This article from the New York Times about a totally unknown, all black proto-punk band called Death, circa 1974, has me salivating to hear this CD. Except for some hardcore music fanatics, Death were totally forgotten, even by the participants, really. Then one of their kids heard his father’s voice on a record at a party in San Francisco and this started a chain of events that saw the music of Death released on CD by Drag City Records:

The group’s music has been almost completely unheard since the band stopped performing more than three decades ago. But after all the years of silence, Death’s moment has finally arrived. It comes, however, nearly a decade too late for its founder and leader, David Hackney, who died of lung cancer in 2000. “David was convinced more than any of us that we were doing something totally revolutionary,” said Bobby Sr., 52.

Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as ”,,, For the Whole World to See” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault of punk from its breakthrough years of 1976 and ’77. Death’s songs “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Keep On Knocking” and “Freakin Out” are scorching blasts of feral ur-punk, making the brothers unwitting artistic kin to their punk-pioneer contemporaries the Ramones, in New York; Rocket From the Tombs, in Cleveland; and the Saints, in Brisbane, Australia. They also preceded Bad Brains, the most celebrated African-American punk band, by almost five years.

Jack White of the White Stripes, who was raised in Detroit, said in an e-mail message: “The first time the stereo played ‘Politicians in My Eyes,’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When I was told the history of the band and what year they recorded this music, it just didn’t make sense. Ahead of punk, and ahead of their time.”

The teenage Hackney brothers started playing R&B in their parents’ garage in the early ’70s but switched to hard rock in 1973, after seeing an Alice Cooper show. Dannis played drums, Bobby played bass and sang, and David wrote the songs and contributed propulsive guitar work, derived from studying Pete Townshend’s power-chord wrist technique. Their musicianship tightened when their mother allowed them to replace their bedroom furniture with mikes and amps as long as they practiced for three hours every afternoon. “From 3 to 6,” said Dannis, 54, “we just blew up the neighborhood.”

This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk (New York Times)

 

 
I started listening to this in the car the other day and I must say to the compiler: Well done, sir! This absolutely blew me away.

What is it, you ask? A monstrous 12 CD set of female fronted punk bands from all over the world from the mid to late ‘70s to the mid 80s (and a little beyond). Some of the artists you’ve heard of (Blondie, Crass, The Avengers, Honey Bane, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Rezillos, Slits, Malaria!) but others, trust me on this, there’s just no way you could have heard of all of them. The fellow who compiled this beast is a master. An expert’s expert.! A maven’s maven!
 

 
This represents a deep education in this exciting sub-genre of punk. It would be overstating the case to say it has aspirations of being a Harry Smith-type collection of punk and obscure hardcore bands, but some of this stuff I don’t think I’d ever come across if given two lifetimes. Apparently some of these songs come from cassettes, probably copied one at a time. There are obviously plenty of the tracks that were taken from vinyl 45 RPM records. And the stuff from the Eastern Bloc countries…. where did he get this stuff?

What a maniac! It must have been really hard to collect all of these songs, even in this day and age. Without a deep knowledge of the subject, it would be difficult to even search for some of these records on Google. Like I say, it’s impressive.

From the Kangknave blog (where you will find all of the download the links and a track listing):

This is a pretty insane project put together by my pal Vince B. from San Francisco a few years back. As the title indicates, this is a homemade 12 x CD-R (!) compilation of punk bands fronted by female vocalists from 1977 to 1989. More like a giant mixtape than a compilation, as he only made 36 copies which he sent to friends and people who submitted material. You may notice that some of the bands didn’t have a steady female vocalist (The Lewd, etc.) but he still included songs that were sung by another member of the band. This is as international as it gets, with stuff ranging from world famous Blondie or Crass to the most obscure Eastern European cassette compilation veterans. The boxset came packaged in a handnumbered fancy translucent lunchbox enclosing all 12 CD-Rs, a stack of full-colored cards featuring comprehensive tracklist and artwork/info, as well as a manga pin-up figure! Talk about a labor of love.

