Most journalists, bloggers, writers, and what-have-yous hope to find that one special thing very few people know about and get the opportunity to bring it out to the attention of a wider audience. It’s the one big story most hope to get at some point in their careers. Rarely do stories fall into laps, they have to be earned, written, shaped and created. But then again, sometimes you get lucky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was friended-up on social media by a guy called Immanuel Martin. I had no idea who he was or why he’d think I’d ever be fun to know. A day or so later, a message popped up in my in-tray. It was from Martin. He sent me an email detailing the life and work of a photographer he knew called Mary Lou Fulton. She was now in her eighties and living with her family in California. Martin explained how he had met Fulton when she worked as a photo-journalist back in the 1980s. He said that she had documented the punks, the mods and rockabilly gangs who hung around Los Angeles. Her work had been published in L.A. Weekly. Martin was one of the young teenage punks Fulton had photographed. He first met her and journalist Patrick McCartney at a Social Distortion and Redd Kross gig in January 1983.

“Like many punk shows in LA,” wrote Martin, “that particular night ended up with the LAPD arriving to shut the show down and then ensuing chaos as the LAPD overreacted and the punks rioted. It was across the street on Sunset Blvd where Mary Lou and Pat McCartney caught up with my friends and I for an interview. Mary Lou snapped several photographs and we chatted. Though Mary Lou and Pat were in their 40s, my friends and I were impressed with their genuine interest in our subculture and non-judgmental attitude. They seemed to have real empathy and understanding for us as kids just trying to be who we were but facing constant harassment by the LAPD and media seeking to paint punks in the worst possible light.”

In Reagan’s America there was no place for disaffected youth. Punk was seen as the lowest of the low and considered by some as a genuine threat to the stability of honest, decent, hard-working Americans, kinda thing. It was the same old BS that’s been spun since Cain and Abel.

A month or so later, Martin caught up with Fulton and McCartney again, this time at an Exploited gig at Huntington Park’s Mendiola’s Ballroom.

“It was an epic bill that night,’ said Martin. “with local LA punk bands, CH3, Youth Brigade, Aggression and Suicidal Tendencies. However only Suicidal Tendencies got to play before the LAPD showed up to shut the show down. They arrived in massive force with it seemed only one intention; to beat anyone they came across without regard for their affiliation to the event. The events that night are well documented so I won’t give a play-by-play here. However it was that night, that Mary Lou and Pat McCartney, journalists, faced the same LAPD violence that we faced. Both were viciously struck by the cops with their batons. Mary Lou ended up in the hospital with a broken rib.”

That night was later documented in an article written by McCartney with Bob Rivkin called “Cops and Punks: Report from the War Zone on the Destruction of a Subculture” in October 1983. The article was illustrated by a choice selection of Fulton’s photographs.

Mary Lou Fulton started her career working in advertising before she moved to Hollywood to work on commercials and documentaries. She showed considerable talent and a strong artistic flair. Fulton started taking more and more photographs which led her to becoming a photo-journalist traveling the world and working for various magazines and newspapers.

Sometime in the late-seventies/early-eighties she became fascinated by the punk rockers she met and photographed on London’s King’s Road. She liked their style, their vibrancy, and gallus attitude towards life. Back in L.A. she started documenting the local punks and all the other different youth cultures which were then flourishing in the city and becoming more prominent with the rise of MTV.

Martin and Fulton lost contact. He began his own career while Fulton continued with hers. Years passed, until one day around 2006/7, Martin rekindled his friendship with McCartney. They exchanged emails and kept in touch. It was after McCartney’s death that Martin contacted Fulton. They discussed her photographs and the hundreds of pictures she had taken of youth gangs during the eighties. Martin thought it was imperative that Fulton’s work was brought to a wider audience. He tried various sources but none, sadly, showed much interest. That’s when he contacted me. Like Martin, I think Fulton’s work brilliantly captured the energy and camaraderie of the various youth subcultures in London and Los Angeles during the 1980s. Her work deserves recognition for its artistry and cultural importance. Fulton’s work deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. And I hope this little blog here can start something happening.
 

