The masters meet. What a moment. 

The guy in the background gets it.

 
It must have been brilliant to have been in Supergrass. No, not for the teeth ‘n’ smiles of their classic single “Alright”, but rather for the sheer bloody quality of their music between 1993 and 2010, as heard in performance, and over 26 singles and 6 superb studio albums. There was an energy and infectious joy about guitarist and lead singer, Gaz Coombes (who looked like he might be Jack Black’s handsome, younger brother); Mick Quinn, bass and vocals; and Danny Goffey, drums and vocals; and Rob Coombes, keyboards.

Like everyone else, I first heard Supergrass through John Peel, who played their opener “Caught by the Fuzz” with zealous dedication. He went on to list it at number 5 in his Festive Fifty for 1994. The song told the semi-autobiographical tale of Gaz being nicked for possession of marijuana, when he was 15. It happened when he driving home one night, and was pulled over by the police:

“I stuck the hash down my pants,but I had it in a little metal tin. I was standing on the pavement, and the tin just went all the way down my trousers and landed on the pavement with a ting. The copper went, ‘What’s that, son?’”

It was perfectly pitched, capturing teenage angst and its bravado brilliantly, and was “exactly what being a teenager sounds like.”

With a musical introduction like that, I knew Supergrass would never disappoint - and they never did. Well, until they split up, that is. (Though I still await the release of their Krautrock inspired 7th album…)

In 1999, Supergrass played a short gig on Spanish television’s Radio 3, introducing material from their third album, as well as previous hits.

01. “Mary”
02. “Pumpin on Your Stereo”
03. “Moving”
04. “Alright”
05. “Late in the Day”
06. “Richard III”
07. “Caught by the Fuzz”

Gaz Coombes has just released his first solo album Here Comes the Bombs, which he describes as “11 little sonic explosions.”
 

 
It ain’t exactly Bullitt but 1955’s Family Affair, an industrial film from AT&T, does feature Steve McQueen’s first film acting role. In it he plays Freddie, a sailor on leave desperately trying to contact his girlfriend by telephone. McQueen is more Gomer Pyle than Thomas Crown in his movie debut.
 
Family Affair was intended to get ATT&T employees jazzed about the idea of a future where homes had multiple phones.
 

Art by Dimitri Drjuchin

New video from Father John Misty’s critically acclaimed Fear Fun album on Sub Pop Records.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on here—although the final moments make the intention a little bit clearer… I think—but I like it.

Knowing Josh Tillman, I don’t really wonder what kind of mushrooms are topping his pizza and neither will you when you watch this…

Directed and produced by Grant James. A divine guitar solo courtesy of Jonathan Wilson comes in at the 2:30 mark.

Click here for more Father John Misty on Dangerous Minds
 

 
A contemplative article by Dan Kaufman in The New York Times Magazine, “How Did Wisconsin Become the Most Politically Divisive Place in America?” tries to make sense of what’s happened there since Scott Walker was elected governor of the state in late 2010:

This past March, standing outside a Shell station in Mellen, Wis., in the state’s far north, Mike Wiggins Jr. told me about a series of dark and premonitory dreams he had two years earlier. “One of them was a very vivid trip around the North Woods and seeing forests bleeding and sludge from a creek emptying into the Bad River,” Wiggins said. “I ended up at a dilapidated northern log home with rotten snowshoes falling off the wall. I stepped out of the lodge, walked through some pine, and I was in a pipeline. There was a big pipe coming in and out of the ground as far as I could see.

“I had no idea what the hell that was all about,” Wiggins continued. But he said the dream became clearer when a stranger named Matt Fifield came into his office several months later and handed him his card. Wiggins is the chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Fifield, the managing director of Gogebic Taconite (GTac), a division of the Cline Group, a mining company based in Florida. He had come to Wiggins’s office to discuss GTac’s desire to build a $1.5 billion open-pit iron-ore mine in the Penokee Hills, about seven miles south of the Bad River reservation. The proposed mine would be several hundred feet deep, roughly four miles long and a half-mile wide; the company estimated it would bring 700 long-term jobs to the area. Fearing contamination of the local groundwater and pristine rivers, Wiggins told Fifield he planned to oppose the mine. He didn’t know at the time that the company’s lawyers would be working hand in hand with Republican legislators to draft a bill that would weaken Wisconsin environmental law and expedite the permitting process.

