If you generally detest today’s pop music, you may be sick of hearing Janelle Monae’s name so much. And considering that she’s firmly inside the music industry machine, it’d be hard to blame you.

But unlike many women in the pop and R&B realm, the girl has pretty confidently determined and shaped her own music and visual style. Synthesizing new rock and traditional soul into the kind of futuristic brew her foreparents David Bowie and Grace Jones served up back in the day, Monae’s still got the aesthetic zeitgeist at her back.

Let’s hope she retains the integrity and panache shown below. This video is excerpted from an appearance she made in the summer of 2007, just as she released her first EP on her Wondaland Arts Society label. And even though she was already officially signed to the megalith Bad Boy label, she saw fit to play the independent Criminal Records store in the Little 5 Points district of her adopted Atlanta hometown with her guitarist Kellindo Parker. Aaaand she tore it up.

Whatever happens to Monae’s career going forward—sometimes it pays to brace for disappointment, sell-out fuckery, etc.—we’ll be able to recount a time when she seemed like the future of pop. Go girl.
 

 
More Janelle getting real after the jump…

AGGRO - That’s what Joe Hawkins and his mates were looking for, with their shaven heads, big boots and braces. Football matches, pub brawls, open-air pop concerts, hippies and Hell’s Angels all gave them chances to vent their sadistic violence. SKINHEAD is a story straight from today’s headlines - portraying with horrifying vividness all the terror and brutality that has become the trademark of these vicious teenage malcontents.

Richard Allen was a Canadian-born writer who could churn out pulp novels as regular as drunks take beer shits. In the early 1970’s, he got a gig writing novels about skinheads for New English Library. He eventually spewed out 17 of em. His first novel ‘Skinhead’ struck a chord with British skinheads and his teenage gangster novels became hugely popular. His stories of the biker, mod, teddy boy and Oi! culture of 70’s Britain became an essential, yet darker and less fashionable, part of London’s punk culture. While The Sex Pistols and The Clash were ultimately a bunch of hippie idealists, the skinhead scene was working and non-working class anger tied to racial resentment and a sense of destiny lost. The Two-Tone bands entered the scene and built a bridge between the cerebral revolution of the punkers and the racial paranoia of the skins. The baldies racist inclinations were defused by their love of reggae, ska, and rock steady. Skinhead moonstomp.

Update: Paul Gallagher reports that “in the 60s and 70s skinheads were black and white - though the movement was hijacked by some members of the National Front (extreme right Nazi organization).  Trouble with Allen’s books was their painting skins in a sometimes negative light. Ska and Two Tone records reclaimed skinheads in the late 70s through The Specials and Madness, etc.”

Check out this solid documentary on Richard Allen and the legions of kids for whom he was the voice of their disenfranchisement and anger anguish. 
 

 
Parts 2 - 7 after the jump…

 
Although “The “Priest” They Called Him” might be the most obscure thing in Kurt Cobain’s discography, it’s probably the best selling musical collaboration of William S, Burroughs’s recording career. Basically, in 1992, Cobain contacted his hero, Burroughs about doing something together. Burroughs sent him a tape of a reading he’d done of a short story originally published in his Exterminator collection in 1973 and Cobain added some guitar backing based on “Silent Night” and “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

It was originally released as a limited edition 10-inch EP picture disc on Tim/Kerr Records in 1993, it was subsequently re-released on CD and 10-inch vinyl.

At the time of the collaboration, however, the two had not met. In a carefully prepared “dossier” on the subject found on the web’s premiere Burroughs website, The Reality Studio, their eventual meeting is described thusly, via several sources:

In October 1993 Cobain met in Burroughs in Lawrence, KS.

During this first week of the tour, Alex MacLeod drove Kurt to Lawrence, Kansas, to meet William S. Burroughs. The previous year Kurt had produced a single with Burroughs titled The “Priest” They Called Him, on T/K Records, but they’d accomplished the recording by sending tapes back and forth. “Meeting William was a real big deal for him,” MacLeod remembered. “It was something he never thought would happen.” They chatted for several hours, but Burroughs later claimed the subject of drugs didn’t come up. As Kurt drove away, Burroughs remarked to his assistant. “There’s something wrong with that boy; he frowns for no good reason.”

—Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

Burroughs describes the meeting… “I waited and Kurt got out with another man. Cobain was very shy, very polite, and obviously enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t awestruck at meeting him. There was something about him, fragile and engagingly lost. He smoked cigarettes but didn’t drink. There were no drugs. I never showed him my gun collection.” The two exchanged presents — Burroughs gave him a painting, while Cobain gave him a Leadbelly biography that he had signed. Kurt and music video director Kevin Kerslake originally wanted Burroughs to appear in the video for “In Bloom.”

