Rob Halford pictured on the front cover of the single for Two’s “I Am A Pig.”
 
In 1996, after calling it quits with his excellent post-Priest project Fight, Rob Halford had a conversation with a rock journalist friend while attending Foundations Forum—a heavy metal convention held in Los Angeles from 1988-1997. At this point, Halford was looking to start up something new and his pal suggested he get ahold of Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 (John Lowery). Halford and Lowery hooked up for several days in LA collaborating on riffs, melodies, and lyrics. According to Halford it was a case of “synchronicity at work”.

His meeting with Trent Reznor, which led to Reznor’s participation in Two, came much later in the band’s development and most of the music Halford, Lowery, Bob Marlette, Phil Western and Anthony “Fu” Valcic had already been recorded and were “well past the demo stage,” per Halford. While visiting New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Halford simply walked up to Reznor’s former funeral home, Nothing Studios and knocked on the door. (Of interest is the door itself, taken from Reznor’s former residence—the Manson Family murder house once occupied by Sharon Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski.) The door was answered by another inhabitant of Nothing Studios, former Skinny Puppy member and producer, Rave Ogilvie. Ogilvie and Halford had never met, but when Rob Halford knocks on your door, the only right thing to do is to let him the fuck in—which Ogilvie did without hesitation.

A short time later as Ogilvie and Rob were hanging out listening to a cassette with some of the music from Two’s album, Voyeurs Reznor showed up, and Trent asked Halford if he could listen to his new tunes. He and Reznor hung out for a few more days in New Orleans, as Reznor was scheduled to appear in a few Mardi Gras parades. Halford returned to his home in Phoenix and a few months later Reznor called Rob and offered Two a record contract which, though Reznor and Rob had vibed musically, still caught the metal god off guard. Here’s more from Halford on that:

“When he called me up after listening to the album, a few months later, he said, ‘Do you want a record deal?’ I was like, ‘Ahhh… yeah… that would be great.’ But I couldn’t understand why? And then he told me that he had been listening to the music and he had a vision. He could hear them (the songs) in a different way. And could we take them and break them down and build them up again, with his interpretation.”

Reznor would take Two’s recordings and re-engineer them, though Halford had “no idea” what Trent had planned and was just really excited at the prospect of Reznor’s (as well as Ogilvie’s) participation in the project, and how his influence would impact the sound of Voyeurs. The album was already a diverse piece of work, and once Reznor was finished applying his sonic touches, it was released on March 10th, 1998, though the first single, “I am A Pig” started circulating late in February. And this is where we finally get to talk about one of the best things to come out of Rob and Reznor’s collaboration—the porn-star studded video for “I am a Pig” directed by Chi Chi LaRue, a prominent porn director and drag queen based in Los Angeles.
 

Two.
 
As it turns out, some of Halford’s friends had recently worked with LaRue, and this got Rob thinking that a video visualized and directed by LaRue would be just what Two needed for the “I Am A Pig” video. According to the story told by Halford, he really clicked with LaRue, who was also a massive metal fan. LaRue was totally into the idea of shooting a video for Two featuring all kinds of S&M action, a litany of adult actors of various sexual orientations, and, of course, a shirtless Rob Halford suspended from the ceiling with a gag in his mouth. While this sounds like a slice of fucking heaven to yours truly, it also went over big with Nothing Records and Interscope which supported the concept of the video completely. Before you take a look at the very NSFW video below, here’s the infinitely wise Halford breaking down the porntastic video for “I Am A Pig”:

“The song itself lyrically contains the idea that what we see as we are now is something different from the potential to be. Like whatever skeletons you have in the closet or whatever. We all carry two sides to our personality, one where we’re in the public domain, a really different person from what we are in private. So that’s the element of what the song is about. The video is just taking sexuality, physical sexuality, and using that as a metaphor to describe the feelings of the song. So we have all these different scenes going on in the video, of different people doing different things with each other. And collectively, it comes up as the boundary lying between being a pig and being a voyeur.”

