, and maybe he was, but it didn’t seem that way at the time and I’m not sure it feels that way looking at it decades later, either. In recent years, he has also claimed that he was a “young Muslim” and was perhaps a little too much of a strict believer at the time. I think this sounds closer to what really went down.
Twenty-two years after the storm, Yusef Islam has permitted himself to play music again, recording an LP in 2005 and showing up at various charitable events (and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity”) since, performing his old hits. Today the former Cat Stevens seeks to be rehabilitated with a new and younger crowd of fans. I get requests all the time to play him on my radio show, and I do, but I’m still a bit torn: I just think that with all the soul-searching eastern doctrines that he was into, he could have been a hip Zoroastrian priest. Van Morrison does well with whatever that cult is that he got himself into after Scientology. Who knows why a well-off pop star would choose such a conservative religion based on “submission,” but I am sure that he has his reasons. I won’t go there as I don’t want a fatwā on MY head. I do declare, however, that the time is here for Cat Stevens’ complete rehabilitation. I mean, fuck it. If you ask me, I think he DID lie a little when push came to shove. Sarcastic? I don’t really think so. But who doesn’t lie? And I also think he was tried to walk back his 1989 comments since then. What would you do? People do say things and then change their minds all the time (look at Mitt Romney!). I’m a firm believer in forgiveness when a decent man pays his debt, or does his time. The artist formerly known as Cat Stevens was duly humiliated and shunned for supporting the fatwā against Salman Rushdie—as he should have been—but in the end he has proven himself to be a timeless artist, with a heart of gold and a love of his fellow man. Let’s officially exonerate Cat Stevens and tell everyone to just shut up and give the guy a break.
14 years before he stopped drinking, David Bowie tried his hand at being a mixologist in this photo from 1966.
Did you know there’s a Diamond Dog cocktail? Well, there is. Combine equal parts of sweet Campari, vermouth, Roses lime juice and fresh squeezed orange juice. Serve on the rocks. It was created at the George V Hotel in Paris, France.
Here’s the recipe for the Ziggy Stardust:
4 parts vodka. 1 part violette liqueur. Dash of orange bitter. 1/2 part Goldschläger. Ground cinnamon. Stir first two ingredients with bitters over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Light a small glass of Goldshläger and pour over the drink. Dust the flame with cinnamon and serve.
British comedian Adam Buxton is one funny dude with a genuine sense of social obligation. In this instructional video, Buxton has provided us with a method to distinguish Moby from Moby look-a-like Michael Stipe, among others. This is an invaluable tool for those of you who would rather have your sex organs torn to shreds than encounter the real Moby in real life. I’ve downloaded this to my cell phone so that it’s available in case of emergency.
Ulli Lommel’s Blank Generation is not the movie it could have been but what it is will have to do. Imagine a lower tier Fassbinder lensing a movie about the angst and ennui of New York’s Lower East Side as embodied in the life of disheveled punk rocker Richard Hell as he struggles to struggle with an emotional attachment to a Godard-spewing French film maker named Nada (Carole Bouquet looking more like a Bond girl than a Bond’s girl). If life in the New York City of the late 1970s was this dull and depressing, we’d have all left for Brooklyn a whole lot sooner.
While there’s some good footage of Hell performing with the legendary Voidoids, there’s little else to indicate that there was a burgeoning music scene right up the block from where the movies non-action occurs. This was 1979 and CBGB was alive with the sound of music…and the aroma of beer and piss.
When he’s not singing, Hell spends most of his time sulking. But who can blame him? With his dour Parisian girlfriend spewing lines like “What are you afraid of?” “We’re all going to die anyway, so who cares?,” who wouldn’t be feeling a bit blank. The bellicose ice queen Nada makes Nico look like Laurie of The Partidge Family.
Blank Generation isn’t a bad movie. It’s just fucking inert and filled with the sort of angster posturing and world weariness that makes you wonder if gravity has a heavier tug below 14th street. Ultimately, it’s all kind of inconsequential and as Richard Hell himself put it “there’s not a single authentic, truthful moment in the movie.” Still, you should watch it for Hell and the Voidoids, the best of the Bowery.