Via Glenn E. Friedman
 

 
A UCLA study finds a jump in 2009 to 8.2 million adults and children from 6.4 million in 2007 stemming largely from job cuts and the loss of employer-sponsored coverage amid the recession. 1 in 4 people do not have health insurance in the richest and most populous state in the country? This is simply astonishing news and yet there are still people who doubt the need for universal health care? It pains me that people really exist who are so mean and so cheap they’d deny their fellow man a life free from worries that they’ll go bankrupt or become homeless as they go through chemo. It’s sick. It could be them next time! Do these idiots not realize this?

PUBLIC OPTION NOW!

From the front page of today’s Los Angeles TImes:

People who were uninsured for part or all of 2009 accounted for 24.3% of California’s population under age 65—a dramatic increase from 2007 driven largely by Californians who lost employer-sponsored health insurance, particularly over the last year.

Among those over age 18, nearly 1 in 3 had no insurance for all or part of 2009, the UCLA researchers found. The ranks of uninsured children also grew.

 
A small but potent archive of full PDF scans of late 70’s/early 80’s UK anarcho/ feminist punk zines is up now at Essential Ephemera
 

 

 

 
It never once occurred to me to do a search for any videos of The Fugs on YouTube. The reason being that I never expected to find any! What TV station would have allowed THEM on the screen? Answer: A Swedish one! (Perhaps one where no one spoke English?)

As you watch this clip from a show called Swiiisch—especially the part with Ed Sanders’ rap about being into “astral perversion” and getting sucked off by ring-tailed fruit bats—try to picture what sort of conniption fit Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover would have had if this had run on American television.

The Fugs would have been put in jail, probably. Dig Tuli’s rad dance moves!

Part II is here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kupferberg

According to now-declassified MI5 files, Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the modern scouting movement, was nice and friendly with the Hitler Youth, and held meetings with von Ribbentrop about forming closer ties.

I knew there was a reason I dropped out of the scouts when I was 10, calling them a “bunch of fascists.” (Literally.) I mean, who names an organization for prepubescent youth “Webelos” (pronounced “We-Blow”)? Freaks.

Scouting founder Lord Robert Baden-Powell was invited to meet Adolf Hitler after friendly talks with the Hitler Youth about forming closer ties, secret British files released Monday showed.

Britain’s Baden-Powell, who started the Scouts in 1907, held talks with German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hitler Youth chief of staff Hartmann Lauterbacher on November 19, 1937.

Lauterbacher, then 28, was in Britain to foster closer relations with the Boy Scout movement and Ribbentrop invited Baden-Powell to tea with the Hitler Youth leader, newly declassified MI5 Security Service files revealed.

(Raw Story: Scouts founder held talks with Nazis)

 
This is an episode of Post Mortem, a series that examined the “pathologies” of certain seemingly doomed artists who were touched equally by genius and madness. Other subjects included Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon, and Nijinsky. This episode, about Montgomery Clift features interviewees like Kenneth Anger, Clift biographer Patricia Bosworth. Kevin McCarthy, and Barney Hoskyns.

The company who made this, Blackwatch Media, also produced the excellent Carry On Darkly documentary about the troubled personalities behind the iconic British Carry On film series of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Carry on Darkly is well worth looking for on the torrent trackers. I enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you Paul Gallagher!

 
Vintage Granada documentary from the ‘70s about Northern Soul and the Wigan Casino nightclub.

Read a personal account of what it was like at the Wigan Casino—by someone who went weekly during 1977—here.

Thank you Declan O’Gallagher!

 
Last week at the awesome Wolfgang’s Vault website, they posted a particularly interesting historical cultural document: a recording of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the young Grateful Dead at one of the infamous Acid Test raves. From the concert summary on the website:

“As 1966 began, San Francisco was rapidly becoming the epicenter of a cultural and musical shift that would impact the world. Dance hall promoters like Bill Graham and Chet Helms were in the early stages of opening venues where local bands could perform for the throngs of young people looking to dance socialize and listen to live music. Local writer Ken Kesey and his friends (known as The Merry Pranksters) were doing the same on a smaller scale, but adding high quality LSD to the mix, which was then still legal and readily available. As Kesey’s parties, or “Acid Tests” as they were called, began attracting more and more adventurous people, it was inevitable that The Merry Pranksters parties would merge with local dance hall venues, which is exactly what happened on January 8, 1966.

