Ok, so this is kind of cheeky and infuriating, but you have to admit it’s also brilliantly executed. The Dewale brothers, aka Radio Soulwax, aka original mash-up masters 2ManyDJs, recently mixed the intros of 500 songs together into one hour long set and called it Introversy. That’s a hell of a lot of song intros - and the mix is accompanied by animation of all the sleeves of all 500 of the tunes coming to life. Now that’s dedication!
Introversy was originally posted on the brothers’ website last month, but as the original was not embedable, here’s a cheeky rip of a ten minute segment that has ended up on YouTube. Yes, the audio and visual quality are not great, but you definitely get the gist, and it’s all the more reason to check out the hour long original which is available to download as a free app on the Radio Soulwax website. Soulwax, their apps and website are all highly recommended - their currently streaming Celestial Voyage Pt 2 mix is a great blend of prog rock and space-disco which also features animated sleeves and is well worth checking out. But for now, here’s a segment from the rather excellent Introversy:
At the conclusion of their 1971 European tour, Sun Ra and His Arkestra visited Paris and performed for the French television show Jazz Session. The result was a stunning piece of musical theater shot in beautiful black and white and broadcast on January 8, 1972.
This is the show in its entirety. It begins with a brief introduction by the program’s creator Bernard Lion (Leo) who, along with being a hardcore jazz enthusiast and record producer, also directed videos for Serge Gainsbourg.
Whether you are a fan of Sun Ra or not, I think you’ll find this quite fulfilling.
Rock Scene was a mid-70s to early 80s black and white picture magazine edited by prominent rock writer Lisa Robinson (later of Vanity Fair) and her husband Richard Robinson (who produced Lou Reed’s first solo record and the Flamin’ Groovies’ Teenage Head). They were a well-known power couple in New York rock circles and had easy access to any and every rocker they wanted to meet. Rock Scene was where you could read about superstar acts like Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Queen and Elton John, as well as cult acts like Mumps, Lou Reed, the Ramones, Cherry Vanilla, The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Blondie, The Dictators, Suicide, Talking Heads, Iggy, Kim Fowley, the Dead Boys, Willy DeVille, John Cale, etc.
Rock Scene was all about the backstage and party scene and it was very “insider,” even featuring articles about rock journalists (Nick Kent, Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray) and well-known groupies like Sable Starr, Bebe Buell and Cyndria Foxe. The contributing photographers included the legendary Bob Gruen, Leee Black Childers, Danny Fields, Roberta Bayley, Stephanie Chernikowski and Richard Creamer. Wayne County even had an advice column called “Ask Wayne”!
I first started reading Rock Scene with the March 1976 issue (above) when I was a ten-year-old and I bought every issue for years. I think from that very first issue I read, Rock Scene helped me define the identity I wanted to have and the life I wanted to lead. Growing up reading Rock Scene instilled in me a desire to want to move to New York and to meet these people. I never aspired to having a real job, I just wanted to hang out at Max’s Kansas City and do drugs with all the cool weirdos I read about in Rock Scene. (Of course Max’s was long gone before I got there…)
Well sort of, anyways. The late great Don Van Vliet does a brief, throaty, whistled rendition with organ accompaniment of the Beatles’ standard which is about as random a moment as anything I can imagine. It’s the cherry on top of this amusing and good natured 1974 Dutch TV appearance which also features a mime-tastic version of “Upon The My-Oh-My.”
House music has gotten a bit of a bad rep over the last ten to fifteen years, and it’s not difficult to hear why. Between the overbearing repetitiveness of trance, the none-more-overdriven sound homogenisation of French “electro” and the simply boring minimalism of, yes, minimal, it’s very easy to forget that house was once a marginal art form that dripped pure funk.
The new album by Azari & III looks set to dress that balance, taking the sound back to its underground roots in the black, gay dance scenes of Chicago. Back in the mid 80s the original house-heads would congregate and wig out at Frankie Knuckles’ Warehouse club and Ron Hardy’s Music Box, to a soundtrack of European disco and proto-techno mixed up with American funk and electro and augmented by drum machine loops. Some of those kids went on to release seminal records on the legendary Trax imprint, among them Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Jamie Principle and even Knuckles himself.
Azari & III are the next logical progression of House music, as it inevitably gives up the gloss and returns to its rawer starting points. The synths and drum machines are raw and dirty, the vocals are ambiguous and androgynous but full to the brim with soul, and the songs are druggy, sleazy, and catchy as hell. The Toronto based four piece have just released their self-titled debut album, and the buzz built by their earlier singles is beginning to pay off with glowing critical reviews and a growing cult status. If you’re a fan of Hercules & Love Affair, then I can’t recommend this band and album highly enough. This is music designed to make you sweat, to jack your body, to vogue.