—Carrie Borzillo, Nirvana: The Day-By-Day Chronicle:

“I’ve been relieved of so much pressure in the last year and a half,” Cobain says with a discernible relief in his voice. “I’m still kind of mesmerized by it.” He ticks off the reasons for his content: “Pulling this record off. My family. My child. Meeting William Burroughs and doing a record with him.

– Rolling Stone interview, 25 October 1993

Cobain killed himself on 5 April 1994.

In Lawrence, meanwhile, William Burroughs sat poring over the lyric sheet of In Utero. There was surely poignancy in the sight of the eighty-year-old author, himself no stranger to tragedy, scouring Cobain’s songs for clues to his suicide. In the event he found only the “general despair” he had already noted during their one meeting. “The thing I remember about him is the deathly grey complexion of his cheeks. It wasn’t an act of will for Kurt to kill himself. As far as I was concerned, he was dead already.” Burroughs is one of those who feel Cobain “let down his family” and “demoralized the fans” by committing suicide.

– Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain

Read more at The Reality Studio

Below, detail from a mixed media collage that Burroughs sent Kurt Cobain for this 27th birthday.
 

 

 
At the time this video was shot in 1977,  Ollie and Rowland were playing together in The Young Charlatans. Rowland later joined The Birthday Party. Ollie went on to work with many bands and eventually became a composer and producer of trance music. But here they are in their teens energized by punk and ready to detonate a punk rock explsosion Down Under. Such innocent faces, such deadly intent.
 

 
A painting of Dee Dee Ramone and a two-page note were placed in a stairwell of the Chelsea Hotel by a fan named Tara. In her note, Tara writes that she fears she may have offended Dee Dee by calling her portrait of Dee Dee ‘crap’ and his spirit responded by turning off her cell phone.

The portrait is rather…um…impressionistic.

The Hotel Chelsea blog reports:

It seems that Tara’s dark pilgrimage was rewarded with a message from beyond. This is the first Dee Dee spirit story that has come our way, but we’re sure there will be many more to follow.

 
Far better than average documentary on punk rock and the punk/reggae connection. Researched and written by the very fine rock journalist Robert Palmer (r.i.p.), this is smart and comprehensive. Broadcast on PBS in 1995 and currently unavailable on video or DVD. Enjoy.
 

 
Parts 3 - 6 after the jump…

 
Here’s the classic Bad Brains video culled from 4 hours of footage shot over the course of 3 nights of performances at CBGB in December of 1982. Hardcore rock/reggae doesn’t get any better than this. While most of this footage has been available in bits and pieces of varying quality on Youtube, here’s the entire video with superb sound and visuals.

You can buy this on DVD from MVD Visual here.
 

 
More badness from Bad Brains after the jump…

 
This has already been flagged on YouTube. Watch the insanity while you can!

(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
Based on the new Fantagraphics book, Destroy All Movies!!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film this weekend, our friends at Cinefamily are presenting a full weekend of punk rock cinema, a two-day meltdown of what appears to be yet another embarrassment of cinematic riches:

From teenage ragers to mohawked post-apocalyptic gutteroids to actual, bona fide punks, this two-day multi-event mega movie showcase of pure power is a brick in the face of every film snob and/or high school principal! The book’s editors, Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly, will be on hand to casually guide you through the garbage-strewn annals of punk celluloid history. This is the final stop on their West Coast book tour, and they’re saving all the special guests, surprises and chaos for the grand finale! Plus, Sticky Rick’s will be here to curate a punk sticker display in the Cinefamily lobby!

The line-up for this is nothing short of wonderful:

TV Party Tonight: kicks off the event with a look at how punk was portrayed on the small screen. Who could forget the punk rockers on CHiPs and Quincey? The Dickies with Don Rickles on CPO Sharkey or Black Flag on Entertainment Tonight?  Then it all goes kaboom with the seldom-seen Afterschool Special The Day My Kid Went Punk (one of Tara’s favorites).

Urgh! A Music War: A 1981 film of live performances by Devo, Dead Kennedys, X, The Cramps, Oingo Boingo, Gang of Four, The Police, Wall of Voodoo, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, OMD, XTC, Pere Ubu, Magazine and more). The screening will be followed by scenes not included in the US version.

La Brune Et Moi, a 1980 look on the Parisian punk underground with Metal Urbain, the Go-Go Pigalles and Astroflash.

Shellshock Rock, a 1979 account of the Belfast, Ireland punk scene with The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers.

