Founding member (along with his partner Cosey Fanni Tutti) of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey (now Carter Tutti), inventor of the Gristleizer and seminal influence on both the electronic and industrial scenes, today is Chris Carter’s birthday.

Which gives me the perfect excuse to mention his recent The Spaces Between album re-issue. His first ever solo album, it was originally released in 1980 on cassette only. In 2010 it was issued on vinyl for the first time ever by Optimo Music (the same Optimo who supplied the excellent ambient-not-ambient mix I posted at the start of the week). It has been trimmed down from 15 tracks to 6, and now includes the track “Climbing” which was not on the original album.

Here’s what Optimo Music have to say:

Originally recorded between 1974 and 1978 at Industrial Records studio in London ‘The Space Between’ album was first released as a 90 minute cassette in 1980 on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records label. It wasn’t until 1991 that it was again released by Mute Records on CD. Although tracks from ‘The Space Between’ have appeared on numerous compilations since its release, the album has never been available on vinyl until now.

This new vinyl edition on Optimo Music, now retitled ‘The Spaces Between’, doesn’t include all the tracks of the original album but has been enhanced and remastered from the original two-track master tapes and has new cover artwork especially for this release. All tracks have been remastered by Chris Carter in 2009 for this release.

Chris Carter - Interloop
 

 
Chris Carter - Solidit

 
The Spaces Between is available to buy on vinyl and download from Boomkat in the UK. Chris & Cosey are in the middle of re-issuing their back catalog too, but I will save that for another post.

 
Ah, nothing like a bit of hyper-kinetic thrash punk to kick off your weekend! Lightning Bolt are rumored to be bringing out a new album this year, but seeing as it took four years between their last two (2005’s Hypermagic Mountain and 2009’s Earthly Delights) I wouldn’t hold your breath. I love these guys anyway, it’s like pure energy in a can. One drummer, one bassist, and Krakatoa erupting under your feet.

 
If you’ve never been to one of their shows (or even if you have), then watch this clip to get a taste of how truly insane they can be. Setting up on the floor, in the round, the audience are just as much a part of the show as the band. Both feed off each other’s energy, and while it seems basic, the band members (both called Brian) are incredibly skilled musicians. This clip should be watched in its entirety for full effect, but if you can’t take the thrash, just skip to 1:50 for the magic flying glasses moment.
 

 
Bonus: here’s one of my favourite LB tracks “Two Towers” - talk about raw power! It takes a minute to kick in…

 

Thanks to YouTube commenter pizzaROX for the headline!

 
In 1973 when I first heard The Wailers’ debut album “Catch A Fire” my world shifted on its axis and I started loving rock and roll again. Reggae resurrected something in me that had lay dormant since Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison died - a sense that music was mystical, transformative and sexy. The Wailers created powerful songs with infectious hooks delivered with passionate energy and the spirit of rebellion in under five minutes. I was inspired to start my own reggae band, The Ravers: five white guys playing reggae in country bars in Colorado.

Bob Marley and Peter Tosh changed the course of my life. Patti Smith, The Clash and The Ramones sealed the deal. The Ravers were now the only reggae playing punk band in the Rocky Mountains. Yeah, it was strange. In 1977 we relocated to New York City and never looked back. I had caught the fire.

In this soulful video, The Wailers rehearse “Stir It Up” during their “Catch A Fire” recording sessions in L.A. in 1973.

Bob Marley : vocal, guitar, percussion
Peter tosh : vocal, guitar, percussion
Joe Higgs: Harmony vocal and percussion
Carlton Barrett: drums
Aston “Family Man” Barrett : Bass
Earl"Wya” Lindo Keybords

“I’ll push the wood, then I blaze ya fire, then I’ll satisfy your heart’s desire.”
 