What followed was a drawn-out fight that resembled other statewide battles over labor, education and voter-registration laws — all of which have been introduced since the election of the Republican governor Scott Walker in 2010. The most bitter of these fights began in early February last year, when Walker proposed eliminating virtually all collective-bargaining rights for a vast majority of the state’s public-employee unions. Around the time that Walker announced the measure, similar laws were introduced in Michigan, Ohio and Florida, and a nationwide demonization of public employees caught fire. Within two months, the National Conference of State Legislators had tracked more than 100 bills, initiated across the country, attacking public-sector unions.

From the beginning, Walker, who declined to comment for this article, seemed cognizant that his move to end collective bargaining placed him at the forefront of a national conservative strategy. His attack on public-employee unions was lauded by Mitt Romney, John Boehner and Karl Rove, and he has received significant financial support from the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch. In a widely publicized prank phone call with Ian Murphy, a blogger impersonating David Koch, Walker described a dinner he held for his cabinet at his Executive Residence on Feb. 10, the night before he announced the collective-bargaining measure. “It was kind of the last hurrah, before we dropped the bomb,” he said to the faux-Koch. At the dinner, Walker held up a photograph of Ronald Reagan and told his cabinet that what they were about to do recalled Reagan’s breaking of the air-traffic-controllers’ union strike in 1981. “This is our time to change the course of history,” Walker said.

The June 5 recall election against Walker and four Republican state senators will be a decisive and momentous day in American history—no matter which side of the political divide you are on—and not just for residents of Wisconsin. If the reichwing and the Koch brothers get beaten back, it’ll send a definitive message to Republicans—and draw an iron line in the sand—letting them know how far is TOO FAR and what NOT to do if they don’t want to end up like Scott Walker. If Democrats take back control of the statehouse, I get the sense that things would largely calm down in Wisconsin, after two years that have seen friendships ended, family arguments and nasty, nasty local politics, vandalism, etc. Clearly in this way, Scott Walker has been a disaster for life in his state. How many people who live there, no matter what their political affiliation is, would argue that the mood in Wisconsin has improved under Walker?

However, if the Democrats and the unions lose, and it appears that they will lose, it’ll be a sad day indeed and will be seen as a demoralizing lesson in just how DEAD democracy really is when billionaires and out of state interests can come in and defeat the determined solidarity of tens of thousands of Wisconsin’s most politically engaged progressive citizens. If Walker wins, it will be a significant blow to the labor unions and progressive morale in general.

With repetitive TV and radio ads blanketing Wisconsin’s airways (Walker is spending over 20x what his challenger Tom Barrett can afford) the Koch brothers and the GOP have brainwashed people into supporting policies that would beggar their neighbors, friends and relatives and destroy the hard fought gains of the unions in the state where the labor movement was arguably born merely so that the rich can get richer. It’s not like everyone in Wisconsin doesn’t already know what’s going on and I doubt that many people are still undecided if they’ll be voting for Walker or Barrett with just two weeks to go. The polls are TIGHT, and incredibly—when you consider how his governorship has torn the state apart and Walker’s SHITTY record on jobs—favor the governor. It’s going to be all about the ground game and the side who can get out the most voters (something the Republicans excel at ).

You can kick in a few bucks to kick Walker’s ass at ActBlue. Fingers crossed and GO WISCONSIN.

 
Creepy, but awesome dolls made by Alejandro Jodorowsky on display at the “Happily Ever After” exhibit during the second annual “Rise of the Dolls Festival.”

The festival was held in the amphitheater of the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile on May 24, under the direction of Jaime Lorca.
 

 

 
Via UPI and with thanks to Franco!

 
A brilliant and beautifully executed wood cassette tape coffee table by artist Jeff Skerka.

