It looks like director Tony Pemberton’s Kickstarter drive for post-production funding for his three-years in the making film, Are We Not Men? The Devo Documentary, has reached its goal and then some with about a month to go.
I just caught wind of the project myself, but my oh my if this trailer isn’t mighty tasty looking:
From their origins during the 1970 Kent State shootings, to their latest album and tours, this documentary offers a funny and fascinating story that appeals to generations of art and music aficionados. Featuring new interviews with contemporaries (Iggy Pop), and followers (Dave Grohl, Tony Hawk), the official documentary reveals the truth about this important and misunderstood band with rare archival film, private home-movies, and recent concert footage.
The ARE WE NOT MEN? film delves into the brains — and the souls — behind the concept, music, and spectacle of Devo. Sculpting its music, lyrics and visuals are two men whose personalities seem different but whose worldviews are the same: introspective Mark Mothersbaugh and outspoken Gerald Casale. It is Mark and Jerry’s cataclysmic, sometimes contentious, collaboration that birthed what we know as Devo. Rounding out the group are two more members whose position cements the group as a literal band of brothers — Bob Mothersbaugh and Bob Casale. Yes, behind the curtain of this art-school façade are two fascinating and sometimes fractious families, led by Akron, Ohio’s twisted version of Lennon & McCartney — with all the genius and precariousness that would imply. It is the stories of these men — together and apart — that drive the engine that is ARE WE NOT MEN?
I can’t wait to see this!
Via Nerdcore
Recording his first proper album The Slim Shady LP with Dr Dre in LA, Eminem decided he wanted to get his infant daughter Hailie on the work-in-progress “97 Bonnie and Clyde.” Then-wife Kim Mathers was curious to know what the song in question – in which father and daughter together dispose of mother’s murdered corpse – was about. Playing it safe, Eminem told her the lyric detailed his taking Hailie on a trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s, a Will Smith “Just the Two of Us”-style scenario the song parodies. When Kim heard the finished track, Eminem believably claims, she “bugged the fuck out.”
“97 Bonnie and Clyde” was the kind of composition that got Eminem in trouble with the Tipper Gore parade as well, along with others who would supply the controversy (those “picket lines” for his “wicked rhymes”) that would go on to inspire so much of the material for his next record The Marshall Mathers LP. One of the most thematically coherent albums in hip hop history, The Marshall Mathers LP features verse upon verse ridiculing the wider culture for its apparent inability to distinguish between word and deed, fiction and fact, often mimicking the confusion for poetic effect:
“Put lives at risk when I drive like this [screech]/ Put wives at risk with a knife like this [scream]”
In “Stan,” for example, the song’s famous protagonist has fatally confused Eminem (or Marshall Mathers) with Slim Shady, and ends up killing his own girlfriend in a manner reminiscent of “97 Bonnie and Clyde.” Elsewhere, Eminem reprised the wife-killing theme for the gothic murder-ballad “Kim,” a slower, crueler and darker version of its predecessor that ends with the following “dying” refrain:
“NOW BLEED! BITCH BLEED!/ BLEED! BITCH BLEED! BLEED!”
While the rest of the accompanying album would be quick to remind us that “no actual Kims were harmed in the making of ‘Kim,’” did anyone ever wonder how the tune played chez Mathers?
Not that well, funnily enough, as I confirmed last week stumbling upon a 2011 interview with (the real) Kim (Shady) Mathers herself, a rather beleaguered woman horrified by her frequent cameos in the work of the twenty-first century’s most famous living poet. Indeed, in the Mathers’ fairly fraught marital home, Kim reveals that “Kim” was such a contentious issue that it was solely referred to (in passing or – you imagine – the odd nucleur domestic squabble) as “that song”…
So when Kim was planning to attend a show on her husband’s stadium tour in 2000, the occasion warranted a special conversation that afternoon as to whether Eminem planned to perform “that song” that night. Sensitive Mr. Mathers reportedly answered in the following reassuring fashion:
“No, because I know that you’re going to be there and I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Syke! At the concert, Eminem, would perform a robust “Kim” – acting it out with a blow-up doll, no less – before the sixty thousand strong crowd, including not only his wife, but her sister and some accompanying friends (must have been awkward for ‘em, eh?) – in the interview, the former Mrs. Mathers describes the surreal horror of being embedded in a stadium rocking with festive hatred – all indirectly directed at her – watching “everyone singing the words and laughing and jumping around in approval.
