Dangerous Minds has checked in on English actor/comedian/musician Adrian Edmondson before, to talk about The Idiot Bastard Band, his group with Bonzo Dog/Monty Python habitué Neil Innes, and his beloved BBC comedy The Young Ones, on which he played the insane and violent postcard-punker archetype Vyvyan Basterd. But we’ve only given passing mention to his fine band The Bad Shepherds, and that’s just absurd. The band’s specialty is Celtic folk covers of classic punk, though songs like Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding” and Kraftwerk’s “The Model” have found their way into the repertoire. They’ve released three albums worth of such interpretations, 2009’s Yan, Tyan, Tethera, Methera!, 2010’s By Hook Or By Crook and last year’s Mud, Blood & Beer.
 

 
Given Edmondson’s history in comedy, you could be forgiven for assuming this was a joke band, an inversion of the tired old novelty punk covers trip. But before you leap to conclude that, hear Edmondson out in these excerpts from an excellent recent interview with Outline Online. 

The whole mechanic of taking on cover songs is a huge mantle for you to take on; has there ever been a song that’s been too difficult, that’s wriggled away from you, that can’t be tamed?


Oh, hundreds of ‘em. Loads of ‘em. Yeah, we try loads of stuff and what we do probably represents about a quarter of what we try to do. It’s not that we don’t like the ones that don’t work, it’s just we haven’t found a way of doing it. We generally take the songs completely to pieces and then put them back together again without thinking about the original and try and find instrumentation for them. Primarily they fall down on lyrics because I’m a middle-aged man and they’ve got to suit my age, and most folk and most punk songs surprisingly do because they’re surprisingly adult in content, most of the punk canon, y’know. They were written by people who were really thinking; they’re not just solipsistic, selfish kind of ‘ooh, I’m in love, I’m not in love’ songs. They’re about social commentary and social protest and things like that and it’s very exciting. But some songs, for example, we’ve tried a few songs by The Damned and none of them worked because they’re all – and I don’t mean this to deride The Damned but they’re all just a bit childish when you take them to bits and you read the lyrics without thinking about what the music’s about. It just doesn’t work. It doesn’t go anywhere. We tried moving up the years as well thinking there must be a load of stuff in the 80s with Tears for Fears and OMD and stuff like that, so we scoured through those and tried to work on that and again, that kinda falls short, lyrically. It’s too childish. I mean, they’re brilliant, original things but they don’t fit the ethos of our band; they don’t become folk songs.

What is it about those genres that seem to lend themselves so well?


Because they’re forgotten songs and people all imagine that that sort of era is full of jumping up and down, shouting and spitting and it didn’t mean anything apart from anger in the performance. They’re disastrously wrong; they’re some of the most complex songs. The idea that all punk songs are three-chord wonders is completely erroneous. There are vastly complicated chord sequences and tuning in some of the songs we play.

The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The U.K.”
 

The Clash’s “London Calling”

After the jump, Motörhead’s “Ace Of Spades” and more…

 
Like… well, like a lot of other people—I’m hardly alone in this opinion—I’m prepared to call The Fat White Family the best new group in rock and roll. They’re obnoxious. They’re trashy. They’re brash, they’re young, they’re (quite) wasted and they don’t give a fuck. According to one journalist, they stink. Musically, they remind me of The Fall, The Birthday Party, The Cramps, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Captain Beefheart. They’re Marxists. They make completely insane videos and their debut album, Champagne Apocalypse, is one of the best things released last year. These randy, freaky, sleazy, druggy motherfuckers are committed.

What’s not to love?

If the epic “Wet Hot Beef (Parts I,II & III)” from their recent EP (a three-song/two song split with Taman Shud favoring Fat White Family) is anything to go by, 2014 is going to be their year, but right now, they’re broke and trying to raise some dosh to do a short American tour:

Alas, my budget for flying out to tour America currently stands at £3.47. With the rest of the group languishing in similar or worse financial hopelessness, we are turning to you, sisters and brothers, to fund our venture; don’t let those yanks go away thinking that all this country produces is middle of the road, safe as houses homogenized industry crap, send them the Fat White Family, make a difference, make a pledge….