This coffee table is a 12:1 scaled replica of a cassette tape. It is made of reclaimed maple, walnut and lucite. Dimensions are 47.25” x 30” x 5” with a 3/8” plexi top. This is a first prototype and one of a kind table. Future versions will be CNC machined out of high grade plywood with a variety of ply combinations and a glass top. This table has been an obsession of mine for 5 years! It is amazing to finally have it come to fruition. The table is completely reversible (sides A and B).

I’m not sure if Jeff’s “Mixtape Table” is a one-of-kind prototype or others have been made for purchase? You can contact him here to find out.

 
Via KMFW

 
Nice time-lapse video of a Robert Moog mural commissioned by Moog Music for their factory in Asheville, NC. The mural was created by local Asheville artist, Dustin Spagnola.
 

 
Thanks, Dustin!

 
In 2008, 47-year-old British businessman Barry Pring had just finished celebrating his first wedding anniversary at a restaurant near Kiev with his Ukrainian wife, Ms Zuizina. As they stood outside waiting for a taxi, Ms Zuizina realized she’d forgotten her gloves and popped back into the restaurant. A car came roaring ‘round the corner and took Mr Pring’s life.

Initially ruled by the Ukrainian police as a random hit-and-run, pressure from the British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Mr Pring’s remaining English family (who are contesting £1.5 million Pring fortune with the widow) has led to it being upgraded to a murder inquiry this week.

“Ms Zuizina, a former stripper,” notes BBC News, with a frigid nudge-nudge wink-wink, “met Mr Pring on the internet in 2006.” Say no more, guv,nor, say no more!

Far be it for me to pre-empt anything, but if it was foul play, this sort of thing is apparently quite common, which is why any gentleman looking eastwards for a younger, poorer wife might do worse than consult the charming Russian Bride Guide: How to Meet, Court and Marry a Woman from the Former Soviet Union by husband and wife intercontinental matchmaking duo Stuart J Smith and Olga Maslova.
 
I must admit to bringing a number of preconceptions to the Russian Bride Guide, but, randomly opening the volume yesterday on the bus (not hugely recommended) I instantly came upon the following halva-sweet sentiment:

“Of course, love is ideal…”

Well isn’t that outright romantic, I thought – it just goes to show yet again that you should never judge a book by its cover, even if that cover does feature a half-naked woman athwart a cardboard box.

Yet what is it, I wondered, reading on, that drove such idealistic men to travel so far and to undertake the risks and costs detailed in this very practical book (its chapters have titles like “Scams, Scammers and Sharp Practice”)? The Russian Bride Guide (a sort of “The Decline of the Western Woman”-type manifesto) explains:

“Because they simply don’t find fat, lazy, smoking, junk food-eating, sloppy, flip flop-wearing [!] women to be attractive. Unfortunately, this is all they seem to see at home.”

Faced with all these “self-empowered, man hating feminists” (in the book’s words), what can the RBG’s “fat, old, ugly and bald” readers (also the book’s words) expect from a Former Soviet Union bride?

“Why pick girls from poorer countries? Less money means fewer cars and more walking, more walking means slimmer bodies. The same scarcity of money means junk food is unpopular, hence less junk food consumption and slimmer bodies again.”

One of the ways the good old RBG tries to protect its readers is by warning them off really excessive age differences. While a couple of decades are the least every “fat, old, ugly and bald” Western man deserves, a cautionary note is struck for those hoping to aim for anything significantly more pronounced:

“If seeking a very large age gap, you must consider the future when she is bopping around the house listening to the latest dance music eyeing the young muscular gardener through the window and you are dozing in your rocking chair with Bing Crosby oozing out of your stereo. It happens; what do you think will happen next?”

Ummm, Svetlana’ or Uschi forgets her gloves (and who could blame her)?

 
This will take your breath way!

Last night CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° show saw the debut on the world television stage of Stacey Pritchard, one of the pinhead Christianists who attends the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina. Providence Road has been getting a lot of unwanted (?) attention lately due to Pastor Charles “Kill the Queers” Worley’s recent sermon there about putting gays and lesbians inside of an electric fence until they died. Last night Pritchard went on CNN to defend Worley and the result was TV magic!

