Here’s a bunch of clips of amazing people doing exceptional things in front of other very lucky people which I curated for our pals at Network Awesome, many of which have turned up in previous blog posts here on Dangerous Minds. Probably the first of many to come ! Special thanks to Shannon Fields, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Dave Madden and Eddie Ruscha.
 
Hamlet Gonashvili - Gogov Shavtvalav

Cutty Ranks - Sleng Teng Riddim

George Harrison - Wah-Wah

Rimpa Siva - Tabla Solo Calcutta 1997 Part 6

John Cage - Excerpt from “Good Morning Mr. Orwell”

Wolfgang Dauner & Et Cetera - Raga

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Dino’s Song

Judee Sill -The Kiss

Yes - And You And I

Nara Leão - Camisa Amarela

Tim Buckley - I Woke Up

The Carpenters - Ticket To Ride

Turkmenian shredding

Tony Oxley - Combination

Derdiyoklar Ikilisi - 1984 Show
 

 
Originally posted on 03/30/11

 
When my friend and label-mate Michael Kentoff of the fine D.C. area band, The Caribbean posted some clips of local public-access phenomenon T.V. John Langworthy to his FB wall I wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. I liked that the line between knowingly funny and genuinely disturbed was truly blurry. So I asked Michael to try to provide some regional context and personal testimony about this hitherto unknown (to me and probably anyone else not living in the greater D.C. area) outsider artiste.
 

Well, you asked for it.

To the long-time local, there’s something very suburban DC about TV John Langworthy: proudly small-town yahoo just miles from the power center of the universe. It’s difficult to explain, but there he is: TV John (who is a twin!) flaunting his big-headed goofiness involuntarily and in defiance.  Suburban DC or not, his similarity to other people ends there.  In truth, he’s from a suburban DC on another planet. Television host, songwriter, open mic night organizer, singer, and whatever he does for a living, TV John is both obscure and conspicuous in any place at any time because he is completely and functionally in his own world – and we’re all invited!

Like his legion of fans (the number is anywhere from 17 to 17,000, I’d imagine), I stumbled across the TV John Show, which played to countless carpet-scraping jaws in the early 1990s, on local cable access.  His show immediately followed The Music Shoppe, a survey of local music that was morbidly fascinating on a whole different level.  Over the course of 30 cable minutes, the TV John Show usually featured two here-today-gone-later-today local performers and, the real pay-off, two lip-synced originals by the towering, flailing, smiling, gyrating host himself.  He called them and still calls them “dream songs,” which, he reports, literally wake him up at night and demand to be captured on the nearest magnetic tape tout suite.  Sort of like McCartney with “Yesterday” if McCartney woke up restrained by straps and safety pins to a hospital bed.  Or if he awoke in a ranch-style house in Montgomery County, Maryland.

I taped a few TV John Shows and would subject unprepared friends to the late-80s video graphics, the parade of oddly matched bands, and, most importantly, to TV John himself – the dream songs and, if we were lucky, a solo comedy sketch that could only be funny somewhere deep inside the cedar closet of John’s brain.  Some friendships ended – as if we were laughing at a disturbed asylum escapee, but most people cringed with delight.  I, for one, always figured John was in on the joke.  He both meant it for real and meant it as a gag.  That was his genre (my theory).

Years later, Dave Jones and I went to see him perform with his band at the venerable Galaxy Hut in Arlington.  At first sight, John was just a big, dorky guy in his 50s, smiling, chatting, drinking a beer.  The most conspicuous thing about him was his giant overly-colorful silk shirt that looked like something a clown might pull endlessly from his left sleeve.  Then the music started and TV John emerged – hurling around and singing in poses that almost seemed right out of pro wrestling.  The normal big dork did not appear the rest of the night – TV John held sway.  It was pretty magical.  Definitely entertaining to the extreme.  Dave and I chatted him up and showed him some video Dave shot of his set.  The three of us laughed.  Dave said, “Hilarious, man!”  TV John, enormous face, raised two large craggly eyebrows over a giant, toothy smile and nodded, “Sure is!”  Knew it.

 
Many more inscrutable TV John clips after the jump…

 
Hey kids, it’s a special Xmas edition of the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour with guest host Rick Potts ! One of the founding members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, Rick and his cohorts have been making and collecting weird records since the early 70’s and mining a specifically suburban vein of audio surrealism delightfully apparent in this radio special. Mele Kalikimaka !
 
Rick sez: “The Winter Holidays can be stressful and downright annoying. It can get you down but an alternative to Grinch-ness & Scrooge-osity is to revel in the oddness, absurdity and surrealism of Christmas-time. Ka-Bella-Binsky-Bungo!”
 