In return for your pledge we are offering ourselves up body and soul, for the next 6 weeks we are on sale. You can have the band come around to your house and cook you dinner, you can have any member of the band give you a special massage, you can purchase a 25 track limited edition anthology of rarities and b-sides, you can have us do some casual labour on your property, there is no low to which we shall not comfortably stoop; the future of bad taste is in your hands, don’t let it slide through your fingers and mucky your shoes.

The list of available rewards for donating include: massages; a “Primal Scream workshop”(?); drum lessons; dinner for two with The Fat White Family cooked by a band member; you can sing backing vocals onstage with the group; be in one of their videos, get a tattoo from the drummer, some original art or even a show at your own home. They were also offering a limited edition CD of unreleased material with handmade artwork, but sadly they’ve all been snatched up already.

The Fat White Family’s US tour is supposed to be some dates at SXSW and then a crawl up the Eastern seaboard. I hope they get out to Los Angeles, too. In February, they’re taking their act on the road across the UK.
 

 

“Cream of the Young” (DO watch this one until the end, won’t you?)
 

“Wet Hot Beef (Parts I,II & III)”
 

“Auto Neutron”
 

“Heaven on Earth” (directed by the notorious comic artist Mike Diana)
 
Plenty more of The Fat White Family after the jump…

 
This might not be the very best footage of The Cramps you’ll ever see—that designation would probably be bestowed upon the infamous video shot at the Napa, CA mental hospital in 1978—but it’s most probably the second best. Oh yes…

This is The Cramps—Lux, Ivy, Nick Knox and Kid Congo Powers—caught live at the Mudd Club in NYC, at their prime, in 1981. The source for this was a broadcast of Paul Tschinkel’s Inner-Tube and it was apparently taped off the air. Recently it turned up on the Dime a Dozen torrent tracker and then on YouTube. I’ve owned—for about 25 years—a really good low generation dub of the final three songs, so to see the entire set is pretty glorious.

A few years ago, Paul Tschinkel teased the Internet by releasing a little bit of what he’s got and here’s what I wrote:

Since I was only ever able to catch a few of them on TV (I moved to NYC the year it went off the air), I was always on the look-out for bootlegs of a cable access program called Paul Tschinkel’s Inner-Tube, perhaps THE greatest (I can’t imagine what would compare to it) underground video archive of late 70, early 80s punk, post-punk, No Wave and New Wave music that exists.

The Gun Club, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, The Cramps, Blondie, Talking Heads, James Chance and the Contortions, Johnny Thunders, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Siouxsie and The Banshees… the list of bands seen on Inner-Tube goes on and on and on. Shows often shot in color, with two cameras and sound board audio. Performances taped at CBGB, Mudd Club, Danceteria, Max’s Kansas City, Irving Plaza and usually the camera was right up front.

Inner-Tube ran for ten years on Manhattan Cable (meaning that you could only watch it if you lived in Manhattan, the outer boroughs didn’t get it, TV Party, Midnight Blue or The Robin Byrd Show, either). Seriously, it was the best of the best. Unbelievable shit.

I’ve been waiting in vain for years, hoping for a proper DVD release of the “best of” Inner-Tube, but the rights issues would probably make that a nightmare. Now it looks like Tschinkel is starting to put some on YouTube. This should be encouraged!

I wrote that two years ago. Since then Paul has released precious little of his treasure trove on YouTube. Hopefully he’ll note the interest in this Cramps post and give us some more? Pretty please???

The sole downside of this amazing video is that Poison Ivy spends much of the time behind a big pillar, hidden from the camera. You do see her, but not as much as you might want to.

Set list:
“Don’t Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk”
“New Kind Of Kick”
“The Green Fuz”
“Can’t Find My Mind”
“Goo Goo Muck”
“Natives Are Restless”
“TV Set”
“Sunglasses After Dark”
“Voodoo Idol”
“Human Fly”
“I Was A Teenage Werewolf”
“Beautiful Gardens”

If this doesn’t get you off, then you don’t like rock and roll… and get the fuck off this blog.
 

 
The Ramones appeared on Nickelodeon’s Livewire in 1981, on the cusp of the release of their Pleasant Dreams LP. It could have just been a cool artifact of an important punk band incongruously showing up on a kids show. But no, some self-satisfied little weed decided to ask a wiseass question about producer Phil Spector’s involvement with the End of the Century album, not to actually find out the answer, but to show off how all “insidery” he was and to belittle the band.

