We’ve had a year of wall-to-wall Donald Trump coverage, and we’re all experiencing a big dose of Trump fatigue. Now that the Donald has formally allied with the crackpot motherfuckers at Breitbart—shudder—I think we may possibly have passed the final moment when someone could say with any seriousness the words “President Trump.” He’s a solid 7+ points behind in the polls and the big viral sensation yesterday was footage of Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen bristling at the suggestion of CNN personality Brianna Keilar that Trump is “down” to Hillary Clinton by a few points. Quoth Cohen: “Says who!?”

Recently Trump himself floated the trial balloon of “2nd Amendment people” acting to resolve the all-too-likely problem of a Hillary Clinton presidency… so while we’re on the subject of assassinations and presidents and stuff, someone made what very well might be THE fucked-up punk image of Trump for 2016…

As you probably know, back in the day Glenn Danzig had a fondness for pulpy horror iconography from the 1950s and a talent for penning a fast-paced ditty, and his band the Misfits have been a favorite of rock and roll fans ever since. (By the way, the Misfits with Glenn Danzig on vocals are playing Denver and Chicago next month.)

One of the Misfits’ best songs is “Bullet” which is a fast-paced ditty about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in which Danzig barks, “Texas is an outrage when your husband is dead! Texas is an outrage when they pick up his head! Texas is the reason that the president’s dead, you gotta suck, suck, Jackie suck!!”

The single had a predictably fantastic cover art, which is shown above. Now someone had the bright idea of repurposing it for the election with everyone’s favorite never-will-be-president-oh-help-me-lord, Donald Trump.
 

 
The image appeared on the Facebook group “Punk Rock from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and Beyond” about two weeks ago.

Now this is not to say that we advocate or condone or recommend any manner of “Second Amendment” remedy to a “President Trump” no matter how unlikely that shit-drenched possibility might be. Just the opposite! In fact, we here at Dangerous Minds wish for the GOP’s idiot clown prince to have a long, long life. Trump’s done more to fuck up the Republican Party than anyone since… well, I was going to say Barry Goldwater, but even that comparison makes no sense anymore. (Goldwater had the “conscience of a conservative” whereas Trump is more like Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi come spectacularly—and ignorantly—to life like a lumbering Godzilla character.) No, we wish only good health on Mr. Trump. May he be around to torment the feckless Republican establishment that allowed his coronation to occur for decades to come. Let’s hope Trump becomes immortal. Maybe we can keep him in a jar—forever—like the Face of Bo?

If you’re about my age, you now desperately want to hear “Bullet” from start to finish and LOUD. It’s waiting for you after the jump…

Elf.
 
Like many of our DM readers I’m a huge fan of everything that the late Ronnie James Dio did during his time walking among us mere mortals. Dio’s love of music started early and by the late 50’s at the age of fifteen he was already gigging regularly with a band. When it came time for Dio to graduate high school he apparently turned down a scholarship (which he earned for playing the trumpet, a discipline that Dio credited his powerful vocal range to) at the plush and prestigious Juilliard School to pursue a career in rock and roll. The band that Dio started out with, The Vegas Kings went through several name/lineup changes until they ended up settling on the proggy sounding The Electric Elves that in turn evolved into the more metal-edged sounding moniker Elf sometime in the early part of 1970s.

Once the 70s rolled around Dio (and most of the rest of Elf) ended up hooking up with one of the guitar gods Dio would perform with during his career Ritchie Blackmore, and that relationship produced three Rainbow albums including one of my favorite records of all time 1978’s Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. The reason I’m giving you my take on what the heavy metal history books refer to as Ronnie James Dio 101 is because when I mentioned in the title of this post that Dio was “covering” Black Sabbath I thought it might cause a few of our readers to throw a massive lump of “duh” in my general direction. But this is RJD circa 1972—a full seven years before he would front the sludgy outfit after Sabbath fired Ozzy who had become so “undependable” in 1979 that he stopped showing up to most of the band’s rehearsals. So to hear Elf along with Dio slaying one of Sabbath’s most epic jams, 1970’s “War Pigs” for a full nine-minutes in 1972 is rather surreal to say the least.
 

