John Hurt is appearing as Quentin Crisp in a film about the cultural icon’s time in New York?

 
I think it’s safe to say that all four of us here at Dangerous Minds are big Julian Cope fans. Jason and I are HUGE fans and I have loved The Teardrop Explodes and followed Cope since I was a teen. The guy’s as cool as anyone’s ever been, he doesn’t care what you think about him and he can write the best guitar riffs since Ray Davies. I’ve seen him in concert four times, read all of his books and I interviewed him once around the time Peggy Suicide was released, in 1991. He was a fascinating guy to talk to, full of energy, his mind wandering off in every direction at once. My guess is also that he was probably pretty stoned that day!

My friend Wm. Ferguson and I met the Arch Drude at the Island Records offices near Tower Records in lower Manhattan. During the interview Cope told us about the mystical experience he had that led to his vision of the earth dying that inspired Peggy Suicide’s somewhat bleak environmentalist message. I recall that we discussed a certain book about Helena Blavatsky which he and I had both read and he compared the physical sensation of his mystic moment to the first time a pubescent boy masturbates, not quite pleasurable and very confusing, a sort of mental orgasm felt in the brain. I asked him if he felt conflicted about bringing a child into a world—his wife Dorian was then pregnant with their first daughter—that he so obviously thought was terminal. He paused and said, “Well, yeah the world is fucked, but it’s not THAT fucked that it can’t be saved, certainly. We’ve got to try.” I then voiced my own skepticism about bring new life into the world—I was 25 at the time—and he said something that I will never forget and have repeated to friends expecting children several times: “If people like you and I stop having children, we’ve ceded our world to the idiots. All intelligent people should have as many babies as possible to prevent all the thick, ungroovy Christians from taking over.”

When we were leaving, I mentioned in passing that I’d seen the infamous Hammersmith Palais show of his first UK solo tour in 1984, a concert that saw Cope performing a bloody act of self-mutilation. During the encore of Reynard the Fox, Cope snapped his mike-stand in half and proceeded to rake the jagged edge across his chest, back and stomach drawing lots of blood and generally freaking out the entire audience! Up until the very end it had been a slick, professional rock show. A girl standing near me puked when she saw what he had done. It cemented Cope’s reputation as a Syd Barrett-like acid casualty.

Cope laughed sheepishly and pulled out his wallet. “Well, you’ll appreciate this: Whenever I’m feeling like I am fucked in the head, I pull out this picture—” it was of a bloodied Cope from the concert I’d seen “—and I remind myself that however fucked up I think I am I am still not THAT fucked!”

And with that he was off. It’s often said of Cope that he’s the last of a dying breed or something to that effect. Not true. This implies that there were more like him, but Julian Cope’s a one off. All hail the Arch Drude!

Above, Julian Cope, tripping on LSD during a Top of the Pops performance of Passionate Friend. Read about this experience in Cope’s own words here.

Great, really intelligent extended Julian Cope interview by Jon Savage

Dennis Cooper on Cope

Julian Cope’s Head Heritage website

The Guardian reports on a beloved French tortoise named “Kiki,” who apparently amused the French public to no end with his priapic, Gainsbourg-esque antics. Kiki, in addition to being one of the world’s horniest animals, was also one of its oldest. Canonize that mofo! >Via the Guardian:

France was in mourning today for one of its oldest and best-loved lotharios, a giant tortoise named Kiki, who died at the age of 146.

Staff at the M?ɬ

 
Adam Cohen, writing in the New York Times, discusses FDR’s skill in defining and maneuvering public option towards constructive social goals. Cohen skillfully argues a very fine point here, and picks a great example to make it: Roosevelt’s championing of a different sort of public option. Can you imagine how different American life would be today if something like this was a legacy of the New Deal? WHO in their right mind would have been against this?!?!

As governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt crusaded for ?

 
Spotted at the Ballardian, Rick McGrath‘s great, first-person account of what went down at the recent memorial for J.G. Ballard on what would have been the “Bard of Shepperton’s?

 
Another vintage Infinity Factory show for you fine people. This late ‘90s episode features an in-depth interview with my good friend and lifelong hero, Genesis P-Orridge on the topic of the then new book, Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle.