To their immense credit, The Ramones answered the smartass’ pitifully thrown gauntlet with a great deal of class. Joey starts strong, and though he drifts off-topic, Johnny saves the moment with a succinct and thoughtful statement of purpose.
 

 
An amusing aside: when you go to the YouTube page for this video—which you’ll have to if you want to watch it, as embedding, unfortunately, is disabled—the uploader makes the claim that the smirking brat is a young Marilyn Manson. I think the differences in appearance outweigh the admittedly striking similarities. Not only is this trying-too-hard little fistpuppet’s facial structure not quite like Manson’s (cheeks and chin are both much wider), Manson spent his childhood and teens in Ohio and Florida, and the eminently punchable, way-too-proud-of-itself assface of the smug little taintbreather in the video is emitting an accent that’s pure New York. Plus, Manson would have been 12 then, and this kid seems more like 14 or 15 to me. Not ruling out the possibility altogether, and I certainly don’t fancy myself the last word on it, but my best educated guess/hunch is “nuh-uh.”
 

Behold: a wasteland where proper awe in the presence of genius vanishes like flatus into a squall.
 

Behold: actual young Marilyn Manson. I say “very close but no cigar,” but judge for yourself.
 
Lastly, what might have been a fine money-shot fades out too quickly, but stay attentive at the end, and you’ll catch Joey’s answer to the question from the girl in the awesomely Welcome Back Kotterish outfit. She, her question, and Joey’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it answer are all fantastic.

Watch it here.

This two-year old post from the Dangerous Minds archive is something we’ve noticed has been getting a lot of attention recently, so we’re moving it onto the front page again. The reason for renewed interest in this matter is that on January 2nd, the UK’s National Archive released some documents regarding Crass’s epic “Thatchergate” prank of 1982 (it had a bit of a long fuse, as you will see). They’re revealing on several accounts, not least for the level of blinkered-ness they indicate prevailed in the spy agencies back then…

There’s a lot of text here, but it’s instructive to read the news reports—there weren’t many—from the time in chronological order and see how the story was ultimately revealed. At the end of the post, I’ve added recent comments from Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant.

These days we’re used to seeing public figures like Sarah Palin and Scott Walker punked, but in the early 1980s, the avenues for media hacking just did not exist the way they do now. The infamous “Thatchergate” tape—an audio collage constructed by Crass bassist Peter Wright (aka “Sybil Right” and “Pete Wrong”) of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan “talking” about nuclear weapons and the sinking of the HMS Sheffield as a deliberate attempt to escalate the conflict in the Falklands War was one of the first. The “Thatchergate” tape was an event back then, especially in the squatter/anarcho-punk crowd that I was a part of in London at the time. To hear about Crass perpetrating the hoax of Ronald Reagan getting “caught on tape” threatening to nuke Europe (he’d show Russia who was boss!) was nothing short of a blow against Moloch!

Today, there are a little more than 2000 items that come up on Google for “Thatchergate” and most have nothing to do with Crass. This story should be a lot better known, it’s one of the greatest pranks in history:

From San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1983.

Washington. A fake tape of a purported conversation between President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was circulated in Europe this spring, possibly by the KGB, the State Department said yesterday.

“This type of activity fits the pattern of fabrications circulated by the Soviet KGB, although usually they involve fake documents rather than tapes,” the department said in a written response to reporter’s questions.

The department said that although the recording is of “poor quality,” a technical analysis revealed that the voices were those of Reagan and Thatcher.

But the department indicated the voices were spliced together and said they were not part of an actual conversation.

“We checked with the White House, which advised thay no such conversation took place,” the department said.

The President’s part in the recording apparently was lifted from his Nov. 22, 1982 speech on nuclear disarmament,” it said. “We are not sure where Mrs. Thatcher’s remarks came from.

The department said a copy of the tape was received by the U.S. embassy in the Netherlands a week before the British elections.

The tape dealt with the Falklands crisis and U.S. missiles in Britain, the department said.

It said, “From the drift of the tape, the evident purpose was to cause problems for Mrs. Thatcher by blaming her for the sinking of the British destroyer Sheffield and also for us by stirring trouble on the INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) issue.”

The Sheffield was sunk by Argentine forces last year during the war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Britain and the United Staes took part in a NATO decision to install intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe late this year as a counter to similar Soviet forces if an agreement on restriction such weapons is not reached.

