World-renowned graffiti artist, Julius Cavero aka T-KID 170, began his “career” in the mid ‘70s tagging under the name “King 13” for gangs The Bronx Enchanters and The Renegades of Harlem, where he learned how to paint trains. After a gang-related shootout, Cavero suffered three shots to the leg, nearly killing him.
In three weeks of hospitalization following the shoot-out, Cavero sketched endlessly, recreating himself as T-KID 170. At that time, Julius Cavero gave up gang life for street art. That’s not to say he went “straight,” mind you—he was still committing criminal acts of trespassing and vandalism, but those acts made a name for him as one of the most important NYC graffiti artists of the ‘70’s and ‘80s.
T-KID 170 became famous for his unique lettering, illustration style, and extremely prolific train-bombing. In addition to his notable artistic ability, T-KID gained a reputation in the early to mid 1980s as being one of the most feared writers. T-KID’s crew, The Vamp Squad, allegedly robbed and beat many writers attempted to tag trains on their “ghost yard” turf. These guys didn’t fuck around.
An unidentified Bible-thumping halfwit and her—get this—twelve children shot cell phone footage of their cringey two-minute dumdum hate parade through a Target store and it’s starting to go viral. The family probably posted it to Facebook themselves (clearly one of her minions held the phone that shot it) but it made its way to YouTube. I could find next to no information about this. There’s not even any information about the location of the Target store or anything else. What you see is what you get.
And what you get is a breathtaking display of idiocy, bigotry and I’m guessing more than a ladleful of severe mental illness. Obviously she is a “Christian” and how much do you wanna bet that she is also a Republican voter? (The GOP wants to curtail voting access for blacks, but this pathological freak is okay with a ballot? And no doubt a gun to protect her family against homos and that Obama, too? Right...)
So what’s going on here is that this… perturbed and disturbed woman is apparently angry that Target allows transgender customers to use bathrooms and changing rooms that correspond to their gender identity, so she brought along her… brood (How much do you wanna bet that they are homeschooled, huh?) and traipsed through a Target whilst hoisting a Bible and annoying everyone in the store who is not one of her blood relatives who she also happened to give birth to.
Maybe the Westboro Baptist Church has some competition? Meet the hateful new Christian kids on the block!
“Attention Target customers… Do not be deceived, Target would have you believe with their Mother’s Day displays that they love mothers and children. This is a deception. This is not love, and they’ve proven it by opening their bathrooms to perverted men. I’m a mother of 12 and I’m very disgusted by this wicked practice.”
Hey look, I’m disgusted by this fucking walking, shouting imbecile factory who feels entitled to bring twelve more genetically deficient morons into the world, yet I’m not inclined to wear such a statement on a sandwich board and walk around like a weirdo outside of this lady’s church. When you’re a Christian in America, though, you don’t need an excuse to wear your hatred (and IQ) so proudly. It’s your birthright!
“Mothers get your children out of this store. Mothers have enough decency to get out of this store, it’s a dangerous place… What Target has done is very hateful. It’s hateful towards families. It’s hateful towards mothers. It’s hateful towards children… Are you gonna let the devil rape your children?”
I thought that was the job of the clergy?
All in all though, as this video makes the rounds today, you have to give this head-shakingly ridiculous woman credit for all of the minds she changed with her goofy self-righteous God-bothering tirade. Not the way she intended to change them, but still. Bless.
The coked-out megalomanical circus that saw David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young storm across America in the first and most decadent superstar open air stadium tour of the rock era was nicknamed the “Doom Tour” by Crosby because of the feuding, the drugs and the fact that a small army of promoters and hangeroners were sucking at their hyper-megastar corporate rock teets like there was no tomorrow. There had been big rock tours in the past, but CSNY’s extra ginormous 1974 outing—dreamed up by manager Elliot Roberts and put into action by rock promoter Bill Graham—was like plotting a military invasion of each new town that the show moved to. The beachheads were 50-70,000 seat football arenas, which saw stages erected and massive PA systems hooked up by a legion of roadies. Other acts on the tour included The Band, Joni Mitchell, Santana and the Beach Boys. The tour was so decadent that they supposedly had pillowcases with “CSNY” embroidered on them! Don’t even ask what the “coke budget” was.
