Hong Kong’s Johnny To is indisputably one of the best living action directors on the planet. Full Time Killer, Exiled, The Mission, Election and PTU are certifiable balls out classics. So, what could be better than a new Johnny To flick? How about a Johnny To flick starring Johnny Hallyday? Hot damn!  Champs-Élysées meets bullet ballet. I am so there.

I lived in France when I was a teenybopper. The Beatles and Stones hadn’t hit yet and I was enthralled with French pop: Sylive Vartan, Francoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc and Johnny Hallyday. They were fluff, but they were sexy fluff with a sophisticated freshly-fucked vibe. So much cooler than Frankie Avalon, Leslie Gore, Fabian and the rest of the pasteurized American pop stars on top 40 radio, the white and the bland.

Johnny Hallyday has evolved over the years from a totally cool Elvis wannabee through folky hipster to a bonafide superfine actor. As he’s aged, his pretty boy looks have turned into a ragged and weary kind of beauty that makes him perfect for tender tough guy roles. Check him out as an over-the-hill gangster in 2002’s Man On A Train. And now in To’s Vengeance

Here’s the trailer for Vengeance followed by two clips of Hallyday in rock and folk mode.  He sings ‘If I Were A Carpenter’  with Emmy Lou Harris as though he really does want her to have his baby. ‘Black Is Black’ is pretty hip too.
 

 
Go directly to the next two clips…

 
Berlin has always been a bastion of innovative cultural work, and one excellent example of this is the Digital Tattoo Productions outfit.

Comprised of the husband/wife team of video artist and animator Edna Orozco and sound artist Dean “Tricky D” Bagar, Digital Tattoo have executed video-mapping-and-sound projects on historical sites in both their home countries of Colombia and Croatia.

They also recently worked on the body-centered dance theatre piece Quia, performed in Bogota and excerpted below. Check it out and keep an eye and ear out for these folks…
 

Digital Tattoo- QUIA from digital tattoo on Vimeo.

 
In 1966, among releases by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, and the Sandpipers, Jerry Moss—the “M” in the label name A&M—gave the OK to release a buzzy, growly cover of Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy” by a cadre of misfits called Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band.

The single apparently became enough of a hit in L.A. to raise the eyebrow of Dick Clark, who features the tune for the kids to jump around to after a penetrating fan interview with Dear Leader below. Unfortunately, even though Clark had moved American Bandstand from Philly to L.A., Don Van Vliet & co. were kept at phone’s length for this “appearance.” One would think the band could have ambled over to ABC Television Center for an appearance, but who the hell knows what the circumstances were?
 

 
In 1990, when Sinead O’Connor was at the absolute height of her fame, I was supposed to write about her for some magazine I can’t recall. I went to Austin, TX for the interview and I found myself standing at the side of the stage during the concert. She and her band (which included Adam and the Ants guitarist, Marco Pirroni) performed a handful of numbers before some computer they needed went kerblooey. Vamping while the roadies valiantly tried to fix the problem, O’Connor strapped on her acoustic guitar and did a spine-tingling version of “Troy” that brought the house down. In a lifetime of concert-going, I have never in my life seen such an intense live performance.

“Troy” is the gut-wrenching, first-person account of a woman, presumably O’Connor herself, walking in on her lover with another woman. Her execution of the song that night was brilliant, almost deranged with grief. As she sang it, you felt it was happening to you and those emotions washed over you. I was turned into jelly by the intensity of the performance. Everyone in that theater, I’m pretty sure had the same reaction as I did.

At the song’s conclusion, she ran off the stage and vomited up in a trash can right beside me. (Forgive me when I tell you that my reaction at the time was, “Wow, she’s really hot”—but she really was, trust me. Even puking).

Soon afterwards, the lights went on and the sold out house was told that Sinead had the flu and couldn’t continue with the show. Refunds were given out, but I’d have to say that if only for that one song, the crowd would gotten their money’s worth that night. The next morning they were off to another city and the interview never happened.

The official music video for “Troy”—which I am assuming was done by John Maybury, who also directed her video for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” because it looks just like his work—is how most people first caught a glimpse of the fragile, twenty-something bald Irish singer and it was a striking debut. But nothing… er… uh… compares 2 that song live, which is why I’m using this clip here instead. The intensity builds and builds, really a masterful performance.
 