The State Department said the tape-recording was sent with a covering letter from an anonymous person to Dutch journalists.

It is said an analysis by the language experts “suggests that the author was not a native speaker.”

The Reagan administration has contended for some time that the KGB has contended for some thime that the KGB has a forgery factory producing false documents to mislead target audiences.

It was also written up in The Sunday Times, on January 8, 1983

How the KGB fools the West’s press.

THE TAPE is heavy with static and puntuated with strange noises, but through it all can be heard the authentic voices of Ronald Reagan on the telephone: “If there is a conflict we shall fire missiles at our allies to see to it that the Soviet Union stays within its borders.”

At the other end of the telephone is Mrs. Thatcher. “You mean Germany?” she asks increduously.

“Mrs. Thatcher, if any country endagers our position we can decide to bomb the problem area and so remove the instability.”

If this is not hair-raising enough, we hear Mrs. Thatcher virtually admitting that she had the Belgrano sunk to end any chance of an agreement with Argentina. “Oh God!” says Reagan.

The whole conversation is fake. Both voices are real but the words spoken have been doctored, cut, rearranged and then expanded on the transcript of the tape. Every word from Reagan is extracted from his lengthy presidential address on nuclear strategy. When, for instance, he seems to swear at Mrs. Thatcher, he is in fact coming to the end of his speech and quoting a hymn: “Oh God of love, O king of peace.”

The tape surfaced in Holland just before last year’s British general election, but it never quite overcame the suspicions of Dutch journalists. They declined to publish the juicy exclusive, sent to them anonymously. But other journalists across the world have fallen for an increasing flow of such stories based on “authoritative” cables, memo and tapes. The State Department in Washington says they are all products of an increasingly sophisicated Russian campaign.

“They have accelerated their efforts and they have fine-tuned them,” claims Larry Semakis, deputy director of a State Department team that monitors what the Russians call “active measures.” He admits that “no one can specifically prove in a court of law that Soviet hand was on this or that item.” But he says there is a pattern in the use of forgeries which points unmistakably to the Russians.

The State Department believes that “active measures” are the responsibility of the KGB’s first directorate; that some forgeries go as high as the ruling Politburo for approval…

“[W]hich points unmistakably to the Russians”? I don’t think so…

Then one year later in The Observer newspaper on, Sunday, January 22, 1984, it was revealed that…

‘Soviet’ faked tape is rock group hoax

A TAPE recording, purporting to carry details of a secret telephone conversation between Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan, has been revealed as a hoax manufactured deliberately by an anarchist rock group.

The recording was taken to newspapers throughout Europe—including The Observer—but, apart from one Italian newspaper, nobody had been taken in by the hoax tape until it appeared in the Sunday Times earlier this month.

That newspaper described it as part of a KGB propaganda war. Unfortunately the tape was recorded not in Moscow but in an Essex farmhouse.

The New York correspondent of the paper reported that the State Department believed the tape was evidence of ‘an increasingly sophisticated Russian disinformation cam- paign.’

The real authors of the hoax tape, the anarchist punk rock group Crass, said that they had been ‘amused and amazed’ that the tape had been attributed to the KGB.

The recording first appeared in the offices of a number of Continental newspapers shortly before the British general election last year.

A covering note said it was a recording of a crossed line on which was heard part of the two leaders’ telephone conversation, and that the person who sent it wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Key lines in the tape include Mr. Reagan apparently asking why the Belgrano was sunk during the Fallrlands war, when Secretary of State Haig was nearing a peace agreement. Mrs Thatcher appears to reply: ‘Argentina was the invader. Force had to be used now, punishing them as quickly as possible.’

Mr. Reagan then says: ‘Oh God, it is not right. You caused the Sheffield to have been hit. Those missiles we followed on the screen. You must have, too, and not let them know.’

Later, in a discussion on nuclear strategy, Mr. Reagan is made to say: ‘If there is a conflict we shall fire missiles at our allies to see to it that the Soviet Union stays within its borders.’

The tape was first brought to The Observer by a Belgian journalist last June. We concluded, like most of the other newspapers, that it was a fake.

The quest for the real hand behind the tape led to an isolated farmhouse in north Essex, where the eight members of the band live with their children.

