Although their passionate, anthemic ode to flower power, “Something in the Air” has been used countless times in films and television commercials, Thunderclap Newman, the group behind this classic song remain unfairly obscure.
Thunderclap Newman were formed in early 1969 when Pete Townshend and Who producer Kit Lambert brought together fifteen-year-old guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and jazz pianist Andy “Thunderclap” Newman to form a three-piece group to play the songs of former Who roadie (and Townshend’s sometime chauffeur) John “Speedy” Keen. Townshend originally planned to work with each of the musicians separately, but since he was concurrently working on his rock opera Tommy at the time, Lambert suggested that a group be formed instead. Newman, Keen and McCullough all met for the first time at the inaugural recording session for “Something in the Air” at Townshend’s home studio. Townshend produced the single and played bass guitar under the pseudonym “Bijou Drains.”
“Something In The Air” was written by Keen for the soundtrack of The Magic Christian film with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. The original title was “Revolution” but that had to be changed due to the Beatles’s song of that same name. By the end of 1969 it was a gold record.
The group recorded an album, Hollywood Dream, again with Townshend in the producer’s chair. It’s a stone classic, there’s not a single weak song on it, but since the band never really had anything in common with one another, after a year of touring Europe supporting Deep Purple and Leon Russell, they just broke up.
Jimmy McCulloch went on to play guitar with Paul McCartney and Wings. His debut with Wings was “Junior’s Farm,” a great showcase for his talents. In concert with Wings, McCulloch would switch to bass when Macca sat down at the piano or played an acoustic guitar. He left Wings in 1977 (good timing!) to play with a reformed version of the Small Faces. McCulloch died of heart failure caused by a heroin overdose in 1979, apparently seated upright in a chair (“America’s Funnyman,” Neil Hamburger told me this, btw. He would know).
“Speedy” Keen had one more hit single, “Y’know Wot I Mean?” and went on to work as a producer with Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers on L.A.M.F. in 1977 (their only studio album) and Motörhead’s debut album before leaving the music industry. He died in 2002. Andy Newman formed a new version of Thunderclap Newman in 2010 and plays Hollywood Dream from start to finish in his set.
The Dirty Show®, Detroit’s infamous underground erotic art exhibition, returns to Los Angeles for another go-round June 10-11.
Instead of being held in a gallery space, this exhibition will be held in the “authentically appropriate” rooms of the sleazy City Center Hotel. (As they organizers admit: “You probably won’t find it in Frommers”).
“We see it as a mix between and exhibition and an art fair. A really fucked up art fair, but an art fair nonetheless,” Jerry Vile, The Dirty Show® founder says.
Artists will include actress/singer/performance artist Ann Magnuson, stained glass artisan Juan Martin del Campo Jr., photographer Greg Firlotte, painter Scooter LaForge, fashion illustrator Richard Haines, sculptor Cheryl Ekstrom, Carol Sixsixtysix, fashion stylist Bill Mullen, fetish photographer Steve Diet Goedde, painter Brian Viveros, fine art illustrator Jeff Wack, graphic designer Rick Morris, photographer Lisa Boyle, physique photographer Gabriel Goldberg and about 50 others. Special rooms will be curated by Pop Tart gallery founder Lenora Claire, Bughouse Design and Rick Castro’s Antebellum Gallery.
Lenora Claire writes:
“I thought it would cool to curate an entire room of erotic art by musicians as so many of them are talented in different mediums and call it GROUP SEX. Kid Infinity, who have the amazing 3D light show that was intended for Michael Jackson before he died, will be doing a really cool erotic 3-D video that people will have to watch with glasses and everything. So cool! Boobs are better in 3D.”
Other musicians participating in Lenora’s suite of the hotel include Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, Cole Whittle (Semi Precious Weapons), and Brett Anderson (The Donnas). There will be a video installation by Steve Stevens (Billy Idol’s longtime guitarist) and erotic portraits of musicians by photographers Austin Young and Dean Karr.
The East Wing of the historic City Center provides 17 rooms staged as artist salons while retaining an adult bookstore vibe.
“Context is king,” quipped Vile.