Ronnie James Dio, Ritchie Blackmore and Mr. Blackmore’s very metal Pilgrim hat.
 
The other notable covers that Elf performed live and recorded as demos back in 1972 (that became the bootleg known as Elf: War Pigs ‘72) are a mish-mash of hits from bands like The Who, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin and even the odd Rod Stewart song. As a forever fan of all things Black Sabbath it’s nothing short of thrilling to listen to Dio take on Chuck Berry’s 1959 classic “Little Queenie” and win. I’m not going to go so far as to tell you that the all of the recordings are good, because they aren’t. But I did post a few of my favorite tracks from War Pigs ‘72 and feel like it’s an interesting snapshot into where Dio was headed and something that any hardcore fan of RJD would brag about owning just for its high (and slightly odd) nostalgia factor. I also included an original Elf track called “Driftin” which is a dreamy track reminiscent of Queen that really showcases Dio’s remarkable vocal range. Devil horns OUT!
 
Listen to early Ronnie James Dio after the jump…

 
In the right circumstances of time, place and imagination—it is possible to time travel. This was firmly impressed upon me in my teens while reading Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin. I had just moved to Glasgow as a student and was renting a room in an apartment owned by a birdlike lady who whistled music hall songs and sniffed pecks of snuff off the back of her hand. She was long retired. Renting a room supplemented her meagre state pension. Now here’s the connection: she had once been a furrier in Berlin during the 1930s and had witnessed at first hand the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. She had seen the Jewish shops vandalized and some of her Jewish friends disappear to who knew where?

It wasn’t just the fact this dear old lady had an experience of the events which I was reading in Mr. Isherwood’s book—but the flat in which I was a lodger had been untouched since the 1930s. The whole interior, its decoration, the heavy furniture, the coal fire, the carpeting and rugs, the cast iron bed, the wooden mantlepiece, the dressing table with polished vanity mirror—everything in this apartment was as it had been in the days just before the Second World War.

Only in the kitchen was there a slight capitulation to modern technology. A 1950s fridge and an electric cooker unused—still wrapped in its protective polythene. I cooked simple meals off a bunsen burner gas ring—a blackout cooker as my landlady called it. It was winter. The apartment was cold. At night I could hear, like Herr Issyvoo, the men outside whistling in the dark. Except these men were not calling up to their lovers to come to the windows but to their dogs off somewhere in the small misty park below. In such circumstances of place and time and imagination, it was all too easy to find myself transported to the decade of Goodbye to Berlin.

That snowbound Christmas I watched Cabaret on television. A multi-award-winning film version of the musical inspired by Isherwood’s Berlin novels. I must have seen that film about thirty times since. It is an almost perfect movie—story, character, sex, politics, and a powerful overarching narrative. Not to mention Liza—with a “Z”—Minnelli at the very height of her talents. Based mainly on the short story “Sally Bowles” from Goodbye to Berlin and John Van Druten’s adapted play of the book I Am a Camera, Bob Fosse’s film Cabaret brilliantly captured the world of Isherwood’s writing.

The film starred Michael York as Isherwood’s alter ego—named here Brian Roberts, Liza Minnelli as night club singer Sally Bowles, Helmut Griem as rich playboy Maximilian von Heune and the incomparable Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub.

Apparently director Bob Fosse wanted to play the MC himself but the studio insisted on Grey. The film was shot at the Bavaria Film Studios in Germany—well out of Hollywood’s reach. One day the studios cabled Fosse to say he was spending too much money on smoke for the nightclub scenes. Fosse read the telegram out to the assembled cast. Then he ripped it up and threw it over his shoulder. That was the end of Hollywood’s involvement. Fosse had been considered a risky choice as director. His previous film Sweet Charity had flopped disastrously. Away from the studio’s interference, Fosse was able to achieve what he wanted. Cabaret swept eight Academy Awards from ten nominations.
 

Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies.
 