Reluctantly the members of the band, who sport names like Joy Be Vivre, G Sus and Sybil Right, admitted faking the tape. They showed how they had put it together over two and a half months, using parts of TV and radio broadcasts made by the two leaders, then overdubbing with telephone noises.

‘We wanted to precipitate a debate on those subjects to damage Mrs. Thatcher’s position in the election. We also did it because of the appaling way Tam Dalyell was treated over the Belgrano debate,’ they said.

‘We believe that although the tape is a hoax, what is said in it is in effect true.’

And there was more: From The Associated Press, Sunday, January 25, 1984
 

 

More still, plus the “Thatchergate” tape, after the jump…

 
Some NYC interviewer caught the Dead Boys in an expansive mood one day in 1977—the video below presents a well-executed montage of the session, complete with the straightforward charm and discernment specific to original punks from the Midwest. As a New Yorker recently moved to Cleveland, I really cannot get enough of their accents, not to mention the unpretentious exasperation with just about everything save Iggy Pop, Paul Revere and The Raiders, small venues, and women who know enough to get lost after the fucking ends. 

Jimmy Zero is by miles the most articulate of the bunch; his brief gloss about their song “Sonic Reducer” is as pithy and comprehensive a distillation of the punk ethic as I can recall hearing in quite some time:
 

That’s pretty much I think the feelings that all teenagers share, but in certain individuals they surface more, and in others they’re totally repressed. It’s just like, we weren’t out to write an anthem or anything like that, that’d be ridiculous. But it’s pretty much what I think, kids in all generations, to my knowledge, have always had on their minds—alienation, when you don’t know where the hell you’re gonna go or what you’re gonna do. You know you’re gonna end up with some kind of a job, which you might not want—you know, just alienation, total alienation. And that song is about saying, Well, all the people that are being stuffed down my throat, I’m not gonna take it anymore. I don’t want it.

 
The final frame of the video, fittingly enough, is of Stiv quaffing down a brewski.
 

 
Below, The Dead Boys captured at their peak at CBGB in October 1977 performing blistering versions of “Sonic Reducer,” “All This And More,” “Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth” and “High Tension Wire.”
 

I cannot convey to you the balls it took to dress like that in Indiana in the early 80’s
 
As a Hoosier, I will always have a special place in my heart for Indiana punks, but I’d love The Zero Boys if they were from Park Avenue. Formed in the late 70’s in that vibrant renaissance town of Indianapolis, Indiana (big dose of sarcasm there), the band released their full-length album, Vicious Circle, in 1982. Though your casual punk may not know the name, the Zero Boys shared bills with Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat, and their petulant hooks and irresistibly sleazy melodies have always been a favorite of your more esoteric record collectors

You can hear their EP, Livin’ in the 80’s here, but I highly recommend you check out the fantastic live footage below, from their 1981 performance at Indianapolis’ own Pizza Castle. The audio is expertly restored, and you can hear the boys perform such underground classics as “Livin’ in the 80’s” and “Civilization’s Dying,” which was later covered by The Hives. There’s something just so absolutely perfect about the lyrics of “Livin’ in the 80’s”—“I have no heroes, just having a good time, don’t remember The Beatles, I don’t like the Stones,” delivered with such youthful contrarian snot. I can’t imagine a better venue for a show like this than a pizza joint, either.

You can actually buy a DVD of the entire performance here, which contains most of Vicious Circle. I had a friend who used to play it non-stop in the background at parties, and I vouch for the performance—it’s not often you find 1980’s ephemera that still feels fresh and mean. At one point, singer Paul Mahern hypes the album, cordially urging the audience to buy the EP for two dollars, and a button for seventy-five cents. He’s not too snotty about it though—we midwesterners value good manners, even in our punk legends.
 

 
This is a guest post from Jason Toon

Socialist skinhead soul outfit The Redskins were so conceptually perfect, that they seemed like something someone made up. And they sort of were. Head ‘skin Chris Dean wasn’t some snaggletoothed bootboy urchin from a cement skyscraper. Dean wrote for the NME, he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, and he had a head full of ideas about youth culture, Trotskyism, and the power of the proper trousers. It was from those ideas, not from the “streets,” that The Redskins sprang.