01. Christmas Night In Harlem - Raymond Scott - Microphone Music
02. The Chipmonk Song - The Three Suns - A Ding Dong Dandy Christmas
03. Who Says There Ain’t No Santa Claus - Barbara Cook & Jerome Courtland - Flahooley , Original Cast Recording
04. Christmas - Joseph Byrd - Christmas Yet To Come
05. White Christmas - The Wailers - Destiny: Rare Ska Sides from Studio One
06. Close Your Mouth (It’s Christmas) - The Free Design - Stars / Time / Bubbles / Love
07. Mele Kalikimaka - Arthur Lyman - Mele Kalikimaka
08. Ding Dong Christmastime - Rick Potts/Christmas Sound Effects - LAFMS Lightbulb Vol. 3 Christmas Cassette
09. Frosty the Red-nosed Ghost - Conniff Singers/Voices of Walter Schumann/Rick Potts - Follow the Raindeer
10. Santa Claus Goes Modern - Rod Rodgers & The Librettos - The Breakdown of Human Absurdity
11. The Parade Of The Tin Soldiers - Sound In Brass Handbells - Ringing Clear, The Art Of Handbell Ringing
12. Bells Are Ringing - Moondog - Moondog 2
13. The Toy Trumpet (2 Versions) - George Wright/Eddie Dunstedter -Merry Christmas/Mr. Pipe Organ
14. The Stupendous Holiday Finksten - The Human Lard Dog And The Band Of Shy - The Fat Assed Freak is Coming To Town
15. Sleigh Ride - Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Sym. Orc. - The Typewriter, Leroy Anderson Favorites
16. Santa Claus On A Helicopter - Wing - Santa Claus On A Helicopter
17. You, Too, Can Be A Puppet - Puppet Singers - Flahooley, Original Cast Recording
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati
 

 
Many actors are superstitious. Some like Peter Bull kept a collection of Teddy bears to bring him good luck; others like Jack Lemmon said the words, “It’s magic time,” before filming each scene. But none were quite as obsessed with superstitions and the Occult as comedy genius, Peter Sellers.

Sellers’ introduction to the Occult came via fellow Goon, Michael Bentine, the Watford-born Peruvian, who had grown-up in a household where seances and table-turning were regularly practiced. Not long after they first met, Bentine told Sellers of his psychic abilities - how during the Second World War, when Bentine served in the Royal Air Force, he had been able to tell which of his comrades would die before a bombing mission. Bentine claimed if he saw a skull instead of his colleague’s features, then he knew this person would be killed. How often Bentine was correct in his predictions is not known. No matter, Sellers was impressed by the shock-haired comic and was soon obsessed with all things paranormal.

From then on he collected superstitions, as easily as others collect stamps. He refused to wear green or act with anyone dressed in the color. If anyone gave him something sharp, he gave them a penny. He read his horoscopes every day, to divine what he should do.

Sellers often said he had no idea who he was: “If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.”  This was his way of renouncing any responsibility for his actions.  He claimed he found comfort and stability in consulting clairvoyants and fortune tellers, which again only underlines the fact he did know who he was - a control freak, who wanted power over his future. It was inevitable, therefore, that once under the spell of sooth-sayers and psychics, Sellers was open to fraudsters, tricksters and con-men.

The clairvoyant who had most influence over his life was Maurice Woodruff, the famed TV and newspaper astrologer, whose syndicated column reached over fifty million people at the height of his career. Woodruff received over 5,000 letters a week, asking for advice and had a Who’s Who of of celebrity clients, including Lionel Bart and Diana Dors. He also famously predicted the death of President John F. Kennedy and the end of the Vietnam War. Sellers was devoted to Woodruff, consulting him before he accepted any roles, and regularly had Tarot readings performed over the telephone. But Woodruff was heavily in debt and open to the persuasion of a little cash earner when film studios asked him to suggest film scripts for the actor.

One famous tale, recounts how Woodruff was asked to suggest the initials of director Blake Edwards as being very important to him. Unfortunately, Sellers failed to connect ‘B.E.’ with the famous director. On return to the Dorchetser Hotel, his usual residence when in London, Sellers was smitten by the sight of a beautiful, young blonde-haired woman at reception. When he enquired as to who this vision of loveliness was, he was told Britt Ekland. Sellers recalled Woodruff’s prediction and married Ekland within weeks.
 
