Over at The Quietus blog, they’ve got a fun feature where they ask musical luminaries like Nick Cave, John Lydon, Iggy Pop, Mike Patton and Ennio Morricone what their favorite Miles Davis album is. Unsurprisingly, asking these iconoclastic fellas, the majority of the nods go to Miles’ incredibly far out 70s album (from Bitches Brew to Dark Magus basically), the ones that most jazz fans, and even staunch Miles Davis fans used to absolutely hate, but that have been reconsidered critically in recent years as the public caught up to them

For me, I started to get into this “difficult” spot of the Miles Davis catalog about ten-twelve years ago. I already owned Bitches Brew and Get Up with It (which features a incredible sidelong elegy to Duke Ellington, (“He Loved Him Madly”) improvised in the studio after Miles heard Ellington had died and cited by Brian Eno as the beginnings of ambient music) but it was A) getting a really good stereo system in 2002 and B) reading this amazing rant by Julian Cope about this period of Miles’ output that saw me really investigate the “horrible” racket Miles was making then. Wanting new music to listen to on my new toy, I bought Dark Magus, Pangaea and Aghartha in the space of three consecutive days. Once I started, I fell into a musical rabbit hole that I didn’t get out of for about a year or two later. I was not a very popular guy with the neighbors back then, I don’t think.

Not that I am saying anything here that hasn’t been expressed already in quarters like The Wire magazine, but if you ask me, the material that Miles Davis produced between 1970 and 1975 (when ill health and drug dependency forced him to retire for several years) is the absolute apex of his vast recorded output. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kind of Blue, In a Silent Way, Milestones, and many other earlier Miles Davis albums, but the ones I play loudest, most often and that I pay the most attention to, are the coke-out live albums, Dark Magus, Aghartha, Pangaea. These albums are… fucking unique and that’s putting it mildly. There is nothing else to compare them to, even remotely, in the history of modern music (Maybe Can meets Fela Kuti?)

With up to three electric guitarists (Reggie Lucas, Pete Cosey and Dominique Gaumont), Miles on organ and electrified trumpet (run through a wah-wah pedal) and a rhythm section consisting of the insane, propulsive drumming of Al Foster, Mtume on percussion and the most amazing Michael Henderson on bass holding the whole thing together, holy shit, these performances are AGGRESSIVE. Julian Cope wrote about notion of continental plates shifting to get across the power of the Pangaea set (recorded live in Osaka, Japan in 1975 on the evening of the day that Aghartha was recorded) and I’d say that’s about right. Every instrument which isn’t soloing is placed in service of THE GROOVE—even the guitars can be seen as adding a percussive element to the overall wall of noise-funk effect. At the proper volume, it can plow you down like a Mack truck. Interestingly, from the midst of this dank, swirling sonic maelstrom, every time one of the musicians steps forward for a solo, it reminds me of the odd noises and “squiggly” sounds that seem to come out of nowhere in certain Stockhausen or Xenakis compositions, cutting through the soupy din (At one point on Dark Magus, a drum machine is pulled out and used like a machine gun).

This 1973 clip is a pretty scorching example of what Miles and his band was doing live at the time. It MUST be turned up loud for the proper effect:
 

 
The complete and original Andy Warhol footage of The Velvet Underground and Nico from 1966. Richard Metzger posted a shorter version of this last year, and wrote an insightful piece about it, check it out here.

 
More clips of Warhol’s The Velvet Underground & Nico after the jump…
 

 
Richard’s Camille Dalmais post yesterday reminded me of the wonderfully named band Furious Pig and their one and only release (save for a few compilation appearances): This 1980 self-titled three song 12” E.P. on the then unbeatable Rough Trade label. These guys frequently supported the cream of the London post-punk crop with their highly choreographed chants and found bits of percussion. Makes my throat hurt just listening !

 
Hear the rest of the Furious Pig E.P. after the jump…

 
Wunderbar! If this guy was really running for office, I would vote for him!

 
Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter puts a new audio device in his high tech arsenal through the paces:

The Dirty-Carter Experimental Sound Generating Instrument uses a dual 4-stage shift register. Each register is controlled independently. Two oscillators are used per register: one as a clock, the other as input data that is cascaded through the four stages. The outputs from the stages are mixed together. A fast clock rate produces a crude form of wavetable synthesis, whilst a slow clock rate creates audible pulses and clicks. The clock speed and the data input’s frequency are controlled by touch electrodes/pads. By tilting the instrument, sound from both the 4-stage shift registers can be mixed together. Glitchy noise, deep drones and percussive peeps!

Charles Leaf, Fox reporter and accused child molester, left.
 
Charles Leaf, the shithead local FOX reporter in New York, who is often seen espousing far-fetched conspiracy theories about what FOX News call “the Ground Zero mosque” has a new claim to fame: sexual assault of a minor. From NJ.com:

Award-winning Fox 5 news reporter Charles Leaf was being held in the Bergen County Jail on Thursday following his arrest on charges of aggravated sexual assault on a minor, according to the Bergen County Sheriff’s website.

Leaf, 41, also has been charged with sexual assault and endangering the welfare of children, according to the website. His bail was set at $250,000.

The alleged offenses occurred in Wyckoff on Tuesday, the website said.