THEE PSYCHICK BIBLE: A New Testameant is Gen’s latest work, published by Feral House (and edited by Dangerous Minds own Jason Louv). It’s been produced in a high-quality, strictly limited edition of 999, signed copies, each with a 2-hour DVD of GP-O related video rarities, some directed by Derek Jarman and Peter Christopherson. Order yours here.

Parts II, III, and IV

 
As someone who has spent many years acquiring rare Joni Mitchell bootlegs, I can tell you, there’s not a lot out there. I’m sure that many live recordings exist of Mitchell from all eras of her career, but not a lot of them have slipped out to traders (in comparison to Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead where there are hundreds and hundreds of live concerts floating around the Internet). When music business blogger Bob Lefsetz sent out a missive the other day about Entertainment Weekly having an exclusive on a 1970 Joni Mitchell duet with James Taylor streaming from their website, well, “click” I was there. The duet begins with Mitchell solo, performing Carey then segueing into Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man. She playfully forgets the lyrics before calling on Sweet Baby James to help her out. It’s sheer delight.

This sublime moment—one of many—is taken from a new 2 CD set (with book) called Amchitka: the 1970 concert that launched Greenpeace and you can buy it directly from Greenpeace here (I don’t think it’s in stores or Amazon). The show took place on October 16, 1970 in Vancouver, British Columbia and was organized by lawyer/activist Irving Stowe, a man often called the father of Greenpeace. The goal of the evening was to raise enough money to buy a boat to transport activists to Amchitka, Alaska to protest the nuclear testing the US government was doing there at the time. It was to be the very first Greenpeace action

Intense folk singer Phil Ochs starts the set, after some passionate introductory words from Irving Stowe. He is followed by Taylor, who was just hitting the big time and is announced as a special surprise guest. Mitchell, then coming off her million selling third album, Ladies of the Canyon, but still nine months before her masterpiece Blue, was the bill’s topper. In 1970, Joni Mitchell was probably the biggest selling female artist in the world—surely she was the most important—and it has been said of her that she was the midwife to the birth of Greenpeace. 39 years later, both she and James Taylor (and the estate of Phil Ochs) are donating their royalties from sales of the CD directly to Greenpeace.

If you want to sample it first, the entire set is streaming from the Amchitka website—click on Music, then click on the link that says “Play List and Streaming”—but don’t be cheap, the 2 CD set, with 48 page booklet is only $21 from Greenpeace and you’ll be supporting a worthy cause. Makes a great Christmas gift because it gives twice!

Footage from the Greenpeace’s maiden voyage:

And a very happy birthday to William Blake, one of the greatest mystics, poets, painters and visionaries that Western civilization ever produced. Driven to a pauper’s grave in his own time, Blake’s vision remains burning in our consciousness as a touchpoint of human freedom against the horrific machine-like nature of our destructive, planet-killing culture. If you haven’t given him your full time, do! If you don’t know him past “Tyger, Tyger” or a few other poems, have another look?

Via Paul Di Filippo. Paul captions: “I’m the King of the Beats!” “No, I am!”

 
Wonderful addition to the bottomless pit of greatness offered over at Ubu, American assemblage artist Wallace Berman‘s first and only film, Aleph.  Best known, perhaps, for spearheading the SEMINA art publication, Berman labored on Aleph from ‘56-‘66.  Here’s what Ubu says of the film:

Aleph is an artist’s meditation on life, death, mysticism, politics, and pop culture.  In an eight-minute loop of film, Wallace Berman uses Hebrew letters to frame a hypnotic, rapid-fire montage that captures the go-go energy of the 1960s.  Aleph includes stills of collages created using a Verifax machine, Eastman Kodak’s precursor to the photocopier.  These collages depict a hand-held radio that seems to broadcast or receive popular and esoteric icons.  Signs, symbols, and diverse mass-media images (e.g., Flash Gordon, John F. Kennedy, Mick Jagger) flow like a deck of tarot cards, infinitely shuffled in order that the viewer may construct his or her own set of personal interpretations.  The transistor radio, the most ubiquitous portable form of mass communication in the 1960s, exemplifies the democratic potential of electronic culture and serves as a metaphor for Jewish mysticism.  The Hebrew term kabbalah translates as “reception” for knowledge, enlightenment, and divinity.  According to the artist’s son Tosh Berman, Wallace Berman treated Aleph ‘...as a creative notebook, and like a true diary, it has no beginning and no end.’

