FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale talks about going mano a mano with ‘The Invisible Man’!
12.06.2022
07:26 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Illustration from ‘The Invisible Man’ by TOMO77

The poster that came with DEVO’s 1981 New Traditionalists album depicts the band sheltering an ethnically diverse triad of babies from the worst elements in American society: a horde of pirates, pushers, concert promoters, and Puritans looking to instrumentalize these newborns for their own unspeakable ends. Arrayed against this mob in matching JFK pompadours and Nutra work outfits, the men of DEVO face the challenge with poise and sangfroid, ready to open a cold can of whup-ass on these would-be baby-wreckers.

In the background, the uncredited artist represents the USA as a rolling lawn ornamented with a few topiary trees, their branches shaped into stacked orbs that taper like the steps of the DEVO energy dome, three leafy cocktail onions of descending size impaled on toothpicks stuck in the horizon. This is the landscape on which DEVO’s Gerald V. Casale stretches his legs in the music video for his latest solo release, “The Invisible Man.”

Once again, it’s “morning in America,” except for the glans-pated dweeb who dogs Jerry’s steps on the yellow brick road, subjecting him to sexual harassment, humiliation, and abuse. But as the story plays out, Jerry begins to suspect—his opponent’s neck tattoo of the D.R.I. logo notwithstanding—he’s once again doing battle with The Mark Inside, old Number One from The Prisoner.

Dangerous Minds caught up with Jerry by 21st-century videophone on November 22, 2022.
 

 
Before I ask you about “The Invisible Man,” it’s November 22. I’ve read a lot of DEVO interviews and I don’t know if you’ve spoken about this very much, so I thought it would be interesting to ask what you remember about the Kennedy assassination, and how you think that event affected your young minds.

Yeah! Probably, that was like the opening salvo in a barrage of timed traumas that just continued the next seven years, that pretty much twisted up everything in my life and set me on a fork in the road, kind of like the proverbial red pill in The Matrix.

I remember everything. I was in French class in my high school. We had a particularly sexy French teacher who was a graduate student, so she was probably, I don’t know, six or seven years older than us, and wore more trendy clothing, like herringbone-print skirts that were above the knee, and black boots, and little blouses that got the boys going. Anyway, suddenly the principal walked in, middle of class, and said, “Class, I have to tell you that the president of the United States has been killed today.” And [laughs] you know, you’re just, like, almost unable to process what you’re hearing, like it’s kind of real, but not really real? And then some of the girls start bursting out crying, and he goes, “And as a result of that, we decided to suspend all classes for the day and send you home.”

And it was interesting, ‘cause [laughs] a girl that I was really interested in, in this kind of puppy way where I didn’t even understand what I was doing, she was crying, and something in me, despite the fact that I was really freaked by what I’d just heard, and kind of understood how serious that was, or how frightening that was, to the United States, I of course used it to offer to walk her home [laughs]. So, you know, the little budding man in me started taking over, and I felt all, like, you know, it was a real, I don’t know, what was it, Stand By Me moment, like these coming-of-age comedies. And I walked her home, and I had my arm around her, and had her holding my hand, and I felt so, like, brave and excited, and scared at the same time.
 

Detail from the ‘Village of the Damned’ poster
 
And then I didn’t go home right away. I thought I’m not going home, I’m not going home to my parents, ‘cause I was already at odds with them. ‘Cause they were blue collar and authoritarian, they didn’t understand me, they were policing my reading list and always criticizing me, and I felt like they didn’t understand how smart I was. So I decided to freak them out by just doing something I never did, which is I walked downtown and I went to the movie theater. I forget what was playing now; it was a black-and-white film, of course. It might have been Village of the Damned, English, great film.