 
More photos from the making of ‘Cabaret,’ after the jump…

 
Richard Harris’ seven-and-a-half-minute reading of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” is not for me. I like watching Harris on-screen well enough, and I like Jimmy Webb’s writing, but there’s something about the way Harris cries over the warm wine, soggy cake and “stripèd pair of pants” that is more than I can stand. Besides, I’m from Los Angeles, and when I hear the name “MacArthur Park” I think of gang murders and police beatings, despite the lovely gang murder wedding I once attended there.

But Mick Jagger was right: It’s the singer, not the song. What “MacArthur Park” needs is a voice without a hint of mawkishness, a voice that expresses disgust as easily as regret, a voice that has blown out some of its capacity for self-pity: a voice that belongs to an old Northern person. Replace Richard Harris with Dr. John Cooper Clarke, and I’m on board! Nor does it hurt if he’s singing ex-Strangler Hugh Cornwell’s hot new arrangement of the number, over which Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull takes a flute solo reminiscent of Dave Greenfield’s keys on “No More Heroes.” All that is “sweet, green icing” on the cake.
 

Clarke and Cornwell on location (via Gigslutz)
 
The video for Clarke and Cornwell’s “MacArthur Park,” filmed on location, is the first taste of the duo’s upcoming album, and it is a treat. If the sight of John Cooper Clarke circumambulating an LA lake in his ‘66 Dylan duds doesn’t make blood rush to your groin and drool stream from your lips, just wait until he goes into the kitchen and actually bakes the fucking cake!

The video after the jump…

 
The Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, Mexico, is not especially renowned for an indie-rock scene, to put it mildly—it’s best known on the musical map as the home of Norteño, a hybrid folk music whose practitioners veer towards rock instrumentation and process, though without ever actually becoming rock. And yet, given its two-hour proximity to San Diego, Mexicali has become home to a fair few punk-influenced bands, including the one that concerns us today, Silent.

Populated partly by members of the extremely dark eletro-punk outfit Maniqui Lazer and the superb electronics-and-bass project Letters From Readers, Silent possesses the gothic emotional intensity of Savages spiked with Nick Cave-ish histrionics, while in their more aggressive moments, their jarring changes hearken back to some of the mathy San Diego outfits of the ‘90s. It’s a potent hybrid:
 

 
Silent’s debut LP, A Century of Abuse, was produced Ruben Tamayo, and is set for release in October. An August/September tour with Retox precedes the release, and the video for their song “Self” is released today. It’s DM’s pleasure to serve as the home of the video’s debut. We seriously think you’ll dig the shit out of this band.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Stream the new album from Retox featuring Justin Pearson of the Locust, a Dangerous Minds exclusive

 
Raymond Pettibon designed the world’s greatest band logo, which also happens to be the world’s greatest tattoo, and he’s arguably the greatest designer of album covers who ever lived. He did a bunch of Black Flag’s albums, and Sonic Youth’s Goo, and the gatefold images for Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and countless others. He has a mordant sense of humor that has never been matched in the field of visual arts and if he’s not a hero of yours you’re probably too young or too old for that.

Pettibon also dabbled in music back in the day, and that’s what concerns us here. In 1990 Furthur Records (nice Pranksters reference!) put out an album credited to “Raymond Pettibon with Super Session” called Torches and Standards that was tuneful and quasi-experimental in the Sonic Youth-y sense.

Super Session also put out an 7-inch in 1992 called “Rubbing Souls And Scratching Holes.” It should go without saying that the cover art for both of these releases is first-rate, because they’re Pettibon drawings.
 

This is (apparently) Super Session working on their first album in a generation
 
So why am I bringing this up to you now? On Wednesday bassist for the aforementioned Minutemen and widely acknowledged indie rock hero Mike Watt released this tweet:
 

sunday I got to witness https://t.co/WWU5zKHAR7 after twentyfive-something years - they're now making THE album! pic.twitter.com/UWCIcWqUkM

— mike watt (@wattfrompedro) August 17, 2016

 
As you can see, Watt included a picture of four older dudes in a practice space, taken recently—Pettibon is identifably on the left-hand side there. Watt also threw in a bit of Super Session promo art.