If you’ve never heard anything by Two, I’m here to tell you “I Am A Pig” sounds just like you’d likely expect—kind of like NIN but with a metal edge and Rob Halford on vocals. Even with Reznor’s industrial influence, the song still reflects Halford’s style. That said, it is very hooky, and at this stage of Halford’s style evolution, he was cultivating a major goth vibe with a jet-black goatee and outfits that looked like they were ripped off from the future set of The Matrix. So yeah, the album might not have been well received initially, but as it has aged, opinion on the merit of Voyeurs has changed drastically, and now it resides somewhere in the realm of cult classics.

More after the jump…

 
In addition to their fabulous full-length records, the Pixies issued a number of great B-sides during their original late ‘80s/early ‘90s run. One of their lesser known—but still totally awesome—non-LP tracks was an unlikely remake.

During the 1980s, the United States government’s “War on Drugs” was in full swing. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed into law the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes. Incarceration rates for nonviolent drug offenders also increased dramatically under Reagan’s watch. It was in this era of “Say No to Drugs” that a new video game emerged.

In 1988, NARC debuted in arcades across the country. The game pitted law enforcement against individuals involved in the distribution or consumption of illegal drugs. Coming across as some sort of far right-wing fantasy, the object of the game was to apprehend or kill (but mainly kill) anyone associated with unlawful drug activity. NARC was one of the first ultra-violent games, and it raised the eyebrows of parents concerned about its display of graphic violence.
 

 
It’s been reported that during the recording sessions for Trompe Le Monde (1991), Pixies singer/guitarist Black Francis became obsessed with Nintendo’s home version of NARC. The Pixies were by no means an anti-drug band, and it’s unclear how their frontman became hooked on NARC. Perhaps he played it during repeated lulls in the studio, or absorbing himself in a violent video game was a way to blow off steam (tensions within the group would lead to a break up in early 1993). Regardless, we know that Black Francis definitely was drawn to one element of NARC—its music. There’s a brief quote that circulates online, said to be from the fanzine, Rock a My Soul, in which Francis talks a bit about the video game’s theme.

“Theme From NARC” doesn’t really have a chorus. I thought it was pretty cool, because the chord progression in it is completely fucked up. It isn’t a standard rock ‘n’ roll progression.

Continues after the jump…

 
In 1983, Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ frontman Kevin Rowland managed to get his band booted off their prestigious support gig on David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour. Dexy’s were riding high as a ragamuffin band of “Celtic soul rebels” who had scored big with their single “Come on Eileen.” Despite the plum role on Bowie’s show-bill, Rowland was no fan of the Thin White Duke. Unfortunately, he made his antipathy public during one gig at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil, Paris, when he told the audience David Bowie was “full of shit,” before adding:

“I don’t know why you are so fussed about Bowie. Bryan Ferry has much more style.”

To be fair, Rowland had a point—well, half a point. Bryan Ferry has always been stylish, while Bowie often latched onto trends, characters, and talented collaborators (like Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, and Brian Eno) to find his style and further his career. Ferry always seemed to know exactly who he was, what he was about, and where he was going.

A baby boomer born into a working class family in Washington, County Durham in 1945, Ferry inherited his obsession for music from his mother. Music was just noise to his father, but for his mother it was a passion. From the age of ten, Ferry was obsessed with rock and jazz. He preferred American artists like Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Charlie Parker, rather than the homegrown sounds of ‘50s skiffle. He got a Saturday job delivering newspapers and magazines so he could read up on all the new record releases and any reviews or interviews with his favorite artists.

Ferry said he never quite fit in at school and always felt a bit of “an oddity.” While his classmates argued about the differences between Bill Haley and Chuck Berry or Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, he chose to follow the artists on the Stax and Tamla Motown labels. It wasn’t just the music he liked but how these artists presented themselves—synchronized dance routines, sharps suits, and beautifully coiffed hair styles. It was show business where the image was as important as the sound.