And then, you know, when I got out of the theater it was already dark, ‘cause it was November in Ohio and it got dark at like five o’clock. And the moment I walked home, of course, I got attacked and talked to and screamed at. But then the television was on, and it was wall-to-wall coverage of the assassination. And, believe it or not, and I don’t know if other people have told you this, but you know the famous Zapruder film, where this guy was shooting, innocently, the arrival of the president in Dallas in his motorcade with a Super 8 camera, and it became the primary evidence of what the Warren Commission kind of bastardized. We saw it unedited, played over and over on TV. There were only three channels, they were all national, so the news—there was real news then, guys like Walter Cronkite just presenting things—would show it. I guess the country wasn’t centralized enough into some kind of CIA disinformation clampdown where you could see the impact, over and over and over! You could see the shots and her crawling on the trunk, Jackie Kennedy. You’d never see the Zapruder film that way again, because once the Warren Commission got ahold of it, they edited it, and what you saw afterwards in history, after that weekend, is never really the film.

And Ι saw the assassination then on Sunday, you know, we were Catholics and forced to go to church, so Sunday morning, television’s on, we’re watching [them] taking Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas police station to his court hearing, and we saw live the assassination of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, right there, with my parents [laughs] while we’re waiting to go to church! I was fifteen.
 

 
So it sorta blew a hole in everything, it sounds like.

Yeah! And then soon on the heels of that came the assassination of Martin Luther King, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the assassination of Malcolm X, as I was coming of age and reading and getting politicized and protesting against the Vietnam War. And it just all jelled. And it ended then with, you know, the National Guard killing four students and wounding nine on May 4, 1970, right in front of me.

There’s a kind of a straight line between those events, for you? Do you see it that way?

Yeah, it’s pretty much a three-stage rocket [laughs] right to supreme rage. Where you consciously put it all together, and you make a decision, and you’re on a path that sets you against all illegitimate authority forever. You’re a “difficult person,” resistive to authority. And that’s really what made me who I was, and really, I don’t think without it DEVO would exist.

I’m a big fan of the EZ listening stuff. There’s some EZ listening stuff on the new EP—

With vocals! With vocals, for the first time.

It reminds me a little bit of the Last Poets.

[Laughs] Well, I am one of the last poets now.

You are, Jerry. But as I look back at that stuff now, I wonder if there was a kind of idealism—there seems to be a real nostalgia underneath, maybe, for that New Frontier, early Sixties…

Yeah. And that’s understandable; we were fed a big heap of fantasy. And it was presented using science. When they showed you the future, it was based on innovation and technology and science. So the flying cars, the domed cities, the end of labor, it was a pretty fine middle-class fantasy of leisure and prosperity! It was a complete brainwash job.
 

Promotional photo from 1981 by Robert Matheu (via Club DEVO)

I keep waiting for that World’s Fair vision to materialize myself.

Yeah, well, forget it.
 
Read more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
|
12.06.2022
07:26 pm
|
The Material Girl Goes Punk: Listen to Madonna’s Rare Demo Tape From 1979
08.23.2022
04:53 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Madonna just wants to be punk. Doesn’t everybody?

In 1979 Madonna was dating musician Dan Gilroy of the Breakfast Club. The pair were living in a converted synagogue in Queens, New York, poor but happy pursuing their respective careers which at the time for Madonna was her quest to be a dancer. Things weren’t exactly going great in that department for Madonna so Gilroy taught her how to play the drums, which she took to pretty quickly. This led to an explosion of creativity from the 21-year-old pre-Material Girl Madonna—she wrote lyrics, and the music to accompany them. She learned to play a few chords on the guitar and sing. In 2008, The Daily Beast released tapes recorded by Gilroy back in the day when he and Madonna were together. He also spoke about some of the first songs she wrote and recorded on his old cassette player. The article itself refers to this work as the “lost Madonna tapes.” And that description feels accurate as the songs you are about to listen to, written, performed, and recorded by Madonna along with Gilroy, Angie Smit on bass, and Dan’s brother Ed on guitar, come from her short time fronting the Breakfast Club. They were self-released by Madonna on cassette in 1979. She had only been in New York for about a year beforehand. She would, with Gilroy’s encouragement and help, travel to France to work as a dancer and backup singer in a Parisian disco. By 1981 she was singing her first record contract with Gotham and, as they say, the rest is history.


Madonna (center) and the Breakfast Club. Photos via Youtube.
 

 

A photo of dark-haired Madonna during her time in the Breakfast Club.
 

