Wonderful tale about tracking down what really happened to one of the wildest, most iconic set pieces of 1970s rock shows, the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership. Forget about Kiss, the Mothership was ten times cooler. George Clinton is a god. From the Washington Post:
Before the Mothership was built, it was a concept. Parliament released “Mothership Connection” in 1975, an album with a title track about hitchhiking to cosmic transcendence: “Swing down, sweet chariot. Stop and let me ride.” Clinton started dreaming up a tour to match. After watching the Who’s 1969 rock opera “Tommy,” he asked himself: “How do you do a funk opera? What about [black people] in space?”
He called upon David Bowie’s tour producer, Jules Fisher, to help bring the Mothership to life. “This was theater. This was drama,” says Fisher, a renowned Broadway lighting designer. “Current shows like U2 and the Stones—they don’t provide this narrative arc.”
The Mothership was assembled in Manhattan and made its first descent in New Orleans from the rafters of Municipal Auditorium on Oct. 27, 1976.
Minds were blown.
I’ll bet they were! The Mothership lands about 8 minutes in on the below clip. This must have been so amazing to see live.
In Maryland, George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic and a missing Mothership (Washington Post)
The Last Supper with scientists: Galileo Galilei, Marie Curie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Thomas Edison, Aristotle, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.
(via I.Z. Reloaded and Nerdcore)
This gentleman is certainly in touch with his inner canine. He really takes you there.
thx Brian Morishita !
And a cartography of inner space via the inimitable Russian psychedelic blog LSDEX.RU. Presumably this is what the next iteration of iTunes visualizer will look like. If so, I might actually get around to buying an iPad, you know, just to hang on my bathroom wall.
Via Cool Hunting, here’s an excellent find: Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s new book “Cartographies of Time,” which collects ways in which the human race has represented time throughout, um, time; a timeline of timelines. I want one.
In their new book “Cartographies of Time,” Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton dissect and track the methods people used when attempting to record the passage of time. These timelines, lists and antiquated infographics reveal particular attitudes and novel approaches to documenting history.
Rosenberg and Grafton organize Cartographies, naturally, in chronological order, tracing the earliest timelines from ancient Greece all the way to modern reinterpretations. Expertly showing the evolution of the form, the book’s fascinating swathe of cartographic imagery will appeal to history buffs and data visualization fans alike.
The central dilemma these historians and chronologists faced over the centuries was to decide what was important, and—the central theme of Chronologies—the myriad methods employed to illustrate and recreate those histories.
I’m a huge sucker for the sound of clunky old drum machines, so this brilliant 1972 single by one time Cannonball Adderley
thx Ian Raikow !
Still in the mood for some old fashioned pop electronics ? Here’s two of the four tracks from this rather attractive 1962 E.P. by Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan
bonus clip: The gents at work in the lab. Unfortunately Dutch language only but lots of lovely gear porn shots !
And speaking of David Cronenberg...the Canadian wasn’t the first director to take a stab at J.G. Ballard’s novel. The San Diego-born (but London educated) Harley Cokeliss directed a version of his own in ‘71.
Since Crash, the novel, was still two years down the road, Cokeliss based the film on some fragments found in Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition. And, perhaps even more suited to the role than James Spader, Ballard himself starred as the film’s lead. From the Ballardian:
With his brooding, hypermasculine presence, Ballard plays a version of Atrocity’s ‘T’ character alongside the actor Gabrielle Drake, her own role a composite of the book’s archetypal ’sex-kit’ women. The film was a product of the most experimental, the darkest phase of Ballard’s career. It was an era of psychological blowback from the sudden, shocking death of his wife in 1964, an era that had produced the cut-up ‘condensed novels’ of Atrocity, plus a series of strange collages and ‘advertisers’ announcements.’
The Ballardian link includes a scene-by-scene description of the hard-to-see short, but, since it’s a recent addition to YouTube, you can start watching it right now below:
Dangerous Minds pal, Marc Campbell says, “It takes a certain kind of genius to put these artists together and make it work.”