Altogether now…
“BLEED! BITCH BLEED!/ BLEED! BITCH BLEED! BLEED!”
Sure enough, Kim went home and attempted to kill herself, slashing her wrists; so a song in which Eminem fantasizes about killing his wife… almost kills his wife. Words become deeds, fiction fact. Odd.
As you know, we’re fans of The Monkees and Jimi Hendrix, and we were quite delighted to see this amazing photograph posted by Micky Dolenz on his FB page. As he explains:
‘This is one of my personal photos from The Monkees 1967 World Tour…In honor of the 45th anniversary of the first concert that Jimi Hendrix appeared with The Monkees~
And what a concert that must have been.
Via Micky Dolenz
The Cookie Monster shows smut is all in the mind with “C is For?”
Hm. Communism? Copulation? California? Canapes? Conservatives? Cobblers?
With a little help from Fidel Villeneuve of the band Applicants.
A lot of work and play went into this one folks. Hope you dig it.
01. Bostich - Yello
02. Love Song - The Cure
03. Don’t Stop The Rock - Freestyle Project
04. Planet Rock - Afrika Bambaata and Soulsonic Force
05. Don’t Go - yazoo
06. When I Hear Music - Debbie Deb
07. Leggo The Herbman Dub - Small Axe vs. Terminal Head
08. O Darcy - Gaiola Das Popozudas
09. The Mexican - Jelly Bean Benitez
10. Love Bump - The Lone Ranger
11. Cookie Jar - Clarence “Scuzzy” Hoskins
12. I’m Your Puppet - Jimmy London
13. Bag A Wire - King Tubby
14. I Can’t Stand The Rain - Eruption
15. Dirty Talk - Klein and MBO
16. Hurricane - DJ Nasty
Animated gif via Colette Saint Yves.
“Hey, your baby looks just like Mark E. Smith…” is probably not something a lot of parents want to hear. Some, but not most.
A small collection of MES look-alikes can be found here.
Thanks, Syd Garon!
Bruce Springsteen is one of the few American rockers keeping alive the theatrical traditions of James Brown, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Screaming Jay Hawkins. Nothing I’m saying here is particularly new, I was just compelled to say it after watching the video below, which reminded me of Springsteen’s value to rock music and our culture and why he’s perhaps the last of the old skool rockers we’ll ever see.
In the video, Springsteen brings back memories of James Brown’s appearance on The T.A.M.I. Show when he performed a scorching and history-making version of “Please, Please, Please” - the one in which he dramatically falls to the stage, is covered with a cape by members of The Famous Flames and is escorted offstage, only to defiantly rush back to the mic to resume the song. This is repeated several times before he finishes the tune in a heap of sweat-soaked sharkskin while an audience of screaming teenyboppers goes apeshit. Yes, it’s shtick, but it’s shtick of a very sublime sort. It’s the ritual that brings the spirit to the church of rock ‘n’ roll.
During his show in Sunderland , England last month, Springsteen pulls off his own James Brown moment (at twice the age that Brown was in 1964). The new “hardest working man in show business” brings some of the same wild energy that caused the little girls at the T.A.M.I. Show to wet their pants when a Black man from South Carolina fell to his knees and screamed “pleeeeeese…”
It was good for our mothers.
It was good for our mothers.
It was good for our mothers.
And it’s good enough for me.
The scenario:
Springsteen is down for the count. Little Steven attempts to revive him in a baptismal of healing water while the congregation, clapping and chanting at a fever pitch, breathe new life into The Boss (the preacher man). Raised from the dead, Springsteen, like Lazarus, struggles to his feet and tries to get a handle on the situation. He implores the crowd to give him some more energy and they ramp it up, singing the chorus of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” As the fans reach a collective epiphany, Springsteen bolts toward a piano and jumps up on it. Renewed and sustained by the incantations of the audience he leaps back onto the stage floor, grabs the mic and arches backwards until his entire body is only inches above the ground, held aloft only by the very tips of his boots. Moments later he’s slapping flesh with the roaring congregation as he and the flock navigate the farther reaches of rock ‘n’ bliss. Young, old, the infirm and the lost, have found a glimmer of hope and beauty in a world where madness rules and cities melt like pillars of salt in the winds of Gommorah.
It will take us all to heaven.
It will take us all to heaven.
It will take us all to heaven.
