Above, artist Kembra Pfahler and friend.

Glamorous new video from Dangerous Minds pal Kembra Pfahler, it’s The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black’s new song “Bring Back the Night.” Directed by Bijoux Altamirano. Might be NSFW.
 

 
Johnny Thunders and Syl Sylvain on French TV in 1981.

Johnny is enjoying a cocktail while Syl miraculously makes a grand piano sound like an acoustic guitar.

Is it my imagination or is the French guy conducting the interview/interrogation acting like an arrogant prick? Johnny could care less, but I would have slapped the fucker for his snide remark about the NY Dolls and his “you drink too much” comment.
 

 
While Steven Tyler’s heart palpitates like a little bird in his chest and Jennifer Lopez does her best to keep her lunch down, Iggy Pop is the definition of self-parody as he lip syncs and flexes his stretch marks on American Idol.

Punk may not be dead but its varicose veins are showing.

Iggy, I still love you but I’m done defending you.
 

 
Thanks, I think, to Jack Sonni.

 
Black Joy features live footage of Psychic TV performing in Manchester in 1988 and the Subterrania Club in London in 1991.

A collaboration between the band and film maker Karen Bentham, Black Joy was previously only available as two separate VHS tapes. You can purchase it on DVD at See Of Sound’s website or, thanks to the always generous folks at SOS, you can watch it here. The DVD does come with a bunch of extra bells and whistles.
 

 
Lene Lovich live at Studio 54 in 1981. Thomas Dolby on synthesizer.

The sound lacks punch, but there’s not much live performance footage of Lene out there and this is better than most.

The set consists of 11 tunes including “New Toy,” “Angels,” “Home,” and of course “Lucky Number.” This was one of the first live shows ever at Studio 54.
 

 
Breaking with the mainstream media about what happened during the March 26 protest in London, this young woman offers a compelling eyewitness counter-narrative. The way she saw it, it was the police who provoked the demonstrators, and not the other way around.

More about YouTuber “Strange Sanum” here. And if you haven’t checked out Laurie Penny’s important essay at Boing Boing titled “Lies in London.” it’s an absolute must-read.
 

 
Dangerous Minds recently featured Wolfgang Buld’s Punk In England. Well, our good friends at See Of Sound have have made available Buld’s first documentary on British punk, Punk In London. This is from a re-mastered DVD and looks and sounds far better than my old VHS copy.

This acclaimed feature length music documentary comes to special edition DVD featuring incredible live performances from: The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Jam, Boomtown Rats, The Adverts, The Lurkers and many more! Digitally remastered to the highest standard from the original 1978 negatives by BBC Post Production, this access-all-areas documentary really captures the punk phenomenon in all its raw power and energy. Featuring early live performances from The Clash, X-Ray Spex, The Jam, The Adverts and interviews with those who strived for anarchy in the UK, Punk in London is a unique and powerful record of punk life as it really happened in the late 1970s. Filled with stunning live performance and insightful interviews, this remastered DVD-9 release features incredible picture and sound clarity along with previously unseen bonus footage of The Clash in Munich. Also included is a retrospective interview with director, Wolfgang Buld and trailers for other Odeon documentaries.”

You may want to own this one. You can buy it here.

“Why don’t you want to appear in our movie?”
Jean-Jacques Burnel: “Because I’m not a prostitute.”
 

 
Via Dorian Cope’s essential On This Deity blog:

Forty-one years ago today occurred the all-time single-most revolutionary political act in rock’n’roll, when Moriaki Wakabayashi – bass player of Tokyo’s underground legends Les Rallizes Denudés – accompanied several other members of the Japanese Red Army Faction in the armed hijack of Japan Airlines Fight 351. Here is a full account of this extraordinary event from Julian Cope’s 2007 Japrocksampler:

“In the early morning of March 31st, nine members of the Japanese Red Army Faction, all aged between nineteen and twenty-one years old, boarded a Japan Airways Boeing 727 at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, on an internal flight bound for Fukuoka. At 7.33 a.m., soon after the aircraft had reached its cruising height, the nine terrorists stormed the cockpit armed with pipe bombs and samurai swords, screaming the fearful words: ‘We are Ashitano Jeo!’ From this first moment of the hijacking, many of the 129 passengers aboard, still bleary-eyed and expecting a forty-five minute flight, had become hysterical with fear because their assailants were screaming longhairs who were aligning themselves with a famous Manga outsider TV hero who’d striven to win a boxing championship in a cartoon series of the same name. Like the Manson Family’s daubing of phrases such as ‘Political Piggy’ and ‘Helter Skelter’ around their crime scenes, the Yodo-go hijackers decision to invoke the ‘divine’ power of cartoon hero Ashitano Jeo was way too far outside all frames of reference for the stricken passengers.