The confirmation that he was on the right track came when he started studying fine art at Newcastle University. Under the guidance of noted British pop artist Richard Hamilton, Ferry became more confident in his own nascent talents and began writing songs. These were at first influenced by Hamilton’s pop aesthetic, best heard in songs like “Virginia Plain” which was inspired by a painting Ferry had made of a packet of cigarettes (Virginia Plain was then a brand of cigarette).

His musical ambitions were brought into sharper focus after he hitch-hiked to London to see Otis Redding perform in concert in 1967. It was then that Ferry knew he had to become a singer.
 
Watch stylish Bryan Ferry in concert, after the jump…
 

 
I recently heard the song “Holy River” by ‘70s group Space Opera and was blown away. Space Opera are a little-known act. Widely believed to be from Canada, the four-piece group actually hailed from Fort Worth, Texas. Signed to a major label, they released just one LP, which quickly faded from view. Stories of missed opportunities are all too common in rock ‘n’ roll, but Space Opera’s tale is particularly lamentable—‘cause there’s magic in them grooves.

The story of Space Opera really begins with Scott Fraser’s teen band, the Mods. The group got started in 1965, and became a popular local act, but by 1968 they were on their last legs. At this time, David Bullock and Philip White entered the picture, and the three talked about forming a new group. But first, they all took part in a studio project—with a young T-Bone Burnett behind the board—that became the album, The Unwritten Works of Geoffrey, Etc.. Pseudonymously credited to Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit, and Greenhill, the 1968 LP was barely promoted by the label, UNI Records, before sinking without a trace.

Undeterred, Fraser (guitar, vocals), Bullock (guitar, vocals), and White (bass, vocals) continued on, playing shows anonymously with various drummers. In the spring of ’69, they were introduced to Brett Wilson, a jazz drummer, who was also from Fort Worth. They had actually all went to high school together, but Wilson was from a different crowd. Soon, they were performing their first show as Space Opera.
 

 
The group quickly established a fan base in their hometown, playing frequently at a popular bar, as well as larger venues opening for big name acts that came through Fort Worth, including Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds—one of their biggest influences. Space Opera recorded some demos, and had some label interest, but nothing was happening. Their break came when a Canadian agent saw the play live. This set off a chain of events, culminating with the band signing a deal with the Canadian arm of Columbia Records, in which they were given total artistic control—an essentially unheard-of agreement, at the time, for a new group.
 

 
In the spring of 1972, Space Opera moved to Toronto to record their debut album. They played live in the studio, but then overdubbed heavily, saturating the tape with sound. Striving towards perfection, they spent a lot of time on it, which made Columbia nervous. When they finally finished recording in July, they returned to Texas, with the assumption that the label had a plan for them—but they didn’t. Disappointed with the lengths it took to make, mix, and then create the artwork for the album, Columbia was losing interest. Making matters worse, in order to duplicate their studio recordings, Space Opera ordered new, custom equipment, but the gear took a loooong time to arrive, breaking their momentum.
 

 
Space Opera was formally released on March 21, 1973 (It came out on Epic Records in the U.S). The wait on the new equipment continued, though, and by the time it finally arrived two months later, the group was all but finished. After just a handful of shows to promote their debut LP—an album that showed so much promise—Space Opera called it a day.
 

 
Blending country, folk, psych, prog, and pop to great effect, Space Opera is a fantastic rock record that, in a perfect world, would have been a huge hit. The songs are solidly sung and played, with gorgeous harmonies and guitar solos that are positively euphoric. For my money, “Holy River” and album closer “Over and Over” are the best examples of Space Opera’s wizardry. 
 

 
A couple of years after they broke up, Space Opera gave it another go, but went their separate ways again before decade’s end. The four were never far apart for long, though, and would still get together to jam, on occasion. They formally revived the band in 1995, and issued a disc of new material in 2001. Brett Wilson died suddenly in 2005. The surviving members played one final time—at Wilson’s funeral. Scott Fraser passed the following year. Two years later, Philip White was gone. Intended by David Bullock as the last word on Space Opera, a collection of unreleased outtakes from the ‘70s, Safe at Home, was released in 2010.
 