 

 

 
More of Mary Lou Fulton’s photographs, after the jump…
 

 
“When I was a lad…” well, it used to be at least moderately difficult to acquire music. Pre-internet, some stuff was really hard to find, even if you lived in New York or London and indeed this often meant paying beaucoup bucks for things back then. I’m frankly ashamed at some of the prices I’ve paid for certain LPs and CDs over the years. I cringe with embarrassment when reminded that I’ve spent $100 on a single soundtrack LP or a rare 12” dance mix. $80 for a 45 rpm single. It made sense at the time…

I mention this wistful old man shit by way of bringing up the most I ever spend on a single CD (times three): At some point in the late 80s, I paid $43 apiece for three Les Rita Mitsouko CDs that I special ordered at Rebel Rebel on Bleecker Street. I was a huge fan of the band (I’ve seen them live twice and I doubt they have played all that many shows in the US) but it was next to impossible to buy their CDs. So I had them special ordered from France and spent $129 plus tax on three CDs and it took about a month for them to arrive. Ridiculous I know, but I had to have them. The truth is that I honestly think I’ve gotten my money’s worth over the years.

Most Americans and Brits have probably never heard of France’s greatest ever pop band. Even Francophiles who love them some Serge Gainsbourg don’t tend to know much about Les Rita Mitsouko and this is a damned shame.

The group was comprised of lead vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Catherine Ringer and multi-instrumentalist Fred Chichin. There’s not a lot about written about them on the Internet, not in English at least, although there are tons of videos on YouTube of various French TV performances (including TV appearances with Sparks and Iggy Pop) and their incredible music videos, which more than lived up to their music. Their records were hard enough to find, but somehow I also managed a near complete collection of their music videos on 3/4” U-matic videotapes, a format that I was, of course, unable to play. Oh the youthful insanity, but truly they are a group worthy of utterly fanatical fandom, as ye shall see…

Les Rita Mitsouko, although they predate both bands by a few years, are in the same general category (to my mind at least) as Deee-lite or Japan’s Pizzicato Five. Aside from the music, the visual component of the group, like with these other two bands, was fashion forward and extremely well art-directed. Contributors to their videos included famed director Jean-Baptiste Mondino, and superstar fashion designers like Thierry Mugler, Agnes B. and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Their first album was produced by Conny Plank (Kraftwerk, Neu!, Ultravox) at his studio in Germany. Rita Mitsouko was named the 20th greatest French rock album in the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine. (The “Les” was added afterwards to warn off people from the idea that the band was Catherine’s). The follow-up, Les Rita Mitsouko Presentent The No Comprendo, was produced by the legendary Tony Visconti and was ranked #7 on that same Rolling Stone list. It’s a masterpiece of pop music, French or otherwise.

Visconti remarked about the group “I never thought I would hear a French rock band rival an English or American one.” If you don’t believe me, maybe the guy who produced Electric Warrior ought to know, right?
 

 
The song that you might know if you’ve heard any song by Les Rita Mitsouko, is “Marcia Balia,” a paean to a choreographer/dancer friend of Ringer’s who died young. This was a huge dancefloor hit all over the world in the mid-80s.

WATCH THIS:
 

 
Okay, so did you clock just how incredibly sexy Catherine Ringer is? Of course you did. It’s rather difficult not to notice, isn’t it? She’s a rare beauty, a hyper-intelligent, gifted woman, a truly great vocalist, one half of arguably the greatest French rock band, ever and…

Well, years later I found out from a French friend that Ringer, who was apparently a junkie in her youth (and perhaps beyond, when I met her in ‘86 or ‘87 she seemed somewhat disheveled and that’s putting it kindly), had made a number of rather specialist porn films in the late 1970s. The types of films for a certain subset of porn connoisseur, if you know what I mean, and chances are, that unless you’re thinking of something really dirty, you don’t…

Apparently during the time of the band’s initial burst of mid-80s notoriety, theme dinner parties were held to all over haute Paris to watch some of Ringer’s filthiest XXX antics—some filmed when she was just 17—made under the noms de porn of “Betty Davis,” “Cat’ Gerin,” ‘Claudia Mutti,” and “Lolita da Nova.”