 
Attention Los Angeles film fans, actor Udo Kier will be IN PERSON Friday night at Cinefamily as part of their month long “That Guy!” celebration of character actors:

There is no other human on earth who looks like, moves, speaks and acts like Udo Kier—and many of the world’s top film directors are intimately aware of this. Frequently cast to give a film that extra indefinable oooompfh, Udo nails it every time, with a mixture of camp, chills, commitment, charm and sex! His penetrating blue eyes are like laser beams aimed through the soul; his gravitas can skew either warmly funny or deadly serious; his physical appeal is that of a sensual dark overlord; his that-guy-ness—electrifying, as his appearance in over 200 film/TV roles, from arthouse to grindhouse, have inspired a deeply devoted cult. This Teutonic two-headed titan of both top-shelf cinema classics and trashy exploitation fare has simply been one of our favorite on-screen performers for forever—and besides, how could Von Trier, Fassbinder, Herzog, Paul Morrissey, Rob Zombie, Argento, Carpenter, Van Sant, Wenders, Michael Bay, Guy Maddin and Uwe Boll all be wrong?

Tonight, we’re thrilled to welcome Udo for a lively discussion about his wild and prolific filmography, an oodles-of-Udo presentation of some of his greatest movie moments, and two incredibly rare films: the legendary 2002 short film Mrs. Meitlemeihr (which features Udo as Adolf Hitler hiding out in post-war London…in drag!), and 1996’s United Trash. Directed by Udo’s good friend, the late Christoph Schlingensief (a director whose outrageously outré is-it-art-or-is-it-exploitation satirical style made Kier his perfect frequent collaborator), the film is an incredible holyfuckingshit masterpiece not to be missed. And it stars Kitten Nativdad! Seriously, don’t miss this. JUST ADDED: the evening’s show will also feature the world premiere of new short films directed by Guy Maddin that star Udo, ones filmed simultaneously with Guy’s new feature Keyhole!

Starts at 8pm. Co-presented by Badass DIgest.

Below, Udo Kier’s memorable cameo in My Own Private Idaho.
 

 
Vittorio De Sisti’s Naked England (Inghilterra Nuda) from 1969 looks like mondo trash at its finest. But good luck finding it on DVD or video. For now, this wild little trailer will have to do.

Drugs, drag queens, nude psychotherapy, tutorials on stripping, trepanation, women wreastling (sic), disco churches and a soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, a suspected murderer who himself would be a suitable subject for Naked England, is an irresistible mix that makes this flick a perfect candidate for restoration and a digital release.

Narrated by English sword and sandal star Edmund Purdom.

Anybody know where I can get my hands on a copy?
 

I never pictured John Galt wearing a baseball cap, did you?
 
Far-right ideologue, Ayn Rand wrote of moral absolutism: “There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.” Yup, but wouldn’t you know it, Rand, who spent her life deploring the New Deal, Social Security, the Great Society and every other form of government aid to the poor and elderly ended up taking *GASP* government “handouts” herself in the form of Social Security and almost certainly Medicare, too.

From Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers:

The Right should be commended politically for their ability to develop and stick to a unified message. But close inspection of this unified message reveals a disappointing secret identified by a student of the Godfather of Neo-conservatism,—- the University of Chicago’s Leo Strauss. The student, Anne Norton (Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire) identified what she called “VIP-DIP” meaning Venerated in Public, Disdained in Private. “Do as I say, not as I do.” The list of vip-dipers on the Right runs from Harold Bloom to Newt Gingrich, but certainly not Ayn Rand. Right?

Say it ain’t so Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.

A heavy smoker who refused to believe that smoking causes cancer brings to mind those today who are equally certain there is no such thing as global warming. Unfortunately, Miss Rand was a fatal victim of lung cancer.

However, it was revealed in the recent 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank O’Connor).

