A miniature Don Draper.
Flavorwire has an excellent roundup of photos titled “Kids’ Halloween Costumes That They’re Too Young to Understand.”
Missing from the list: Little Johnny Cash.
“I shot a boy in Reno just for some candy corn.”
I love it when the audience feigns shock and disgust on The Jerry Springer Show, all the while poking their snouts in the dirt like pigs looking for truffles.
Gwar and El Duce of The Mentors gleefully push the crowds’ buttons as they discuss “shock rock,” which is the musical equivalent of taking a dump in the punch bowl of pop culture and political correctness.
Some might find El Duce’s “rape rock” crosses the lines of bad taste into something more vile, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Duce’s trangressions are a form of performance art in which he’s embodying the worst expectations of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and testing the boundaries of free speech. It may be crude but it’s effective.
Three months after this episode of Springer was filmed, El Duce (Eldon Hoke) died at the age of 39, which adds a bit of bittersweetness to the title of one of his classic love songs “My Erection Is Over,” the lyrics of which were quoted during the 1985 Senate hearings on offensive language in rock songs.
I want me a sleazy slut
Who can give a tongue bath to my butt
My erection is over…it’s over, it’s all over
It WAS all over when El Duce was crushed by a freight train one night in April of 1997. Some say it was suicide, some say it was payback for making claims he was hired by Courtney Love to murder Kurt Cobain. Maybe it was an accident. Whatever the case, it’s the kind of shit the denizens of Springerville love to their cluck their tongues over.
Madness are now as loved as the Queen Mother was once adored by London cab drivers. Understandable as they have been making people happy with their infectious music for over 30 years.
This is Madness live in Nottingham from 1980. Originally recorded for the BBC, it’s a great show, and although the audio isn’t perfect, it’s difficult not to watch without a grin on your face.
Madness Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson, Mark ‘Bedders’ Bedford, Lee ‘Kix’ Thompson, Carl Smyth (aka Chas Smash), Dan ‘Woody’ Woodgate, Chris Foreman (aka Chrissy Boy), Mike ‘Barso’ Barson
Set list:
01. “Night Boat To Cairo”
02. “E.R.N.I.E”
03. “Mistakes”
04. “Close Escape”
05. “Crying Shame”
06. “Razor Blade Alley”
07. “Baggy Trousers”
08. “My Girl”
09. “Land Of Hope And Glory”
10. “Embarrassment”
11. “On The Pete”
12. “The Prince”
13. “One Step Beyond”
14. “Madness”
Madness will be touring for the release of their 10th studio album Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da (with a cover by Peter Blake), which is out on October 29th, more details here.
I always thought David Niven was Scottish, mainly because this great, charming actor regularly claimed he had been born in the town of Kirriemuir in 1909.
Kirriemuir is known as the birthplace of Peter Pan author, J. M. Barrie, and AC/DC frontman Bon Scott. It is also famed for Walter Burnett’s Kirriemuir gingerbread, which I recall eating in thick buttered slices as a child, thinking this tasty treat was the very stuff Niven must have lived off as a bairn. Of course it wasn’t and Niven hadn’t been born in Scotland, rather he was a son of London, born in 1910. Still, it only added to his tremendous style and charm, which made me find him so likable as an actor and raconteur.
That and the fact his films, in particular The Way Ahead, A Matter of Life and Death, The Elusive Pimpernel, Around the World in 80 Days, and Separate Tables were regularly screened on local TV during the sixties and seventies, possibly in the misguided belief Niven was Scottish.
Some of this great charm can be seen here in this brief interview with Sue Lawley, from 1973, where Niven discusses his childhood, pot, alcohol and good luck.
With thanks to Nellym.
Their spouses congratulate Ann Romney and Michelle Obama, post debate.
Who won? The answer may surprise you!
Although Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” comment was obviously the comedic highlight of the debate, Stewart draws out the laughs nicely here on the Libya question like the satiric maestro he is. Brilliant!
I think every man goes through a phase when he thinks he’s as funny as Sergeant Bilko. Or Top Cat. Smart, funny, wise guy who nearly gets away with some scam. That’s why The Phil Silvers Show, and Top Cat will be immortal.
This is a brief interview with Phil (Sergeant Bilko) Silvers explaining why he was an Anglophile, his love of cricket and his talent for song-writing. Recorded when Silvers was starring in the British revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1974.
Bilko’s funny. Silvers not so much. But he’s still a legend.
With thanks to Nellym
OK, so this instalment of Cocaine’s... might not have the epic freak-out-ish-ness of last week’s John Cale performance, but to me this sums up the spirit of the cocaine age perfectly.
Godley & Creme were once part of 10CC, of course, and video directors of quite some renown in the 1980s, but they also delivered a string of haunting, emotional electro pop hits like this one, a tale of tragic spousal abuse as overheard on a commuter train.
What that has to do with sliding down a fake window while clenching your fists is anyone’s guess. But, like I said, cocaine’s a helluva drug.
This performance is epically camp, and was undoubtedly inspired by some of the finest marching powder. Kevin Godley tosses his mullet and gurns as if trapped in a lost Douglas Sirk classic, while all around bright shiny lights create a vaseline-heavy haze that will have you checking your eyeballs for cataracts. The tune is rather lovely, with synths that sound more like vintage 60s electronica than early 80s electro, but I can just hear the producer now, frothing at the mouth and screaming that what this needs is “MORE DRAMA!!!”