I doubt that they served any sausages or chocolate pudding at such soirees, let’s just say. No lemonade, either, ‘kay?

Let’s move right along, now, shall we?
 

 
Continues after the jump…

Marilyn Manson looking more than a bit like David Bowie.
 
It makes sense that Marilyn Manson would campaign hard to make his cover of the Eurythmics 1983 world-wide smash, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” the single of his 1995 EP Smells Like Children. Dave Stewart, praised the cover calling it “oddly infectious.” Vocalist Annie Lennox agreed with Stewart, who appreciated Manson’s “extreme” take on “Sweet Dreams.”

His instinct proved to be right on the money, and “Sweet Dreams” a-la Marilyn Manson, would become an international hit. “Sweet Dreams” was not the only cover on Smells Like Children as Manson also took on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ signature song, “I Put a Spell on You” and Patti Smith’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll N***er.” During his career, Manson has covered songs which range from selections that totally make sense like Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” to a chilling rendition of “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song for the film and television series M*A*S*H. The list of artists and songs covered by Marilyn Manson is long and full of surprises, including a tune made famous by Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which Manson recorded for the soundtrack of the 2017 film 24 Hours to Live.

In 2002, Irish bootleg label Murphy Records put out Killer Wasps-The Real Ultra Rare Tracks best described as a schizophrenic sampling of Manson rarities. The various covers on the release include Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” A huge Bowie fan, Manson would collaborate with Shooter Jennings (the son of Waylon Jennings) on a mystical cover of “Cat People (Putting out the Fire)”—a song Manson used for years as a warm-up for his live shows. The song appears on Jennings’ 2016 record Countach (For Giorgio)—a collection of covers originally done by electro-music wizard Giorgio Moroder. Jennings and Manson’s “Cat People” would also spawn a curious eight-plus minute NSFW video presented in old-school 16-bit style.

A selection of Marilyn Manson’s many covers follows after the jump…

 
In mid-1975, Alex Chilton was down on his luck—way down. No record label was interested in issuing the third Big Star LP, so the album was shelved, and the band broke up. He was struggling financially, as Big Star had failed to make an impact on the charts, and it had been years since the pop success of his first band, the Box Tops. Drugs and alcohol weren’t helping matters, either. All the while, Chilton was still writing great songs, and he was looking for a new record deal, as his contract with Ardent Records was about to expire. A demo tape documenting this era made at Ardent with Chris Bell, his former bandmate and songwriting collaborator in Big Star, is about to be put out—and Dangerous Minds has the premiere of one of the tunes.

Due to a variety of factors—including musical and personal conflicts in and around the band—Chris Bell left Big Star in late 1972, but in 1975, while in Europe looking to kickstart his solo career, he told music journalists he was open to the idea of a Big Star reunion. When Bell returned to the States, he got in touch with Chilton, and soon Alex was at Ardent Studios, singing a lovely harmony vocal on Chris’s gorgeous, tender ballad, “You and Your Sister.” Ultimately, a Big Star reunion didn’t happen, and it’s been thought that the session for “You and Your Sister” marked the final time Chilton and Bell worked together in the studio, but the recent unearthing of the Chilton demo has essentially changed history.
 

The original Big Star (L-R): Andy Hummel, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, and Jody Stephens.

The 1975 demo engineered by Chris Bell at Ardent was discovered on a tape reel labeled simply “Alex Chilton.” The recordings, which exhibit Alex at the beginning of his charmingly ramshackle period, are of Chilton solo, just his voice and instrumentation. For the session, he tracked early versions of “My Rival” and “All of the Time,” as well as the rarity “Windows Hotel,” and “She Might Look My Way,” which was co-written by Tommy Hoehn and included on Hoehn’s 1978 LP, though a studio version hasn’t been included on an official Chilton release before. The demo has two stabs at the song, and on the second, Bell layers AC’s vocals to fine effect, contributing to the sweetness of the tune.