Hardcore Madonna fans are likely aware of this period of Madonna’s development as a pop star thanks to the 2019 documentary, Madonna and the Breakfast Club (it’s out there streaming on multiple platforms if you’re interested in checking it out). Hardcore fans will also know Madonna has been known to perform versions of these songs (and other early material) live. Here’s the thing—much like the early days of the Go-Go’s, Madonna is definitely flexing her affinity for punk rock while mixing it with her own brand of spirited pop which the entire world would soon embrace and others would emulate. Now, if you’ve never heard this version of Madonna, and dig your punk with a side of pop, you are going to love these raw jams. It’s also quite compelling to hear them, knowing what was to come from Madonna in a few short years. The demo itself (which contains other recordings), went to auction in 2009 and sold for an astonishing $6400.

So before it disappears online (as it does from time to time), listen to four songs from the demo right here.

Four songs from Madonna’s self-released demo cassette with the Breakfast Club, 1979. Includes ‘Shit on the Ground/Safe Neighborhood,’ ‘Shine a Light,’ ‘Little Boy,’ and ‘Love Express.’

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
08.23.2022
04:53 pm
|
A 45-minute ‘God Save the Queen’ for HM Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee!


 
“A report in 2019 revealed that Queen Elizabeth II and her family cost the British people £67 million per year,” says grateful subject Andrew Liles, introducing his elongated version of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” The monarchy is a sweet deal for Britons, since the royals put on the occasional horse show starring Tom Cruise to thank the common people for expending their lives in toil so that their betters may luxuriate among jeweled combs and Sèvres tea services.

Now, Liles has found a musical way to tell the royals “you’re welcome” for the generalized misery that supports their year-round debauch: extending Her Maj’s favorite Pistols choon from a length of about three minutes to 45, one for each year since 1977. In all likelihood, this is the very melody she will be humming this morning while she consumes a year of your wages for breakfast.

Unfortunately, there’s still no future, but on the bright side, there’s a lot more of it!
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
|
05.19.2022
03:08 pm
|
Dennis Bovell MBE on the Pop Group’s ‘Y in Dub,’ with exclusive live audio!
03.14.2022
07:40 am
Topics:
Tags:


Dennis Bovell, Mark Stewart, and Gareth Sager (photo by Chiara Meattelli)
 
On Y in Dub, released digitally last year, producer Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell MBE and the Pop Group revisit every track on their 1979 Radar Records album Y and single “She Is Beyond Good and Evil,” creating looking-glass complements to the originals that seem long overdue. In advance of the album’s vinyl release on April 8, Bovell gave Dangerous Minds a tour of Y in Dub‘s vast, echoing mental space. 

If you can cast your mind back to when you first encountered the Pop Group, what was it about them that made you want to work with them? What were your first impressions of the band?

My first impressions of the band were that, here was a bunch of budding young musicians who could handle jazz riffing and were also into, not tuneful singing, but meaningful lyrics, you know. I think to say something is better than to be beautifully in tune and saying nothing. I applauded their militancy and their approach to music in general, their likes and their dislikes. And in fact, later on in life, Bruce Smith, the drummer, joined Linton Kwesi Johnson and me with the Dub Band.

I wanted to ask about that too, because I think the Pop Group and Linton Kwesi Johnson co-headlined a number of shows together, right?

Absolutely.

Can you tell me about that? Were you at the controls ever for the Pop Group—

No, no. I had worked with both of them, and then by that time I was, like, more in the studio person than being out on live gigs, because by then, I had had it with live gigs, to be honest, you know: the confusion, the lack of organization, the long traveling hours and then being expected to perform like a circus flea, you know, I’d had it with that by then, and they hadn’t! So they were about to experience that, while I was about to crawl back into the studio with my normal self, work at my own pace.

Are you maybe ten years older then they are? They were quite young when they recorded this.

They still are quite young. [Laughter] I never really thought about how much older I was than them, but I guess that made them listen to me as the producer.

Nowadays, when I listen to the original record, but also this dub set, it strikes me that they were such young people—I think Mark was still a teenager.

I think he was about seventeen or something, yeah.

But the music in a way—I know what you’re saying about everything not being perfectly in tune—but at the same time the music is kind of sophisticated.

Absolutely.

It doesn’t sound to me like a bunch of young people playing.