 
Space Opera’s 1973 LP came out on CD in 2004, but like the rest of the group’s album discography, it’s currently out of print. Their stunning debut has never been reissued on vinyl.

Space Opera came to my attention thanks to the inclusion of “Holy River” on the new compilation of obscure ‘70s pop/rock jams, Sad About the Times.
 

 
A stream of the full 1973 Space Opera album is below. It kicks off with the song that was the only single culled from the record, the catchy “Country Max.”
 

When I can no longer remember my dreams upon waking,
I will make my waking more dreamlike.
—Ingrid Chavez

A few years ago I was going through a pretty intense David Sylvian “phase” that was instigated by reading Anthony Reynold’s excellent Japan bio A Foreign Place and I was struck by one of his obscure b-sides, “Whose Trip is This?” A collaboration with his then wife Ingrid Chavez—best known for her role as the angel girl in Prince’s Graffiti Bridge movie and co-writing Madonna’s “Justify My Love”—the song sounded nothing much like anything else that I was familiar with in Sylvian’s vast back catalog. I played it on repeat several times a day for like… an entire year. It instantly zoomed into my personal pantheon of all time favorite pop songs.

Soon after discovering “Whose Trip Is This?” I pulled out Madonna’s Immaculate Collection and played “Justify My Love” about which, I thought, hmmm… that doesn’t sound much like anything else from Madge’s back catalog either?

Cut to me sitting at my keyboard buying used copies of Chavez’s Prince collaboration May 19, 1992 and her brilliant “Elephant Box” single. Yes, please.

It’s accurate to say that Ingrid Chavez has a signature “thing” that she does. Not that I want to imply that her music is formulaic, because it’s certainly not. However, she whispers as much as she sings, and her girly, breathy voice—her amazing voice—is always very separate from the backing track, similar to the way that “spoken word” tends to be mixed. There is almost always a sexy, languid sort of beat and no sharp edges anywhere to be found. Her melodies are always catchy. The template that first appears in “Justify My Love” is a constant, but Chavez finds a lot of variety in that form.

And then there are her words. Chavez’s lyrics often take the form of affirmation, observations of beauty in people and nature, or romantic advice. She writes in a direct and universal manner that allows almost any listener to project themselves onto her words. She’s rather adept at expressing herself, you might say.

Memories of Flying, Ingrid Chavez’s new album comes out today and I highly recommend that you give it your time and attention. I realize that the majority of readers probably only know Chavez via Graffiti Bridge, if they know of her at all, but take my advice, get to know her music or you’re really missing out on a mature, major artist, albeit a somewhat obscure one who records rather infrequently. Each and every single song on this album could be a hit, if not for Chavez, for younger performers. All of them could be used to great effect in film and TV. She could be one of the top songwriters in America, truly and this album is very much worth your time and attention. It’s tranquil. It’s relaxing. Intimate. Lush. Delicate. Sensual. And wise. It’s music that wants to heal you.

You can stream Memories of Flying on Spotify, but (trust me on this) the vinyl mastering is outstanding. If you care about such things—and you should—get the record.

I asked Ingrid Chavez some questions via email.

Richard Metzger: Do the words always come first?

Ingrid Chavez: No, most often, the words are secondary. First comes the natural melody and rhythm of whatever music I am working with. Driving and humming to the blur of nature, letting words take shape falling into place naturally. The goal for me is to get out of my head and into my heart, to not think so much, but to feel. Driving helps in that process for me.

Who are your collaborators on Memories of Flying?

Ingrid Chavez: Mads Nordheim produced the song “Light Rays.” I sent the demo to him knowing that he would understand how to work with the simplicity of the song. It is one of my favorite tracks on the record, and it was important that sense of intimacy not be lost with a big musical production. Mads understood that and kept the music minimal.
 

 
It’s obvious who “You Gave Me Wings” is about. What were you doing when you heard Prince had died?