The “Doom Tour” grossed $11 million back when $11 million was still a hell of a lot of money, but the principals only pocketed half a mill each after expenses (and the promoters, natch) were paid first. There’s an amusing “oral history” of the trek at Rolling Stone.com. Only Young kept both feet (literally) on the ground, traveling in a bus with his son Zeke and avoiding the insanity.
I feel like the world would be a better place if more artists and designers had an attitude like Hattie Stewart. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, and she treats the world of pop culture like her own personal playground. Last year she posed for pictures wearing a shirt of her own design that was studded with fake logos for acts like Miley Cyrus, in a style she termed “death metal meets Britney Spears.”
In this series Stewart takes disrespectful aim at some vintage Playboys, including covers that Harry Crane on Mad Men probably, ah, “enjoyed looking at.”
One of the five commemorative stamps issued by the German postal service honoring the late Motörhead frontman, Lemmy Kilmister.
If you have friends or relatives in Germany, it’s time to call out a favor as the German postal service has just released a collection of stamps honoring the late Lemmy Kilmister.
There are a total of five different images of the iconic Motörhead leader in the book of ten stamps, that will be available for sale starting on May 17th through June 17th, 2016. Sales of the Lemmy stamps will be limited to only 7777 books (an homage to Lemmy’s “lucky seven”), and will run you about eleven bucks (US) over here. But again, you can only purchase them if you’re actually in Germany. So get going on locating your long-lost German Aunt or Uncle as I’m 100% sure these stamps will sell out swiftly.
Few bands encapsulated the wild tumult of the 1960s as thoroughly as the MC5. In a few short years they went from being dorky enough to wear matching band outfits to performing for the protesters outside the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By early 1973 the band would break up after just three albums; in 1975 Wayne Kramer was busted for selling cocaine.
Released in 2002, David C. Thomas’ movie MC5: A True Testimonial was one of the most highly praised documentaries of that year. Unfortunately, in 2004 Wayne Kramer sued Thomas and the film’s producer, Laurel Legler, over purported assertions that Kramer would serve as the movie’s music producer. It took three years but Thomas and Legler prevailed in court.
At one point Kramer explains that Rob Tyner came up with the name MC5, which he liked because it reminded him of the name of a machine part such as those being manufactured all around him in Detroit. “MC5” stood for “Motor City 5,” of course, but the band members would sometimes make up other possibilities, such as “morally corrupt” or “marijuana cigarette” or “more cock” or “marijuana cuntlappers” or “Mongolian clusterfuck.”
The MC5 were surveilled by the U.S. government in connection with their revolutionary politics; MC5: A True Testimonial includes some of the government’s footage of their 1968 performance in Chicago.
I like these mash-up wooden sculptures of Hollywood film directors by artist Mike Leavitt. If you notice, each sculpture references movies the director made. The directors are in the details i.e. Stanley Kubrick’s eyelashes referencing A Clockwork Orange or Hitchcock carved as a bird.
Each sculpture measures around 18 inches in height. Now as to whether or not these are for sale… I simply don’t know. You can contact Mike Leavitt at his site here to find out. You can also follow Leavitt on his Instagram to see his work in progress.
“I don’t know nothin’ about Southern belles/ But I can tell you something about Southern hell…”
Last month I idly read an article about a singer/guitarist named Adia Victoria in one of the free weeklies I’d picked up in a coffee shop. It seemed like her music might be worth following up on—the article made her look really intriguing—and so I tore the page out and put it in my pocket. Back home later that day I looked her up on the Internet and read this article and then this one while I listened to her music on Soundcloud and watched her read poetry and perform live on YouTube. Since then I’ve been pushing all of my rock snob friends to look out for Adia Victoria and as her debut album, Beyond the Bloodhounds, is out via today (via Atlantic Records subsidiary Canvasback Music) I think it’s high time for me to post about her here on Dangerous Minds. I’ve been chomping at the bit to write about Adia Victoria for weeks to be honest, but I wanted to wait until the record came out.
