The Horrors’ new album Skying is getting terrific reviews from the British press and based on this lysergic video for the first single off the album, “Still Life,” I’m compelled to give a band I once shrugged off as a bunch of marginally talented pretty boy fashion victims a fresh look. Yes, they wear their influences as brashly as a brocade vest designed by Vivienne Westwood, but what fine influences they are and the band does them justice. So, if you’re a fan of eighties British new wave and synth-pop ala Echo and The Bunnymen, OMD, Teardrop Explodes, Psychedelic Furs and The Cure, you could do a lot worse than The Horrors (Interpol and The Bravery, for instance).
These slender young lads with their lovely long hair may be growing into a formidable group worthy of more than a few kind words from a cynical asshole like myself.
Christopher Walken gives the tale of The Three Little Pigs a wiseguy spin in this very funny clip from British TV show Saturday Zoo hosted by Jonathan Ross. This aired in 1993.
Rob Grill lead vocalist of The Grass Roots has died at the age of 67 from complications resulting from a head injury.
The Grass Roots were never considered a hip band during their decade of popular success in the 1960s and 70s, but they created a solid stream of hits, including one of rock’s great anthems, “Let’s Live for Today.”
“Midnight Confessions,” “Temptation Eyes” and “Two Divided by Love” were, and still are, staples of mainstream radio, but it’s The Grass Roots’ monster hit “Let’s Live For Today” that ranks as one rock and roll’s epic and most indelible fist pumpers.
A good part of the group’s success was attributable to Rob Grill’s sweetly insistent vocal style which combined a sense of urgency with a lovelorn cri de couer. Grill’s voice gave the group an emotive punch that lifted the band a notch or two above the candy gloss of the lite psychedelia that surfed the wake of California hippie music.
While we pride ourselves on being an anarchic collective here at Dangerous Minds, we do have a few unwritten rules. One is no mashups unless they are exceptional. Well, I may be wrong (I occasionally am) but this tight little video/audio marriage of Thin Lizzy and The Pixies really works for me. And I’ll post anything that reminds the world of just how ultra-cool Phil Lynott is…even in mashup mode.
From the supremely inventive Phil RetroSpector: “The Boys Are Back In Heaven.”
This little clip of a puppet Rupert Murdoch, having an editorial with his vulturous editors, is almost as fresh today as it was twenty-five years ago, when it first aired on the satirical sketch show Spitting Image.
Is it a surprise that twenty-five years ago Murdoch was seen as a ghastly, untrustworthy, muck-raking shit?
How could anyone have forgotten?
The fact that so many did, and the fact that Murdoch became so very, very powerful over those twenty-five years, fully underlines the extent to the unhealthy and undemocratic relationship maintained by past governments with the media tycoon.
More obscure punk rock for you lovely people: Lost Kids performing their “Cola Freaks” single, and the flipside “Rådden Dig,” on Danish television in 1979. (WHO is that fuckin’ guy after the second song? Get a load of him!.)
This record, one of the very first singles ever released by a Danish punk group, is a rarity often selling for as much as $300, when it can be located. It’s rare even in Denmark.
Magic Michael seems to be one of those “Zeligs of rock and roll” whose life saw him bouncing off the great and near greats (and probably some “near the greats,” as well). Here’s what the uploader’s description on YouTube says:
Described by NME writer Nick Kent as “Ladbroke Grove’s answer to Wildman Fisher,” Magic Michael—aka Michael Cousins—was a permanent fixture on the early-‘70s U.K. hippy scene, albeit one who seemed destined to court controversy. Again according to Kent, he was once booed off-stage at a Hawkwind concert (“This is believed to be the first and only time such an event has occurred”), while he can also be spotted during the previous year’s Glastonbury Fayre movie, performing naked before a decidedly hostile crowd. 1972 saw Magic Michael appearing at the Greasy Truckers Party; both the original limited-edition LP release and the 2007 three-CD reissue capture him in fine form, performing the 20-minute ad lib “Music Belongs to the People.” He also recorded an entire album with Nirvana’s Patrick Campbell-Lyons, scheduled for release on the Vertigo label, but ultimately canned. By 1973, Michael was working and recording within Brian Eno’s orbit; he also auditioned unsuccessfully for the role of vocalist with Can. He also worked with Nick Lowe during 1976, offering up the self-composed “Little by Little” for the Stiff label compilation A Bunch of Stiffs. Three years elapsed before Magic Michael resurfaced, cutting a new single, “Millionaire,” alongside Damned members Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible, and Algy Ward. Since that time, he has remained silent
I was intrigued by midway through the first sentence. Have a listen to Magic Michael, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies performing the high energy rocker, “I’m a Millionaire.”
Alan Grayson is running for the Florida congressional seat he lost and I’m thrilled. He’s one of the very few Democrats left who has the guts to really take it to the Republicans. I’ve always admired his fearlessness and plain spoken bluntness. Losing his last election doesn’t seem to have diminished his passion for confronting the lies and duplicity being spun by both parties.
For the 70% of all homeowners in Orlando who owe more than they own on their home, and the 25% nationwide who are “underwater,” and feel like they are drowning, I’m in. For the six million Americans who haven’t worked in six months and are seeing their benefits running out, for the eight million more who are unemployed, and for the eight million on top of that who can find only part-time work, I’m in. For the millions of parents who have absolutely no idea how to pay for a college education for their children, I’m in. And for everyone who is appalled by the prospect that we may cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as we spend more than $150 billion a year on three unnecessary wars and almost $100 billion a year on the Bush tax cuts for the rich, I’m in.
If for no other reason, I love Grayson because he’s an unfashionably idealistic peacenik at a time when no one seems willing to give peace a chance or even talk about it. He also wins points with me for quoting John Lennon.
Imagine if we had decided after 9/11 to wean ourselves off oil and other carbon-based fuels. We’d be ten years into that project by now.
Imagine if George W. Bush had somehow been able to summon the moral strength of Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, or Martin Luther King Jr, and committed the American people to the pursuit of a common goal of a transformed society, a society which meets our own human needs rather than declaring “war” on an emotion, or, as John Quincy Adams put it, going “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”.
Imagine.
Imagine that we chose not to enslave ourselves to a massive military state whose stated goal is “stability” in countries that never have been “stable”, and never will be.
I believe this is a special limited edition DVD cover (only available at Comic Con 2011) for Grant Morrison documentary Talking With Gods. The delightful illustration of the comic’s mage is by Camilla d’Errico.