More on the paranormal Peter Sellers plus bonus clip after the jump…
 

 
Since posting about Rick Meyerowitz’s up coming book on the National Lampoon, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great the other day, I’ve had the Lampoon on the brain a bit. Last night I was adding things to the Netflix queue, when I noticed, to my surprise and delight, that there was a video document of the 1973 Off Broadway production of National Lampoon’s Lemmings, starring a very young John Belushi (23 or 24 at the time), Christopher Guest (25), Chevy Chase (30 and with long hair) as well as Rhonda Coullet (who does a wicked Joni Mitchell) and Alice Playten (who nearly steals the show with her outrageous Joan Baez parody). The show was written by Tony Hendra (the manager in This Is Spinal Tap, who also co-directed Lemmings), Doug Kenney (National Lampoon co-founder and co-writer of Animal House. He also played “Stork”) and P.J. O’Rourke.

The first surprise is that this even exists in the first place. I’ve known the record since I was a kid, but who knew there was a video of this? Well, there is and it’s fascinating, if not exactly all that funny. It’s interesting because it’s got these three great funnymen seen before they would achieve fame a few years later with SNL and also it’s a wild period piece. If this sounds even remotely like something you’d be interested in, by all means get over to Netflix and watch it, but if you don’t expect it to be the best thing you’ve ever seen and don’t expect belly laughs (there are a few) then you’ll be able to appreciate this more on its own, slightly rumpled terms. Comedy doesn’t tend to age well, but that’s not why you want to watch this. One strong disclaimer, though, for younger viewers, most of the references are going to be totally incomprehensible unless they’ve seen the Woodstock documentary.

Although the cheesy titles don’t tell you this, Lemmings was videotaped for HBO as The National Lampoon Television Show. We didn’t know that when we were watching it and wondered what possible outlet there would have been for something with so much swearing in it in 1973? Turns out HBO started the year before, so we had our answer, but still, how odd that they kept something like this out of the public eye for so long.
 

 
The “plot” of Lemmings, as such, is that the audience is supposed to be present for a Thanos-celebrating rock festival: “Woodshuck: Three Days of Peace, Music & Death.”  A Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young spoof (“Freud, Pavlov, Adler, and Jung”) sees the group singing a parody of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” (and their own “LongTime Gone”) but the lyrics have been changed to “We are lemmings”—instead of stardust—and Belushi, as the MC makes constant references and updates about members of the audience killing themselves and snuffing it (“The brown strychnine has been cut with acid.”). Near the end, as the heavy metal group “Megadeath” are playing, Alice Playton (as a groupie) asks “Did you know that pure rock sound can kill? Isn’t that far out? So the thing to do is go over to the amp and put your head there.”

More on National Lampoon’s Lemmings after the jump…

 
I think that those of us who are old enough to remember hearing actual Muzak in public places were in fact hearing one of these diabolical devices: The Seeburg 1000 background music system. Essentially a stackable spindle record player that played Seeburg’s specially produced 16rpm, big hole in the middle LPs chock full of motivating background music, sure to bring out the productivity in your employees and the wallets from your customers. I was delighted to find literally hundreds of clips of these records, alas mostly being played on conventional players, on the youtubes. For the pupose of this post I’m concentrating on a few examples from Seeburg’s long running Industrial library:

Average tempo: medium fast. Predominantly instrumental,with a light seasoning of great vocals. An occasional polka or march. Emphasis on popular music. Minimum of stringed instruments. Unusually rhythmical. Over-all lively character but never a rock ‘n’ roll. Designed for Industrial plants only.

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Clip from a mockumentary about how Africans view white culture in Austria, a land where “no black man has ever stepped foot.” Does anyone know what this is from? It reminds me of the brilliant retro comedy series, Look Around You created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz. I’d love to see the entire thing, this clip is but a cruel tease! (Reminds me of Martin Mull’s mid-80s HBO series, The History of White People in America. I will never forget the scene with Fred Willard as a clueless white man (his forte, obviously) barbecuing in his backyard wearing an apron with a cartoon hot dog asking “What Do You Want on Yours?”)

Beginning June 15, vintage Firesign Theatre radio shows, dating from 1970-72 will be rebroadcast for the first time since their original air dates on WFMU radio. This is comparable to being a James Joyce fanatic and finding not just one notebook where he’s working out the themes that would become fully developed in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, but an entire crate of ‘em. Some of the most mind-bending, thought-provoking and hilarious material of their career and unheard for the past 40 years. A counter cultural treasure of the highest order. Firesign Theatre LIVE in Portland and Eugene, Oregon this weekend!

Rich Fulcher (Snuff Box, The Mighty Boosh) previews his gaggle of upcoming shows in Los Angeles, discusses the life and loves of his Eleanor the Tour Whore character and tells viewers about a few of the devilish insurrections of his new book, Tiny Acts of Rebellion: 97 Almost-Legal Ways to Stick It to the Man.