Adia Victoria’s gestalt can be summed up in a musical Venn diagram wherein PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple and Hank Williams meet Jack White, Chelsea Wolfe, St. Vincent, Gary Clark Jr. and Patti Smith. She’s an incredible guitarist. In her songwriting she has a remarkable talent for getting straight to the point. Her literate lyrics are sharply observed; direct yet intangible, so the listener can project themselves onto her poetry. (Neil Young is a master at this, obviously, and so is she.) I’ve read that she’s heavily influenced by blues singer Victoria Spivey—and Nirvana—and this makes sense.
The one good thing about music show Top of the Pops was the chance of eyeballing something special, something new, something you might not get the chance to see anywhere else. This could be David Bowie, or Motorhead ripping through their latest number, or Public Image Ltd. or Blondie or Siouxsie and the Banshees throwing pocketfuls of confetti onto the studio audience.
Sometime in early 1981, I was very fortunate to catch a new five-piece band from London called Department S who made a damned fine impression on me with their debut single “Is Vic There?” The track had been played a few dozen times on the radio but I was none the wiser to the who, what, when, where, why of the band.
Taking their name from a cult TV series, Department S looked assured, interesting, had a catchy first single and an iconic lead singer in Vaughn Toulouse. Their music was different to many of the angry disillusioned post-punk bands clogging up the charts—they were upbeat, thrilling, with an almost John Barry Bond-like riff countered by Toulouse’s vocal delivery.
Department S. came out of London’s punk and ska scene. Toulouse had been with a band called Guns For Hire. Guitarist Mike Herbage joined the band and wrote their only single. The group then evolved into Dept. S and was joined by Tony Lordan (bass), Stuart Mizon (drums) and Eddie Roxy (keyboards). In one early interview they described themselves as “not just a bunch of silly cults”—a reference to their crafted individualism.
There’s no particularly dominant member of the band, although Vaughn writes all the lyrics and mostly steals the limelight “Cos I’m the best lookin’ I s’pose.”
“We’re not a group as such,” he continues. “We’re five individuals that make Department S. It’s like a closed-circuit business-sort of a PIL set-up.”
“Is Vic There?” seemed to hang around the chart for ages—as if the public weren’t quite sure about the group, the song, or what to make of the strange attractive Gene Vincent allure of the lead singer—before eventually (thankfully) making it all the way to number 22.
Come summer: Dept. S were playing support and headline gigs around London and working on an album (Sub-Stance) when they released a second single “Going Left Right” on glorious 12-inch. While the B-side “She’s Expecting You” sounded like the same band who had recorded “Is Vic There?” the second single almost sounded like a completely new and different band. It led some music critics to describe Dept. S as “a tricky band to pigeonhole” while giving “Going Left Right” two thumbs up—calling it “far superior” to “Is Vic There?”
Skaters from the 1967 U.S.A.R.S.A. (the United States Amateur Roller Skating Association) competition.
Although I was an avid roller skater in my youth (as were both of my parents), I had no idea that the the United States National Amateur Skating Association (or U.S.N.A.S.A.) existed. Had I known, I would have immediately run away from home with my brown suede skates (with sweet orange wheels and stoppers) to pursue my dream of being an Olympic Champion roller skater. Regrets, I’ve had a few.
USARSA Senior Dance Champions of 1961, Jay & Janet Slaughter of Illinois.
In 1937, a Detroit-based group comprised of seventeen roller rink owners formed the RSROA (the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association). The creation of the RSROA didn’t go over that well with the Amateur Athletic Union (or AAU, a national amateur sports organization formed in 1888 who worked with amateur athletes all around the country, helping many on their way to the Olympic Games) as the membership of RSROA included the rink owners themselves and professional skaters. So, in 1939, the United States Amateur Roller Skating Association (USARSA) came to be and became a part of the the good-old AAU.
There were so many competitive categories within the USARSA, ranging from skate-dancing, novice, a curious sub-novice category, and a few for “tiny tots” that could skate (photos from which have been cataloged over at the site USA Roller Skaters), that I can only imagine the competitions themselves were long, grueling events not only for the skaters, but for the fans in attendance. The images in this post provide a fun and fascinating look back in time. Some remind me of the beautiful awkwardness that is the obligatory (and dreaded) senior prom photo. Your good-times roller skating flashback moment, begins now!
Hugh Devore 3rd Place (the outfit is 1st place material all the way), USARSA Senior Men’s Singles, 1956.