D.O.A.: A seldom seen gem featuring X-Ray Spex, Generation X, The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols and an insane interview with a nodding-out Sid VIcious and Nancy Spungeon. Directed by Lech Kowalski.

Also screening, The Class of 1984, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (with cast members and director, Dave Markey, Allan Moyle’s Times Square (with Tim Curry), The Slog Movie (LA-punk doc with Fear, TSOL, and the Circle Jerks), a special “punk in cinema montage” by the fine folks at Everything is Terrible!, and there will even be an after party at Part Time Punks when the on-screen madness ends! This looks to be a blow-out good time, people! Festival passes are on sale until midnight on Thursday.

Co-presented by Fantagraphics, L.A. Weekly, Alamo Drafthouse, Razorcake, Big Wheel Magazine, Don’t Knock The Rock and Part Time Punks.
 

 
As seen on WFMU’s mighty “Beware of the Blog”: If you are a fan of outsider music, The Shags, and/or feral children, then the “music” of Amanda is probably right up yer strasse. You could even think of her as a much, much younger version of Ari Up, when she was first fronting the Slits as a 14-year-old. Or not, maybe it’s just a kid mucking about sans any inhibition. You decide!

Irwin Chusid tells the Amanda story in “Don’t Mess With the Power Child: The Amanda Chronicles”:

The “Amanda” recordings have emerged as an unexpected cult sensation on my WFMU program over the past two years. The chronicles feature Amanda Whitt, a growling (think Cookie Monster), defiant pre-pubescent with a Southern twang spewing mayhem over 1980s breakbeats and disjointed shards of pop hits. On some tracks Amanda shrieks while clanging pots & pans. The recordings exude undeniable charm, but there’s nothing cute about it. Any sentient adult witnessing this behavior would commence punitive action or summon law enforcement.

Power-child Amanda was recorded between 1986-89 at home in Alabama, between ages 8 and 11, by her older (by 7 or 8 years) brother Joseph (a.k.a. Jody). Joseph and Amanda were a couple of hyperactive kids pretending to be, respectively, a music video director and a child star. Most recordings were captured on cassette, others on video cam, in the lowest of lo-fi. The duo sometimes enlisted friends in the frolics, and often drove their parents crazy (with incidents caught on tape). The most durable performances were titled (e.g., “The Pickle People,” “Horrible Hybrid Tulips,” “Indian Hoots Echo Baby,” “Me Swinging in Cookieland”) and compiled on “albums,” whose design awkwardly replicated the commercial cassette format. Inserts were pasted up and xeroxed, and collections assigned titles (e.g., Primitive Swagger, Monumental Whopper Turmoil Jam, Empires and 5th Dimension Perspective, and Worship Me). The recordings were not circulated beyond friends.

At age 11, Amanda began to chafe at Jody’s stage-brother puppeteering; she soon discovered boys, and the recording project was abandoned. The tapes were stored in shoe boxes in Joseph’s closet, where they remained for decades as forgotten adolescent artifacts.

A sample lyric:

“WORSHIP ME”

Worship me
I am Cookie
You must worship me
Bow before MeMe
I am your idol
I am the goddess of cookie
You will worship me
Chant before me butt-slave
Come to me at the temple of MeMe
Worship me
You must worship me
Don’t mess with the power child
I control you

The Amanda recordings found their way to Irwin Chusid’s ears via home taping legend, R, Stevie Moore. Now you can hear them yourself: Stream or download here. Listen to a contemporary interview with siblings Joseph and Amanda here. (Part 2 is here)
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds: Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music

 
Siouxsie segment from BBC documentary on the ‘Queens Of British Pop’. Odd to see Ms. Sioux being described as ‘pop’. Whatever the case, it’s a tasty bit of video and Siouxsie looks absolutely lovely. My heroine.
 

 
Siouxsie on Ulster TV sometime in the late 70’s.
 

 
In the annals of punk history, this has got to be one of the strangest events recorded on video. The term ‘what the fuck’ was invented for moments like this. The kids in the foreground seem utterly disinterested in the weirdness unfolding before them.

You gotta love David Thomas for doing something so absolutely freaky. Alfred Jarry would appreciate this.

Harry Potter seems particularly bewildered.

David Thomas grew up in Cleveland Heights Ohio. On November 24, 2006 which was BLACK FRIDAY (one of the year’s busiest shopping days), the Border’s bookstore at Severence Mall in Cleveland Heights Ohio allowed Pere Ubu to play an in-store 5 song set. The “quiet” version of Ubu chased folks out of the store…it was great. Here they close the show with SONIC REDUCER.