But The Redskins were a real band, they did inspire a real (if small) left-wing skinhead movement, and most importantly, they did make real (and really great) records. Their 1982 debut single, “Lev Bronstein” b/w “Peasant Army”, paired a post-punk-soul A-side with a chugging Oi! B-side, all produced by Jon Langford of The Mekons and released on his CNT Records. Intriguing enough, especially considering the strident left-wing poetry of the lyrics, but The Redskins really caught fire with their second single, “Lean On Me,” a hyperfast take on ‘60s soul analogous to what the 2-Tone bands did with ‘60s ska. It hit #3 on the UK indie chart, and made The Redskins an electric presence in the ‘80s left-wing pop ferment. When the miner’s strike heated up in 1984, The Redskins’ socialist stance resonated like a brass section.
 

 
If you found Crass too tuneless, if Billy Bragg was too quiet, if The Style Council was too slick, The Redskins were your band. And Dean wasn’t afraid to call the others out for insufficient ideological rigour: “If there’s a tour organized by the Labour Party, one thing you can be sure of is that it’ll sell out,” he said about Red Wedge, Labour’s attempt to mount a travelling anti-Thatcher pop circus. And Dean called Bragg “Neil Kinnock’s publicity officer.”

Touche! But the people in those acts are still around, still doing something. Where’s Chris Dean now? It didn’t take long for his revolutionary fire to burn itself out. After a stack of classic singles and one great LP (Neither Washington nor Moscow), The Redskins fizzled out by the end of 1986. Dean was great at writing stirring anthems like “Keep On Keepin’ On!” and “It Can Be Done!”, but alas, failed to walk the walk. He reportedly retreated to a reclusive life in Paris, leaving the rest of us with a totally unique example of how to weave a handful of diverse cultural and political threads into a thrilling band. Whatever you think of The Redskins’ Trotskyist politics, music could use this kind of commitment, imagination, and style today.

The Redskins perform “Lean On Me” live:

 
Chris Dean and Martin Hewes talk about the band and show the video for “Keep On Keepin’ On!”:

 
More from The Redskins after the jump…

 
Art rock gods Wire were inactive between 1981 and 1985 due to solo outings and other projects. When they reformed, the sound of Wire 2.0 moved away from their earlier harder-edged material towards more electronic instrumentation and experimentation.

The band had moved on and announced that they would play none of the older songs live, hilariously opting instead to hire a Wire tribute band called The Ex-Lion Tamers—their name taken from one of Pink Flag‘s song titles—to open their American tour playing tunes from their first few albums.

You have to love that. What other band save for Wire would do such a thing?

Wire live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London on Sunday July 21, 1985. This is, I’m pretty sure, the first gig of their return.

Set list: “Drill,” “Serious Of Snakes,” “Ambulance Chasers,” “Harry,” “Madman’s Honey,” “Come Back In Two Halves,” “Kidney Bingos,” “Up To The Sun,” “Drill.”
 

 
Although he and his dance troupe have performed choreography set to the music of Wire, Glenn Branca, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Igor Stravinsky and others, it is his work with The Fall that the work of Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark will always be the most closely associated with.

The classically-trained Clark has said that hearing the manic, rubbery, jagged-edged relentlessly repetitious music of Manchester’s post-punk bard Mark E. Smith was a sort of clarion call for him as a young man to start doing his own work—if punk bands could do their thing, then that same ethos and attitude (and shock value) could go into creating a new form of modern ballet. Clark’s vision of ballet happened to incorporate Leigh Bowery wielding a chainsaw, syringes strapped to his dancers and sets festooned with fried egg trees . Clark seemed touched by the gods. His angular, asymmetrical, yet bizarrely graceful form of movement caused a sensation in the dance world. He was Nijinksy with a mohawk.
 

Michael Clark as Caliban in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books

The Fall and Clark’s company appeared together on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1984 in a provocative performance of “Lay of the Land” that saw Clark prancing around in a Bodymap leotard that exposed his ass cheeks to the nation as the group made a mighty roar behind him.
 

 
They collaborated more formally in 1988 when The Fall provided the live soundtrack for Clark’s ballet “I Am Curious, Orange” at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London (The Fall’s LP was called I Am Kurious Oranj). Some tantalizing looks at what that production was like come from Cerith Wyn Evans videos for “Wrong Place, Right Time” and “New Big Prinz,” which were apparently shot at a rehearsal.
 

 
Below, “New Big Prinz”

 
More after the jump…