It is AMAZING just how stubbornly impervious this woman is to basic facts. It’s like she has an impenetrable bubble all around her where no intelligence can get in or out (Only Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Domino’s pizza can pierce her force field of ignorance. I don’t know what happens on the other end and I don’t want to know).

Mark my words, this is a bravura, star-making appearance by one of American’s most dreadfully dumb people. Of course, I jest, there might be people stupider than Stacey in some dark, backwoods"holler” of America, but do they have her sneering, know-nothing Tea party charisma? Her fashion sense? Her gift of gab?

I don’t think so. A STAR IS BORN.

This woman is already an ICON OF STUPIDITY, even if she doesn’t know what that means…

Why, Stacey Pritchard, you just might be the female equivalent to Joe the Plumber! (Secretly I think you’re better than he is!). Please run for US Congress in your state (you’d win!) and caucus with Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Steve King and your North Carolina home girl/soul sister in MENSA, Virginia Foxx! A Sarah Palin endorsement must be imminent. The abjectly stupid gotta stick together!

“Hey Stacey, phone for you. A guy callin’ ‘eemself Roger Ailes wants to offer yew a contract on the Fox News…”
 

 
If you missed the recent annular solar eclipse, fret not as an amazing new video has just been released by NASA which reveals the Sun’s surface in a way never before seen.

This video takes SDO images and applies additional processing to enhance the structures visible. While there is no scientific value to this processing, it does result in a beautiful, new way of looking at the sun.

The original frames are in the 171 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet. This wavelength shows plasma in the solar atmosphere, called the corona, that is around 600,000 Kelvin.

The loops represent plasma held in place by magnetic fields. They are concentrated in “active regions” where the magnetic fields are the strongest. These active regions usually appear in visible light as sunspots. The events in this video represent 24 hours of activity on September 25, 2011.

I could stare at this for hours and not get bored.
 

Graham Skipper, Jesse Merlin (and a headless Brian Gillespie). Photo by Thomas Hargis.

After a highly successful premiere run in 2011, director Stuart Gordon’s ultra-gory musical version of his ultra-gory 80s cult film, Re-Animator™ The Musical has just two weeks left in its current Los Angeles engagement before the show travels to New York City and then the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

Dangerous Minds has a pair of tickets to one of the Saturday night late shows (this weekend or next) for a lucky reader who tells us in the most creative way, why the Re-Animator tickets must be theirs.

Re-Animator™ The Musical was the winner of six LA Weekly Theater Awards, including “Musical of the Year.” It’s BLOODY terrific (wear a raincoat, don’t say I didn’t warn you) fun and one of the leads is played by my very good friend, Jesse Merlin, who gives a bravura performance as the villainous “Dr.Carl Hill” who loses his head about mid-way through the show, but keeps right on singing anyway. Cheers’ George Wendt will also be returning to the cast as the zombiefied Dean of the medical school. Chris L. McKenna, Rachel Averym, Mark Beltzman, Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, Marlon Grace and Liesel Hanson round out the cast, with Graham Skipper featured as “Dr. Herbert West.

” Book by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris. Music and lyrics by Mark Nutter. The special effects are being done by the same guys who did them for the 1985 movie.

I mean, it’s a super-smart musical comedy Grand Guignol—with lots and lotsof blood—based on an H.P Lovecraft story... what’s not to love, here, right? See it now in Los Angeles while you still can!

Re-Animator™ The Musical runs nightly Thursdays through Sundays 8:00pm [Thu., Fri., Sun.] with two shows on Saturdays: 7:00 & 10:30pm at The Hayworth Theatre, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057.

More details at: www.reanimatorthemusical.com

This coming Tuesday the 29th, Stuart Gordon will be at Cinefamily, in-person for an in-depth Q&A session about the process of bringing his legendary ‘80s horror film to the stage as a musical with a screening of the original film and appearances by the play’s cast.

Leave your reason why we should give YOU the tickets in the comments. The best answer chosen by us, for no particular reason whatsoever will win. It’s up to you to get yourself there, so this contest is really only for our local Los Angeles readers (In other words, please don’t enter if you won’t be able to actually attend the performance, okay?)
 