As off-kilter as these songs sound at times, Chilton’s melodic gifts can’t be obscured—in fact, the combination of chaos and songcraft is precisely what makes this material so appealing.
 

 
The recently discovered Chilton demo is about to be issued by Omnivore Recordings as My Rival, a 10-inch EP that arrives on November 29th—Record Store Day. A digital edition will be released on December 6th. The set contains liner notes penned by Rich Tupica, author of the essential 2018 book, There Was a Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of Big Star.
 

 
Here’s the premiere of “My Rival” from the EP:
 

 
It’s possible that Chris Bell, realizing that he and Alex Chilton were in very different places musically in 1975, never even brought up the idea of Big Star reunion with Chilton, though Alex later said if Chris had, he wouldn’t have been interested. Tragically, Bell died in a car accident in late 1978, leaving the ‘75 Chilton demo session as their final team-up. In the spring of 1993, Alex reunited with drummer Jody Stephens for a Big Star gig, with Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies filling out the lineup. The unit continued to play on and off until Chilton’s sudden death in 2010.
 

 
We’ll bid you adieu with video of Alex Chilton and Sid Selvidge playing “My Rival,” circa 1975:
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Downs’: A stoned and chaotic unreleased Alex Chilton track from new Big Star box, ‘Complete Third’
What’s Your Sign?: Big Star’s Alex Chilton and his obsession with astrology
The Baker Street Regulars: Obscure ‘70s band that featured former members of Big Star

 
Mute Records have released a special deluxe edition of The Pop Group’s debut album Y seeing the iconoclastic album remastered and cut at half-speed at Abbey Road.

To mark the 40th anniversary of this groundbreaking 1979 album, there’s also a box set including the original album, “She Is Beyond Good and Evil” on 12” single and two additional albums Alien Blood—a 10-track album culled from the original 2” tapes of their studio sessions including studio recordings of “Kiss The Book” and “We Are Time (Ricochet)”—and Y Live, a compilation of live performances from shows in New York, London, Sheffield and Manchester. More information at the Mute website.

In the following essay, director Michael Calvert describes what it was like to make a short film with The Pop Group. You can download a special PDF booklet with stills from the 1979 shoot here.

The Ray of Sound

Closer in time to D-Day than the present day, The Pop Group film is, nevertheless, instantly recognisable as the modern world, which fortunately still exists today. It shows the world of bands, drum-kits, amplifiers on chairs, and singers holding microphones facing an audience in a non-hostile environment. Back then, all this was alternative culture, now it is the mainstream.

They had rented a Chapel—Hope Chapel on Hope Chapel Hill—which was disused at the time. It was in Hotwells, where ideas come from the earth, like the hot water which bubbles up from underground. It was the perfect location for the film we wanted to make, which was a ‘promo’ film for the band and their first single. Dick O’Dell had me on the lowest of low budgets. That was a good thing, as it prevented any form of cinematic excess. It was one camera, one lens, and a few lighting ideas stolen from classic Hammer horror. I had promised them that it would be nothing like Tony Bennett’s “Stranger in Paradise,” the first promo from 1952.

I drove down from London with Phil Reynolds, in a rented car with a load of rented gear in the back. We had both just graduated from LCP. Phil took the b&w photos shown here for the first time.

Cinematic discipline, the careful synchronisation of the film to the music track which was playing back on 1⁄4” tape, went out the window in the first five minutes. I was standing in the middle of the audience and things were happening in a different way. I realized the only way to shoot this was to go with it, just to look for good footage, good angles, good light, and hope it would fit together later on.

It was a good performance, and not just by the band. The audience, their friends and fellow travellers, all played their part, some in strange costumes. The lack of a stage meant that everyone was on the same level, so there was an atmosphere of a happening rather than a gig. It was a 60s thing mixed with a punk thing. We might have done four or five separate takes; they got increasingly abstract.

The fire scenes were set up across the river in the woods. They had built “Beyond Good + Evil” as letters supported by long staves. It was hard to get it all burning at the same time. The best part of that scene was when a few people took the staves and used them as torches, spinning them round. It was improvised.