Dirty Show® L.A. #2 (Hotel Edition), Fri & Sat June 10 & 11 8-11 p.m. City Center Hotel, 1135 West 7th Street, Downtown Los Angeles, $15
Spray Paint the Walls: The Story of Black Flag by Stevie Chick is now available in a revised edition for U.S. readers via PM Press. The story of the band in all of its various incarnations, SST Records and their fellow travelers, comes in at a hefty 403 pages:
They were the pioneers of American hardcore, forming in California in 1878 and splitting up 8 years later leaving behind them a trail of blood, carnage and brutal, brilliant music. Throughout the years they fought with the police, record industry and their own fans. This is the band’s story from the inside, drawing upon exclusive interviews with the group’s members, their contemporaries and the groups who were inspired by them. It’s also the story of American hardcore music, from the perspective of the group who did more to take the sound to the clubs, squats and community halls in American than any other.
With the Arty Bollocks Generator you will never be short of the right words when it comes to describing your art work, your film, your novel or your artistic vision.
Arty Bollocks Generator
Do you hate having to write your artist statement?
Generate your own here for free, and if you don’t like it, generate another one.
For use with funding applications, exhibitions, curriculum vitae, websites ...
Here are a few examples:
My work explores the relationship between postmodern discourse and emotional memories.
With influences as diverse as Kierkegaard and John Lennon, new combinations are generated from both simple and complex layers.
Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of meaning. What starts out as triumph soon becomes corrupted into a tragedy of power, leaving only a sense of what could have been and the chance of a new understanding.
As temporal impressions become clarified through emergent and personal practice, the viewer is left with a glimpse of the inaccuracies of our future.
Don’t pass this by because it’s an item about Donald Trump, this clip is totally worth watching. No matter what your political persuasion—or even what you think of the messenger—Donald Trump makes several good and valid points here. There is probably very little else that he and I would agree on, but his assessment of the GOP is deadly accurate, here. It’s downright vicious, too, which is why it’s so much fun to watch.
He who only recently sought the Republican nomination. Fascinating.
Furthermore, I (more or less) believe Trump’s reasons, as stated in the video, for getting himself out of the mess the Republicans have made for themselves. Sure he took some body shots when he flirted with running in the Spring, but the abject stupidity on offer this year from the Republicans has been absolutely staggering. Too much, apparently for even a prominent birther like Donald Trump. Soon even Orly Taitz will abandon the GOP!
Of course, the coda, where Trump hints bluntly tells viewers that he’s pretty much ready, willing and able (once the new season of The Apprentice is in the can, natch) to jump into the race if the GOP can’t get it act together, is the money shot here.
Since Trump’s burning his GOP bridges with such gusto—and we can be 100% certain that he’s not asking for the Democratic nod—that would leave an independent run. (A third party doesn’t seem like his style, plus who would want him?)
I sincerely hope Donald Trump does a Ross Perot and runs. If he really wants to inflict some damage on the GOP—and from what he says here, who’d doubt that?—an independent run would be the most effective way to go about it. Plus, it would just be such an insane, surrealistic spectacle. I was sad when he got out of the race so early, weren’t you?
Run, Donald, run! And here’s hoping that Sarah Palin is your running mate!
Here’s a couple of free downloads that see a near-perfect meeting of minds between “hauntedretro” acts Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and Nite Jewel, and king of the retro-boogie himself, Dam Funk. All of these acts have an obsession with synthesizers that come from a particular era (the late 70s to early 80s) and produce music that sounds like the kind of thing you’d find in you hip uncle’s garage on a dusty mixtape labelled “Memories of 1982”.
First up, Dam Funk has done a remix of the Haunted Graffiti track “Fright Night”, one of the stand outs on last year’s excellent Before Today album on 4AD Records. He adds even more lush synths and drum machine action that fits like a velvet glove. You can download the track here, via Pitchfork.
Secondly, about 18 months ago Dam Funk was brought together with Nite Jewel to co-produce an exclusive track for XLR8R magazine’s “Tune in an Afternoon” feature, another meeting of soulful synth acts very much on the same page. I only discovered the track, called “Am I Gonna Make It?” about 6 months ago, but it has been on heavy rotation on my MP3 player ever since, it’s that good. You can download it here, via XLR8R.
