Photo Credit: Glen E. Friedman
 

Photo Credit: Glen E. Friedman
 

Photo Credit: Glen E. Friedman
 
Here’s a really wonderful interview with one of my favorite photographers and artists, Glen E. Friedman. Do yourself a favor and watch the video. From State Magazine:

It was then that I found that the most beautiful, gripping color photographs were taken by just a single photographer, a very young teenager, by the name of Glen E. Friedman. Glen would go on to take these skills he learnt as a kid and apply them to his other great love in life, music. What you’re about to hear is an interview I did with Glen, who describes for you, some of his favourite shots from the last four decades. It’s a journey which has taken Glen from the mosh-pits of American punk-rock with bands like Black Flag and Fugazi to the suburban streets with hip-hop where Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Run DMC, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest and Ice-T all became subjects in front of Glen’s lens. So, less talk, more action; press play. After all, they say a picture is worth a thousand…well, you know…

 
Interview with Glen E. Friedman in pictures & audio

 
Well this is a new comic concept for me:

Frustrated by societys failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens, Foreskin Man has taken up the fight agains male genital mutilation.

Aided by the power of his technologically advanced plasma boots, Foreskin Man flies above the city to hunt down criminals who cut the genitals of innocent boys.

It is the dawn of a new era. Circumcisers, beware!

Foreskin Man
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
This is what what happens when a fairly decent pop tune gets wedded to an absolutely horrible video. Safety Dance was a big hit back in the early 80s. I remember dancing to it at New York City’s Peppermint Lounge. And on the basis of the song alone, one could assume that the band performing it might be pretty groovy.

But in the era of MTV, for every star that was created, there were several that were sacrificed on the altar of a shitty video. Case in point : Men Without Hats.

The Safety Dance video looks like a cross between an ad for a Renaissance Fair gathering and a female hygiene deodorant…with a coked-up midget and an obnoxiously blissed-out hippie chick who seems to have wandered in from a Grateful Dead concert. No wonder Men Without Hats quickly became men without hits.

 
Danish musician Tommy Seebach died at the young age of 53. The cause of death was ruled a heart attack, but more than likely it was Seebach’s massive alcohol intake that contributed to his premature demise. Perhaps the derangement of senses induced by alcohol inspired his brilliantly twisted choices in album cover art and the whacked out hippie weirdness of his 1976 video Apache.
 

 
I Need That Record, Brendan Toller’s documentary on the life and death of indie record stores, has finally hit the streets. Initially released to record stores only on May 17,  the DVD as of today is available everywhere.

Seeing the shot of Vinyl Mania shuttered in the first few seconds of the trailer breaks my heart. I spent many hours shopping for obscure vinyl in that place, mecca for vinyl junkies.

Greedy record labels, media consolidation, homogenized radio, big box stores, Ecommerce, shoddy “stars” pushed by big money, and the digital revolution all pose threats on the very well being of our favorite record stores and the music industry at large. Will these stores die? Will they survive

You can buy I Need That Record at Amazon.

 
This is hilarious: A Republican congressional candidate and his wife are caught on videtape taking down his opponents signs, by his opponent’s son! Brilliant!

From The Pensacola News Journal:

The video showing District 1 candidate Greg Brown and his wife, Jennifer, removing Doug Broxson’s campaign signs has led to a Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office investigation.

The campaign shenanigans happened Saturday night when Broxson’s son, Jason Broxson, hid an infrared video camera, often used by hunters to track game, in some bushes at state roads 87 and 89, north of Milton.

Minutes after the camera was deployed, the Browns happened by and removed [the signs]. Jason Broxson hid in some bushes and watched as the couple took the signs.

“Honestly, we just got lucky that he happened to show up right then,” said Kevin Brown, Broxson’s campaign manager. “Lord only knows the odds of that.”

Kevin Brown, who is not related to Greg Brown, said the camera was set up because Broxson was having problems with his signs being stolen and vandalized.

 
Soon after his high profile 1980 drug bust, Papa John Phillips reformed the Mamas and the Papas with daughter Mackenzie, Denny Doherty and Spanky McFarlane (from Spanky & Our Gang). Both Phillips’ were still in rehab, at the time, where they were working as drug counsellors. John and Mackenzie made this appearance on Canadian magazine program, That’s Life, during their 1983 tour, to talk about rebuilding their lives after drugs in an interview seems that seems remarkably candid compared to the execrable confessional talk show culture we have today.
 

 
The new Mamas and the Papas toured and recorded for eight years. Initially, their band included Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson and keyboard player Arthur Stead, who’s next gig was playing with Public Image Limited! A new collection of unreleased songs from that period, Many Mamas Many Papas has just been released as part of the “Papa John Presents” series of archival releases, and proves that Phillips was still capable of churning out catchy songs with a sting in the tail long after his 60s heyday. Among them is Kokomo, almost unrecognisable in its original form from the later Beach Boys version – rewritten by Mike Love as a boozy paean to Spring break.

In light of recent revelations, Fairy Tale Girl is a poignant (even, prescient) song about daughter Mackenzie, written in the early 70s around the time she starred in American Graffiti. But then, Papa John has been a magnet for outrageous claims for years. Here, he tells Larry King about the night Roman Polanski accused him of murdering Sharon Tate!
 

