Dangerous Minds pal Rich Fulcher gets serious with Craig Ferguson last night. Rich will be my guest on the DM talkshow taping this weekend.

 
Festive 1940s advertisement for Jester Wools.

(via Chateau Thombeau)

 
In the last article I set-up the parameters of what I have coined the “Haunted Retro” sound, and looked at Ariel Pink and his friends John Maus and Gary War. But that was all very phallocentric really, so this time I am covering the female-led bands in this imaginary “scene”.

Nite Jewel

Well, it’s not so imaginary, as a lot of these artists have worked together and definitely share some aesthetic and musical qualities. For instance L.A.‘s Nite Jewel have worked with John Maus and Haunted Graffiti member Cole MGN in the past. It’s not hard to see or hear why. They both record to 8 track tape using analogue and classic FM synths (like Roland Junos) and both have a slightly surreal, daydreamy vibe. But while Maus could very roughly be described as “synth-pop”, Nite Jewel make something that is more like “white-girl-soul”. They have recorded a cover of MOR-period Roxy Music and have a definite Fleetwood Mac-on-more-downers vibe. Being largely the work of one woman (Ramona Gonzales) Nite Jewel recently released the Am I Real? EP on the American Gloriette label, whose lead track “We Want Our Things” is a good snapshot of their sound.

Nite Jewel “We Want Our Things”
 

 
Nite Jewel “What Did He Say”
 

 
Nite Jewel “Want You Back”
 

Desire & Italians Do It Better after the jump…

 
Post modern bubble gum. Blondie on Japanese teen show Popteens in January 1978.

Way before they scored a hit in the States, Blondie were huge in Japan. They were the rock and roll version of Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup can, a distillation in one indelible image of something so American yet so universal. Pop!
 

 
“Dub Revolution Ina China.”  Jiang Liang Sound vs. Chinese propaganda footage and the “party is boundless.”

Jiang Liang is upholding a long and honored tradition that goes all the way back to when Leslie Kong left China in the late 1950s and opened a record store in Kingston, Jamaica. In 1962 he produced Bob Marley’s first two singles. Randy Chin, Byron Lee, The Chung Brothers, Herman Chin-Loy were Jamaican-based Chinese ex-patriots who were all involved with the production of seminal reggae tracks in the 1960s and 70s. Roots music is indeed multi-cultural.

Revolutions come out of the barrels of subwoofers.
 

 
Thanks Mark Kamins.

Saunders on shrooms.
 
Bryan Lewis Saunders is a visual artist, musician and brain addled fucking dopefreak genius. Don’t stare at his self-portraits for too long or they’ll invade your soul like a swarm of amphetamine-crazed humming birds. Saunders’ approach to the demons inside his head is to unscrew the lid.

On March 30th 1995, I started doing at least one Self-Portrait everyday for the rest of my life. At present I have over 7,900 of them. Like fingerprints, snowflakes and DNA they are all different, no two are the same.  For hundreds of years, artists have been putting themselves into representations of the world around them. I am doing the exact opposite. I put the world around me into representations of myself as I find this more true to my Central Nervous System.”

Pay a visit to Saunders website and see what sleep deprivation, massive amounts of chemicals and divine intoxication can do to a man.
 

 
Thanks for the turn on I Heart Chaos

 
A snapshot of Hell.

(via TDW)

 
John Butler’s superb latest animation T.R.I.A.G.E. is a speculative tale showing how:

A sick and failing area is swiftly restored to sound financial health

T.R.A.G.E. is an acronym for

Target
Respond
Identify
Administer
Globalize
Exit

Sound familiar?

Of course, triage is “the process of determining the priority of patients’ treatments based on the severity of their condition.” With this in mind, any similarities between actual events is purely intentional.
 

 
Bonus animations by John Butler ‘Unmanned’ and ‘Sub Optimal’ after the jump…
 

 
Following on from the post on Becky Fischer’s weirdo fundamentalist brainwashing for preteens, here’s Richard Dawkins’ recent documentary on faith schools and the damage they do to the minds of impressionable children. Here a more subdued Dawkins, who has been in these situations enough times to learn that all you have to do is let a fundie (of any religion) start talking and they will hang themselves with their own words, providing you with television gold in the process, does just that: He lets them talk

God Man, it must have been so demoralizing for him to go on these shoots! Some of this is just tragic. Supernatural beliefs should have no part in a proper education.

The number of faith schools in Britain is rising. Around 7,000 publicly-funded schools - one in three - now has a religious affiliation. As the coalition government paves the way for more faith-based education by promoting ‘free schools’, the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins says enough is enough.

In this passionately argued film, Dawkins calls on us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which, he argues, bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children. The film features robust exchanges with former Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke, Head of the Church of England Education Service Reverend Janina Ainsworth, and the Chair of the Association of Muslim Schools, Dr Mohammed Mukadam.

It also features insights from child psychologists and key players in faith education as well as insights from both parents and pupils.