I was surprised at the negative reaction to Nite Jewel when I posted about them on DM before. What gives guys? Are they getting excessively pushed by the American press? Because they’re profile is pretty small in the UK. Or are they too hipster-seeming? I was surprised at the reaction, which seemed to go beyond mere dislike and into something darker. Either way, I genuinely like Nite Jewel and their spooked-out, lo-fi take on MOR soul-pop. Here is the short film made by XLR8R for the “Tune in an Afternoon” feature, which gives an insight into both artists’ production styles, plus a look around Jack Waterson’s Future Music store in LA - haters should watch this as it might just change your mind:
I once produced a series called Banned in the U.K., which was based on the premise that we can learn more about a society through what it bans that by what it permits. This week, the issue of censorship has highlighted the difference of what is permitted when viewing extreme violence as fact and fiction.
The principal focus of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) is the sexual arousal of the central character at both the idea and the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, and murder of his naked victims….
...There is little attempt to portray any of the victims in the film as anything other than objects to be brutalised, degraded and mutilated for the amusement and arousal of the central character, as well as for the pleasure of the audience.
While the BBFC has banned Brits from viewing fictional acts of extreme and sexual violence, Channel 4 television has taken the brave decision to air raw footage (filmed on a cell ‘phone) of allegedly Sri Lankan troops systematically murdering and committing acts of sexual violence against its population in a documentary called Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields.
The material has been described as “the most horrific footage [Channel 4] has ever broadcast”. An extract from the video was aired in August 2009, which showed naked, bound men being executed with a shot to the back of the head by what appears to be Sri Lankan soldiers. This material was edited as it was considered “too gruesome” to be broadcast pre-watershed. Now the footage will be transmitted at length next Tuesday at 11pm:
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields includes full-length videos of naked and bound Tiger prisoners kneeling whilst they are shot in the back of their heads by men in army uniforms. When extracts of some of these videos were first shown on Channel 4 News the Sri Lankan government denounced them as fake - and have refused to accept they are real - despite being authenticated by UN specialists. In new footage, a Tiger prisoner is shown tied to a coconut tree. The same prisoner is captured in a series of photos - at first alive, threatened with a knife and then dead and covered with blood.
Further videos show evidence of systemic murder, abuse and sexual violence - women’s bodies stripped of their clothes being dumped into trucks by soldiers. The film includes an interview with a woman who, with a group of civilians, handed herself and daughter over to government forces. She claims they were both raped; she witnessed others being raped, she heard screaming and shots and never saw them again.
This week, Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4, Dorothy Byrne defended her decision to screen the film in a radio interview:
“I believe it is absolutely justified. The UN has reported that there is credible evidence that actual war crimes took place.
“This is not just a TV programme, this is evidence. If we don’t show it and the Sri Lankan government say it never happened – how are you the viewer, a member of the public, able to make up your mind, unless you see it yourself.
“We felt we had to show it as overwhelming evidence of potential war crimes which need investigating.
“I would like to be able to say we will never again show footage again like this. I hope it is the first and last time we have to do it.”
Byrne took the decision to show the film “after serious and careful consideration.”
“This dossier of visual evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by forces of the government of Sri Lanka is of the greatest possible public interest. We believe that screening it is the only way to enable viewers to make their own informed judgments about what happened.”
Byrne is right to show the footage as “evidence”, in the same way the films of Auschwitz and Belsen were “evidence” of the atrocities committed. But it will lead to people asking why it is acceptable to broadcast genuine material of “gruesome” violence, and sexual assault, while it is not acceptable to screen fictional material, like the next Tom Six movie?
Shouldn’t it be more troubling to watch film of actual murder, rather than fictional?
The screening also opens “a door to which there is no way of closing” for once one news agency shows such footage, what is to stops others following suit?
There is usually a protocol to showing shootings in news footage: the camera freezes before the moment the gun is fired, then cuts to the dead body. This explains in simple terms what has happened. If this protocol is abandoned then the stakes are upped in terms of what a news channel can offer to attract viewers - and let’s be clear, viewing figures drive scheduling, which drives programs and their commissioning, and if real violence can deliver column inches and a healthy viewing figure, then who is going to say “no” to cell ‘phone footage of other atrocities?
But there is also a more troubling issue - would this material have been screened if it was British citizens that had been shot in the head? Do we treat foreign nations with dignity when it comes to reporting on their lives? Or do we use them as victims for our own infotainment?
This is a very tricky area but I think Byrne is right, for it is “evidence” that Channel 4 is presenting and there is a moral duty to screen it, which is what makes this footage exceptional, and important.
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields is broadcast on Channel 4 on June 14 at 23.05hours, details here.