On that night The Pranksters and their Acid Test house band, The Grateful Dead, descended on Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium, loading in piles of sound equipment, projectors and strobe lights and ready to turn attendees on to LSD while subjecting them to sensory bombardment. The band had literally just become The Grateful Dead, having recently changed their name from The Warlocks, and was just one component of the overall experience. Ken Kesey, strategically overseeing everything, was also plugged in to the P.A. system and could ramble stream-of-consciousness commentary over the proceedings. Various Pranksters were also equipped with roving microphones, which could be fed in and out at any time. Mass free-form creativity while under the influence was the goal. Often it was utter chaos, sometimes it was divinely inspired and for the vast majority of attendees, it was incredibly liberating to “freak freely” with others who felt the same.

While no mere audio recording could ever capture an Acid Test experience, this one does manage to capture some of the spontaneous free-formlessness and remains one of the earliest (if not the earliest) examples of a live Grateful Dead recording, when they were essentially still a cover band playing for dancers.

The recording begins with the proceedings just getting underway and not surprisingly, plenty of chaos onstage. As The Grateful Dead attempt to get the stage powered up, Captain Ken Kesey is rambling away, welcoming attendees to tonight’s journey. After several minutes of embracing absurdity, The Grateful Dead begin the slow blues of “I’m A King Bee,” sounding not too different from the early Rolling Stones, but more hypnotic. Although primitive, many of the elements of the prototype San Francisco sound are in place, from Garcia’s banjo style electric guitar picking and his use of twang bar to end his riff lines to Pigpen’s largely improvised vocal style. Garcia and Pigpen team up on lead vocals for the next number, a bouncy cover of “I’m A Hog For You Baby,” which also includes Kesey interjecting Prankster style public service announcements over the band. Although occasionally tempo-challenged, up to this point drummer Bill Kruetzman comes across as the most accomplished musician here and when others drift off, he and Phil Lesh help keep things somewhat anchored.

The musical highlight of this recording follows as The Grateful Dead play a solid 17-minute sequence consisting of Pigpen’s “Caution” segueing directly into “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” Here one can hear the promise of this band and everyone turns in a respectable performance, particularly Pigpen and Garcia, who were clearly leading the way. “Caution” soon becomes a driving hyper-jam, featuring a great early example of Garcia’s shredding technique. The “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” that follows is downright spooky, thanks in no small part to Pigpen’s organ work, which rarely gets much mention. With the band cranking away about nine minutes in, suddenly the police pull the plug!

Kesey, not one to miss an opportunity for increasing the absurdity, announces “The chief security agent has taken over and has pulled the plug on the band! Completely nullifying the engines!” Several other roving microphones are also heard, including what sounds like an instantaneous tape loop of a police officer saying “Clear the house! The dance is over!” Many humorous and sarcastic comments are heard eminating from the stage as well as the room, while Bob Weir begins baiting the cops with a spontaneous monologue. As the police converge on the stage, several people begin belting out a hideously off-key rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” just to needle the police a little more. Amidst grumbling and noise, the tape runs out with a commentary from Jerry Garcia, who exclaims, “In the end, its nothing but mindless chaos. Good old mindless chaos, hassling, ever hassling…”

Directed by Tamra Davis, the documentary features never-before seen footage of the prolific artist painting, talking about his art, and existing in the two years prior to his death in 1988.

The OST features music from Mike D and Ad Rock.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child was released on Feb 21st.

Thanks Manuel Hernandez!

 
Sassy Lou Reed interview shot during the Sally Can’t Dance/Rock & Roll Animal phase in Australia, 1974. Reed is clearly having fun toying with the reporters on the topics of drugs (he’s for them), transvestism (sometimes) and what he spends his money on (drugs).
 