Godley & Creme “Under Your Thumb” Top Of The Pops, 1981:
When asked by a reporter in 2001 whether he was concerned if he would be remembered as a “conning pervert and abuser when he died,” Jimmy Savile replied:
‘If I’m gone that’s that. Bollocks to my legacy. Whatever is said after I’m gone is irrelevant.’
The reporter then asked if Savile was ‘into little girls’, to which the BBC presenter replied:
‘I’d rather not even opinionate on this. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to sort out the psychology of child abuse.’
Every day a new allegation emerges about Jimmy Savile. These allegations now cover 6 decades, and include allegations of the rape of children, mentally ill patients and the sexual assault of a disabled girl. The police are currently investigating over 300 lines of inquiry.
Savile’s attacks occurred in hospitals, clubs and the BBC. And it is the latter organization that is coming under considerable scrutiny by the police.
The question is how did the BBC employ such an individual, when there were known allegations against him? And what was the everyday culture at BBC that could allow Savile’s behavior to go unnoticed? Uncommented upon? Even tolerated?
A glimpse of how things were at the BBC can be found in Stephen Fry’s second volume of autobiography, The Fry Chronicles (pages 296-297 of the paperback edition), where he described a meeting with the BBC executive Jim Moir in 1983.
Hugh [Laurie] and I were shown into his office. He sat us down on the sofa opposite his desk and asked if we had comedy plans. Only he wouldn’t have put it as simply as that, he probably said something like: ‘Strip naked and show me your cocks,’ which would have been his way of saying: ‘What would you like to talk about?’ Jim routinely used colourful and perplexing metaphors of a quite staggering explicit nature. ‘Let’s jizz on the table, mix up our spunk and smear it all over us,’ might be his way of asking, ‘Shall we work together?’ I had always assumed that he only spoke like that to men, but not so long ago Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders confirmed that he had been quite as eye-watering in his choice of language with them. Ben Elton went on to create, and Mel Smith to play, a fictional head of Light Entertainment based on Jim Moir called Jumbo Whiffly in the sitcom Filthy Rich & Catflap. I hope you will not get the wrong impression of Moir from my description of his language. People of his kind are easy to underestimate, but I have never heard anyone who worked with him say a bad word about him. In the past forty years the BBC has had no more shrewd, capable, loyal, honourable and successful executive and certainly none with a more dazzling verbal imagination.
Now retired, Moir recently told the Guardian that he had no knowledge of any allegations against Savile during his term at the Beeb, as either exec or as Head of Light Entertainment.
“There is so much talk about rumours, but I can tell you that neither from external sources or internally, neither by nods and winks or by innuendo, did I receive any scintilla of this story whatsoever, or discuss it or his behaviour with my superiors. There was not a scintilla of this either from Roger Ordish, his producer for 20 years.”
Should we be surprised? Not really. But it makes sense that Moir didn’t hear any allegations when it was seen as okay to use sexist, aggressive and offensive language such as ‘Strip naked and show me your cocks,’ or, ‘Let’s jizz on the table, mix up our spunk and smear it all over us,’ on a regular basis. This kind masturbatory boy’s club culture covers up for a lot of unacceptable behavior.
More on Savilegate, after the jump…
On a farm in Newbury, a camera crew set-up to film a scene from Dennis Potter’s latest drama series Pennies from Heaven.
Potter was a controversial dramatist, who was praised and loathed in equal measure. His previous single drama Brimstone and Treacle had been banned outright by the BBC for depicting the rape of a disabled woman by a strange, young man, who may or may not have been the Devil. Potter said of Brimstone and Treacle:
“...I had written Brimstone and Treacle in difficult personal circumstances. Years of acute psoriatic arthropathy—unpleasantly affecting skin and joints—had not only taken their toll in physical damage but had also, and perhaps inevitably, mediated my view of the world and the people in it. I recall writing (and the words now make me shudder) that the only meaningful sacrament left to human beings was for them to gather in the streets in order to be sick together, splashing vomit on the paving stones as the final and most eloquent plea to an apparently deaf, dumb and blind God.
“...I was engaged in an extremely severe struggle not so much against the dull grind of a painful and debilitating illness but with unresolved, almost unacknowledged, ‘spiritual’ questions.”
Set in the 1930s, Pennies from Heaven told the story of a sheet-music salesman Arthur, played by Bob Hoskins, whose life and fantasies were reflected through the prism of popular songs of the day. Potter said of the Arthur:
“Lacking any sense of God or faith, he literally believes in those cheap songs to the depths of his tawdry, adulterous, little lying soul.”
When Hoskins first read the script he thought it “lunacy”. A second-reading convinced him it was something very special. He was right, Potter had written a brilliant and original series, which proved to be an enormous success when first broadcast on the BBC. It went on to win a BAFTA for “Most Original Programme”, and earned Hoskins and his co-star Cheryl Campbell best actor and actress nominations.
The series was remade (badly) by Hollywood (no surprise there) with Steve Martin in the lead, in 1982. Hoskins went on to international success with the gangster classic The Long Good Friday, while Potter returned to his mix of drama, fantasy and song with his acclaimed series The Singing Detective in 1986.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Cast and Crew: The making of ‘The Long Good Friday’
With thanks to Nellym.