Iceberg Slim is well-known as the literary progenitor of gangster rap (Ice-T, Ice Cube and Jay-Z have all listed him as a formative influence), mostly for his groundbreaking autobiography Pimp. Check out this great tribute to Slim by Josh Alan Friedman:

Like the painter Grandma Moses, Iceberg Slim was reborn an artist after age 40. His third, and harshest prison sentence - 10 months in steel solitary at the Cook County House of Corrections - finally crushed the pimp right out of him. Vilifying past predatory values, he exorcised his demons into folklore, leaving a seven-book legacy. Pimp: The Story of My Life, contained bookend warnings against the life. But Iceberg’s masterpiece only bolstered pimp liberation amidst the blaxploitation movie craze. In Times Square, for instance, a hundred fur-coated Superflys lorded over a thousand streetwalkers, taking renegade control of 8th Avenue. For them, Pimp declassified the sorcery of whore control, became a textbook for wannabe’s, and lent ethnic pride to the hideous profession.

Pimp still holds as perhaps the greatest chronicle ever written on male-female relations. In the flush of literary success, white feminist-journalist types sought out interviews like intellectual groupies. Pimp philosophy, Iceberg believed, might be adapted to mainstream relationships. “My theory is that some quantum of pimp in every man would perhaps enhance his approach to women,” he told the Washington Post. “Because I think it’s a truism that women gravitate to a man who can at least flash transient evidence of heelism. . . Women are prone to masochism, anyway. I think if you are able to manufacture a bit of ‘heelism’ in your nature and give them a sense of insecurity as to whether some voluptuous rival might come along and steal you, then you are a treasured jewel.”

I read Pimp when I was 13. I’m not sure it exactly uh helped my skills with women, but it certainly gave me a new vocabulary to irritate my friends with.

However, nothing compares to Slim’s readings of his own work on the album Reflections. Hearing Iceberg Slim’s renditions of key points in his life?

Edward Woodward, mostly known as the vindictive cop from The Equalizer and The Wicker Man, died yesterday at the age of 79. Who will save us from the never-ending onslaught of street thugs and dirty pagans now? The Independent has released an obituary:

Veteran actor Edward Woodward, who was known for his roles in The Wicker Man and The Equalizer, died today.

The 79-year-old had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia, and died in hospital, his agent said.

Janet Glass released a statement praising his “brave spirit and wonderful humour”.

It said: “Universally loved and admired through his unforgettable roles in classic productions such as Breaker Morant, The Wicker Man, Callan, The Equalizer and many more, he was equally fine and courageous in real life, never losing his brave spirit and wonderful humour throughout his illness.

Featured below, a trailer for the Wicker Man featuring Woodward in full form.

 
This young man, Will Phillips, a ten year-old student in Washington County Arkansas is very, very impressive. He’s smart, he’s articulate, he’s logical and he is passionate about doing the right thing.  This kid is awesome. When Will took his stand—or rather kept his seat—against a rote recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in his classroom until there really is liberty and justice for all Americans—including lesbians, gays and transgendered people, he had no idea that his small gesture of defiance would end up with him on CNN. But there he was and wow, this kid is just unflappable. He even looks smart, and that’s impossible to fake (Compare his countenance to Sarah Palin’s!) You can see the wheels going round in his head before he opens his mouth. And when he speaks, he speaks the truth. God bless you Will, go out there and make your mark on the world.

When you watch the video clip note how Will’s father, Jay Philllips, is obviously bursting with pride over his son’s principled act of civil disobedience. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, a private/public moment of great empathy Jay shows toward Will.  Jay and his wife, Laura, are active supporters of the local LGBT community, and have clearly instilled a sense of right and wrong in their son and they, too, deserve a round of applause—make that a standing ovation—for having raised a child this fantastic.

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Warm congratulations to Dangerous Minds hero—and Michael Jackson disruptor—Jarvis Cocker!

