Thee Oh Sees’ Castlemania is a real contender for my top ten records of 2011.
My introduction to TOS was at SXSW in 2009 when they performed an exhilaratingly demented show at Emo’s. Frontman and group mastermind John Dwyer attacked his guitar like a man wrestling an alligator while inhaling his microphone with the gusto of a amphetamine-crazed porn star auditioning for Deep Throat 3D . It was one of the most riveting and ridiculous live shows I’ve ever scene. And the band was as tight as a baby’s scrotal sac.
Castlemania consists of 16 tracks of garage rocking mayhem and twisted psychedelia sure to please the hearts and souls of fans of The Fugs, Velvets, Holy Modal Rounders, Zappa, Beefheart, Roky Erickson, The Troggs and The Archies.
Here’s a taste of Thee Oh Sees’ Castlemania.
A video to give you the jitters, “Meat Step Lively” from 2009’s Help after the jump…
If you love Reggae, if you love music, then you’ll love this excellent 3-part documentary - Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. Originally shown on the BBC in 2002, parts of this documentary have been on YouTube over the years, but now some kind soul has uploaded the whole series for our delight. How wonderful. Enjoy.
Here are three TV commercials that jumped on the hippie bandwagon in the Sixties. While condemning the counter-culture, mainstream media sure loved to use the energy and colors of psychedelia to sell, as demonstrated in these go-go crazy ads, clothing, sparkplugs and cameras.
Here’s a trippy/weird commercial for IHOP. Thanks to DM reader Wandering Mort for turning us on to this.
Variety called Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place “the counter-cultural equivalent of an archaeological dig—or maybe an acid flashback.” Sound about right. The documentary utilizes the legendary 16mm color footage shot by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they rode across America during their infamous 1964 cross-country trip in the psychedelically painted bus dubbed “Further” (a “trip” vividly described in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). Opening this Friday in New York and on August 12 in Los Angeles, Magic Trip was co-directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney and his long-time collaborator, Alison Ellwood. (It’s also currently available on Pay-Per-View)
This film footage is something that we’ve always read about, but that we’ve have seen very little of, usually just snatches here and there in various documentaries over the years. I always thought it was silent footage, but apparently not, so now we can actually hear the non-stop speedfreak jive of Neal Cassidy, captured for posterity and not merely described on the page. What’s sounds so cool about this movie (which I haven’t seen myself yet) is that the filmmakers opted not forego the route of having elderly burnouts repeating rote anecdotes about events they probably have little memory of in actual fact (especially this crew, they were tripping balls!). Instead they’ve made what they are describing as an “immersive” experience that tries to recreate, to the extent possible, what it was like to BE there when it happened. Along the way, aside from Kesey and motormouth Cassidy, the audience meets Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Ken Babbs and the other Merry Pranksters.
There is an interesting article about the making and history behind Magic Trip that appeared in the New York Times over the weekend. Charles McGrath writes:
In all Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as his crew called themselves, shot some 40 hours of 16-millimeter film, but the project was never really finished. As Mr. Wolfe wrote, “Plunging in on those miles of bouncing, ricocheting, blazing film with a splicer was like entering a jungle where the greeny vines grew faster than you could chop them down in front of you.” Kesey showed all 40 hours unedited a couple of times and also hacked the footage up into various shorter versions before stowing the film cans in his barn, near Eugene, Ore., where they rusted away — until Mr. Gibney and Ms. Ellwood showed up.
Kesey was onto something similar to what we would now call reality television: scenes of people with odd names (Mal Function, Gretchen Fetchin, Generally Famished) getting stoned and behaving weirdly. After publishing the novels “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion,” he had by 1964 wearied of writing or so fried his brain with hallucinogens that he embraced what he saw as a brand new art form: a drug-enabled psychic quest that would document itself as it was happening. The famous bus — a psychedelic-painted International Harvester with a sign in front that said “Furthur” and one in back that warned “Weird Load” — was wired for sound, and there was a movie camera on board. With Kesey sometimes directing and sometimes just standing back and watching, the Merry Pranksters filmed one another and also their interactions with an uncomprehending public when, for example, Neal Cassady drove the bus backward down a Phoenix street as the Pranksters, stoned on LSD, pretended to campaign for Barry Goldwater for president.
This is an major-league, important part of American history that’s been unearthed here. I can’t wait to see this!
Here’s a young Rage Against The Machine in their “live” debut, performing in front of an extremely sparse crowd at Cal State Northridge in 1991.
Setlist:
1: Killing In The Name (Instrumental)
2: Take The Power Back
3: Autologic
4: Bullet In The Head
5: Hit The Deck
6: Township Rebellion
7: Darkness Of Greed
8: Clear The Lane
9: Clampdown
10: Know Your Enemy (alternate version)
11: Freedom
I’m not exactly sure why anyone would want or need something like this? I can’t imagine a severed silicone child’s hand attached to your iPhone would somehow enhance your communication experience. I’m totally stumped here.
1988’s Bombin’ is another fine documentary on hip hop and graffiti culture directed by Dick Fontaine (Beat This! A Hip Hop History). This time Fontaine chronicles how a scene born in the Bronx travels across the Atlantic and hits the streets of Britain’s ghettos.
“I’m making this film to exorcise a pain in my soul that just won’t go away, like oil stains. I wash my clothes with movies.” — Alex de la Iglesia
Friday at Cinefamily in Los Angeles, there is a special FREE midnight screening of Alex de la Iglesia’s new film, The Last Circus. This looks amazing:
From the hyperdrive mind of one of Europe’s most ruthless cinematic satirists comes The Last Circus: a wicked tragicomic deconstruction of the terribly bloody Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of a benevolent-turned-psychotic Sad Clown vs. an evil alcoholic wifebeating Happy Clown! Alex de la Iglesia uses his nation’s greatest historical horror as the backdrop for an uncompromising tale of two equally damaged circus performers manically vying for the heart and soul of their joint obsession: their circus’s alluring female acrobat. Hysterically funny without watering down even a fraction of its harrowing message, the film matches its operatic, wildly unpredictable twists with the equally chaotic reality of life under Franco’s dictatorial rule of Spain in the 1970s. Equal parts Saving Private Ryan and Santa Sangre, The Last Circus is one helluva unique and thrilling time. 35mm, 107 min.
Register for the free Cinefamily screening of The Last Circushere. And make sure you get there on time. Seriously.