Here’s an amusing clip of Giorgio Moroder and his mega-mustache performing “Looky, Looky” on the French TV show Musicolor back in 1969. I dig the silk scarf. 

 
(via HYST)

 
No matter which way that things go in Wisconsin in the short-term, the writing is certainly on the wall for the increasingly hapless-looking Republican governor Scott Walker and probably his GOP buddies in the statehouse as well. And what nasty graffiti it is. Walker has to be one of the most tone-deaf politicians of this generation (which is saying a lot) and he’s leading his GOP troops right off a cliff. Of ALL the places to take on unions… Wisconsin? Good lord, what an idiotic decision that was, even if Walker did get to pretend for one brief (very brief) “shining moment” that he was the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan busting the unions…

No one can take that away from him. But his job can be taken away and I’d wager the odds are that it will happen. Very few people hated Gray Davis in California—we found him incompetent—can the same be said of Wisconsin’s opinion of Walker? It was political suicide for him to step on the tails of so many badgers. Walker can—and probably will—be recalled by Wisconsin voters who are already sick of his stupid Republican face after just a matter of weeks. He has to be in office for one year before that can legally happen, but I should think that gives angry Wisconsinites plenty of time to organize his political demise.

From The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

With recall drives being threatened on both sides, this report by a Democratic targeting expert argues that both Gov. Walker and GOP state lawmakers are vulnerable to recall challenges because of the intensity of feeling among opponents to Walker’s budget proposals.

It was done by Wisconsin’s Ken Strasma, who did micro-targeting for the 2008 Obama campaign, and concludes that among people who dislike what Walker is doing, “very large numbers are willing to take some action about it,” said Strasma in an interview.

The obvious cautionary notes: Strasma works for Democratic and progressive clients (he said he did this survey and analysis on his own, not for a client).  For either side planning recall campaigns, the threshold for signatures is very high in Wisconsin (25% of the number of people who voted in the last gubernatorial election).  And no recalls can occur before a year has passed from the time the targeted official was elected.

If I lived there, I’d be standing in the Rite Aid parking lot with a clipboard every weekend myself. I’ll say it again: This is one of the biggest, most important developments in American civic life in DECADES. If you don’t understand why, you aren’t paying enough attention.
 

 
Nicely! Via Daily Kos

WICHITA—-In a move that has taken labor unions by surprise, David H. and Charles G. Koch announced today that they are “drawing a line in the bearskin rug under the original Matisse above the fireplace” and staging a sit-in to protest the protests in Madison, Wisconsin.

“We are outraged that a mere hundred thousand infuriatingly peaceful and persistent common people think they can push wealthy heirs like us around by not giving us what we want,” the co-owners of Koch Industries said in a statement released by their senior senior senior butler. “We are going to sit here in our grand ballroom (the one in the south wing, not the one in the east wing because it’s drafty) and wait them out until they agree to destroy themselves.”

The Kochs said the sit-in was a painful but necessary step, since their efforts to nullify the collective bargaining rights of public union workers in Wisconsin by buying off politicians and blanketing the airwaves with anti-labor ads have failed to produce the results they want. The secretive brothers, who control the levers of power in the Republican party, are occupying their time by running their several industries from makeshift suites, squeezing chunks of coal between their buttocks to make diamonds, banging on caviar tins with sterling-silver spoons and slowly descending further into madness.

“I never thought the plot of The Shining could happen in real life,” said one Koch housekeeper speaking on condition of anonymity. “But you should see what they’ve scrawled on the wall—-it’s much worse than ‘Redrum.’ Then again, get a load of the size of this diamond!”

While security personnel, guard dogs, an alligator-filled moat and a ring of gullible but well-armed teabaggers have kept unauthorized visitors from entering the mansion, a liberal blogger managed to stage a prank call in which he claimed to be Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is leading the fight there at the direction of the Kochs to effectively crush public unions. Unlike an earlier call, in which the same blogger fooled Gov. Walker into believing he was speaking to David Koch, this one was noticeably shorter.

“Hey guys, how’s it going out there?” asks the blogger in a recording of the call. Responds Charles Koch: “Listen you [expletive deleted], we paid good money for you to follow our instructions. Now put this thing to bed already. We’re several days behind schedule and David here is starting to mold.”