Well, a lot of people said that about Coltrane. [Laughs] He was never on time, he was never in tune, but he was genius.
 

 
So how did you approach this dub set of Y?

First of all, we made sure the tapes were still playable, were still audible, and then we passed them over from analog to digital files. File by file, right? Each file: the kick drum file, switch it over, the snare drum—the whole recording. And then we went into a digital room with a young lad called Dave McEwen, and he kind of helped us to put them on a digital level where I could actually revisit each channel and have full control over it, as it were.

So I had the files transferred to digital files, and so we could manipulate them on the Pro Tools level. And then we put them in a computer and then sent them back onto an analog desk, right? So I was just using the computer to synchronize the files, but when the files came back, they were coming back to an analog desk, and I was equalizing them as I felt for that room, for those speakers, and giving the right amount of delay, et cetera, just to kind of take us back into the analog age, but using digital files.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
|
03.14.2022
07:40 am
|
Nina Hagen’s ‘Nunsexmonkrock’: Greatest (and weirdest) unsung masterpiece of the postpunk era?
02.02.2022
02:06 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Nina Hagen’s 1982 album NunSexMonkRock is one of the single most ground-breaking and far-out things ever recorded and it deserves to be considered a great—perhaps the very greatest—unsung masterpiece of the post-punk era.

I’ll take it even further: To my mind, it’s on the same level as PiL’s Metal Box, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica or Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Or The Dreaming by Kate Bush.

There I’ve said it.

Make no mistake about it, artistically NunSexMonkRock is a monumentally important recording.

It’s also something you can buy used for a single penny on Amazon. There is no mention whatsoever of the album in Simon Reynolds’ Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. The Allmusic review of NunSexMonkRock is but a single sentence. The Quietus doesn’t give a shit about it, nor does The Wire. In fact, there is almost nothing of any substance written about the album online anywhere. Hardly any music blogs have ever deigned to even mention it. Google the title, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

That doesn’t mean that NunSexMonkRock doesn’t have its hard-core passionate admirers—there are dozens of Amazon reviews and almost all of them are five-star raves—but we’re talking about something that was obscure 40 years ago when it came out. Even if you could easily pick it up at the local mall then—and for a while there, you could—few did. I would imagine that most people who have discovered the charms of NunSexMonkRock since it was first released have done so primarily because they saw it in a $1 bargain bin and it looked weird so they picked it up. (Every used copy of NunSexMonkRock on vinyl is pristine, it’s virtually guaranteed.)
 

 
Luckily for both of us, you don’t have to take my word for any of this, I can make my case for the epic holy/demonic genius of NunSexMonkRock with the music itself—thanks YouTube—which is neither wholly punk, nor rock, nor opera, nor really anything even remotely recognizable as any previously known genre of music. Already a category of one, NunSexMonkRock appears to have no obvious influences either. Reliable adjectives fall by the wayside when you are confronted with such an anarchic artistic anomaly. Because it’s so very much out on its own peculiar limb, it’s completely timeless. (Musically at least, but lyrically Hagen makes a cryptic prophecy about the then leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who up and died the year the album came out.) NunSexMonkRock could have been recorded 40 years ago, yesterday, or a thousand years from now and it just wouldn’t matter.

The album inhabits a territory so utterly exotic and unclassifiable that the creator herself would never again venture that far out. NunSexMonkRock is a zany, oddball, sexy, freaky as fuck and totally revolutionary masterpiece of modern music. At the center of this evil maelstrom is Hagen’s multi-layered, multi-octave and gymnastically operatic voice, a unique hybrid of Maria Callas, Zarah Leander, Yma Sumac and Mercedes McCambridge doing the voice of the demon Pazuzu in The Exorcist...

Rolling Stone called NunSexMonkRock the “most unlistenable” album ever made. Au contraire. It’s an incredibly weird album, let there be no doubt about THAT, but once you’ve gotten over the initial shock, NunSexMonkRock is as catchy as hell. “Most unlistenable”? Although that sounds like a dare I personally would be willing to take Rolling Stone up on, it’s not even remotely true.
 