This is the video for Azari & III’s debut single, the highly catchy “Hungry For The Power”, featuring coke snorting yuppies, S&M vixens, murder and cannibal voguing zombies (NSFW):
Stefanie Heminger, who hosts her very own really rad rock and roll website where she interviews seminal artists like Papa Roach, Reo Speedwagon and Ron Jeremy has given Rick Perry her full-bodied endorsement.
Heminger’s rock and roll roots are pretty impressive. According to her bio…
...she started touring, hanging and learning from the pioneers of Rock Music. You might of seen her on Playboy TV, Playboy Radio XM, MTV, Telemundo, Album cover of Murderdolls, or back up dancing for several artists.
This has got to have Obama shaking in his loafers and Rick Perry happier than a homosexual in a pickle patch.
Nick Cave and The Cavemen filmed live at London’s Electric Ballroom in April 1984 for Spanish TV.
Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson and Hugo Race.
22 minutes of shambolic apocalyptic rock from the masters of mayhem.
The little black bar that pops up briefly at the bottom of the video is there to block out some distracting, inaccurate and unnecessary English to Spanish subtitles.
You like werewolf movies? You like TV On The Radio? Yeah, so do I.
Here’s a tantalizing mash-up of highlights from werewolf flicks and TOTR’s terrific “Wolf Like Me.” An obvious coupling done well by Editcadet. And it’s actually kind of spooky.
Here’s Mr. Cadet’s latest, ‘Keep On Walking’: a montage of scenes of people walking away from the camera turned into one seamless tracking shot.
So you want to be a rock & roll star
Well listen now to what I say
Get yourself an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play
Via Zombies En El Ghetto.
Slade never looked cool, but that wasn’t the point. They were four young lads out for a good time, and they wanted you to have a good time too. You can hear it on their classic album Slade Alive, when lead singer, Noddy Holder encourages everyone to get up, get ripping and really let themselves go. And during the 1970s, that’s just what their fans did.
Slade were Noddy Holder, Jimmy lea, Don Powell and the sequined Dave (“You write ‘em I’ll sell ‘em”) Hill. Between 1970 and 1975, they sold over 6.5 million records in the UK alone, chalking up 6 number ones, 3 of which went straight to the top of the charts - a feat not achieved since The Beatles - and this at a time of 3-day weeks, power cuts and food shortages.
For their energy, dynamism and 4-chord songs, Slade were more of an influence on Punk than Iggy and The Stooges. Just listen to the opening riff for “Cum on Feel the Noize”, it sounds like the start of a Sex Pistols track. Or try “Mama Weer All Crazee Now”. As latter-day Mod-Father and frontman for The Jam, Paul Weller noted:
“The whole punk rock thing really happened because of bands such as Slade and the like; rock bands that wouldn’t back off.”
Then there’s Noddy Holder, who may have looked like a grown-up Artful Dodger, but had a brilliant and unmistakable voice, which inspired Joey Ramone:
“I spent most of the early 70s listening to Slade Alive thinking to myself, ‘Wow - this is what I want to do. I want to make that kind of intensity for myself.’ A couple of years later I found myself at CBGB’s doing my best Noddy Holder.”
The tags were all there: Slade’s first single was produced by Kim Fowley; their manager, was ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, who had managed Jimi Hendrix; and their writing partnership of Holder and Lea was compared to the greats who’d gone before, one of which, Paul McCartney saw the future of pop divided between Slade and T.Rex, just like The Beatles and The Stones.
It should have been, but in 1973, drummer Don Powell was seriously injured in a car crash that tragically killed his girlfriend. Slade nearly split. Then, there was their film Flame, not a mop-top romp, but a long-hard look at the music business - it alienated fans though is now considered the “Citizen Kane of rock musicals”. Then, in a bid to conquer America, they spent 2 years Stateside, when Slade returned to the UK, Punk had taken over, and they were “old farts”, even though the Pistols’ Steve Jones thought that:
“Slade never compromised. We always had the feeling that they were on our side. I don’t know but I think we were right.”
It’s Slade is a well-deserved and refreshing reassessment of one Britain’s greatly under-rated bands, with excellent archive and contributions from Slade, Ozzy Osbourne, Toyah Wilcox and Noel Gallagher.
The rest of ‘It’s Slade’, plus bonus clips, after the jump…