Responding to the Kochs’ sit-in, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said he was confident the labor unions would prevail. “Size matters,” he said. “Our sit-in is bigger than their sit-in.”

Governor Walker couldn’t be reached for comment. A spokesman said he was at Madison City Hall applying to have his name legally changed to Ronald Reagan.

 
Michael Hansmeyer is an architect and programmer who explores the use of algorithms and computation to generate architectural form, and he has created these incredible cardboard sculptures using algorithms. As he explains on his website:

In recent years, algorithms in architecture have been able to transcend their role as frameworks of formalization and abstraction. This has been made possible in a large part by the integration of scripting languages into CAD programs. Algorithms’ output can now be directly visualized, and through digital fabrication methods this output can be built.

This opens up a new role for algorithms as a design tool. As such, they provide the benefits of depth and breadth. On the one hand, their computational power can address processes with a scale and complexity that precludes a manual approach. On the other hand, algorithms can generate endless permutations of a scheme. A slight tweaking of either the input or the process leads to an instant adaptation of output. When combined with an evaluative function, they can be used to recursively optimize output on both a functional and aesthetic level.

As the New Scientist magazine reports, to make these sculptures:

...Hansmeyer started with a computer model of a simple Greek column and ran it through a subdivision algorithm which repeatedly splits the surface, creating more detail with each iteration.

The result is a 3D model with between 8 and 16 million faces, but 3D printers can only handle half a million, so Hansmeyer needed an alternative solution to transform his creations from virtual to physical reality. He sliced the column into 2700 pieces and used a laser cutter to create each slice from 1mm-thick cardboard, then reconstructed the column by layering the slices together with a solid wooden core. The whole process only cost $1500 and took about 15 hours, with three laser cutters working in parallel.

To see more of Hansmeyer’s work, check here.
 

 

 
With thanks to Iris Lincoln
 

 
Holly Woodlawn superstar discusses circumcision, transsexuals in the military and group sex while enjoying a can of Budweiser.

I have no idea where or when this interview was conducted. Definitely sometime in the 1970s. Scripted? I think so. Hilarious? Absolutely.
 

Tamori wearing his signature shades
 
This wonderfully surreal clip from a 1986 episode of Japanese TV variety show It’s Okay To Laugh hosted by popular comedian Tamori (who is never seen in public without sunglasses) takes a classic Japanese fairytale called “The Peach Boy” and melds it with American jazz to create something truly unique. And it gets progressively more unique as it goes along.

Featuring “Milestones” - Miles Davis, “Misterioso” - Thelonious Monk, “Sister Sadie” - Horace Silver, “Waltz For Debby” - Bill Evans, “Doxy” - Sonny Rollins, “Maiden Voyage” - Herbie Hancock, “Donna Lee” - Charlie Parker, “Moment’s Notice” - John Coltrane…and more.
 

 
Cracked Actor captured David Bowie at “a fragile stage” in his life. His relationship with his wife, Angie, was beginning to falter, there was business problems looming, and he was addicted to cocaine, which caused “severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems.” Filmed during Bowie’s legendary “Diamond Dogs Tour” in 1974, Alan Yentob’s film revealed a man on the run, taking stock, even questioning his own ambitions:

‘I never wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. I never, honest guv, I wasn’t even there. But I was, you see, I was there. That’s what happened.’

Revealing his difficulties with fame:

‘Do you know that feeling you get in a car when somebody’s accelerating very fast and you’re not driving? And you get that “Uhhh” thing in your chest when you’re being forced backwards and you think “Uhhh” and you’re not sure whether you like it or not? It’s that kind of feeling. That’s what success was like. The first thrust of being totally unknown to being what seemed to be very quickly known. It was very frightening for me and coping with it was something that I tried to do. And that’s what happened. That was me coping. Some of those albums were me coping, taking it all very seriously I was.’

And the singer’s paranoia, at the time of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation:

‘There’s an underlying unease here, definitely. You can feel it in every avenue and it’s very calm. And it’s a kind of superficial calmness that they’ve developed to underplay the fact that it’s… there’s a lot of high pressure here as it’s a very big entertainment industry area. And you get this feeling of unease with everybody. The first time that it really came home to me what a kind of strange fascination it has is the… we… I came in on the train… on the earthquake, and the earthquake was actually taking place when the train came in. And the hotel that we were in was… just tremored every few minutes. I mean, it was just a revolting feeling. And ever since then I‘ve always been very aware of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time.’