More Sinead O’Connor in The Dangerous Minds Radio Hour

 
Joe Albanese has put together an outstanding collection of classic rock picture sleeves on his Facebook page. This might be the best gallery of images like this I’ve ever seen. Truly outstanding stuff on display. These are but the tip of the iceberg.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thank you, Douglas DeFalco!

 
Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart has apparently died at the age of 69 after many years of rumored ill-health. I’m in shock at the moment. He was one of my greatest musical heroes and one of the most powerful and distinctive vocalist/lyricist/composers of the last century.  Play Orange Claw Hammer (below), an a capella powerhouse from Trout Mask Replica as loud as you can and know that there was a real depth of feeling in the man’s work that went beyond weirdo freakishness. Bon voyage, good captain. We’ve lost a true original.
 
via Rolling Stone :

Don Van Vliet, who became a rock legend as Captain Beefheart, died today from complications from multiple sclerosis in California. His passing was announced by the New York-based Michael Werner Gallery, which represented his work as a painter. His Trout Mask Replica was Number 58 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. “Don Van Vliet was a complex and influential figure in the visual and performing arts,” the gallery said in a statement. “He is perhaps best known as the incomparable Captain Beefheart who, together with his Magic Band, rose to prominence in the 1960s with a totally unique style of blues-inspired, experimental rock & roll. This would ultimately secure Van Vliet’s place in music history as one of the most original recording artists of his time. After two decades in the spotlight as an avant-garde composer and performer, Van Vliet retired from performing to devote himself wholeheartedly to painting and drawing. Like his music, Van Vliet’s lush paintings are the product of a truly rare and unique vision.” Van Vliet leaves behind a wife, Jan. The two were married for more than 40 years.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds: Leaving your holes open with Captain Beefheart: 1969 interview LP

 
Phill Niblock, himself a notable composer in his own right, made this lovely, minimalist filmed portrait of Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra in 1968. Shooting them on a rooftop in high contrast black and white and focusing in on fingers and mouths, this is as good an excuse as any to take 17 minutes out of your day to enter the waking dream world of Le Sony’r Ra.
 

 
Niblock’s portrait of Max Neuhaus after the jump…

 
San Francisco disco diva Sylvester James’s appearance at a dance party in a subterranean SF Muni station in the Castro district in 1979 couldn’t have been more fraught. The neighborhood had just been shaken to the core the previous fall with the shooting death of Harvey Milk, SF’s first openly gay supervisor. Ahead lay the AIDS epidemic, which would eventually take Sylvester himself 22 years ago this week at age 41.

But on that night, Sylvester was at the peak of his success. He was just about to release his 5th album, Stars, the follow-up to 1978’s Step II, which had hit #7 on the American R&B charts and included one of gay America’s legendary anthems, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” After his first taste of mainstream success, and after nine years of the official Gay Pride parade in San Francisco, after coming this far, perhaps it seemed fitting for the community to get back to its roots and and take the party underground again.
 
Thanks to Erica Green for bringing this to my attention…
 

 
Hopefully many of you have already listened to the latest episode of The Dangerous Minds Radio Hour, but if not, then maybe this clip of the title credits from The Liquidator—specifically the theme tune, sung by Shirley Bassey and written and conducted by Lalo Schifrin—will entice you to do so. I lead an “all female” set off with this track, taken from the scratchy old soundtrack album.

Obviously, the makers of this film were trying their hand at creating another James Bond, with Rod Taylor playing “Boysie Oakes,” a character that came from a Cold War-era spy book series that also tried to chime in on the James Bond action. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of sub-Bond rip-offs during the Sixties. The Liquidator, to its credit, tried hard by hiring Bassey and Schifrin (who also worked on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. around this time). They even snagged the gorgeous Jill St. John a few years before she became a proper Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever. Superb Richard Williams credit sequence.
 

 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 
Yes, it’s that season again when thoughts turn to chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Christmas elves and GWAR!

All together now:

Crush, kill, destroy, crush, kill, destroy, destroy!
I was first and shall be last, slaying all who cross my path
Toppling your gleaming towers, bathing you in golden showers
I crush you as I would a fly
I Kill you and I watch you die
Destroying all I find offending, devastation never ending

 
Via Mu