 
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Simmons reviews When You’re Strange, the new documentary about The Doors from director Tom DiCillo (Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion) on the Mojo blog:

DiCillo’s hardest task has been to do justice to the charisma of Mr. Mojo Risin’ (one of Jim Morrison’s many handles, in this case an anagram of his name); I saw The Doors live in January 1969 and can attest that Morrison glowed, generating tangible heat. And yet, 39 years since his death, the Morrison magic comes through loud and clear, as the film traces the transformation of 1965’s callow California kids into the jaded, burnt-out rock stars of 1971. Along the way, we witness every over-told incident in Doors history: Light My Fire and the subsequent string of hits, the adoration of trendsetters du jour like Andy Warhol, Morrison’s refusal to sell out - whether it be changing a controversial lyric for Ed Sullivan or selling a song for a car commercial - his increasingly self-destructive behaviour, the two books of poems published in his lifetime, the penis-flashing in Miami that never happened, and the poète maudit’s Parisian finale.

The musical contributions of the other Doors are emphasized, from drummer John Densmore’s deft swing to guitarist Robbie Krieger’s flamenco fingering and organist Ray Manzarek’s Bach mastery, serving to remind that there would’ve been no Doors without the other Doors. Morrison’s excellence as a singer is also noted, a fact often overlooked in the accounts of his antics. When he was younger, his vocal role model was Elvis; as he got older it was Sinatra and one can clearly hear Ol’ Blues Eyes’ in Jim’s caress of a note.

The footage feels fresh and intimate. There are clips of Morrison’s underground movie from his university days, a sweet Jim playing with children, fly-on-the-wall recording studio scenes, as well as the familiar live concerts where we witness Jim the consummate performer and Jimbo the inebriated clown. But it’s the shots lifted from Morrison’s own experimental films HWY and Feast Of Friends (the former the source of that Ford Mustang footage) that allow us entry into the omnivorous, risky, arty mind of the front Door.

 
I recently acquired *cough, from Demonoid, cough* a quadraphonic version (i.e. 4-channel) of The Worst of Jefferson AIrplane and their Volunteers set in 4-channel audio as well. Originally released during the heyday of Quad (which was approximately 1974 to 1976) on 8-track and reel to reel tapes (for the more discerning audiophile) these rarely heard versions of some of the Airplane’s best-loved songs are phenomenal. As a very hardcore fan of the band since I was a kid, I really got off on hearing something new in the music I was already so very, very familiar with. On Volunteers, three—count ‘em—three songs are totally different from the album versions. Not different mixes, but substantially different versions which would have been lost to history due to the outdated format. (Although they were included on the excellent Jefferson Airplane Loves You box set, these tracks sound way better in their original quadraphonic glory, not bounced down to stereo. Hey Fredrick has a completely different lead vocal, Volunteers is totally different, I think it was even recorded on a different day from the original, and The Farm is also a lot different).

But the best song of all to hear in Quad was Lather. It sounds fantastic and there is an incredibly cool Philip Glass-style ostinato that Grace Slick is doing on the piano that has never been clear and audible in any version of this song I’ve ever heard before (and lord knows the JA catalog has been released in as many crappy permutations as their RCA label mate, Elvis’s catalog, has). It’s always been there, you just couldn’t hear it like this.

It’s fascinating for me to see the (rapid) flowering of an audiophile underground in Bit Torrent land. Anonymous professional and amateur audio engineers are buying up the original Quad tapes from the 70s on Ebay, restoring and refurbishing their old quadraphonic gear and then transferring these old tapes to Pro Tools, and then into DVD ISO files that you can burn with Toast. The ones made from the reel to reel tapes are by far the best, but even the ones made from 8-tracks are still pretty cool to hear, even in a lower fidelity.

Why doesn’t the music industry (specifically a label like Shout Factory, who would do the best job) look into what people are obviously quite interested in on the torrent trackers—especially the Russian ones— and get some ideas of what they still might actually purchase on disc (i.e. multi-channel versions of classic rock albums). A few of the original Quad mixes have actually been put out on DVD-A or SACD, such as Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (amazing) as well as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (also amazing). For the most part, however, they only see the light of day on torrent trackers via these inspired hobbyists.

But back to the Jefferson Airplane. Below is an odd lip-sync’d performance of Lather from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Who else would on television then would have let Grace Slick get away with this?!?!
 

Epic guitar duel between Neil Young and Stephen Stills in this blistering live version of Young’s Down By The River at the Big Sur Folk Festival on September 14, 1969.