 
Nevertheless(!), let’s ease into it, shall we, and start off with what is probably NunSexMonkRock‘s most accessible number, the unstoppable riff-driven rocker “Born in Xixax” that leads off side two of the album. This features the great Chris Spedding on guitar. Tell me this riff isn’t as good as “All Day and All of the Night” or “Jumping Jack Flash.”
 

“This is Radio Yerevan and this is the news…”

Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
|
02.02.2022
02:06 pm
|
Completely brilliant sculptures of the cast of UK cult TV show ‘The Young Ones’
08.25.2021
05:55 am
Topics:
Tags:


A sculpture of actor Adrian Edmondson in character as Vyvyan Basterd from the UK cult televsion series, ‘The Young Ones.’
 
At Toy-Con in London in 2020, one of the exhibitors was UK sculptor, artist, and toymaker Mike Strict, who we can all thank for making our mid-80s dreams come true by sculpting up figures based on the unforgettable characters from the UK sitcom The Young Ones. Only twelve episodes exist of The Young Ones, but the impact the show made is still felt by its dedicated fan base to this day. Strict chose to create three sculpts/figures of fictional Scumbag University undergrad students Vyvyan Basterd; an angry heavy metal fan and medical student, played by Adrian (Ade) Edmondson; Rick, a sociology student and genuinely unlikable make-believe anarchist, played by the late Rik Mayall; and Neil Wheedon Watkins Pye, the lentil-loving, suicidal hippie played by Nigel Planer.

Usually, Strict is a strictly one-off kind of toy/figure/sculptor, but this time he did create more than one of his Young Ones figures, sold at Toy-Con. It’s not clear how many Strict made, but what I can tell you is that it appears they were all, rather unsurprisingly, sold. However, that does not mean you are out of luck if this is exactly what your collectible collection is missing, as Strict does accept commissions. At Toy-Con, his Rik, Vyvyan, and Neil figures sold for $75 USD—something to keep in mind if you’re going to try to acquire one. Much of Strict’s work is dark and creepy (YAY!) and includes nods to horror films. So if you’ve ever wanted a play-set based on the 1973 film The Wicker Man starring Christopher Lee, then Strict is your man. Or, perhaps you’ve been pining away for a sculpted diorama of Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, featuring their iconic image of a man in a hat caught in the crosshair of a weapons scope. Because, yeah, Strict made one of those in 2019.
 

Rick.
 

Neil and his everpresent pot of lentils.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
|
08.25.2021
05:55 am
|
Lydia Lunch sells out*
04.29.2021
09:46 am
Topics:
Tags:


Photo by Jasmine Hirst
 
*As if.

As reported at Pitchfork and elsewhere, Lydia Lunch is selling the rights to her life’s work. According to a March 25 press release, this would transfer “all intellectual rights and copyright ownership” of “all of her written articles, compositions, the majority of her Master Recordings, books, artworks, photography and more.” This would include 61 published works, nearly 400 compositions, and Lydia’s “ownership interest” in 326 master recordings. The ultimate buyer—obviously a person of wealth and refined taste who would respect the cultural and historical significance of such a body of work—will be able to exploit the material as they see fit.

Valuing transgressive art might have been a difficult thing in the past, but with a few decades of distance, what was once underground and perhaps violated cultural norms—like Fingered for instance—becomes history. (And in this case, it also gets uploaded to PornHub.) And that’s not to say that it’s “safer”—we’re talking about Lydia Lunch, for chrissakes—but that it can be more readily turned into a more mainstream commodity than in the past. 

It will be interesting to see what happens here. I asked Lydia a few questions over email, her answers below, but I think it’s worth mentioning that in the past two years, I personally have purchased seven Lydia Lunch authored, or related items—vintage vinyl pressings of Queen of Siam and 13.13, a newer vinyl version of 13.13, and three books, one by Lydia, the recent “oral history” Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over by Nick Soulsby (which I contributed to) and a book of her interviews with RE/Search’s V. Vale that I just bought. I realize that my spending habits aren’t the same as most people’s, but I’m a good example of someone who has spent, you know, more than $100 on Lydia-related products in the past 24 months.

What made you decide to do this?