Ingrid Chavez: Ganga, an artist out of Denmark sent me a track that I had been sitting with for a few weeks. I knew that I wanted to work with it, but was waiting for the right time to dive into it. April 21, 2016, I decided to take a drive. I brought a copy of the Ganga track with me along with my newly adopted puppy Suki. I stopped at a cafe to grab a coffee when I received a call from my friend Katherine asking me if I heard the news about Prince. She wasn’t sure if it was a hoax. In the short time that we were on the phone, my phone started blowing up and it quickly became apparent that Prince was gone. I just started driving, listening to the track that I had brought with me. Tears were streaming down my face as I drove, the melody and words forming.  I stopped in the town of Montague, MA. at a cafe and wrote down the words. That road will forever remind me of that day.

Why are there so many years between your albums?

Ingrid Chavez: I released my first full length album in 1991 on Paisley Park Records and then I married David Sylvian and we started a family. For the most part, I devoted my time and energy to raising our children. During that period, I recorded an EP with David called Little Girls With 99 Lives, and I joined a band called OVA in Minneapolis. In 2007, I began recording for my second full-length album, A Flutter And Some Words. I have come to realize with the upcoming release of Memories of Flying that there is about a four year period between each release. That’s about how long it takes for me to conceive a new album, write, record, mix, master and design the artwork. I still believe in the album, the idea of telling a story in chapters or songs. Albums take time and in that time, an artist must live and evolve.
 
More after the jump…

 
I was positively head over heels in love with Follow the Sun, Mexican Summer/Anthology Recordings’ stunning 2017 compilation of 70s Aussie FM radio folk rock. If your eyes walked across that last sentence and you were thinking “Ooh, that sounds like it might be really good,” trust me, it’s goddamned great. I think I must’ve played the first side 20 times before I even flipped it over and then I did the same thing with side two.

Follow the Sun was compiled by Australian musician Mikey Young (Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring) and Keith Abrahamsson (head of A&R at Mexican Summer and founder of Anthology Recordings) and the pair have returned for a sort of sequel/follow-up/companion to that classic collection called Sad About the Times. However this Times (see what I did there?) the focus is on North American folk, soft rock, West Coast jangle, power pop and more.

You can sample quite a bit of what’s on Sad About the Times below, but before you do, have a quick read of this excerpt from the marketing materials to set the mood

You are alone in a hot tub on a warm summer night back in the ‘70s. Scarcely a week earlier she was right there with you, laughing, gazing at the stars, the FM radio playing the top pop hits as you frolicked in the gurgling water. Now she’s gone. Really gone.

Then a song you never heard before comes on the radio. You feel like it reaches into some place that has already been prepared in your mind. It is as if the song is reading you. The song really knows she’s gone, and more. What a great hook, you think.

Then you never hear it again. You remember it really captured the way you felt, it sounded sad but somehow had a healing quality. Down but not out. It seemed familiar the first time you heard it, as if it had cut to the front of the line while the other meaningful songs in your life were taking years to get there. What was that song?

I have good news for you. It’s on this album even if it’s not on this album.

You probably already know, even before you’ve heard it, whether or not you’re going to love this album, don’t you?
 

 
I’ve only had a chance to listen once before posting this, but two songs that immediately jumped out at me were Space Opera’s epic “Holy River” which sounds like the Byrds meet krautrock and folk singer Norma Tanega’s “Illusion” from her nearly impossible-to-find second album I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile. Most people know her from her “one hit wonder” of the 1960s, “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” or from the use of her blistering “You’re Dead” on the soundtrack of the vampire mockumentary comedy What We Do in the Shadows and I am hoping that this means a reissue of Tanega’s sophomore album might be in the works. (Rhino has Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, which I highly recommend, on their release schedule for June.)

Sad About the Times comes out on May 17.
 

Norma Tanega “Illusion”
 

 
BLAM!!!

Fifty years ago, the rules of engagement changed. On Thursday May 15th 1969, police opened fire with shotguns on mostly peaceful, unarmed student demonstrators who were protesting the seizure of the People’s Park in Berkeley, CA.

