Jiving nicely with my feedback-obsessed episode of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour today is this marvelous and engaging sound art/performance piece entitled Diptych by Michelle Temple & Aiwen Wang-Huddleston. There’s a lot to love here but mainly it’s the sense of fun that recalls the best of the Fluxus artists and especially that it doesn’t involved any laptops, iPads or iPhones. It’s a really nice vocabulary of sounds in that combination of materials as well.
With thanks to Dave Madden
Approximately 26” x 22”
Designer Andrew Hartzell says, “Yes, this is real. And they’re very nice. I use one myself.”
The Wu-Tang Bath Mat is available for $20.00 over at Hartzilla.
Update: It appears the price is now $25.00.
(via TDW)
More forward thinking hip-hop, at last! This is the kind I really dig - addressing issues of sex and sexuality which (come on now, let’s be honest) hip-hop has never had a great track record for. Especially where women and gays are concerned.
Shunda K is one half of the out-spoken, lesbian, Christian rap group Yo Majesty. Hailing from Tampa, Florida, Y!M have developed a significant cult following throughout the world, signing to one of the UK biggest indie labels, Domino, and releasing their album Futuristically Speaking… Never Be Afraid in 2008. Their singles “Club Action”, “Don’t Let Go” and guest spot on Basement Jaxx’s “Twerk” have all proved big club hits, and taken the traditional Southern hip-hop sound into areas more electro-friendly and uptempo.
The band are currently on a temporary hiatus, but Shunda has been busy, with guest spots on Peaches’ “Billionaire” and DJ Flore’s Raw album under her belt. This January she released her debut solo album The Most Wanted, preceded by the singles “Here I Am (ft Scream Club’s Cindy Wonderful)” and “I’m Da Best (ft Yo Majesty’s Shon B)” on Fanatic Records.
Yet again defying the traditional notions of what “Southern hip-hop” means, The Most Wanted keeps the dancefloor pressure at an uptempo maximum, with production from UK garage and funky artists like Deekline and French electro producers like Les Gourmets. Shunda K matches them step for step with a breakneck flow that covers God, gays, love, sex, spirituality, enlightenment, education and pussy. Yeah, lots of pussy. The album’s first video “Im Da Best” has just dropped, and sets the scene perfectly:
Shunda K - “Here I Am (ft Scream Club’s Cindy Wonderful)”
Shunda K - My Light (ft Tan)
The Most Wanted has got great reviews already, with MTV Iggy declaring “This is an exciting, deep, and original work of hip hop. Get on it.” Shunda K now stands as the world’s best known and respected gay hip-hop artist. Could she be the first gay rapper to cross over into the mainstream?
The Most Wanted is available here.
It’s the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour episode 17 with your returning champion, Brad Laner. A quick glance at the playlist will reveal a raucous incursion into many beloved realms of psychedelic feedback and caustic, cheap synths. These are a few of my favorite things…
01. Amon Duul II - Archangel’s Thunderbird
02. Dr. John - Stealin’
03. Game Theory - Dripping With Looks
04. Tuxedomoon - 19th Nervous Breakdown
05. Crawling Chaos - Left Hand Path
06. The Byrds - The Christian Life (Gram Parsons lead vocal version)
07. The Electric Prunes - Long Day’s Flight
08. The Beautiful Daze - City Jungle Pt. 2
09. Quicksilver Messenger Service - Calvary
10. 13th Floor Elevators - I’ve Got Levitation
11. The Groundhogs - Cherry Red
12. Whitehouse - Avisodomy
13. Further Instructions
Download this week’s episode
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at iTunes
Video bonus: Members of The Beautiful Daze mascarading as the grooviest fake band in history, The Sacred Cows as previously blogged about by Marc Campbell here :
Eddie Kirkland died on February 27 in Tampa, Florida. He was killed in a car accident while driving to a gig. He was 87.
A monster of a guitar player and a thrilling performer with a deep history within the blues community, Kirkland toured for 8 years with John Lee Hooker, was a bandleader for Otis Redding and played with Little Richard and Ben E. King, among many others. But despite his formidable credentials, Kirkland never broke out of the hardcore blues circuit to a wider audience.