About a week later, I set off for Bristol again, a couple of big tins of cutting copy under my arm. I had hired an editing suite down by Temple Meads.

This time I was staying on Simon’s sofa. He was programming me with the meandering Eric Dolphy, alternating with slabs of Ornette Coleman. The next afternoon, when I finally got to the cutting room, I had Eric Dolphy’s fingers. I cut and cut. People would drop in from time to time, to see what was taking shape.

When they left, I would cut and cut again. It became a mosaic of footage. It was more like making a stained glass window out of tiny coloured fragments.

This went on for a week or so. I eventually ran out of material to stitch into the seven minutes or so running time, so I took it back to the negative cutters, who translated my battered cutting copy - which I still have - into the master negative. Some of the shots are no more than six frames long: a 1⁄4 second.

Looking at the film again, what stands out, in comparison with most other work in this genre, is the lack of a fixed perspective. Every shot is from a different take or a different angle. The time-line is inconsistent, it meanders, it’s disorientating, it’s raucous.

But this is all as it should be; this is The Pop Group. It wasn’t planned like that, it just happened.

—Michael Calvert 2019

The Pop Group will be touring from the end of 2019 and throughout 2020 in support of the release.
 

“She is Beyond Good and Evil,” directed by Michael Calvert.
 

“The Boys from Brazil,” directed by Michael Calvert

 
The Greys: may or may not be a band from New York that are now a one or two-person operation working out of Mexico City. The Greys may or may not be Elvis impersonators high on ketamine disco dancing through neon nights. Then again, the Greys may or may not be suburban revolutionaries waiting for the Communist call. Or, the Greys may or may not be the girl of your dreams in the arms of four Welsh men from Hull. Most probably, they are none of these things.

It doesn’t really matter. All you need to know: The Greys is the name of a band who would rather remain anonymous (or so I’m told). A band who want to be known for their music rather than who they are. And that’s fine with me. Though I’m sure you can dig up the details if you’re so inclined on Discogs. But back to the Greys. They describe their music as “Art Rock, Avantgarde, Deathrock, Krautrock, Space Rock, Punk, Post Rock, Prog Rock.”.

Last year, the Greys released a 12” four-track EP which created some passing interest. They also roped in cult film director, actor, writer and artist Nick Zedd to direct their promos.

It was the Zedd connection that brought me to the band. Good thing too. Zedd shared his director’s cut of the Greys’ most recent track “The Reckoning.” Intrigued by the music and more particularly the visuals, I contacted Zedd to find out more.

Who are the Greys?

Nick Zedd: The Greys were a band twenty years ago in NYC or NJ I think. The band still puts out records which are kind of good but very experimental.

And you worked with the band before “The Reckoning”?

NZ: I shot two previous music videos with the band. On [‘The Reckoning’] I selected the makeup, costumes, locations, the pig, blood and other details and directed everyone and lit the sets. The girl is an artist who does dissections and preservations of dead animals. The two previous videos I did with the Greys were good too. We had bigger budgets to spend on props and locations and a Mexican girl who was an erotic dancer who also sang on one. That one was called “Vive Libre” “Deathless” was one we shot in the hotel I eventually was evicted from, using a drone camera for some shots.

What’s the promo for “The Reckoning” about?

NZ: I wanted to raise awareness regarding the history of U.S. imperialism and the crimes committed by agents of predatory capitalism for hundreds of years around the world. Hypocrisy is cherished and enshrined by the ruling class of the United Snakes of Amerika who control everything we see and hear on controlled corporate media, in our broken educational system and in the dominant political narrative to which we’ve been conditioned. I wanted to break through the propaganda with six minutes of truth.

Sounds good.

NZ: I want the video to reach the widest possible audience.

Check out more of the Greys music here and follow Nick Zedd here.
 

 
Bonus the Greys’ video ‘Deathless’ directed by Nick Zedd, after the jump…
 

‘The Entombment’ (1957).
 