Dawkins also draws on his own personal history as a father, arguing that the government must stop funding new faith schools, and urges society to respect a child’s right to freedom of belief.

 
Before Prozac, Paxil or Effexor, women treated their melancholia with kitchen appliances.

In the 1960s Westinghouse Corporation noticed that women across the nation were whiling away their hours in states of despondency bordering on catatonia. Young beautiful women were seen wandering through the woods in brightly colored pantsuits, aimlessly swishing their hair and staring listlessly at forest creatures. Were they on LSD? Had they turned into hippies?  Something had gone terribly wrong. What had compelled these seemingly normal women to turn into zombie-like extras from Night Of The Living Dead? And more importantly, how could society return them to the fold? Well, the geniuses at Westinghouse came up with a brilliant solution that was just crazy enough that it might work: mood altering refrigerators!

Here’s one woman’s miraculous transformation from the walking wounded to perky go-go dancing housewife. The Westinghouse cure… with a dose of bongo and Hammond organ.
 

 
BB Submitterator’s Sailors Girl says:

The band playing the theme to this 1970’s Japanese TV series remains unknown, but if there is a better example of Japanese glam rock and giant robots committed to 45 out there I haven’t heard it.

I have to agree, the theme song for Super Robot Mach Baron is pretty incredible. If any DM reader knows who this band is… do tell!
 

 
No one who has watched the staggeringly scary documentary Jesus Camp will ever forget creepy Pentecostal kids minister Becky Fischer, whose ministry has been described as fundamentalist “brain washing” or “child abuse” by an awful lot of people (click here for some “special” highlights from Jesus Camp if you haven’t seen the film).

Fischer instills her pre-teen flock with such time-honored (but IQ deficient) Pentecostal traditions as a belief in exorcism, the reality of everyday demons, that they are “present day apostles” fighting “spiritual warfare,” how to be a good Republican and of course… learning how to speak in tongues! (Ask yourself why the fuck would any right-thinking person want their kid “taught” how to “speak in tongues” in the first place? The answer is easy: NO ONE with a functioning brain would!)

This woman is a menace to the minds of these children. No surprise either that her Kids in Ministry website also features the “teachings” of brainless bigots like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs.

On a brighter note, probably seven out of ten of the kids who were unfortunately born to couples dumb enough to entrust their children to such warped indoctrination will eventually come to realize that Becky Fischer is a complete idiot and quite a bizarre human being with very, very strange, unscientific and ignorant beliefs and will want to get the fuck out of the Church as fast as they can. Partially as a direct result of being exposed to this weirdo when they were young.

Becky Fischer teaches children an organized system of superstition and ignorance, no more and no less. It’s too bad that there is no government-mandated psychological screening of people like this before they’re given a bunch of young minds to skull fuck.
 

 
Via Christian Nightmares

 
Another “Haunted Retro” video - yet more no budget fun, different to yesterday’s Gary War clip, but complimentary. This was directed by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, when Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti supported them on a US tour last year. It was shot on an iPhone and after-effected by George Salisbury of Delo Creative. All notes for this video say the effects don’t come through fully due to YouTube bitrate-compression. Trippy!
 

You can find this tune on the latest Haunted Graffiti album Before Today (4AD). This short spell of “Haunted Retro” concludes with tomorrow’s post, part two of the made-up genre overview with Nite Jewel, Glass Candy and more.

This is an interesting concept - a group of people come together to listen to a particular album, in its entirety from start to finish, on a state of the art PA, with no talking or phones allowed. It’s pure appreciation of an album - its track list and running order, listened to in the format the artist intended. No skipping, shuffling or fast-forwarding. This kind of thing doesn’t really have a name yet, but “record club” (like “book club”) is probably a good place to start.

Classic Album Sundays is just such a group, put together by the well known DJ Cosmo, aka Colleen Murphy, who cut her teeth at David Mancuso’s legendary Loft parties in New York. From the BBC:

This monthly club in north London is run by Colleen Murphy and for her it is a strike against “‘download culture”, the sense that music has just become an endless compilation of random songs used as background noise.

“Everyone, stop multi-tasking, sit down, open your ears and do some heavy listening.”

The set album this month was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We sat in silence even as David Bowie’s record was turned over to side two. The seats were soft, someone had lit some incense. Some people closed their eyes, others nodded in rhythmic appreciation. There was a sense of being collectively submerged in Bowie’s music.

“You’re not even allowed to use the bathroom here, it’s too noisy,” says Ms Murphy.

This raises some interesting issues. Personally, I like having the freedom to skip and choose tracks to listen to, as I see fit. For me there are very few albums that are worth gluing your ears to from start to finish. That’s not to say they don’t exist, but the “album” is a superficial format imposed on music only in the last half-century. I find individual songs to be more important, something I guess I have picked up from dance and dj culture. Or maybe I just have a low boredom threshold.

Listen to an audio report from BBC News on Classic Album Sundays.