Mr. Kirkland became known for his impassioned singing; wailing guitar lines (he was among the first to bring blues guitar into the electric age); vibrant stage presence (he favored bravura headgear like turbans and huge bandannas); and boundless energy, expressed not only musically but also acrobatically.”
The New York Times obituary here.
Eddie Kirkland with Foghat at the Palladium in New York City, 1977. Fuck yeah!
The Foghat footage is followed by a fan made video from last year of Eddie in rehearsal.
Here’s a great clip of the French space/rock/sci-fi/disco outfit Rockets performing their biggest hit, a cover of Canned Heat’s “On The Road Again” on the Italian TV show Stryx in 1978. Rockets combined the electronic pulse of Eurodisco with the driving power of classic 70’s rock. Terry Miller, author of the blog post quoted below, sums Rockets up perfectly: “Imagine Gino Soccio mixed with ZZ Top. Interstellar Rock!” It’s camp and fun, if not a little scary due to the matching bald-heads-and silver-skin look, and just how seriously they are taking it.
Like Giorgio Moroder, Rockets had been around for quite a while before finding international success on the first wave of European disco in the late Seventies, even managing to sign to the hallowed Salsoul Records in the States for one album . Although it’s fair to say they were a novelty act, that didn’t stop them from having some seriously bitchin’ tunes. Their front man Zeus B Held went on to produce a number of well known European acts in the 80s, including Nina Hagen and Gina X Performance. From The Stranger’s Line Out blog (by Miller):
In 1972 producer Claude Lemoine produced a single called Future Woman for a band called Crystal. With the single’s poularity the band decided to change it’s name and look, so in 1974 they became The Rocket Men (or Rocketters in France). They shaved their heads, wore matching “space age” outfits and painted themselves with silver make-up. They didn’t quite have the formula right though, unitl 1976 when they changed their name to Rockets. They did a dancier, spacier remake of thier hit Future Woman which brought them, once again, popularity throughout Europe. It didn’t hurt that their live shows were full of lasers, smoke, exploding cannons of fire and a tripped out light show.
I’ll be posting more from Stryx in the near future, but unfortunately most of the footage does not look or sound as clear as this clip.
Rockets - “On The Road Again”
Rockets -“Space Rock”
Rockets - “Future Woman”
Stevie Riks is a British comedian who does remarkable impressions/parodies of pop stars that are affectionate, smart and often brutally funny. His take on Bryan Ferry is so good it’s scary.
In this video, Riks does Ferry doing nursery rhymes while Freddie Mercury adds a bit of color.
Riks as Ray Davies is some brilliant silliness. He really nails the subtleties of Ray’s voice and that is no easy task. This had me laughing to the point of tears. Maybe it’s the face.
Stevie has almost 400 videos uploaded to his Youtube channel. It’s all him doing his impressions and they run the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime. A few cut to the bone. Check them out here. He does a killer Lemmy.
Riks does Lemmy after the jump…
Filmed in Chicago in 1962, Twist Craze features a triumvirate of bands that exist in no known universe outside of the sphere of the movie itself: The Parisian Twisters, The Manhattan Twisters and The Windy City Twisters. The proposed sequel, Twist, Crazed And Confused, was reputedly going to include performances by The Kenyan Twisters, The Tulsa Twisters and The Istanbul Twist Society but during pre-production the world’s attention shifted from The Twist to The Watusi and the project was scrapped.
Dig that swimming pool!
Hippies,beatniks, go go dancers and acidheads let it all hang out in a psychedelic group grope set to the now sounds of the new generation. Mature audiences only.
“What Goes On” (live) - The Velvet Underground
“Cellophane Woman” - Sopwith Camel
“Help You Ann’ - The Lyres
“Time Machine” - Satori
“Roller Girl” - Anna Karina
“She Has Funny Cars” - The Jefferson Airplane
“I Haven’t Got The Nerve” - The Left Banke
“Sally I Do” - Abdullah’s Regime
“Hold Me Now” - The Rumors
“Mona” - The Pleasures
Break out the Kama Sutra oil, the Nepalese Temple Balls and the Nag Champa incense and get ready to freak out!