Below is the original Channel 4 News report on the Sri Lankan atrocities - please note some viewers may find this clip disturbing, as it contains footage of prisoners being killed.
I’d heard the theory that the Smurfs were a ploy to get us used to the imminent arrival of little blue aliens, but this is news to me. A French academic has published a book claiming that the Smurfs were both Communist and anti-Semitic, claims that have met with a backlash from fans of the little blue guys. From The Guardian:
Antoine Buéno, a lecturer at Sciences Po university in Paris, makes the claims in his new book Le Petit Livre Bleu: Analyse critique et politique de la société des Schtroumpfs, in which he points out that the Smurfs live in a world where private initiative is rarely rewarded, where meals are all taken together in a communal room, where there is one leader and where the Smurfs rarely leave their small country.
“Does that not remind you of anything? A political dictatorship, for example?” asks Buéno, going on to compare the Smurfs’ world to a totalitarian utopia reminiscent of Stalinist communism (Papa wears a red outfit and resembles Stalin, while Brainy is similar to Trotsky) and nazism (the character of the Smurfs’ enemy Gargamel is an antisemitic caricature of a Jew, he proposes). A story about the Black Smurfs, meanwhile, in which the Smurfs are bitten by a fly which turns their skin black and renders them unable to speak, has colonial overtones.
Reactions to the book were immediate and hostile, with commenters on Smurf fansites calling Buéno a “dream breaker”, an imbecile and a crook with “paranoid delusions”, who is ruining childhood memories.
Is this strange video perhaps more proof of a connection?
It’s been some time since we’ve last heard from iconic feminist rockers, Le Tigre. A new DVD titled Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour has just been released with a mix of footage from their 2004 world tour and conversations with band members JD Samson, Johanna Fateman and Kathleen Hanna. It was directed by Kerthy Fix.
How did the documentary come about?
We were about to go on tour in 2004 and I was thinking how there was no good documentation of the projects I’ve done, and about how weird we all were in the ‘90s, like “Don’t photograph me!” We were so freaked about being sucked up by the mainstream that we didn’t even document ourselves. I didn’t want that to happen to me, as a grownup. We put some money into a camera to shoot our shows, just to have it, not really thinking that we’re making a movie. Then we started filming stuff on the bus or backstage. After, we stopped touring, revisited some of the material and slowly started putting it into the project and finally it’s done, six years later.
What’s your favorite part of the movie?
I like a lot of the stuff that Johanna says about JD in the interview part. There is some stuff that we never really say to each other because it’s too corny. Like, you don’t actually sit in a room and go, “Here’s what you brought to the band.” It was interesting to hear Jo say these sweet, sentimental things about JD. She talked about a lot of stuff that happened in terms of JD’s gender and presentation, how that did change how people perceived us as a band. I definitely got an education by seeing the way a journalist would treat her and not know how to treat her. I don’t know, I guess it just brought this issue to the fore. It felt really good to have that spoken out loud.
Was there anything that you might have forgotten about or were surprised to see?
Just how goofy we were. I don’t think people think of us as being that goofy and I don’t think of us as being that goofy, but looking back at the footage I was like, “Oh my God.” Every time the camera went on we were totally goofy and I know when the camera went off, we were equally goofy. I sort of forgot about that, that everything was kind of a joke and lighthearted and it was really in contrast to some of the other things that were going on that were really heavy. It was either really heavy, like “We’re being boycotted!” and then trying to put a Band-Aid on everything with humor, all the time.
Read more of Kathleen Hanna Looks Back on Le Tigre, Praises Lady Gaga’s Gay Pride, Dismisses ‘Boring’ Odd Future (Spinner)
Below, a live “Deceptacon” from Who Took the Bomp?
Here’s a screen test shot back in 1980 of Tom Selleck and Sean Young performing “the bar scene” for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Apparently Tom Selleck was the first choice for the role of Indiana Jones, but CBS would not let him out of his Magnum PI contract to film the movie. And yeah, the audio is a bit out of sync.
Not too shabby. I think Tom Selleck would have made a convincing Indiana Jones. I’m not so sure Jones would sport a pornstache, though.
Business Insider posted these wonderful images by photographer Danny Lyon taken during the Summer of 1974 in Brooklyn. He was there for two months and snapped photos of everyday life.
I know I’ll be called a “jerk” for pointing this out, but notice how there are no obese children or adults in any of these photos.