Former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has been given an honorary degree in his home city of Sheffield.  Cocker, who has also had success as a solo artist and radio producer, studied at the institution when it was Sheffield Polytechnic.  Receiving his certificate at a ceremony at City Hall, the 46-year-old said: “I’m called a doctor now.  Don’t worry, I won’t open a surgery.”  He added: “But I guess if you are a songwriter maybe I could have some kind of musical surgery.  If you had a song with a swollen chorus, or a varicose verse, or if you need a little bit of help I could try and heal your song for you.”

And while Jarvis won’t be delivering them anytime soon, “Babies” the song follows below:

 
Pulp Singer Jarvis Cocker Receives Honorary Doctorate

 
The below clip of William Burroughs showing off his weaponry was shot, presumably, for non-American television.  “So, if you had a razor-sharp, double-edged knife, you could whip it out and cut someone’s throat before he knew what was happening.”  Umm…yes, sir! 

 
The New Yorker‘s great Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century) alerts us to the first major museum exhibition in years devoted to “arch-magus of the musical avant-garde,” John Cage.  Unfortunately, though, it’s happening not in America (nor is it scheduled to), but in Barcelona at its Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA).

The Anarchy of Silence?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the passing of poet Lenore Kandel, a SF beat and anarchist who provoked censorship furor with her graphic poetry compilation The Love Book:

Lenore Kandel hung out with Beat poets and was immortalized by Jack Kerouac, wrote a book of love poetry banned as obscene and seized by police, and believed in communal living, anarchic street theater, belly dancing, and all things beautiful.

Ms. Kandel, a lyric poet and one of the shining lights of San Francisco’s famous counterculture of the ‘60s, died on Oct. 18 in San Francisco. She was 77 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks earlier.

“I met Lenore in 1965 at a citywide meeting of artists opposed to the war in Vietnam,” said actor Peter Coyote. “Lenore was physically beautiful and physically commanding. She had this voluptuous plumpness about her and an absolute serenity.”

(Lenore Kandel via Arthur Magazine)

Reverend Billy, an anti-capitalist activist turned anti-capitalist preacher, is a pillar of the New York (and American) activist community. A Coney Island resident, Reverend Billy leads a one-man crusade against consumerism. He even officially wedded a couple I know. Check out this excellent, in-depth interview with the Rev. Billy at Coilhouse:

Q: Where, when and why did you first become politically active?

A: We were always political, the Church of Stop Shopping, which became the Church of Life After Shopping during the recession. I was complaining to the choir that I was screaming ?

Sheldon Dorf, the co-founder of the San Diego Comic Convention, has died. NPR reports:

As The San Diego Union-Tribune says, “Dick Tracy, Charlie Brown and the entire comic strip pantheon lost a friend” this week.

Sheldon Dorf, who founded the hugely successful Comic-Con International comic book convention, died Tuesday at the age of 76. A friend, Greg Koudoulian, tells the Associated Press that Dorf succumbed to kidney failure. The wire service adds that Dorf “had diabetes and had been hospitalized for about a year.”

NPR’s Ina Jaffe reminds us that Dorf founded the convention in 1970. The four-day event, which pulls in about 125,000 people, is held in San Diego each year. The next is scheduled for July 22-25, 2010.

Dorf ran Comic-Con for 15 years. He told the Union-Tribune that over time, “it’s just become an ordeal. ... It’s become too much of a success.”

Having attended the San Diego Comic Con aka Nerd Prom over 9000 times, I give highest props possible to Mr. Dorf for helping create an institution which not only began as a support group for fandom but later went on to warp the fabric of American life as we know it. Anybody who has attended the convention has witnessed that, once outsiders to the entertainment industry, fandom is now the altar at which Hollywood grovels for its ideas and the collective voice which can make or break many a film or TV show. Nice work!

(More info: FishbowlLA: Comic-Con Co-founder Dies)

The greatest music video ever filmed? Perhaps, perhaps. Marianne Faithfull sings. Derek Jarman directs.

Another warning to the youth of today from the regal statesmen of the counterculture.

Aaaand with that I believe that the Dangerous Minds Stones Quota has officially been broken.