Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Here’s the late, great Joey Ramone doing a smashing job of singing the beautiful early John Cage piece The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs which is itself based on text by James Joyce. This comes from an Italian Cage tribute LP from the early 90’s that I was previously unaware of which also features a ton of other luminaries such as DM super-pal Ann Magnuson, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, John Zorn, etc.
 

 
Hear Robert Wyatt and Cathy Berberian’s versions of the same song after the jump…

 
My favorite listening of late has been the brilliant Christian Renou who has released a library of recordings under the name Brume. 

Renou is a sound sculptor, which may sound a tad pretentious, but is an appellation that makes perfect sense when you listen to his breath-taking, disturbing, suspenseful and incredible music. 

Here are two genius tracks to give you just a small flavour of his work.
 

 
More Brume after the jump…
 

Smarter than your average bear, the multi-talented writer David Quantick recently popped up on BBC’s Newsnight Review to rattle cutlass with the Music Industry. 

Quantick is best known as the co-writer of the award-winning The Day Today, with Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan, worked on Chris Morris’ Brass Eye, wrote and created the world’s first internet sitcom Junkies and most recently penned the rather excellent Miliband of Brothers for Channel 4.

In this short clip, pirate Quantick states:

The Music Industry is like the Mafia, but less efficient. And record industry executives are loud, nasty and bad for you like cocaine in human form. Remember the slogan ‘Home taping is killing music’? Well piracy isn’t the problem. What’s killing music is the Music Industry.

As Quantick points out, it’s about time these odious wastes of talent and their money grasping, hypocritical, fuckwit pop stars learned to live off a proper working wage. Just like most people do. It maybe a simplistic argument, but it cuts through the bull usually given out in defense of sheer naked greed.  And if the Muisc Biz and its popsters can’t live off what it makes, well, as Mr Q. says:

Let bands earn what they deserve to earn. Take pop music away from Simon Cowell and the 79p download sites, because if the Music Industry dies, then like child labor, corporal punishment, and James Blunt’s career, maybe it deserves to die.

 
This, the fifth episode of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour finds your host Brad Laner going it alone (Richard will return for the next episode) and delving into some expansive jams by some stalwart DM heros along with some recent discoveries. These are sounds for those of us who are unconcerned with filing our musical tastes within convenient corporate marketing categories and who hold music in too high esteem to assign it mere lifestyle accessory status. Hope you dig it.

Yes - “We Have Heaven”
Henry Cow - “Industry”
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - “Kandy Korn”
Gato Barbieri - “Antonios Das Mortes”
Junip - “Loops”
The Funkees - “Akula Owu Onyeara”
Michel Chion - “Dies Irae” (from Requiem)
The Beatles - “Revolution (take 20)”

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 
British group Kaleidoscope (not to be confused with the American band of the same name)  released two sweetly psychedelic albums Tangerine Dream in 1967 and Faintly Blowing in ‘69 before changing their name to Fairfield Parlour and moving in a prog rock direction. This clip from French TV is the only known footage of the band. From late 1967?

This video oozes coolness. Catch the glimpse of Serge Gainsbourg.
 

Via Bedazzled

 
Yuen Woo Ping has been making cutting edge martial arts films since 1978 when his groundbreaking classic Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow starring Jackie Chan burst on the scene like a fist to the solar plexus.  He is arguably the greatest director and choreographer of action scenes in the history of cinema. His credits include the fight sequences in The Matrix, Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle. Last night I attended a screening of Ping’s newest movie True Legend at Fantastic Fest and I think it’s among the finest martial films produced in the past two decades. While the film features a shitload of computer generated imagery, at heart it’s an old school kung fu movie. A morality play with grand emotions and epic action, True Legend engages the heart while being breathtakingly thrilling. Just when you thought Asian action flicks had lost their mojo, Yuen Woo Ping resurrects the genre once again.

After the screening of True Legend at Austin’s Paramount theater, RZA presented Master Woo Ping with a lifetime achievement award. RZA worked with Woo Ping on the Kill Bill movies.

RZA on Yuen Woo Ping:

“I have been a fan of Yuen Woo Ping since I was young. I had a chance to meet him on the set of KILL BILL along with his team. I have always admired him as a fan and once I met him I admired him as a man too. He has directed many of my favorite movies of all time and it will be a great honor to present him with such a prestigious award.”

 
Watch the mindblowing trailer for True Legend after the jump…

 
Brazilian singer and birthday girl Gal Costa started her career during the Costa e Silva and Médici military juntas in Brazil, and from the top there was no stopping her. Joining up with the renegade Tropicalia movement in 1968, Costa helped make history with a group of musicians led by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.

In 1973, in an atmosphere rife with governmental repression, torture and strict press censorship, Costa unleashed the album India, which sported a Sticky Fingers-esque cover that got the album immediately banned from the shelves. Based on a themed live show and arranged and produced by Gil and recently rediscovered funk-meister Arthur Verocai, India comprised a great bunch of post-Tropicalia experimental rock tunes, a version of Tom Jobim’s bossa classic “Desafinado,” and this intense version of the Portugese folk tune “Milho Verde.” 
 

 
Bonus clip after the jump: an Afro’ed Gal tears down the house in 1968 with Veloso & Gil’s “Divinho Marvilhoso” at IV Festival de Música Popular Brasileira!
 

 
Carl Barat was Paul McCartney to Pete Doherty’s John Lennon. Their band The Libertines were the wannabe Beatles of the past decade, but an excess of drink, drugs, and, er, burglary all led to the band’s early demise. 

However, the story doesn’t stop there.
 
More on Carl Barat plus bonus clips after the jump…
 

 
Gene Loves Jezebel was the coolest band ever to be fronted by identical twins (Michael and Jay Aston). And ‘Motion Of Love’ was one of the hookiest songs of the 80’s.

The brothers Aston look a lot like Gina Gershon and Juliette Lewis in this video. I’d consider fucking them.