P.S. - I had a chat with Hell a couple of months ago in Austin. He’s a big supporter of film-preservation and was hosting a screening of a re-stored 35mm print of King Kong at the Alamo Drafthouse for Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. It was a thrill to see one of my favorite rockers looking and sounding good as he enters his mid-sixties. He was planning a road trip through Texas and in his black suit and boots he cowboy-walked down Sixth street with the self assurance of a post-modern gunslinger in a spaghetti western where blood comes in spurts and men do have names like “Hell.”
Dennis Flemion of Milwaukee duo The Frogs drowned over the weekend in Racine, Wisconsin’s Wind Lake. He was 57.
Highly respected among fellow rockers like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan, Flemion was an outrageous performer, singer, songwriter and artist. While never achieving the popularity of the bands he influenced and inspired, his work with his brother in The Frogs will long be remembered for its provocative humor, style and devilishly witty punk rock attitude.
Here’s a piece I wrote for Dangerous Minds two years ago on the fabulous Frogs:
Love them or loathe them, The Frogs, brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion, are undeniably one of the most outrageously tasteless bands in the annals of rock and roll. While no group will ever equal the exalted standard of rock depravity set by G.G. Allin, The Frogs have definitely earned a spot near the throne.
The Frogs are USDA grain fed rock and roll dadaists, improvising their songs and recording them on the fly in their home studio,utilizing genres as disparate as Appalachian ballads and glam rock to satirize pop culture and subvert sacred cows. They pissed off some of the humorless members of the Gay community (you know who you are) with their hilariously insincere celebration of homo love, It’s Only Right And Natural (1988), which featured campfire singalongs like “I Don’t Care If U Disrespect Me (Just So You Love Me),” ” Been A Month Since I Had A Man and “Hot Cock Annie.” And when The Frogs brought their record label, Homestead, the uber politically incorrect Racially Yours (2000), the label refused to release it even though the album had sure fire hits (in an alternate universe) like “Darkmeat 4 Sale” and “Two Blacks Don’t Make A White.” It seems record execs are just too fucking dumb to understand satire. The Frogs are The Fugs for a new generation - The Frugs. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is off limits for their deliriously weird and often very funny vamps, particularly sex (of all sorts), drugs and rock and roll, with The Frogs themselves often the butt of their own jokes. Their take-no-prisoners attitude to rock star poseurs is particularly brutal.
The Frogs actually did release an album that was radio friendly, a sardonic piss-take on rock stars called Star Job, which contains two of the best rock songs of the past 15 years: “I Only Play 4 Money” and “Weird On The Avenue.”
Dennis, Kurt and Jimmy.
Unfortunately, most of The Frogs videos on the Internet are shitty quality and really and don’t do the brothers justice. Having seen the band live, I know what they’re capable of. Yes, they could be sloppy, but they were often awe-inspiringly good. I’ve put together some of the best videos I could find, including clips from their never released long film Toy Porno.
Frogs with Vedder, Toy Porno and more after the jump…
DM pal Ann Magnuson is a genius at painting “parody” fake Basquiats.
And now, for a low, low price you can own one, too! Ann’s got these two paintings on offer for a mere $1000 donation to her “The Jobriath Medley: A Glam Rock Fairy Tale” project. I know Basquiat never painted with glitter, but he really should have!
WHAM BAM, JUST THE PAINTING, MAAM: Don’t give a damn about glam rock but you want one of Ann’s Fake Basquiat paintings? Okay! Done!
This tier is for those who want Ann to create an original Fake Basquiat painting CUSTOMIZED JUST FOR YOU! With or without glam rock themes. That’s right, YOU pick the colors YOU like and give Ann YOUR specific likes, dislikes, loves and/or select experiences from YOUR life and she will incorporate some into a special Fake Basquiat painting just for YOU! 16”x20” canvas. Glitter optional.
*We’ll also add The Jobriath Medley CD whether you like it or not!* (One of Ann’s rare Fake Basquiats sold at auction at a LACE benefit for $1,600 so this is quite a bargain!)
