‘Together’: trippy new music video from Hervé
I’m putting together my list list of the best videos of 2010 and this is a definite contender. “Together” by Hervé with a sample from Primal Scream’s “Come Together”. Directed by Starworks. Grooooovy.
I’m putting together my list list of the best videos of 2010 and this is a definite contender. “Together” by Hervé with a sample from Primal Scream’s “Come Together”. Directed by Starworks. Grooooovy.
Swedish singer and self-appointed guru (Thomas) Di Leva is one of the oddest pop phenomenons I’ve encountered in quite awhile. Apparently he’s been a big star in Sweden for the past 30 years and yet I’d never heard of him. I pride myself on knowing a shitload about rock and roll and spiritual materialism, but somehow Di Leva, who embodies some of the best of the worst in both music and new age mumbo jumbo, has flown below my cultural radar all these years.
A cross between David Bowie, Donovan, Meher Baba and Barbra Streisand, Di Leva has released 19 albums, has dozens of videos on Youtube and a trippy dippy website devoted to his mystical teachings. His spiritual organization is called Spaceflower, which he describes with typical new age vagueness:
We are all Spaceflowers with roots in Eternity. Striving to consciously and blissfully flow through the supreme infinite reality. We are all one with the eternal now forever.
And Di Leva humbly describes himself as…
One of the greatest spiritual teachers and music artists in his home country Sweden. With Spaceflowers he is now taking his vision, presence and action globally.
Whether or not he succeeds in his quest to raise the planet’s consciousness or not is yet to be seen, but for now we have glimmerings of something Divine (as in Pink Flamingos) in his music videos and live performances. As much as I’m tempted to write this guy off, I find him actually quite compelling. From his obvious David Bowie vocal influence, new wave synth beats and Summer Of Love lyrics , Di Leva is not particularly original and, yet, he is. He’s a cosmic rip-off artist that manages the trick of making you almost believe in something totally artificial. But, I like artifice and Di Leva is thoroughly entertaining in his own weird, spacey, Swamidelic way. He’s a flower child gone to seed, Jesus in day-glo Laura Ashley drag or Dreamgirl mu mu. An Aquarian Age Adam Ant. Meher Abba.
Visit Di Leva’s Spaceflowers website and for a mere $9.00 you can receive a cosmic transmission via telephone from the Guru himself. He accepts Paypal.
Update 9/16: since posting this last night, the spaceflower.net website has been taken down for ‘construction’. I wonder why? Was it something I said?
Di Leva does Bowie after the jump…
I remember reading early 70’s interviews with Don Van Vliet wherein he bragged of starting a record label called God’s Golfball and his plans to sign a band from his home town of Lancaster,California called Rattlesnakes and Eggs. I’m sure you can forgive me for thinking for lo these many years that band name to be a standard issue Beefheart non-sequiter along the lines of “There are 40 people in the world and 5 of them are hamburgers”. But no, they existed. For real. A communal affair, natch. They got their name from a resident pot-smoking 5 year old boy and boasted the occasional membership of John “Drumbo” French and future Magic Band member John Thomas. The music as heard here is not as far out as I’d hoped, but is still a pretty great slice of horn driven eccentric Zappa/Beefheart-esque desert boogie. They never released anything, but thanks again to the miracle of the Youtube, somebody put up a recording. Dig it.
Métal Urbain were contemporaries of the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Formed in 1976, the French punk rock group’s harsh and noisy sound was as aggressive—if not more so—than that of their English or American counterparts (with the exception of Suicide or The Screamers). Their lead singer, Clode Panik, sounded like a French version of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith.
The group’s second single, “Paris Maquis” was Rough Trade’s first record release and influential British DJ John Peel showed his support, but they never really made it and broke up in 1979. Métal Urbain’s sound has been a big influence on Big Black’s Steve Albini and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Métal Urbain reformed in 2003 and toured the US. In 2006, Jello Biafra produced their album, J’irai chier dans ton vomi, in San Francisco.
Below, Métal Urbain lip-synching “Paris Maquis” on French TV in 1978:
After the jump, a performance of Métal Urbain’s Gallic synthpunk anthem, “Panik”!
Bold and brassy, cult figure Cherry Vanilla first came to the public’s attention playing a necrophilliac nurse in Andy Warhol’s freaky London stage play, Pork. Back in her hometown of New York City, she became David Bowie’s publicist during his Ziggy Stardust-era, working beside fellow Pork cast-member Leee Black Childers (who was the VP of Mainman, as Bowie’s then management company was called).
Later she moved to London, where RCA Records marketed her as “The First Lady of Punk.” Sting and Miles Copeland played in her backing band. Later, she went to work for composer Vangelis, running his US office, which she still does to this day. Cherry Vanilla’s memoir, Lick Me: How I Became Cherry Vanilla
Below Cherry Vanilla performs “The Punk” on Germany’s Music Laden television program in 1977:
There’s more right about this record than I could ever elucidate in a couple of pithy sentences. Best to simply bathe in its glory. You’ll be non-stop dancing in no time.
The Dead Weather’s latest single, “Blue Blood Blues”, will have a limited edition component in the form of an all new Triple Decker Record. Designed by Jack White and assembled by United Record Pressing, the Triple Decker contains a 7” record embedded inside a 12” record. The Triple Decker is limited to 300 copies and are available at Third Man Records in Nashville on Friday Sept. 17, and at finer brick and mortar independent record stores worldwide. 50 copies will also be inserted in random mail order for Blue Blood Blues.
Fascinating stuff from New York-based filmmaker, Kirby Ferguson:
Remixing is a folk art but the techniques involved — collecting material, combining it, transforming it — are the same ones used at any level of creation. You could even say that everything is a remix.
The blog about the web video series, “Everything is a Remix”
(via Nerdcore)
Did Johnny Carson know what he was getting into when his producers asked Jim Henson to perform without Muppets on his show in February 1974?
By the time of the clip below, Henson and his Muppets Inc. crew were five years into what was becoming a hugely successful partnership with the Children’s Television Workshop on the show that would raise Generation X, Sesame Street.
What better time to do something like, say, adapt electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott’s highly trippy piece, “The Organized Mind” as a short live multimedia stage performance? (By the way, the film playing in the background is apparently Henson’s film adaptation of the same piece of music.)
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cookie Monster helps train IBM sales staff (1967)
Jim Henson’s “Time Piece”
Bonus clip after the jump: “The Paperwork Explosion” another 1967 Henson/Scott collaborative film for IBM…
Groovie Goolies cartoon show aired on American television from 1970 to 1972. A mashup of Laugh In , The Adams Family and Looney Tunes, Goolies was filled with goofy hippie dippy skits, bad puns and tons of pop culture references. Every episode had a couple of musical numbers featuring groups like The Mummies And The Puppies, The Rolling Headstones and The Bare Boned Band.
The Groovie Goolies actually toured as a band (a bunch of guys dressed up in costumes) and released an LP on RCA records
In this video, the Goolies perform the very cool tune “When I Grow Up” followed by the totally surreal live-action Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies. After all these years, this stuff still seems pretty groovy.
Alice Cooper talks about his favorite cartoon characters, the Groovie Goolies, after the jump…