Lydia Lunch: I have managed to own everything I’ve done, was able to release as much material as I have in various formats over the years, produce other artists, curate spoken word shows for decades, host workshops for writers, collaborate with so many incredibly creative artists, tour extensively…it would be a great relief if someone would step in and conceive possibilities that can allow me to carry on.

It would be extremely helpful to have support for my podcast The Lydian Spin with Tim Dahl, which has over 90 episodes online available for free.  I consider it an audio museum where we promote other artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc.  It is a mandatory platform not only to give voice to other artists to express their vision, but a vehicle for myself and Tim to try to make sense of the almost unfathomable mess this country is trying to lift itself out of after four years of complete absurdity.

I’m working on a documentary with Jasmine Hirst - Artists-Depression/Anxiety & Rage. We’ve interviewed over 35 artists and a few therapists and will have it finished by fall. An important subject especially now.
 

 
I have an LP finished with Tim Dahl’s psycho-ambient trio GRID, and a slinky jazz-noir LP with the amazing chanteuse and songwriter Sylvia Black. I’m working on a play. RETROVIRUS is waiting for shows to open up. All of this, as usual, self produced amd self financed…even I can only do so much without some financial support especially now for fuck’s sake. HA! Or should I wait for Spotify to cough up half a cent for every song they play?

How do you put a dollar value on your life’s work?

I can’t. But I’m open to proposals. Also after 43 years it begins to feel like a humongous invisible beast of sound and vision hanging over my head, or to quote Lawrence Ferlinghetti a “Coney Island of the Mind”. It would be great if someone stepped in who wanted to run The Cyclone.
 

“My Amerikkka” by Lydia Lunch
 
How would a potential purchaser do the same?

They would have 100 years to figure it out! There must be someone creative enough to find methods that I don’t have the time or energy to pursue, since I continue to create in multiple formats and have no intention of slowing down.
 

“Collateral Damage” by Lydia Lunch
 
What’s the process you envision?

Getting the word out that this material is available, targeting forward-thinking people who understand not only the future possibilities, but have an understanding of history as well. I was lucky to work with Nicholas Martin who recently acquired my archives for the Fales Library at New York University and is establishing a digital museum. But I still own the copyright on over 380 musical compositions, and partial ownership in most of the master recordings, 61 published works, my artwork and photography, etc. It’s all just really too much for me to manage as I continue to create. Selling this to the right party would also allow me to independently continue to produce and collaborate with other artists which is extremely important to me.
 

“Casualty” by Lydia Lunch
 
How does a serious possible buyer contact you?

Through my manager Tom Garretson at tgarretson@lydia-lunch.net

The trailer for Beth B’s documentary ‘Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over.’

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.29.2021
09:46 am
|
Penny Rimbaud of Crass imagines the other Rimbaud during the deadliest battle of World War 1
10.08.2020
08:29 am
Topics:
Tags:


Photo credit Maryann Morris  

Far be it for me to say that Penny Rimbaud—novelist, poet, painter and co-founder of the mythical anarcho punk band Crass—missed his calling in life, but whenever I listen to him speak, I’m immediately put in mind of such great actors as Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris. My word does this fellow have a mellow bellow! And even if performing Shakespeare onstage wasn’t in the cards for this most radical of radicals, what about doing voice-overs for TV ads? He could’ve been rich!

But I don’t think it’s ever been money that motives our Penny, is it? But still… THAT VOICE.

Recently Rimbaud announced his new album Arthur Rimbaud In Verdun, out November 20th via One Little Independent Records, a series of poems set to music about his namesake, Arthur Rimbaud, witnessing the carnage of the battle of Verdun, where over 700,000 casualties were sustained by the French and German armies, with over 300,000 slaughtered and nine villages destroyed.

The work is described as: “a fiction constructed by Penny, out of interest as to the possible outcome, places the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (who died in 1891) at the historic and tragic battle of Verdun in 1916. The idea being that Penny found something to be explored in the possibilities of the young vagabond and his perception of such drastic events. Dark and vivid jazz-infused ambience is punctured by Penny’s spoken word lyricism painting pictures of the chaotic experience of World War 1.”