After being discouraged from pursuing a career in art by his lawyer father, Paul Delvaux would enroll at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. René Magritte, was studying there as well. Delvaux’s father unhappily agreed to his son’s study of architecture, though the younger Delvaux was deeply challenged by the evil that was mathematics, and failed his exam. Delvaux would then switch gears delving into the art of decorative painting. After an extended stay at the Académie Royale, he would graduate in 1924 after approximately eight-years of artistic immersion—though some sources indicate Delvaux would depart the school much later, in 1927. A quote attributed to Delvaux below nicely provides insight into his evolution as an artist and precisely what inspired him:

“Youthful impressions, fixed once and for all in the mind, influence you all your life.”

One of Delvaux’s artistic calling cards was his affinity for human skeletons. This interest could be traced back to his early schooling and his fascination with the skeletons that were on display in his biology classroom. Another account details Delvaux developed a fear of skeletons after being subjected to looking at one hanging in the music room at school. The artist had also been photographed numerous times at various ages with various skeletal muses. Also distinctly present in Delvaux’s dreamworld were entirely or partially nude women. Along with his skeletons, his paintings of women were often unsettling and confusing, as were some of the sexual situations Delvaux envisioned, then painted them into. Another young love of Delvaux was the illustrations of French illustrator Édouard Riou. Delvaux would become aware of Riou after receiving Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, which he got as a communion gift in 1907. Delvaux would be inspireded by artists affiliated with the Barbizon School, an art movement originating in the forest-town of Barbizon focused on the expert painting of landscapes, just south of Paris. 

Furthermore, even though he had not completed his studies in architecture, the time he spent with the discipline would prove to be a strong influence in his work, especially those including another childhood love, trains, and train stations. In addition, during his time at Académie Royale, Delvaux was also under the direct tutelage of two Belgian painters; Constant Montald and the esoteric symbolist, Jean Delville. Traits of both Montald and Delville can be clearly seen in Delvaux’s work.
 

‘The Tunnel’ (1978).
 
A pivotal event in Delvaux’s career occurred in 1926 when he attended a gallery show for Giorgio de Chirico—the founder of the short-lived Scuola Metafisica (Metaphysical School) in Italy. De Chirico is credited for providing much of the fuel used to ignite the Surrealist movement. Surrealist works by René Magritte were of keen interest to Delvaux, as were Salvador Dali and Dada pioneer Max Ernst. Surrealism is quite evident in Delvaux’s paintings and concepts, but the artist did not consider himself a part of the movement. In fact, Delvaux’s work would be categorized in 1925 by German photographer, art historian and critic Franz Roh as “Magic Realism.” Another formative experience for the artist were his visits to the Musee Spitzner, which after burning down, turned into a traveling anatomical museum featuring approximately 250 different wax recreations of human anatomy, including hideous deformities and wax depictions of social diseases. In 1943, Delvaux would pay tribute to Pierre Spitzner in paint. Here’s Delvaux detailing his first visit to the Spitzner:

“In the middle of the entrance to the Museum was a woman who was the cashier, then on one side there was a man’s skeleton and the skeleton of a monkey, and on the other side, there was a representation of Siamese twins. And in the interior, one saw a rather dramatic and terrifying series of anatomical casts in wax, which represented the dramas and horrors of syphilis, the dramas, deformations. And all this in the midst of the artificial gaiety of the fair. The contrast was so striking that it made a powerful impression on me. All the ‘Sleeping Venuses’ that I have made, come from there. Even the one in London, at the Tate Gallery. It is an exact copy of the sleeping Venus in the Spitzner Museum, but with Greek temples or dressmaker’s dummies, and the like. It is different, certainly, but the underlying feeling is the same.”

