The Ded Dave Show is a local TV/webcast comedy show from the Detroit area that’s “about what zombies do when they are not eating you.”

The Ded Dave Show really pushes the envelope of how good an “amateur” production can be. In fact, its very existence goes to show how the line between the two gets erased further with each passing year due to better video equipment finding its way into the hands of eager and talented young filmmakers who don’t feel that they need anyone’s permission to make what they want to make. About the only thing separating “amateur” from “professional” these days seems be getting paid… which can still be an issue of course! Let’s hope Hollywood notices the talents on display here.

In this special Holiday episode—a yearly classic for the entire (Manson) family—join Ded Dave, Bog and a host of undead characters in their X-mas adventures in the land of the dead!

On Christmas night of 2009, The Ded Dave Show aired its very own Holiday special. Broken into two separate segments, the episode began with a gruesome telling of the “true” story of Santa Claus. The second half showed one of The Land of The Dead’s most sacred of ceremonies for Jesus’ birthday, its annual X-Mas Pageant.

First prize is a Denon RDC-N7 stereo receiver with Denon SC-N7 speakers, retail value $800! Two runner-ups will win a pair of Denon AH-NC600 noise-canceling earphones each, a $200 value!

The Rules: You, the entrant have to “like” Dangerous Minds on Facebook or follow us on Twitter (or both). Only people who have done this will be eligible to win. You also have to “like” Denon on Facebook.

Then, in the comments below, post the best name for a band you can think of. To be perfectly clear: Not the name of an existing or historical group, but a completely new and hopefully very funny band name. And try not to be too, gross, eh?

The name that makes us laugh the hardest wins the Denon stereo system (an $800 value) and two runner-ups will win the Denon noise-canceling earphones, a $200 value!

You can enter as many times as you want!

It’s that simple. In case you need some inspiration, here’s the list of “new & improved band names” that Jello Biafra came up with. The winning entry will have to be in somewhere in this ballpark. Here are a few more.

The odds of winning (especially if you’re funny) are pretty darn good. So what are you waiting for?

The winners will be announced on New Years Day, 2011.

 
Read larger letter here.

 
(via BuzzFeed)

 
Wild! Seldom seen photographs of Niagara Falls from 1969 when engineers diverted the flow of the river from the American side to remove loose rock.

From Daily Mail:

Their plan was to remove the large amount of loose rock from the base of the waterfall, an idea which they eventually abandoned due to expense in November of that year.

During the interim, they studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and strengthened a number of faults to delay the gradual erosion of the American Falls.

The team, made up of U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, blew up their temporary dam in November 1969 and six million cubic feet of water once again thundered over the falls’ sides every minute.

Now, after lying unseen for more than four decades, a set of images showing the eerie calm at the American Falls that year have been unearthed by a man from Connecticut.

 
Below is a video of a barren Niagara Falls shot in November, 1969.

 
More photos after the jump…

 
Yes, it’s that season again when thoughts turn to chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Christmas elves and GWAR!

All together now:

Crush, kill, destroy, crush, kill, destroy, destroy!
I was first and shall be last, slaying all who cross my path
Toppling your gleaming towers, bathing you in golden showers
I crush you as I would a fly
I Kill you and I watch you die
Destroying all I find offending, devastation never ending

 
Via Mu

 
If you are looking for a great Christmas present for one of your rock snob friends, you could certainly do worse than picking them up a copy of Ann Summa’s new book of classic Los Angeles punk photos, The Beautiful & The Damned. I look at a look of books like this and turn my nose up at them, usually for the fact that most punk-era photographs have become way overfamiliar, but this is certainly not the case with Summa’s work, as much of the work here is previously unpublished.

Taken from 1978 to 1984, the images are mostly of L.A.‘s original punk bands such as The Germs, The Screamers, X, the Cramps and the Gun Club, and some of the more avant garde “art stars” of that scene like the Kipper Kids and Johanna Went. Visiting groups from the UK are represented, too in Summa’s book and include The Clash, PiL. Magazine, The Fall, The Slits, Bow Wow Wow and the Pretenders. New Yorkers like Lydia Lunch, Television, James Chance, Laurie Anderson and Talking Heads are also included as well as a few “elder statesmen” who influenced the Los Angeles punk scene: Captain Beefheart, David Bowie and Iggy. What amazing work on display here.

The Beautiful & The Damned was edited and has an introduction by Kristine McKenna, a mark of quality and distinction itself in this household. You can’t go wrong with this one for certain “types” on your holiday shopping list, that’s for sure.

Buy The Beautiful & The Damned at Amazon.

A gallery of Ann Summa’s work on Boing Boing

Ann Summa website

Below, one of the greatest (and sadly unrecorded) bands of the original Los Angeles punk scene, The Screamers, performing “Vertigo,” live at Target Video.
 

 
I owned one of Honda’s flashy red scooters. It didn’t last long in Manhattan. Stolen.

The Lou Reed commercial captures a certain nitty gritty New York vibe, the kind of place where scooters disappear.
 

 
Grace and Miles after the jump…

 
That’s what I’m talking about!  A stumbling, ham-fisted stop/start beat, deep dub bass, some truly distressed guitars and just a wee lil’ hint of pretty lady singing. Voila: it’s a great new track from the newly back-from-the-dead Seefeel. This will be playing on repeat all morning in the Laner household. New album comes out on Warp in February, it says here.
 

 
via Surfing on Steam, thanks !

 
I used to wait for new music from The Beatles and The Stones with an almost unbearable anticipation. The same was true of films by Kubrick and Scorsese. Now there’s little music or film that puts me in that state of heightened expectation. The only film maker that conjures the sense that maybe there are new mystical cinematic vistas on the horizon is the alchemist of celluloid Terrence Malick. And Terrence has a new film coming out in 2011. My serpent power is humming.
 

 
French film maker Jean Rollin has died (Dec. 15). He was known for his erotic, surreal, blood-splattered horror films. While I found some of Rollin’s movies an uneasy and often tedious mix of high and low art, there is no denying that Rollin had a poetic touch and transgressive sensibility that transformed even his lesser films into compelling experiences of varying degree.  Imagine a collaboration between Bergman, Radley Metzger and Herschell Gordon Lewis. There was always something memorably bizarre in all of Rollin’s work.

Film enthusiast and former member of legendary punk pioneers The Flesheaters, Chris D. posted this brief eulogy for Rollin on the New Texture blog:

Director Jean Rollin died today. He was responsible for many incredibly beautiful, poetic images in French films and was looked down on/ignored by the French film industry for decades as only a purveyor of trash. He didn’t direct any unqualified masterpieces, but he was a poet and a visionary and deserves to be remembered fondly for creating some of the most beautiful, simultaneously melancholic, creepy, haunting images of pure poetry in French cinema from the mid-1960s to the present.”

While Rollin’s best films, in my opinion, involved vampires, The Grapes Of Death (1978) is an unusual approach to the world of zombies. Unlike most zombie flicks, Rollin has crafted a film in which zombies are emotional creatures who actually feel remorse for their actions.

As is usually the case with any film directed by Jean Rollin, The Grapes Of Death has sumptuous cinematography and sexually charged imagery. Enjoy.