In a series of interviews, filmed in limousines, backstage and in hotel rooms, Cracked Actor reveals an uncertain, vulnerable, and at times incoherent Bowie; but in performance, he is magnificent.

Originally made for the BBC’s arts strand Omnibus, this is a brilliant, mesmeric, landmark documentary, even if Yentob is slightly disparaging of Bowie’s re-invention as “a soul singer.”

Footnote: when film director, Nicholas Roeg watched Cracked Actor, he decided to cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
 

 
Bob Dylan’s one-time muse and girlfriend Suze Rotolo has died after a long illness in New York at the age of 67. She was the subject of his song “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (“I once loved a woman, a child I’m told. I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul.”) and other classics. Dylan began dating Rotolo when she was just 17-years-old. The couple was photographed for the cover of The Freehweelin’ Bob Dylan. in 1963, but split later that year when he began seeing Joan Baez. Rotolo seldom spoke about Dylan, but was interviewed by Martin Scorsese for his Dylan doc No Direction Home in 2005. In 2009, Rotolo published her memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.

Professionally, she was a teacher, a painter and a book illustrator.

From Rolling Stone:

In Bob Dylan’s 2004 memoir Chronicles Volume One, he describes meeting Rotolo backstage at a concert. “Right from the start I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” Dylan wrote. “She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blooded Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid’s arrow had whistled past my ears before, but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overboard.”

By early 1962, Dylan and Rotolo were living together in a tiny apartment on West 4th Street. Suze came from a staunchly left-wing New York family, and played a huge role in Dylan’s political awakening. When they began dating Dylan was largely apolitical and his set consisted mostly of decades-old folk songs. Rotolo took him to CORE (The Congress of Racial Equality) meetings and taught him much about the civil rights movement. “A lot of what I gave him was a look at how the other half lived—left wing things that he didn’t know,” Rotolo told writer David Hajdu in his book Positively 4th Street. “He knew about Woody [Guthrie] and Pete Seeger, but I was working for CORE and went on youth marches for civil rights, and all that was new to him.”

Rotolo told Dylan about the brutal 1955 murder of Emmett Till, inspiring Dylan to write his early protest classic “The Death of Emmett Till.” “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written,” Dylan said at the time. “How many nights I stayed up and wrote songs and showed them to [Suze] and asked, ‘Is this right? Because I knew her mother was associated with unions, and she was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was. I checked the songs out with her. She would like all the songs.”

In the summer of 1962 Rotolo took a long trip to Italy, leaving Dylan alone and heartbroken in New York. During this period he penned “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Boots of Spanish Leather” and “Tomorrow Is A Long Time”—all bittersweet love songs about Rotolo. She returned in January of 1963, and weeks later Columbia records send photographer Don Hunstein to shoot the cover of The Freehweelin’ Bob Dylan. The young couple walked up and down Jones Street for a few minutes while Hunstein snapped shots. “Bob stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned into me,” Rotolo wrote in her 2009 book A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. “We walked the length of Jones Street facing West Fourth with Bleecker Street at our backs. In some outtakes it’s obvious that we were freezing; certainly Bob was, in that thin jacket. But image was all. As for me, I was never asked to sign a release or paid anything. It never dawned on me to ask.”

 
Mark Tulin the bass player for The Electric Prunes died this past Saturday at the age of 62.

The Prunes, best known for their 1966 hit “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night,” had re-formed in recent years and were working on new music with Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan producing. Tulin filled in as Smashing Pumpkins’ bassist for two shows in 2009, and played with the Corgan project Spirits in the Sky on a tour that year, as well as a tribute to the Seeds’ Sky Saxon.”

“I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night” is one of the seminal psychedelic garage rockers of the 1960s and still has the capacity to blow minds—sounds as fresh as ever.

Here’s a clip of The Prunes performing live on French TV in 1967.
 

 
Via The Daily Swarm

 
I was just introduced to this lovely clip made by one Geoff Mullen today by the venerable composer and music seller Keith Fullerton Whitman who pointed out how well the simple manipulated old school consumer model video feedback suited the layers of noisy, modal guitars. All of which combine to really hit the spot for me today. Hope you enjoy it too.