Rimbaud is joined on the recording by Evan Parker, Louise Elliott, and Ingrid Laubrock, all on tenor sax. You can preview “Part 6” below.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.08.2020
08:29 am
|
Open Up and Bleed: WILD footage of Iggy & The Stooges performing ‘1970’ IN 1970!
06.17.2020
11:50 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
There are many urban legends in rock and roll. One of them is that Stooges bassist Dave Alexander was fired after he showed up totally shitfaced for a gig at the massive Goose Lake rock festival in 1970. Alexander was alleged to have been too fucked up to stand, let alone play his instrument, so Iggy sacked him.

Sidestepping the matter of “wow, this dude was too messed up even for… the Stooges?”—did it really happen like that? Well, maybe not, according to an exciting new find coming to you soon from the heroic Third Man Records label:

The apocryphal tale of the Stooges performance at the Goose Lake festival has been told countless times over the past five decades. Bassist Dave Alexander, due to nerves or overindulgence or whatever you choose to fill in the blank, absolutely spaces in front of 200,000 attendees. He does not play a single note on stage. He is summarily fired by Iggy Pop immediately following the gig. Here starts the beginning of the end of the Stooges.

But what if that simply…wasn’t the case? What if you could prove otherwise? Well, it’d be the proto-punk equivalent of having an immediate, on-the-scene, man on the street report of all those folkies booing Dylan’s electric set at Newport in ‘65. Irrefutable evidence of what ACTUALLY went down.

Found buried in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse amongst other tasty analog artifacts of the same era, the 1/4” stereo two-track tape of the Stooges complete performance at Goose Lake on August 8th, 1970 is the Rosetta Stone for fans of this seminal band.

Not only is this the last ever performance of the original godhead Stooges line-up, but it is the ONLY known soundboard recording of said line-up. Playing the entirety of their canonical 1970 masterpiece Fun House, the sound, the performance, everything about this record is revelatory.

Would you believe that…Alexander actually DID play bass on this occasion? Or that, despite grievous failures on some songs, Alexander is damn solid on others? Especially on the bass-led songs “Dirt” and “Fun House”? Does Iggy provoke the crowd to tear down festival barriers? Did the powers that be pull the plug on the Stooges? So many questions are answered only to have more arise.

Released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the performance, Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970, is the rare release that literally rewrites the history of these Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees.

A heavy drinker, Dave Alexander died at the young age of 27 in 1975. He was name-checked a few years later in Iggy’s spoken-word intro to The Idiot’s “Dum Dum Boys”:

“How ‘bout Dave? OD’d on alcohol.”

 

 
The Stooges: Live at Goose Lake: August 8th 1970 will be released on August 7th. Pre-order here from the Third Man online store.
 

Iggy and The Stooges at their most primal prime, taped at the Goose Lake music festival in Michigan in 1970.

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
06.17.2020
11:50 am
|
Hardcore noise rock covers of AC/DC classics (plus punk rock comics!) is what the world needs now
06.05.2020
07:59 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
When it was originally founded by Mark Fischer (along with his pal Rob Syers), Chicago’s SKiN GRAFT was a purveyor of underground/DIY comics and low-brow punk ‘zines ethos. Conceived and furiously drawn by the pair, Fischer’s and Syers’ comics were sold at punk shows in St. Louis, at high schools during lunch, and local comic and record shops. Thanks to several characters they created, such as “The Zeppelin Patrol” a group of outer space hippies (lovingly inspired by one of the kings of underground comics, the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Gilbert Shelton), “Serious Brown” (best described as a private dick in Muppet form), and “Hot Satan” (who is still proudly represented in the labels logo), SKiN Graft would soon catch the attention of comics giant Caliber Press. At the time, Caliber was considered one of the largest publishers of indie comics in the U.S., and published two issues of SKiN GRAFT, distributing them worldwide before SKiN GRAFT decided to switch gears and try their hand at putting out records. Their first, with St. Louis, Missouri math rock band Dazzling Killmen, combined both aggressive punk rock jams with, of course, comics, for a 7” split in 1991 with Minneapolis spaz-punk band Mother’s Day.