 
The Ramones rehearsing in the loft of their artistic director Arturo Vega in 1975. Vega created The Ramones’ logo, one of the most enduring images in rock and roll history.

Man, this is thrilling!
 

 
A sly, surly and sardonically funny Bob Dylan lays into Time Magazine correspondent Horace Judson in this scene captured by D.A. Pennebaker in 1965. This IS punk rock! John Lydon was 9 years old when this footage was shot. Bob went out on a limb when most pop stars played it safe. You know Lennon was paying attention.

Judson ended up writing a favorable piece on Dylan.
 

 
In response to the recent Glenn Danzig piece I posted, Dangerous Minds reader Phillip J. Birmingham sent me a link to a video of Danzig getting a taste of his own medicine. Apparently Glenn can’t walk it like he talks it. The incident documented below happened several years ago. So, it seems Glenn has a history of acting like a prick.

This may be old news for some of you, but it’s new to me. I’ve only recently become a fan of Glenn’s misadventures.

Danzig allegedly got into a scuffle with North Side Kings singer and frequent Soulfly collaborator Danny Marianinho following Danzig’s performance in Tuba City, Arizona. The following is Marianinho’s official statement regarding the incident, as sent to Blabbermouth.net:

Before crazy rumors begin to spread I would like to explain what happened:

North Side Kings were to play with Danzig last night in Tuba City, Arizona. To make a long story short the whole show was a disaster and a few bands got bumped off. Mr. Danzig (or his management??) refused to push back the original scheduled time slot so NORTH SIDE KINGS and RAPID FIRE would have to play ‘after’ his set. Whatever — we agreed to play later because we drove 6 hours and didn’t feel like going home without playing. Needless to say, as soon as DANZIG was finished, the venue turned on the lights and DANZIG’s crew and the staging company began to take the stage apart almost instantly. I confronted Mr. Danzig backstage while he was signing autographs and told him I thought he was an asshole because of his ‘rock star’ attitude and no consideration towards the FEW other bands that got bumped off tonight. In a fit of rage he turned around and slammed me into the wall yelling ‘Fuck you, motherfucker,’ trying to be a big, tough guy in front of his fans. I, in self-defense, punched him in the face, knocking him out as he was attacking me again. He went down, bleeding from his mouth, eyes rolled back, and in shock that he got knocked to the floor so quickly. A friend happened to tape the entire incident and this is all documented. Many witnesses saw him attack me, and I did what any man would do.

It was unfortunate that this went the way it did — and I hoped Glenn Danzig learned a valuable lesson tonight: Do not lay your hands on anyone unless you can handle what may happen. I apologize for nothing, except for the poor little kids that had to witness this big asshole get his ass kicked in a matter of seconds…”

 
Previously on DM: Former Misfit Glenn Danzig throws hissy fit.

 
Acclaimed British journalist and punk historian Jon Savage has curated Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-1980, a unique and revealing compilation of the Golden State’s hugely diverse pre-thrash punk scene that gets released November 15th.

That seems strange on the surface. Strange that it’s both taken this long into the 21st-century American punk revival and reissue era for such a quality collection to emerge, and that it’s taken an Englishman rather than a Californian to do it. But this particular Englishman is more than qualified. As noted in his recent interview in the Quietus, Savage hepped up to the scene while on the West Coast in 1978 as a journalist for Sounds magazine, hanging with the likes of the Screamers and the Avengers and confirming to himself and others that the UK didn’t own punk.

Savage’s inclusion of both Northern and Southern Cali bands like the Bags, the Alley Cats, the Weirdos, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, and the Dils makes Black Hole most resemble the compilations released by the legendary short-lived L.A.-based Dangerhouse label run by Pat “Rand” Garrett and David Brown from 1978 to 1980. But Savage augments those with a range of others, from superstars like the Dead Kennedys to second-tiers like Crime, Middle Class and the Sleepers, and on to important obscurities like the two-single-releasing Aurora Pushups.

One of Savage’s rationales surrounding the comp, on which he expounds in Quietus, proves striking:

I don’t like hardcore. It’s too ‘boy’ for me. I was into the idea of punk being made for and by outsiders. And that meant outsiders of every hue, and that meant weird boys, hopeless boys, strong women, and gay men and women. As soon as it starts to get a machismo, and this happened in UK punk, too – I’m out of there.

Black Hole will join Penelope Spheeris’s classic late-‘70s documentary The Decline of Western Civilization as primary documents of a rough and energetic multi-city underground music scene—one that reflected the social dysfunction of the state in political schizophrenia with the world’s eighth-biggest economy.