In 1933 Delvaux lost his mother. Following her death, he would destroy more than 100 of his early paintings after being criticized for the explicit nudity in his work. His father would pass away four years later. That year would bring about Delvaux’s first marriage to Suzanne Purnal, and the beginning of a new, horribly destructive chapter in Delvaux’s life. Unsurprisingly, in the decade he spent with a woman he never really loved who made his life miserable,  Delvaux created some of his most masterful work. The Nazi occupation of Belgium would be yet another conduit for Delvaux’s creativity, bringing the artist to darker, more controversial places. He would paint as bombs descended across Brussels—most famously “Sleeping Venus” (1944). In 1948, priests were prohibited from attending one of his solo gallery shows, the reason more than likely his depictions of nude women. Men of the cloth would be banned from another show of Delvaux’s in Venice in 1954, this time at the behest of the future “people’s pope” Pope John XXIII, then-Cardinal Roncalli.  Roncalli was incensed by Delvaux’s work and labeled it “heretical.” Here’s the painting by Delvaux that drove the future Pontiff over the edge:
 

‘Crucifixion,’ 1952. Delvaux would paint different versions of ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Sleeping Venus’ over the course of his career.
 
Quite by chance during a visit to the Belgian seaside town of Saint Idesbald in 1947, Delvaux would meet up with his first love, Anne-Marie de Martelaere—a woman his family, especially his overprotective mother, had forced him to stop seeing. They rekindled their romance, and Delvaux would divorce Purnal and move to Saint Idesbald, marrying de Martelaere in 1952. The town is also home to the Paul Delvaux Foundation and Museum (founded in 1982).  He would continue painting until he lost his sight in 1986 at the age of 89, the same year he lost the love of his life, Anne-Marie. Delvaux would move to Veurne, Belgium, where he would live the rest of his days before passing away at the age of 96.

Authentic paintings by Delvaux routinely sell at auction for well over a million dollars. In 2012 an oil on canvas by Delvaux “Le Canapé Bleu” (painted in 1967) sold for an astonishing $3,200,000.

Five decades of Delvaux’s divine NSFW work follows.
 

‘Woman in Cave’ (1936).
 

‘Women-Trees’ (1937).
 
More after the jump…

 
On a quiet Sunday afternoon in December 1991, two of rock’s most iconic figures were standing outside a bar in Edinburgh waiting for their cue to go on. Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl smoked cigarettes, complained about the cold, and were ignored by the majority of people passing-by on South Clerk Street. Nirvana had agreed to appear at a benefit gig for Sick Kids at the Southern Bar after being asked by Edinburgh band the Joyriders. Nirvana had played the capital two nights previous and now two-thirds of the band were making a return engagement under the billing “very special guests.”

A rumor Nirvana were to play this charity gig brought in some wide-eyed fans, but most left after one of the Joyriders announced over the mic that they were not coming. A few fortunate fans stayed on alongside a scrum of regulars. Twenty-minutes later, Cobain and Grohl finished their smokes and made their way inside.
 

Nirvana at the Southern Bar. Photo Mary Boon. Via.
 
This was Scotland 1991, where it seemed to most Scots nothing culturally important ever happened here. The country was still on a desperate high that wee Paul McCartney had a farm down in Campbelltown and, you know, had once written a #1 song called “Mull of Kintyre.” Jings. While over on the west coast, or Glasgow to you and me, there was still long tedious reminisces about that day Elvis Presley set foot on Scottish soil at Prestwick Airport while he waited for a connecting flight back to the States. All the important things in Scotland moved to London or like AC/DC emigrated to Australia. It would take Irvine Welsh in his book Trainspotting and then John Hodge in the film adaptation to articulate why it was “shite to be Scottish”:

Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It’s nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don’t hate the English. They’re just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We’re ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, tha’s what, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don’t hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.

That’s one way of looking at it. Maybe not the right one, but it was one that was prevalent at the time. Self-loathing is a gift from the Stork when many Scots are born. With hindsight the appearance of Cobain and Grohl gigging in a wee pub on the southside of Edinburgh was like Jesus taking charge of refreshments at a wedding.