Demanding that the pilot take them all to Cuba, the hijackers were furious to discover that the Yodo-go had only enough fuel for its original destination, and they reluctantly agreed to land at Fukuoka’s Itatsuki Airport. For three long days, the Yodo-go sat on the tarmac as negotiations took place. Eventually, a compromise was reached. The authorities agreed that the airliner should be allowed to fly instead to Pyongyang, in Communist North Korea, if twenty-three women and children were allowed to leave the airline in return for a total refuelling and the substitution of the Japanese transport minister Shinjuru Yamamura as hostage. The aeroplane set off westwards, but the Yodo-go’s pilot Shinki Iashida hoodwinked the hijackers into landing at South Korea’s Gimpo Airport, at 3pm. Believing that the runway was a part of North Korea’s Pyongyang Airport, the hijackers sought to confirm this by asking a member of the ground crew for a photo of dictator Kim Il Sung as proof of their northerly position. Denied this proof, the nervous hijackers then panicked and refused all food and drink. However, they eventually accepted that all the passengers – including many US nationals – should be allowed to leave the aircraft, in return for permission to fly to North Korea. The plane left Gimpo airport and headed north, landing in the disused Minimu Airport, where the North Korean authorities hailed the nine as cultural heroes, granted them political asylum, and insisted that they remain in North Korea, where they received military medals and were given ‘luxury accommodation’ at the Village of the Revolution.

In Japan, the ramifications were massive, for the hijacking was both humiliating for the Japanese authorities, and disturbing to the wider world, who were then still reeling from the bombing of Milan’s Piazza Fontana by right wing extremists the previous December. Furthermore, the presence of so many US nationals aboard the Yodo-go had brought the CIA to Japan and the names of the nine hijackers only emerged via the media in dribs and drabs. Slowly, the Japanese underground realised that this hijack had indeed been the work of their own people, many having been students from Osaka University or Kyoto’s forward-thinking Doshishi University. But for Japan’s burgeoning underground rock’n’roll scene, the strangest presence of all among the hijackers was that of Moriaki Wakabayashi, bass player with ‘The Radical Music Black Gypsy Band’ Les Rallizes Denudés.”

[ Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler pps. 123-124]
 

 
Via Dangerous Minds pal Glen E. Friedman’s blog:

In May 1975 Die Electric Eels recorded two slabs of what have to be some of the greatest proto punk ever. Agitated (listen in the player below) has all the punk elements: short song, sloppy instrumentation, raw production and a lousy solo.

In 1978, Rough Trade released the Agitated 45 (RT 8). Guitarist John Morton illustrated the cover and wrote the titles in a faux German style, which was taken at face value by many who initially bought it, exactly the sort of confusion and ambiguity to which the Eels aspired. Between the sounds, still extreme by 1978 standards, and the gradual realization that “Die Electric Eels” were actually a crazy band from Cleveland that had broken up three years earlier made it that much more impressive.

Nick Knox who later became the drummer for the Cramps was also in this band.

A bit reminicent of early Black Flag recordings with Keith Morris, and if you can imagine, even more raw.

 
Killing Joke lurk in rock and roll’s shadow world where they weave with electronic instruments of mystic fire magical incantations and dark grinding musical shapes that linger in the air like Aleister Crowley’s opium-scented nightsweats.

I’ve been in on the Joke ever since I saw their epic performance at NYC’s Peppermint Lounge in 1981. Killing Joke is not a band you watch, it’s a band you become a part of. The zone between artist and audience is decimated in a pounding, unrelenting surge of energy and mantric mayhem. The apocalypse and resurrection in one blow to the head. Post-punk mindfuckers and proto-industrial metal pioneers, Killing Joke approach music like alchemy: it isn’t worth a shit if it doesn’t change something.

This video footage of Killing Joke performing at Philly’s legendary punk venue the East Side Club in 1981 is history, plain and simple. Not even the crude technology thru which these signals were recorded could constrain the power and urgency of KJ.