And it’s good enough for me.”
Springsteen’s unabashed love of rock ‘n’ roll makes him not only a protean performer, able to create convincingly in multiple genres, but also a fan of epic proportions. In concert, he mashes up the history of rock ‘n’ roll, not only musically, but in moves and attitude that pay tribute to both the ritualistic and carnivalesque aspects of a music that is well over a half century old. He’s tapping into a tradition where performers, from Cab Calloway to Wayne Cochran and Iggy Pop, put their bodies into the beat and become moving hieroglyphs signifying something so deep that we ultimately have no name for it. We can only act it out, like Jesus walking on water or James Brown walking on air. And while Bruce, The Boss, is the center of the spotlight, there is something self-deprecating about the man. As serious as his lyrics and concerns can be, there is a rock ‘n’ roll clown in Springsteen that is willing to be a fool for his art, a jokester and an anarchist. The Boss has come to play. And we, the audience, come not just for the show, we come for the catharsis. That is the power and glory of rock ‘n’ roll.
Makes me love everybody.
Makes me love everybody.
Makes me love everybody.
And it’s good enough for me.”
Springsteen may not have James Brown’s moves (the only person who did is dead), but he’s got the spirit down right. It may be old time religion, but it’s sure as shit good enough for the millions of people that pack The E Street Band’s travelling tent show night after night in what seems with every passing year more like a spiritual mission than a rock ‘n’ roll tour. Of course, with Springsteen there’s little difference.
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show after the jump and Springsteen at the Isle Of Wight 2012…
No, ‘Bounce Bounce’ has got nothing to do with the New Orleans dance scene of the same name. Rather, it’s a lovely fusion of minimalist electronics and live violin by Hahn and Hauschka, aka double Grammy winning violinist Hilary Hahn and the German pianist Hauschka.
Taken from the duo’s improvised collaborative album Silfra, which was recorded last year in Iceland, the video was directed by Hayley Morris and features some beautiful old school, underwater-styled, stop motion animation. There’s something of the Surrealists and Max Richter to this clip. The rest of Morris’ work is also highly recommended, and you can see it on her website.
The visuals compliment the music perfectly. It’s no real surprise to learn that Hahn and Hauschka are influenced by, amongst others, Bjork and John Cage, though they claim the biggest influence on the recording of their album was the location of their sessions - “silfra” being the part of Iceland xwhere the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet
Fittingly, then, this is music that crosses the divide between the visceral and the cerebral. And it’s nowhere near as pretentious as that sounds. Silfra is available now through Universal/Deutsch Grammophon, and for more info on Hahn and Hauscka, visit the duo’s website.
Hahn and Hauschka “Bounce Bounce”
I think we can all agree that Chris Morris is a comedic genius, right?
His work, from BBC Radio’s On The Hour and The Chris Morris Music Show in the early 90s, through The Day Today, Brass Eye and Nathan Barley on TV, and all the way up to his most recent work, Four Lions, is both howlingly funny and the pinnacle of biting satire.
One of the reasons his work is so powerful is the attention to detail, from the small linguistic tics to the perfectly-framed, over-the-top computer graphics. But in particular, for me, it’s his use music that is most impressive. Morris can simultaneously rip the piss out of a tune or a band while lodging a brand new melody in the style of that act permanently into your brain. That’s no mean feat.
While Chris Morris’ musical works are never really foregrounded in his films and shows, they are definitely worthy of attention in their own right. (Heads up WARP - why not put out a compilation of Morris’ musical satires?) So, after a discussion with a friend that was sparked by the discovery of an American band non-ironically named “Blouse”, I decided to compile the best of Morris’ musical parodies for DM.
A major tip of the hat is due to the YouTube uploader FourJamLions, who has uploaded quite a bit of Morris’ music, though some of it is not embeddable on other sites. Here is FourJamLions’ compiled clip of the best musical moments from the classic series Brass Eye. This clip includes the priceless Pulp parody “Blouse” (with Morris playing the lead singer “Purves”) singing an ode to serial child killer Myra Hindley. After the jump there’s more of Morris’ musical monstrosities, but if you need some bizarre-but-familiar aural refreshment this Friday, here’s a great introduction:
BRASS EYE Music (inc Pulp parody BLOUSE “Me Oh Myra”)
After the jump, music from The Day Today, Brass Eye, Nathan Barley, and The Chris Morris Music Show…