As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”

Although FOI requests have confirmed that Rand got Social Security payments under her married name from December 1974 until her death in 1982, one researcher’s recent FOI request for her Medicare records turned up nothing. Even if true believer Randroids would fail to take Evva Pryror at her word, certain things might be assumed, like an elderly author, even a successful one, being wiped out financially by a catastrophic illness. Lung cancer treatment isn’t cheap—it’s the kind of thing that could put someone out in the street—but Rand, a notoriously heavy cigarette smoker, must’ve been grateful for the virtues of altruism (and the benevolence of her fellow American taxpayers) when presumably no bill came for her cancer treatment in the mid-70s

Does this make Rand no better than the “looters” and “moochers” of the welfare state she decried for her entire career? Not necessarily, but it would make her a hypocrite.

 
Lee Harris is a playwright, poet, publisher and “foot soldier” of the UK’s counter culture. Born in Johannesburg in 1936, Harris was one of the few whites on the African National Congress, opposing segregation during the time of Apartheid, and was involved with the Congress of the People rally in Soweto in 1955.

Harris arrived in the UK in 1956, to study drama, after college, he had a small part in Orson Welles’ film Chimes at Midnight and later worked in theater. 

A major turning point for Harris came on the 11 June 1965, when he first heard Allen Ginsberg at the decade defining International Poetry Reading at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

We turned up in our thousands to hear some of the best poets of the Beat Generation. When Allen Ginsberg stood up to read his poems you could feel an electric charge in the air. There he was, like an Old Testament prophet, with his long dark hair and bushy beard, his voice reverberating with emotional intensity. Never before in that hallowed hall had such outrageous and colorful language been heard…..Hearing Allen that first time was a revelatory and illuminating experience.

That event and his presence in London that summer, helped kindle the spark that set the underground movement alight in the mid-sixties.

Harris began to write plays with Buzz Buzz and then wrote the critically acclaimed Love Play, which was performed at the Arts Lab in 1967 - a highly important venue for alternative arts, founded by Jim Haynes, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono exhibited and David Bowie performed. It was during this time Harris became acquainted with William Burroughs, Frank Zappa, Ken Kesey and toured with The Fugs.

Harris wrote for the International Times and in 1972 established the first “head shop” Alchemy in London on the Portobello Road, where he sold “paraphenalia” brought back from India and counter culture books.

“I’d started off in the West End before as an anarchist trader selling psychedelic posters in the late sixties you see because I did not know how to make a living. I ended up in the Portobello Road, making chokers, selling chillums, first because that was the in thing with beads.

I had traded at many festivals so it was natural for me and I started to be a sort of medicine head, with Tiger Balm, Herbs and I believed in cannabis as the ‘healing herb’.

It was here that Harris was famously prosecuted for selling cigarette papers. The shop was a focus for alternative culture, and it was here Harris began publishing underground ‘zines, including Jim Haynes, infamous drug-smuggler Howard Marks, and artist, journalist and activist Caroline Coon.
 

 
Part two of ‘Life and Works of Lee Harris’ plus bonus Lee Harris and the Beat Hotel, after the jump…
 

 
Himalayan goats, known as Thar, roam the rough mountain terrain around Nepal. In adapting to their treacherous environment these sure-footed creatures have developed some astounding climbing and leaping skills.

The mountain goat is one of the world’s best rock climbers. Its feet have inner pads for traction and cloven hooves that can spread apart for better grip. A dewclaw on the back of each foot also keeps it from slipping.

These goats are practically flying.
 

 
Via Blame It On The Voices

 
As seen on the KCRW website:

Join the Grammy Museum for a Zappa-wise and Zappa-wide view of the Composer in Residence at the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK), part and soul of the cottage industrial complex where Zappa hung his hat (the wide-brimmed pointy one, slightly crumpled at the top with the stars and comets on) for virtually his entire adult life and career. This inside/multi/track discussion will examine the wherefores of FZ’s statement “Music is the Best!” and include audio and visual elements and a bit of live music presented by Gail Zappa with Todd Yvega and Joe Travers. Moderated by Scott Goldman, VP, GRAMMY Foundation, followed by audience Q & A.

Grammy Museum, 800 West Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90015