Watt also links to the intriguing video below, which features some footage of Super Session playing a live show in Long Beach in 1989 or 1990, as the band’s bassist Ray Ferrell confirms in a comment to the video. I believe the video was posted by Jack Brewer of Saccharine Trust, some of whose albums Watt produced. (It’s worth taking a look at the intro text for this video, take my word for it.) Anyway, the video is raw but undeniably compelling and Watt’s saying that “after twentyfive-something years—they’re now making THE album!” so something is going on.

Anyone with “furthur” info is encouraged to keep us up to date.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Art of Punk: Watch great new doc on Black Flag and Raymond Pettibon’s iconic collaboration
Sonic Youth and Mike Watt vs Madonna

 
Unless you happened to vacation at Walt Disney World Florida in the ‘80s and ‘90s, you might not be familiar with Horizons, a dark ride attraction at EPCOT widely thought of as the greatest vision of “future living” ever created. The two-story, spaceship-shaped pavilion located on the east side of the park’s “Future World” housed a remarkable 54 Audio-Animatronic figures, 770 props, 12 projectors, and a pair of massive OMNIMAX screens (groundbreaking technology at the time) spread across 24 sets set in the year 2086. Upon its opening in October of 1983, Horizons showcased man’s relationship to the sea, land, air, and space through a beautiful series of stunning futuristic vignettes. In a 1989 interview, Michael Jackson cited Horizons as his personal favorite Disney attraction (alongside Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain). Many still consider Horizons to be the greatest Disney theme park attraction, ever.
 

 
However, when the 1990s rolled around the ride had significantly lost its popularity with the general public. With tastes rapidly changing and short attention spans increasing, many park guests no longer had the patience to sit still for 15 minutes, and priorities began shifting towards more “thrill-based” rides such as Test Track and Mission: SPACE. In December of 1994, Horizons closed its doors indefinitely without any formal notice or announcement. Serious Disney park goers were devastated by the sudden news and regretful they weren’t given the chance to say a proper goodbye or ride one last time.
 

“Hoot” (left) and “Chief” (right) in the Art Deco Apartment scene at Horizons. Photo courtesy of the Mesa Verde Times.

Let’s fast forward exactly one year later to December 1995, as two best friends in their late twenties were working mind-numbing desk jobs and living in a shitty downtown Orlando apartment. Dave Ensign (aka “Hoot Gibson”) and Ed Barlow Jr. (aka “Thunder Chief”) had been insanely huge Horizons fans ever since it opened when they were 15 years old. They were thrilled when the announcement came in: Horizons was to be re-opened for a limited time due to the closure of two other attractions that were down for refurbishment in Future World (Universe of Energy and World of Motion). That’s when this story really begins: Hoot and Chief set out to document the ride and get as much photo, video, and audio coverage as they could before it closed again. Not knowing exactly how much time they had to get it done, not knowing how it would be done, just knowing that it had to be done.
 

Audio-Animatronic figure with Bionic Fonzi in the Desert Habitat Kitchen scene. Photo courtesy of the Mesa Verde Times.

Their next several workdays in the office following the announcement involved making an extensive checklist as they broke down all 24 scenes in the ride and itemized a list of props, hand-painted backdrops, and set pieces. They wanted to document every detail in the ride at all costs. Over the following weeks and months, they equipped themselves with mag lights, still cameras, and huge JVC VHS and Super 8 camcorders. They quickly realized that properly documenting everything on their checklist the way they wanted to would require exiting the “OMNIMOVER” ride vehicle while it was in motion. How would they be able to pull this off without getting caught, and just how extensive was the security on Disney park rides?

In a pre-9/11 Walt Disney World, security measures were basically implemented only when the park noticed significant and repeated incidents of park guests climbing out of their ride vehicles. Only then would they apply whatever security measures were necessary for that particular attraction: Universe of Energy was monitored on closed circuit television; The Living Seas and Haunted Mansion had intrusion mats (a security system that completely shuts down the ride when stepped on by someone who had exited their vehicle); and Spaceship Earth eventually got infrared sensors. To their good fortune, Horizons was perhaps the only Disney attraction ever built without any security whatsoever.