 
I posted here last month about Belgium’s most famous one hit wonder, Plastic Bertrand, he of Ça plane pour moi fame. and now he’s back in the news, being accused of, well, being a punk equivalent to Milli Vanilli! From the Guardian:

If evidence given to a Belgian court this week is to be believed, the man recognised as the voice behind Euro-punk’s anthem had built his acclaim on shaky ground: he did not actually sing the song.

According to a linguistician commissioned by a Belgian judge to examine the original recording of Ça Plane Pour Moi and compare it with a version released in 2006 by Bertrand’s former producer, the singer of the 1977 track spoke with a distinctive twang that would not have come naturally to the Brussels-born front-man. “With the endings of sentences on the tapes the voice can only belong to a Ch’ti or a Picard,” read the judgment, implying the true singer must have originated from north-eastern France, an area which produced both the Picard dialect and the affectionately mocked Ch’ti patois.

It is also the area that produced Lou Deprijck, the track’s composer and producer, who believes he has been vindicated in his claim to be the true performer of the big-selling single. “My Ch’ti patois has proved me right. I am relieved,” he was quoted as saying in Le Parisien newspaper. “I hope I will finally get my rights.” Deprijck, who for the past decade has been pursuing his music career in Thailand, has insisted for years that he was the real singer on Ça Plane Pour Moi, the hit that made it to No. 8 in the UK single’s charts despite being performed in largely unintelligible French.

Roger Jouret – the man behind the Plastic Bertrand persona – vehemently denies the claims.

Read the entire article: Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand denies allegations over hit song (Guardian)

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Plastic Bertrand vs Elton Motello: Jet Boy, Jet Girl vs Ça plane pour moi

Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 
Rather astonishing news from the fashion and film world. Dangerous Minds’ fave filmmaker Kenneth Anger has released a two-and-a-half-minute film dealing with the fall/winter collection of the Varese-based house of Missoni, produced by filmmaker/Anger manager/Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler and scored by French composer Koudlam.

Vogue Italia‘s Mariuccia Casadio provides some details:

A man of few words, this fascinating former actor who still takes care of his appearance first filmed the settings for his film “Missoni”: mostly locations near bodies of water in the Sumirago countryside and part of Rosita and Ottavio’s garden. For the indoor sequences, he built a set in the Council Room of the Sumirago Town Hall, a basement room with a vaulted ceiling. The mood of the film and the poses and movements of Margherita, Jennifer, Angela, Rosita, Ottavio, Ottavio Jr. and all other [Missoni] family members are reminiscent of Sergei Parajanov’s “The Color of Pomegranates”, a 1968 film that inspired Anger to create his Chinese box-style storyboard.

Do yourself a favor and go full-screen with this one. And if you’re unfortunate enough to not be familiar with Anger, do yourself another favor and click one or both of the links below. You’ll be glad you did.
 

 
Get: The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 1 [DVD]
 
Get: The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 [DVD]
 
Thanks to Ian Raikow for the heads-up!

 
Here we see the evolution of one of Norman Rockwell’s most fascinating illustrations, The Tattooist.

Rockwell often used photos as reference points for his paintings. For The Tattooist, Rockwell enlisted the help of a neighbor, Clarence Decker, to pose as the photo model for the sailor and artist Mead Schaeffer as the tattooist.

To insure that he was getting the details right, Rockwell obtained a tattoo machine from Al Neville who owned a tattoo parlor on New York City’s Bowery. Neville also served as a consultant on the painting.

The Tattooist appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post’s March 4, 1944 issue.
 

 
see the finished painting after the jump…

 
Among musicians, the infamous Troggs Tapes is the tabula rasa of rock and roll memes. As band members Reg, Dennis, Tony and Ronnie desperately try to nail a take of a song, they progressively meltdown, bickering, ranting, and collectively uttering more “fucks” than Tony Montana in Scarface. The tapes are claimed to have been a source of inspiration for Spinal Tap.

Here’s a groovy unattributed anecdote which, whether true or not, illustrates the mythology connected to this iconic tape;

Ron Wood was doing some studio work with Bob Dylan and over the course of the gig played Dylan the “Troggs Tapes”. Not unnaturally, Dylan thought they were very funny.

It turned out that Troggs singer Reg Presley was working in an adjacent studio making a demo for a commercial.

When Wood discovered this, he approached Dylan all excited, saying “Remember that guy on the tape I played you? Well, he’s next door right now!”

Dylan says, “Really?! Wow, I gotta meet him. You gotta introduce me!”

So Ron Wood takes Bob Dylan next door to find Reg disconsolately fumbling with a bass guitar.

Dylan, by way of introduction, says “Hey, I didn’t know you played bass, man. How long you been playing bass?”

Reg looks up and with a deep sigh says, “All fuckin’ afternoon, mate, all fuckin’ afternoon”.

Larry Page has posted a transcript of the Troggs Tape here.
 

 
more laughs after the jump

 
Electronica remix of The Kink’s ‘You Really Got Me.’ Purists beware, this may strike you as blasphemous. I like it.

Thanks to thriftshopxl.