The cops were given the green light to do whatever the fuck they wanted or in PR parlance use whatever force was necessary to remove the demonstrators. The word had come down from California’s Governor Ronald Reagan who thought Berkeley was “a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants.” Some of the cops agreed. These were mostly hyped-up ex-Vietnam vets who thought hippie draft-dodging commie student bastards were the nearest thing to the VC they’d ever get a chance to blast on home turf. The cops were just pawns in a game but their actions were bloody, unnecessary, fatal, and ultimately futile.

BLAM!!!

In the mid-1950s, the University of Berkeley wanted to buy a stretch of land to redevelop as student residences, a parking lot, and some campus offices. Student numbers were growing and there was a lack of good affordable student housing. The university bods eyed up a 2.8 acre plot of land just east of Telegraph Hill and about a block from one of Berkeley’s other student dormitories. As there wasn’t enough cash to buy the land and pay for its redevelopment, the plans were put on hold until 1967 when the university bought the plot by eminent domain (or compulsory purchase) for $1.3m. The land had about 25 various low-rent working class dwellings which were soon bulldozed to make way for the bright shiny brand new future.

But fuck all happened.

After almost two years, the land had become nothing more than a dumping ground for garbage and wrecked automobiles. Word soon went round campus, with an earnestness only the young can afford, that the land grab, the bulldozing of the houses, and the promise of a bright new shiny future had just been a clever ruse to rid Berkeley from the influence of the radical left-wing dropouts who lived in the plot’s low rent dwellings. Word was the cops and some university officials saw these people as the main instigators of Berkeley’s anti-Vietnam and anti-capitalist agitation. Get rid of them, the story went, and the university and the city and the state were getting rid of a goddam irritant.

There was some substance to this theory, which was in no small part aided by Governor Reagan’s vehemence against Berkeley, but it wholly overlooked a bigger issue which was universities like most academic institutions are run by well-meaning ditherers whose business acumen is hamstrung by their good intentions. Left untended, the site was bringing the neighborhood down and damaging local businesses.

In April 1969, concerned residents, business owners, merchants, students and alike got together to decide what they could do to change the site. The best suggestion came from student Wendy Schlesinger and anti-war activist Michael Delacour who offered up a plan to turn the area into a people’s park and free speech area. This suggestion was unanimously agreed upon by those who attended the meeting. Unfortunately, they never presented their idea for possible consideration to the university land owners. But fuck them. They’d never taken an interest in the site, they’d just bulldozed a shitload of houses and let it to go wild.

The People’s Park brought together around a thousand volunteers who helped clear out this abandoned ground for wrecked cars and dumped trash and start to landscape and plant trees and flowers. By mid-May, the People’s Park was open to all. But back on campus, trouble was brewing.
 

 
More on the battle of People’s Park, after the jump…
 

Clint Eastwood pictured on the sleeve of his 1962 single for “Rowdy” and “Cowboy Wedding Song.”
 

“He will never make big as a singer.”

—Lyricist and record producer Kal Mann on Clint Eastwood’s prospects as a singer in the early 60s.

Well, Kal Mann—who wrote songs for Elvis Presley and Chubby Checker—wasn’t exactly wrong, but Clint Eastwood didn’t care. In fact, twenty-plus years after Mann declared Clint’s musical career was a pipe dream, he and Merle Haggard would occupy the number one spot on the Hot Country Singles chart with “Bar Room Buddies” in 1980. Eastwood’s love of music is well documented and, in addition to his many other talents, he is an decent pianist. In all, Eastwood’s musical career spans nearly five decades dating back to 1959 when Eastwood landed the role of Rowdy Yates on the television series Rawhide. There are several occurrences of Eastwood singing on various episodes of Rawhide, and the actor would leverage this experience and record his first EP in 1961 containing two singles put out by Hollywood record label Gothic; “For All We Know,” and “Unknown Girl of My Dreams.”

Eastwood was not a bad singer—but his baritone vocals and style were rather unremarkable within the country genre. Eastwood’s material was pop, but crafted towards a more country & western kind of swing, keeping in line with Eastwood’s Rowdy Yates character in Rawhide.