Hoot and Chief started Phase I of their operation with a very basic strategy for exiting their OMNIMOVER ride vehicle: “Jump out, get shots, jump back in.” However, after this went on for a while they wanted to spend more time on the sets, so they began testing different strategies using trial and error to get a larger gap of empty ride cars. Chief would hang out right near the loading area and watch people board the ride using the mirrors in the entry hallway, and Hoot would stay at the front entrance where people entered the building. Chief would count the ride vehicles; there always had to be at least six empty vehicles ahead of them and six empty vehicles behind for them to remain unseen. Upon boarding the ride and rounding the corner they’d jump out and run like the wind to get as far ahead as possible. By keeping count of the car numbers they had a precise idea of how much time they could spend in each individual scene, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a minute or two.
 

Chief jumps back into his OMNIMOVER vehicle. Courtesy of the Mesa Verde Times YouTube channel.
 

Chief hangin’ out in the Undersea Classroom scene. Photo courtesy of the Mesa Verde Times.

Over the course of the next several months Hoot and Chief had mastered their technique, meeting at EPCOT in the evening after a long day of work at the office. They got very good at knowing how much time they could spend in each scene simply by doing it over and over. But soon this became boring and repetitive; they wanted to explore the ride more, and make it to some of the areas they weren’t able to get to. This began Phase II of their efforts, exiting their ride vehicles and staying inside Horizons while it was operational, sometimes for as long as 4-8 hours at a time!

More of the adventures of Hoot and Chief at Horizons, after the jump…

The VHS box cover art

Girls Bite Back (aka Women in Rock, 1980) is an ahead of its time document acknowledging female rock musicians. Directed by Wolfgang Büld (who also directed Punk in London, British Rock and Lovesick) the movie opens with a photo slideshow of many pioneer musical greats including Bessie Smith, Debbie Harry, Joan Baez, Cher, Dolly Parton, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Linda Ronstadt, Cass Elliott, Wendy O Williams and many others while Nina Hagen performs. After this we see a segment of interviews by some of the featured performers (Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Slits, Girlschool, Lilliput, Zaza and Mania D.) and I’m amazed at how relevant their answers still are today. The women are asked what it’s like being female musicians, their overall answer is that they’re just musicians. Being female is not the important thing about what they’re doing. A young Viv Albertine is quoted saying, “We are fucking women making music—that’s all there is to say about it.” Unfortunately even with that badass mentality, 36 years later there is still a need for Viv Albertine to deface a punk exhibit for not acknowledging these important women and their impact on music.
 

The Slits

The most relatable thing about the women in this movie (at least for me) is a segment where they discuss their desire to be recognized as musicians and how they don’t want to be categorized as feminists or anti-male. It’s become a strange world where feminism is sometimes taken too far, as if it means hating men and wanting to be the superior gender, when really it’s all about equality. Girls Bite Back really captures this idea.

An indifferent Siouxsie Sioux is interviewed saying that if it was four years earlier she wouldn’t be playing in a band. She says, “It’s too easy. It’s the thing to do if you’re bored. It used to be more of a risk.” Siouxsie actually seems quite depressed in this footage. That’s probably the saddest thing about the film, as she seems entirely over her music career almost as it was beginning. However, she builds up more enthusiasm by their third live song “Jigsaw Feeling.”
 

Hard rockers Girlschool

Wolfgang Büld did a great job of picking out the bands featured in the film, I mean really his band choices were on point. It’s an awesome range of bands with rare footage of live shows and intimate interviews. There is something nicely raw about it as well, no captions to tell you who each band is, no subtitles when Mania D. is interviewed (they speak German). These imperfections, while a bit frustrating because you want to know what they are saying, make the film feel low budget in a labor of love, intimate kind of way. If you’re a die-hard Nina Hagen fan, you will be disappointed. She’s only in the very beginning and end, no interviews. However, the concert footage of her is pretty rad.