 
It’s Bob Dylan’s birthday - Happy Birthday Bob. But rather than the usual cake, candles and documentary clip, here’s a slightly different birthday card: 2 versions of Dylan’s “Masters of War” slowed down by 400% and 800% by Angel Musicfication.
 

Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 400% slower.

Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 800% slower.
 

 
In April 1970, as rumors spread of Paul McCartney quitting The Beatles, news reporters hurried to Apple HQ, hoping to make their assumptions fit the story when interviewing Beatles’ Press Officer, Derek Taylor, and the band’s recently appointed manager, Allen Klein. This rare little news clip, seemingly missing a linking voice-over, captures the moment the rumors of a Beatles split were confirmed.
 

 
With thanks to Nellym
 

 
DM pal Tommy Udo reminded me today of this brilliant and inspirational speech by the socialist, trade unionist, politician and writer Jimmy Reid. The whole speech has been posted over at Exile on Moan Street, and my DM comrade Richard Metzger wrote eloquently about Jimmy Reid at the time of his death in 2010.

It’s may be forty years since Reid gave this speech, at his inauguration as Rector of the University of Glasgow, but its inspirational words are still as relevant and much needed today. Back in 1972, Reid’s speech hit resonated across the world, and was published, in its entirety, in the New York Times, where it was described as:

“...the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”

No hyperbole. This is one of the Great Speeches, and as Richard has previously pointed out “Mandatory Reading”.

Jimmy Reid’s Inaugural Speech as Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1972
 
“Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

“Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

“Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.

“It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven’t seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.
 

 
Via Exile on Moan Street, with thanks to Tommy Udo!
 
The rest of Jimmy Reid’s speech, after the jump…
 

 
Anyone care to hazard a guess at why he’s crying?

Via RightWing Watch:

The Family Research Council is currently hosting its annual Watchmen on the Wall Pastors Briefing in Washington DC, featuring a variety of Religious Right leaders and members of Congress working to mobilize pastors from across the nation.

Today, in between speakers, FRC handed the floor over to Jesse Connors so that he could promote his web-based evangelism tool called TrueLife.org which claims to offer “reliable answers from a biblical worldview via the Web that are non-threatening and easy to understand and directs people to church.”

Connors’ service seems to revolve around producing, for a fee, personalized business cards that pastors can hand out, encouraging people to visit the True Life website where they can learn more about Jesus and the Bible and find local churches.  At least, that was the best we could discern, as it was hard to know just what Connors was talking about as he grew increasingly emotional while discussing the success of the effort and demonstrating a video about struggling with homosexuality.

Get some help, Mary!

I feel really sorry for this fuckin’ guy.
 

 
The British Royal Family, it would appear, are feeling increasingly hemmed in by their approximately non-fictional status. You would have expected it of Diana, somehow, whom I not only believe (as per Kevin Costner’s recent assertion) would have gone on to star in the The Bodyguard 2, but, had she not been in that “accident” would have by now bequeathed the world a dozen docu-soaps, a whole range of sex tapes and at least one (unimaginably bad) album.

But I expected more – humble subject that I am – of Elizabeth II, who was this week said to have been getting up to some extremely post-modern shenanigans with the current James Bond. Daniel Craig, as reported in the following Telegraph article:

“It appears that James Bond, Britain’s best-loved spy, is to be rewarded for his dedication to duty with a knighthood bestowed by the Queen. Daniel Craig, the 007 actor, is reported to have received the ceremonial tap on the shoulder at Buckingham Palace in scenes to be screened during the opening ceremony at the Olympic Games. The Queen is said to have gamely agreed to take part in the action and makes a cameo appearance in the film, which will be beamed around the world.”

Buckingham Palace have refused to confirm whether Craig procedes to give Her Highness one of those rough-ish Bond fucks, but he may as well, as that’s sixty years of otherwise reasonably dignified reign “gamely” flushed down the khazi, ma’am.

Perhaps, it’s worth noting the fact that Elizabethan spy and necromancer John Dee was the original “007” to the “original” Queen Elizabeth’s “M” (current “M” Dame Judi Dench—who played Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love was apparently also filmed at the Palace, completing this bizarre cat’s cradle).