Eastwood would continue to tap into his success as the star of one of the longest-running TV westerns programs by finally putting out a full-length album 1963 strategically titled, Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. Clocking in at under 30 minutes, the album contains mostly standards including “Don’t Fence Me In” written by Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher (and first popularized by Gene Autry). It’s not without its charm as at times Eastwood sounds like he is channeling Bing Crosby and his version of “Don’t Fence Me In” from 1944. Posted below is an assortment of audio from Eastwood’s early recordings—others can be found online. CD’s of Clint’s musical contributions are easily found on eBay should you want to add some Clint to your music collection. (PS: you should want to.)
 
Clint Eastwood sings, after the jump…

Tulip.
 
I think it was C. P. Snow in a book about the artist Brian Clarke who pointed out that art preceded science. He alluded to the way artists had broken down objects into geometric forms from Cezanne to Picasso, Braque, and Cubism, to the wild canvas splatter of Jackson Pollock that all anticipated the atomic age. Snow was a very earnest and serious writer with tremendous pretensions to being a great, if not the greatest writer—he long thought he deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was the kind of self-agrandizement that comes from a life where one brooks no disagreement from others. But Snow did have a point and is still an author worth reading. Art does, in some ways, prefigure science. An easy example, Warhol’s endless silk screens suggest a digital age of (im)perfect cloning or nanobiology and cell-replication. So it is with the art of the collage—our modern world of multiple voices, multiple viewpoints, multiple screens all contained within one frame like television of the Internet or our minds.

French artist Julien Pacaud calls his work “digital collage” as he uses a computer to create his artworks rather than the traditional method of scissors and glue. Self-taught, Pacaud claims he works by instinct. He flicks thru vintage magazines and old books looking for an image that will inspire him. Once found, he scans these images, stores them, before returning to them to find out where they might take him. When he starts a collage, he has no set plan. It develops by trial and error, accident and chance. A process which eventually reveals its own path.

I think that what drives my creation is my subconscious—the ways I express myself come rather randomly. I also don’t feel the need to explain my artworks, and am happy for anyone who interprets my work however they want—even if I created the piece with a specific idea in mind.

Pacaud has described his work as “organizing chaos,” depicting his “inner need” to bring structure to the disparate elements in his work—the clash of landscape and geometric form; of nature and human construct; of desire and the failure of communicate. In a way, he is creating myths for a modern age. His influences range from The Twilight Zone to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, but he first attracted to the possibilities of collage by Storm Thorgerson’s cover design for Pink Floyd’s album Wish You Were Here—two men shake hands on a deserted backlot, one is on fire. It could be an image out from Pacaud’s portfolio.

Based in Paris, Pacaud was “an astrophysician, an international snooker player, a hypnotist and an esperanto teacher” before turning his skills to art. He works as an illustrator contributing to newspapers, magazines, and books. His work has also been used on the covers of several albums by the likes of Hushpuppies, Jeff Mills, and (Swedish) Death Polka. He also produces his own music. A book of his work, Perpendicular Dreams was published last year, and a second volume will be released this year. His work is available to buy and more can be seen here.
 

Funny Games.
 

Magical Geographic.
 

One Million Years Trip.
 
More organized chaos, after the jump…
 

 
Last year, we told you about Matt Gimmick, the Detroit punk band that released a killer EP in 1979. The 7-inch is especially notable for containing covers of unreleased songs by the Stooges. We’ve revised and updated our 2018 article, as the Matt Gimmick EP, out of print for decades, is about to be reissued for the first time, and we have the premiere of the remastered audio.

*****

In 1979, Matt Gimmick, a punk rock band out of Detroit that sprang from the ashes of one of the earliest Stooges-inspired groups, put out an EP that included a couple of unusual cover tunes. That they were Stooges compositions wasn’t the extraordinary part, though covering the unit fronted by Iggy Pop was far from common then; recording Stooges songs that virtually no one had ever heard before was most certainly noteworthy.   