Making their entrance to shouts of “Ya hippie bastards,” Cobain and Grohl perched on two bar stools and played three songs: “Dumb,” “Polly,” and “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam.” Krist Novoselic didn’t perform though was rumoured to be in attendance.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
FOOD FIGHT! Nirvana gets thrown out of their record release party on Friday the 13th, 1991
Incredible early Nirvana gig at a tiny East Coast goth club, 1990
‘(This is Known as) The Blues Scale’: Outtakes from the Sonic Youth / Nirvana ’91 European Tour

 
In 1972, in the wake of his immensely successful album, What’s Going On, and its accompanying singles, Marvin Gaye released the topical 45, “You’re the Man,” which failed to crack the Top 40 of Billboard’s Pop chart. A disappointed Gaye retreated, electing to focus on projects unrelated to creating a follow-up LP. These endeavors included scoring the film Trouble Man and taping an album of duets with Diana Ross, though his inner artistry pushed him to keep creating and recording solo works. Two of the tracks Marvin came up with were Christmas songs that were slated for a holiday 45 in late ‘72, and while both tunes are really interesting in their own unique ways, the 7-inch never saw the light of day.

Marvin co-wrote and produced the two Christmas numbers, and he also played the Moog synthesizer, an instrument that had recently been gifted to him by Stevie Wonder. Marvin’s Moog takes the lead on “Christmas in the City,” a jazzy instrumental that conjures up images of city streets on Christmas Eve. It’s a very cool track.

“Christmas in the City” was slated to be the B-side of the scrapped single. The planned A-side, “I Want to Come Home for Christmas,” at first sounds like a traditional Christmas tune, in which the singer laments that he’ll be away from home on the holiday, before the song takes a surprisingly dark turn and it’s revealed the protagonist is a soldier—a prisoner of war (Vietnam was on Marvin’s mind). The logic behind the single’s cancellation is unknown, publicly, but one can imagine what Motown’s reasoning might have been. The songs would sit in the vault until the ‘90s, when they were finally released on separate compilations.
 

 
Both tracks have been included on You’re the Man, an album consisting of all of Marvin Gaye’s solo and non-soundtrack recordings from 1972, a representation of what a ’72 successor to What’s Going On might have resembled. Released earlier this year, the seventeen-track set includes a previously unreleased mix of “Christmas in the City,” and the long version of “I Want to Come Home for Christmas.”
 

 
Other standout cuts on You’re the Man include “The World is Rated X,” which covered similar lyrical ground as “What’s Going On”; “Piece of Clay,” a gospel-soul song with some searing lead guitar; and the closing funk jam, “Checking Out (Double Clutch),” which finds Marvin talking to the listener through the track.

You’re the Man is available in digital, CD, and vinyl formats. The two-LP gatefold edition features new liner notes by Marvin Gaye biographer David Ritz. Though the songs on You’re the Man have come out on various releases in years past, some of the mixes make their debut here, and nearly all of the tracks have never been pressed on vinyl before.
 

 
Get Marvin Gaye’s You’re the Man here.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Marvin Gaye’s triumphant return to the concert stage after a four-year layoff, 1972

 
One of the stand-out tracks on Book of Shame’s debut album was “Hope & Glory” an excoriating assault on the state of the world, both public and private, written by the band’s renegade duo of Peter Boyd-Maclean and Gary Bridgewood. 

“The song, ” Boyd-Maclean tells Dangerous Minds, “was written in response to a number of issues going on personally and on a more global spectrum. In particular, the way democracy has been hijacked by the rich industrial business looking after themselves and fucking the rest of humanity in the process. Whether this is indifference to climate change, Trump, or Brexit.”

Boyd-MacLean thinks it’s now time to do something to stop the greed and political chaos he sees currently destroying the world. Taking a lead from Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN , Boyd-Maclean and Bridgewater remixed “Hope and Glory” to coincide with the recent Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in London and across the UK.

“In troubled times,” Boyd-Maclean asks, “is there any hope, is there any glory?  You can be the judge… I think it’s important we all do something to change what is happening in the world. From climate disaster, Trump, the rise of the right, to Brexit. And now as the Extinction Rebellion movement is gathering pace it’s time to act in all forms to change the world for the better for all.”

“Hope and Glory” (Greta Mix) will be released on November 29th, but you can watch the promo exclusively here.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
An Exclusive introduction to Book of Shame: Acerbic rock for those ‘who’ve been through shit’