Quite why opening ceremony director Danny Boyle feels it necessary to thus tear down the walls of our national reality is uncertain, but despite his involvement in these nasty Olympics, I can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t an entirely bad egg – not least because he cites Caliban and his “the isle is full of noises” Tempest speech as the main inspiration for his show. That is, not Prospero et al – the ‘enchanted’ rulers/actors of this strange island – but the rest of us. Wonder if we’ll recognize ourselves in the finished product?

 
It doesn’t say if the masturbator was also fed mushrooms. Or if he continued masturbating. Either way, it all sounds very John Waters.

Thanks Boag!
 

 
Horse Meat Disco are one of the most recognisable names in the modern dance music landscape, a four-piece dj unit known for their top quality record selection as well as their rather cheeky “boner horse” logo.

Focusing heavily on disco music, Horse Meat have done much to rehabilitate that maligned genre in the eyes and ears of the club-going public, and have already released three compilations of rare disco gems on the London-based funk and disco Strut label.

Their weekly party in South London’s Vauxhall is a free-for-all of dancefloor intensity and wickedly positive vibes. It’s overtly-gay, yet open-for-all, and its friendly atmosphere has done wonders to re-establish gay clubbing (and clubbing period) as something cool and fun to do in these down-at-heel times. By concentrating, heavily but not exclusively, on music from the 70s and 80s, Horse Meat have reconnected the modern gay audience with their own, often overlooked, history and culture, and serve as a timely reminder that going out, getting out of it and dancing ‘til the wee small hours was not invented yesterday.

In short, they’re legendary. And it’s my favorite club. To me, the best description of Horse Meat Disco comes from the Brixton DJ and label owner Andy Blake, who calls the club “roots music for the gay community.”

For their latest podcast, the second in a new series being made available through Soundcloud, Horse Meat Disco DJs James Hillard and Luke Howard have put together over an hour of their favorite tracks by Donna Summer, who died last week at the age of 63.

It’s a suitably joyous, and touching, celebration of disco’s reluctant female queen, and features much of her work with super-producers Giorgio Moroder and Quincy Jones, including a whole side of the excellent 1977 LP Once Upon A Time. Although generally regarded as a “singles” artist, Summer had some killer album tracks, as demonstrated here. She could also turn her hand to straight-up soul as opposed to icy electronica, and must rank as one of the most sampled artists of all time.

I wonder if any current musical “gay icons” will leave such a lasting legacy?
 

 

  HMD’s Donna Summer Tribute Podcast by Horse Meat Disco

 
The fact of Vanessa Paradis (proudly displaying her Jane Birkinesque diastema) and Dave Stewart (a neon Serge Gainsbourg) singing Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” is evocative enough in and of itself. But there’s an added dimension to this video that makes the whole thing kind of spooky and more than a little bit clammy. Watching Paradis performing a duet with Stewart, who looks uncannily like a combination of the future father of her two children, Johnny Depp, and Depp’s frequent collaborator Tim Burton plus his former lover and collaborator Annie Lennox, is like watching a re-tooled version of “Lemon Incest” for the MTV generation…without Gainsbourg’s real incestuous vibe.
 

 
As the echoplex of history loops in upon itself, let’s ponder other elements of this time warpy video.

Paradis’s cover of “Walk On The Wild Side” appeared on her 1990 album Variations sur le Meme T’Aime, the same year that Depp and Burton’s first collaborative effort, Edward Scissorhands, hit the big screen. 1990 was also the year that Lou Reed re-united with John Cale and the other members of The Velvet Underground to play a charity gig in Paris. The last time they had played together was 1972, the year that Paradis was born. Add up the numbers in 1990 and you get 19. Paris 1919 is the title of John Cale’s third solo album.

Exactly 19 years after singing her duet with Stewart, Paradis covered the Serge Gainsbourg song “Ballade de Melody Nelson” with Johnny Depp.

Sigmund Freud was 19 years older than Carl Jung. Flight 19 disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The Qur’an teaches that 19 angels are assigned to guard the fires of Hell. Which brings up the question: “where were those angels when this video was made?”

“Walk on the Wild Side” is 40 years old. So is Vanessa Paradis. Jesus fasted 40 days and nights….