The period following the second Stooges album, Fun House (1970), when Ron Asheton and James Williamson both played guitar, is an interesting era of the band, one that, alas, wasn’t well documented. It was a particularly dark time for the Stooges, as Elektra Records had dropped them, and three of the members—including Iggy—were addicted to heroin. This version of the group didn’t venture into the studio, and only very rough audience recordings are in circulation.
 

 
A CD boxed set consisting of four concerts from the Stooges’ spring 1971 outing was released in 2009 by Easy Action as You Don’t Want My Name, You Want My Action. The label did their best to clean up the tapes, but only so much could be done. At the time of the ‘71 tour, the band played the same six-song set of new numbers—all written by Iggy and Williamson—on a nightly basis (of those songs, only “I Got a Right,” recorded in 1972 by a different version of the band, and not released until 1977, is widely known). From the Easy Action collection, here are a couple of those tunes, “Fresh Rag” and “You Don’t Want My Name”:
 

 
Matt Gimmick evolved from the proto-punk band who called themselves—appropriately enough—the Punks. Formed in the Detroit suburb of Waterford in 1973, the Punks were around for a handful of years and did record, though they didn’t put out any material in their lifetime. Since 2003, a few Punks compilations have been issued, including Lost & Found 1973-1977, which came out in 2018. Check out the Punks via their YouTube channel.
 

The Punks, c. 1974.

The future members of the Punks used to go to shows together all the time, and in either late 1970 or the spring of 1971, they caught the Stooges at the Palladium in Birmingham, Michigan. Having snuck a tape recorder into the venue, the guys captured the Stooges’ entire set. Though what the group played was unfamiliar, the recording was nice and clear.
 

Detroit Free Press clipping, December 1970.

A couple of years later, the Punks learned three or four songs from the tape, which they mixed in with their originals during shows. Matt Gimmick recorded spot on versions of “Fresh Rag” and “You Don’t Want My Name” in late 1978 for their Detroit Renaissance ‘79 EP. Before launching head first into “Rag,” Matt Gimmick vocalist, Frantic, gives an amusing shout out to Iggy, and during the opening moments of “Ya Don’t Want My Name,” the singer is heard saying, “Goodbye Sid,” a nod to fallen Sex Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious, who died in February 1979.
 

The back cover (2019 reissue).

Two dynamite original numbers—the snotty, “Detroit Renaissance ’79,” and the Raw Power-esque ballad, “Cry”—balance out the 7-inch. Approximately 500 copies were released via the band’s own label, Earthbound Records.
 

 
I’ve been corresponding with Alan Webber, guitarist for both the Punks and Matt Gimmick. One of the things Al told me was how the latter group came up with their name.

The Gimmick part came from the fact that a lot of people in the music biz back then would say we needed some kind of gimmick to help the band “go places.” Like pyrotechnics or a fog generator—yeah right! So, we used the word “gimmick.” The Detroit music scene sucked back then.

I believe we got the name Matt from my great-uncle, Matt Flynn. He was the one that would call us a bunch of “punks” when we were first forming the Punks.

 

Matt Gimmick goofing around during a photo session, c. 1979.

Unfortunately, the cassette containing the Stooges’ Palladium show has been lost to the ages. No copies were ever made.

Matt Gimmick called it a day in the early ‘80s.

A documentary, My Time’s Coming: The Story of The Punks, is currently in the works. Follow the film’s progress on Facebook. The Punks first reunited for a show in 2003, and have played sporadically ever since. As for Matt Gimmick, Al says they “could play anytime in the near future.”
 

Matt Gimmick tearing it up at the legendary Detroit club, Bookie’s, c. 1979.

Here’s a preview of the Punks documentary:
 

 
Matt Gimmick photographs courtesy of Alan Webber. Thanks, Al.

*****

HoZac Records is set to reissue Detroit Renaissance ‘79, on vinyl and digital formats, by week’s end. Get it via HoZac’s website or Bandcamp.

As promised, here’s the premiere of Matt Gimmick’s remastered EP:

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Iggy & The Stooges playing at a high school gym in Michigan, 1970