Girls Bite Back is a film female musicians should see. It’s poignant, witty and a great little rockumentary. If nothing else, it’s worth it alone to watch see the live performances by Girlschool and The Slits’ interview segments—they’re so fucking cool.
 

A shot from the opening sequence for the 1964 film, ‘Goldfinger.’
 
Back in 1961 visual artist Maurice Binder (who got his start creating department store ads for retail giant Macy’s) presented an idea to Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli that would become an intrinsic part of their James Bond movie franchise—the famous title sequence that featured naked girls, guns and of course Mr. Bond caught in the sights of a gun barrell.
 

The famous ‘gun barrel’ shot originally conceived by Maurice Binder. This one taken from 1969’s ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ starring George Lazenby.
 
According to Binder his pitch to Saltzman and Broccoli was put together on the fly after he had been contacted by the studio when his title sequence for the 1961 film The Grass is Greener caught their attention. Binder was asked to adapt some similar ideas for the opening sequence for Dr. No. The storyboard that Binder brought to the fateful meeting was cobbled together with white price tag stickers that served as a means to convey gunshots floating across the screen. Needless to say Saltzman and Broccoli dug his pitch and Binder’s overall original concept—that included the image of a Bond viewed through the scope of a gun—became an important part of the films’ success.

When it comes to how later Bond titles sequences would come to be realized, we have Robert Brownjohn to thank. As a student at the Institute of Design in Chicago Brownjohn studied under the tutelage of Hungarian-born artist, painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy. Moholy-Nagy, a former professor of the Bauhaus School helped influence a technique used by Brownjohn of projecting in-motion footage onto the bodies of his subjects (which Moholy-Nagy used in his early films in the 1920s) when he created the title sequences for From Russia with Love in 1963 and perhaps the most memorable Bond title sequence in the franchise’s history, 1964’s Goldfinger. Brownjohn was also the brainchild behind covering model Margaret Nolan in gold paint. Shortly after Goldfinger’s success the artist’s relationship with Saltzman and Broccoli became contentious and Binder returned and would go on to create every Bond film title sequence until 1989’s Licence To Kill. He too often used the technique of projecting films onto the models.

I can’t lie—I’m a sucker for the Bond franchise especially the ones that star Sean Connery (and the dashing George Lazenby who briefly took over for Connery for 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). When I was recently watching yet another James Bond marathon I became focused on the opening sequences. What struck me was the gorgeous placidity of the images when you got to gaze at them for a moment without the credits popping up. Which sent me off in search of finding said images sans credits—and I wasn’t disappointed. And I’m sure you won’t be either. Check them out below and a video of what the opening sequence looks like without the help of text for A View to a Kill.
 

‘The Spy Who Loved Me,’ 1977.
 

‘Licence to Kill,’ 1989.
 
More after the jump…

 
When Simple Minds started out they could do no wrong.  From their debut album Life in a Day to New Gold Dream, 81, 82, 83, 84—they were the sound of the future. Their antecedents were Bowie, Bolan, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk.

Their early records ranged from the synthpop of Empires and Dance to the non-commercial experimentation of Real to Real Cacophony. They were post-punk, New Wave and greatly liked by the New Romantics.

However, by the release of Sparkle in the Rain in 1984, Simple Minds had evolved into stadium band—vying with U2 for world domination.

It’s almost forty years since Jim Kerr and co. started off as punk band Johnny and the Self Abusers. There’s been plenty of highlights since then but for me, I still get a kick off those early records that sounded like music that’s been transported from the future—“I Travel,” “Chelsea Girl” and “Theme For Great Cities.” Euphoric music to be played loud, shared and enjoyed.

To get a taste of what I mean—here’s Simple Minds at Hurrah’s in New York City performing “Premonition,” “Changeling” and “Factory” in October 1979. It was filmed (I believe) for BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, and includes an interview with the show’s host “Whispering” Bob Harris.

Listening to Simple Minds perform back then—you could almost believe these songs were written today.
 

 
More from the Minds, after the jump…