Details of the arrest were not available early this morning. Wyckoff police would not comment.

Leaf, the married father of two children and an ex-Marine, joined the station in 2006 and is the station’s investigative and general-assignment reporter who has covered national stories, including the Bernard Madoff scandal and the proposed development of a mosque near the World Trade Center site, according to his résumé on myfoxny.com.

Who wants to make a $5 buck bet this story never gets even a mention on FOX News?

 
Truly poetic. Enjoy. I know I sure did.

Thanks Brian Tibbetts!

 
Thirty years ago this month, a new play opened in London’s National Theater that was to change legal and theatrical history. Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain contrasted Julius Caesar’s Roman invasion of Celtic Britain with the Saxon invasion of Romano-Celtic Britain, and finally Britain’s involvement in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late 20th century. Epic in scale, Brenton’s intelligent analysis of the effects of imperialism was sidelined when The Romans in Britain became center of a farcical court trial over a simulated act of buggery.

The son of a Methodist minister, Howard Brenton was born in Porstmouth in 1942, educated at Chichester High School, and at Cambridge University, where he won the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for poetry. In 1965, he wrote his first play Ladder of Fools, described as an “Actable, gripping, murky and moody: how often can you say that of the average new play tried out in London, let alone of an undergraduate’s work.”

A highly talented and original writer, Brenton quickly proved he was unafraid to investigate controversial or contentious political subjects.  His first big success as a playwright was Christie in Love (1969), which examined the public’s fascination with murderers through the life of John Christie, who had murdered at least 6 women at his home, 10 Rillington Place. The play opened with a monster-like Christie rising from beneath a grave of torn newspapers, and then masturbating in front of the audience. His next Brassneck (1973) followed the rise of an inner city family over thirty years, from radical politics to drug dealing. While The Churchill Play (1974) questioned the rise of state security against individual liberty, and opened with a dead Churchill rising from his catafalque in Westminster.  The play briefly caused a national scandal, as it questioned Churchill’s actions as a political leader. Brenton followed this with Weapons of Happiness, an examination of a factory strike in London. In 1977, he was then commissioned to write The Romans in Britain.

Commissioned by Sir Peter Hall, director of the National Theater, a key establishment figure and founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who formed an odd collaboration with the left-leaning, libertarian Brenton. The key to their relationship was Hall’s genuine respect for Brenton, and his belief that playwrights should deal with contemporary political issues, in particular, at that time, the situation in Northern Ireland. To direct the production, Hall brought in Michael Bogdanov, a young, imaginative director, known for his acrobatic and physical productions for the RSC.

It was soon apparent that a key scene in the play would be troublesome. This scene centered on the anal rape of a native Celt called Marban, by a Roman centurion, played by actors Greg Hicks and Peter Sproule. The action was symbolic, but its effect was literal. Both actors bravely agreed to play the scene naked, and it was decided that Sproule, as the rapist centurion, would grasp his penis and extend his thumb to simulate an erection. He would then jab at Hicks’ behind in a simulation of sodomy. During rehearsals word went out that alleged hardcore sex was being performed by the actors under Bogdanov’s direction. This led to a planned boycott by the theater’s ushers. To stop this, Bogdanov invited the ushers, and any other concerned parties, to an open rehearsal. Beer was suppled and the audience gave the performers and their scene overwhelming approval - a literal thumbs up, one might say.

In October, The Romans in Britain opened to mixed reviews, ranging from a disparaging “These ignoble Romans are a national disgrace” in Now magazine, to discussions of the play’s political content. Only one thing remained constant, the shock of the rape scene. Its effect was later compared to that of the news of John F Kennedy’s assassination.

Tipped off by a journalist, Mary Whitehouse, a busy-body President of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, an unrelenting campaigner for censorship, who wanted anything distasteful (i.e. that she didn’t like) off TV screens, raised her concern that the play would “over stimulate” men and incite them to bugger young boys. Though she refused to see the play herself, as she was too frightened it would lead to the “corruption of her soul”, she requested the Metropolitan Police to examine whether the play was “an offence against the Theaters Act of 1968” which outlawed performances “likely to deprave or corrupt.” After a brief investigation, the Attorney General, Lord Havers, decided there was no case to answer. But Mrs. Whitehouse didn’t agree and discovered that a private prosecution could be brought against the director on grounds that he had “procured an act of gross indecency by Peter Sproule with Greg Hicks on the stage of the Olivier Theater,” a law intended to stop men wanking in lavatories.
 
More on ‘The Romans in Britain’ plus bonus clips after the jump…
 

 
Bjork-esque, Camille Dalmais, at one time the “guest vocalist” of French “new wavers” Nouvelle Vague, performed on that band’s innovative bossa nova-styled cover of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk To Fuck.” The song was used for the soundtrack of 2007’s Planet Terror, directed by Robert Rodriguez.

Here Camille, who incorporates burping and animal noises into her singing, performs the song live in Paris in 2008, taking it even further, with an acapella approach.
 

 
Why France loves Camille Dalmais (Times of London)

 
Dangerous Minds likes to keep its readers up to date on the latest in drug info. An educated mind is a dangerous mind.

Note that some meth cookers look like one of the Blues Brothers.