Here’s the title track by the Urinals. This is Cali.
 

 
Get: Black Hole (Californian Punk 1977-1980) [CD]

 
The recently deceased Tuli Kupferberg plays God in the wild 1972 underground film, Voulez-vous coucher avec God? made by Canadians Michael Hirsh and Jack Christie. A rare screening of Voulez-vous coucher avec God? will take place on November 14 at the Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave. in Manhattan during a special celebration of celluloid Tuli called “Fug on Film.” Presented by Arthur.

J. Hoberman writes in the Village Voice:

As strenuously druggy, anarchic, and blasphemous as it is, this 1972 feature might have been one of the many post–El Topo movies auditioned as a midnight attraction by the old Elgin Theater and might even have caught on. Instead, it’s having its belated local premiere this Sunday as part of Anthology’s tribute to Kupferberg, beat poet, Fugs founder, and Voice contributor (mainly in the form of letters to the editor).

Here, he plays Middle America’s worst nightmare: His God is an unkempt, hairy schmoozer, consorting with his female subjects in a vaguely Baghdadian crash pad identified as Hashish Seventh Heaven, while holding forth in a braying New York accent: “Give ‘em some of that blackface crap—we’ve got enough sexism,” he advises the filmmakers in between chants of “Oy, oy, let’s bomb Hanoi!” As cheerfully offensive as it is, the movie’s greatest outrage comes when God anoints a toothless derelict to run for U.S. president. (The same actor, identified only as “George,” doubles as the angel Gabriel—in which role he’s punished for dereliction of duty with a hot-oil enema.)

Slapdash, but not badly made, this exercise in Yippie vaudeville employs Claymation and television, as well as a bevy of naked houris, to hold one’s attention—although it does fall apart midway. End title delivered as a moon notwithstanding, the climactic gross-out is the mouse omelet prepared for George—a repast that only serves to burnish the genius of John Waters, whose Pink Flamingos (the movie in which Divine eats dog shit) was the Elgin’s midnight attraction for 48 weeks, from late winter 1973 to January 1974.

The Descendents in 1978
 
Here’s some video I shot tonight of the Descendents performing at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin. Founding members vocalist Milo Aukerman and drummer Bill Stevenson have been doing this off and on since 1978 - 33 fucking years ago!  Bassist Karl Alvarez and guitarist Stephen Egerton joined the Descendents in the mid-80’s. Original member Frank Navetta died in 2008. Stevenson joined Black Flag in 1982 when the Descendents dis-banded for a few years. He and Milo re-grouped in 1985.

Tonight’s show was high energy and timeless. Punk lives!

Karl Alvarez, bass | Milo Aukerman, vocals | Bill Stevenson, drums | Stephen Egerton, guitar
 

 
‘Myage’ 1986:

 
Ms. Boyle has very good taste in music. One of my favorite Lou Reed songs nicely done. A strange combination that works. Whoever is handling Susan’s career is making some smart moves. What’s next? ‘Morning Morning’ by The Fugs?

According to news reports, Reed participated in some capacity in the creation of this video. The reports are conflicting, some saying he directed it, others that he merely suggested the concept of the video. My feeling is that he had nothing to do with this other than having written the song and giving Boyle his blessing. Who knows?
 
Update: Video was removed due to a copyright claim by Sony Music Entertainment. Here’s another version below.
Update: According to Spinner, Lou Reed DID direct the video.

The saga of Lou Reed and Susan Boyle took another surprise turn on Sunday when the pair premiered a video for Boyle’s cover of Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ on PopEater. Reed made headlines in September when he allegedly wouldn’t let Boyle cover his 1972 classic on ‘America’s Got Talent,’ causing the Scottish singer to cancel her appearance on the show. In reality, the ban on the cover was simply due to a publishing rights mistake, and Reed had no problem with the cover. Once that was cleared up, Reed asked to direct the video for Boyle’s orchestra-laden version of the song, which is on her new album ‘The Gift.’
“I wanted to create a beautiful and intimate piece shot in Susan’s native Scotland and she quickly agreed,” Reed told the UK’s Sunday Mail.

Boyle added, “I loved that Lou understood how much it meant to me to film in Scotland. I didn’t mind how much it rained or blew a gale—I enjoyed every minute.”

 
Divine sings ‘The Name Game’.

Divine gives it her all at The Hacienda in Manchester, 1983.  The audience appears to be totally clueless - joyless division. Where the fock is Happy Mondays?

Divine was punk before punk. A shit-eating Diva that could have devoured the entire Sex Pistols for breakfast.