 
Well, I never thought I’d be posting anything Oprah-related, but who knew we’d be hearing again from Jim Jones Jr., the son of Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple founder and engineer of the Jonestown tragedy?  Jim Jones Jr. lost both his wife and unborn child that day, and seeing him in a forgiving mood on Oprah certainly provides a fascinating footnote to what’s been described (pre-9/11) as the single greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster.
 
Part I of the interview follows, with links below to the other two segments.  Never one to shrink from controversy, Oprah follows Jim Jones Jr. with the sister of John Wayne Gacy.  You can watch some lesser-quality video of that segment here.

And if you’ve never seen the excellent Jonestown: The Life And Death Of People’s Temple, YouTube hosts the documentary in its entirety (click here for Part I).

 
Jim Jones Jr. On Oprah, Part: II, III

A huge collection of films by “other cinema” pioneer Lutz Mommartz is available at the Internet Archive. Music in the first clip is by a group called The Iceni about whom I can find no further info. Anybody ?

 
Maybe NSFW. Definitely uh, hot…

thx Tara !

 
First Lennon’s jewelry, now Abbey Road, the iconic studio whose consoles mixed not only 90% of the Beatles catalog, but WWII British propaganda recordings as well.  Purchased by EMI back in 1929 (!) for £100,000, the studio is expected to raise tens of millions of pounds.

 
(via Everlasting Blort)

 

 

 
Here are some random images and videos of London in the 60s from Flickr user SwingingLondon.

(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
Orson Welles has been back in the news lately. First British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Brideshead Revisited, Let it Be, The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus) will be taking a paternity test to either prove or disprove that he is the only son of the famed director. Lindsay-Hogg is writing an autobiography and wants to put the matter—which has dogged him his entire life to rest one way or the other. Welles’ daughter, Chris Welles Feder has recently published her autobiography, In My Father’s Shadow (which I have, but have not yet read), about growing up with such a monumental, larger-than-life figure as Welles. She told the Guardian newspaper that she has long suspected LIndsay-Hogg might be her brother, “If it does turn out that Michael is my half-brother, it would be delightful. We used to play on the beaches of Santa Monica together all the time and he was my favorite playmate, and I have the fondest memories of him,”

Lindsay-Hogg’s mother was the Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, a star of the Broadway stage who appeared in Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier and died in 2005. Married to Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, she had begun a relationship with Welles in America during his marriage to Chris Welles Feder’s mother, the Chicago-born actress Virginia Nicholson. The families continued to live side-by-side for some time and the two children became close.

“My memory is that nobody knows for sure whether Orson was Michael’s father. My mother told me that even Geraldine Fitzgerald didn’t know,” said Welles Feder.

And then there is this new documentary, which is a must-see in this Welles-obsessed household. From the Wellesnet website:

In Prodigal Sons, we discover that Welles second daughter, Rebecca, the child of Rita Hayworth (beauty) and Welles (brains), actually had the grandson Welles would have been happy over, but apparently never knew about! Marc was quickly put up for adoption in 1966, shortly after he was born.

The family who adopted Marc were the McKerrow’s of Montana. The father was a doctor (like Welles’ own guardian, Dr. Bernstein) and the mother, a schoolteacher (like Roger Hill). Later Mr. and Mrs. McKerrow had two sons of their own, Paul and Todd.

Paul becomes an accomplished athlete, who later shows an interest in movies, (including a love for the work of Orson Welles). Then, in a bizarre twist that no screenwriter could ever imagine, Paul decides to become a trans-sexual. As Kimberly Reed, she goes on to make movies, her most recent being this documentary!

Meanwhile, Paul/Kim’s natural brother Todd turns out to be gay. Of course while the three brothers, Marc, Paul and Todd are growing up, none of them know that Marc is actually the grandson of Orson Welles. Marc himself only finds out that his real mother is Rebecca Welles, shortly after Rebecca dies, and he then finds out the truth about his famous grandparents.

 
The ‘only son’ of Orson Welles to take DNA test (Guardian)

Prodigal Sons official website

Thank you, Steven Otero!