Jumping to 1995 would see the SKiN GRAFT release SIDES 1-4, the first installment in a series of singles and comic book sets featuring bands performing songs “influenced” by AC/DC. Artists on the four-song record included Shellac (formed by Steve Albini and drummer Todd Trainer with the former bassist for the Volcano Suns, Bob Weston), Brise-Glace, Big’n, and Chicago-based noise rock band, U.S. Maple. The release included “crossover” comics—think Batman vs. The Beatles (issue #222, 1970), or one of my personal favorites, the comic collision of Star Trek and the X-Men, in 1996. Instead of having the comics included in SIDES 1-4 directly associated with AC/DC, Fischer and Syers instead hit up their comic catalog, resurrecting Hot Satan, Johnny Oedipus, and Serious Brown in new comics. According to Fischer, the idea for SIDES 1-4 was also inspired by the noise put out by Rene Herbst and his label Gasoline Boost Records in Germany (which included Big’n).
 

Tail Spins #19 (December 1994/January1995). Here Fischer and Syers paid homage to one of the very first comics owned by Fischer, Captain America #203 while homaging the great Jack Kirby. This image is a part of the digital comics released today with ‘SIDES 1-4.’
 
SIDES 1-4 was only produced on vinyl, and noise-loving music fans consider the album a highlight of their record collection. Starting on June 5th and coinciding with Bandcamp’s June “fee-waving day,” SKiN GRAFT will give fans a chance to digitally download a newly remastered SIDES 1-4, various comic sets and a limited number of 7” vinyl copies. All this talk about Hot Satan, AC/DC, and loud, rowdy punk rock got me, an AC/DC lifer, wondering about how some of the creative minds got behind this project, and how they got their first dose of a band beloved by everyone. I mean, have you ever met a person who didn’t like AC/DC? I know I never have. Here’s how U.S. Maple guitarist Todd Rittman, Bob Weston, SKiN GRAFT’s Mark Fischer remember the first time they had their young minds blown by Australia’s greatest export, AC/DC:

Todd Rittman:

“I remember when Highway to Hell (1979) came out. I was 10 and just starting taking an interest in rock music. My best friend had an older brother who would play us his records, and I remember having my mind totally blown forever by AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin. The sound of the guitars and tribal drums, Bon Scott’s voice, and how truly happy he was to be doomed to eternal damnation all really impressed me. All I ever heard growing up was the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Hard rock brought a whole new palette of colors to my brain. I used to go to a record store called The Flip Side that was within walking distance of the townhouse I grew up in, just look at the LP covers and plan which ones I would spend my money on (once I ever got any). I probably spent the most time looking at the cover of If You Want Blood You Got It (1978) wondering what kind of deranged criminal mind would think of such an image (and actually wondering if it was real!) I’ve never been the same.”

Bob Weston:

“I first heard AC/DC every morning from a boombox that the leather-vested burnouts blasted on the bus to junior high school in 1977. I loved it. Maybe it was “Dirty Deeds”...?”

Mark Fischer:

“I felt the same way as Todd! AC/DC’s cover art seemed a lot seedier and more dangerous than their contemporaries. The album cover of Highway to Hell scared me in all of the right places. I knew my parents would not approve, but it was irresistible - like low hanging forbidden fruit.”

So as we’re all nodding in agreement about Fischer, Weston, and Rittman’s feelings on AC/DC, I have more good news regarding upcoming plans to expand on SKiN GRAFT’s musical exploration and experimentation of/with AC/DC. More covers are planned for the forthcoming SIDES 5-6 such as “Let There Be Rock” by the thunderous Zeni Geva (Japan), and everyone’s favorite AC/DC sing-along about a ding-dong’s two best buddies, “Big Balls” by Palace Contribution (featuring Will Oldham aka, psilocybin connoisseur Bonnie “Prince” Billy). All four songs from SIDES 1-4 can be cranked all the way up below and purchased right here while you scroll through a few of the fantastic accompanying comics in all their delinquent glory.
 

 

An assortment of SKiN GRAFT comic characters.
 

 

ENTER THE KARATE CHIMP!
 

A promotional ad for ‘SIDES 1-4.’
 
HT: With thanks to Mark Fischer and Ron Kretch.

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
06.05.2020
07:59 am
|
Page 1 of 139  1 2 3 >  Last ›