Calligraphy by Susan Stuart - LightMotif Productions
Til Human Voices Wake Us
And We Drown
Poetry is not just for pussies. Some of it doesn’t even suck, like this one.
Seriously, I really enjoy TS Eliot. I know he’s kind of the mayonnaise of poetry, I don’t care. I don’t pretend erudition in verse. I know what I learned in high school, and the rest I got from Col. Kurtz.
When Brando read the Hollow Men in Apocalypse Now, I took the next step and read some TS Eliot. I liked it. I like this one in particular. It’s read by … an English gentleman… and it’s the coolest thing ever.
In honor of Miss Etta’s passing, I present you with one of the neatest little surprises I’ve found.
On New Year’s Eve 1982, the Grateful Dead (a pop music combo) played a gig in the land of Bill Graham. Apparently, from the comments I read in myriad (more than you would think) music forums I scoured, these hooligans liberally provided all and sundry with LSD backstage.
So, you get to see a bunch of tripping hippy telepaths, a legendary blues/soul/pop singer, and a righteously tight horn combo play some really nice set. This is the third set of the night for the Dead. Goddamn, you got your money’s worth with that band (until you didn’t. Like Zeppelin).
The audio is excellent stereo, and will fill your headphones delightfully. The video starts just as Etta takes the stage (or thereabouts) but if you want to watch the whole 2 hour plus show, just restart it. You’re empowered. It’s the Coolest Thing Ever.
“My function is to raise the possibility, ‘Hey, you know, some of this stuff might be bullshit.’” — Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Pope, Genius, Awesome
BoingBoing paid homage to one of the most underappreciated pillars of the post everything culture. He is, by far, the most influential person in my life. I just realized this, upon reflection. He showed me that I am the master who makes the grass green, and the map is not the territory.
I remember watching this when it first aired on HBO, back in the early 80′s. I was living in Bedford, NH and one funny night in 1983 (I looked it up) Buddy Hackett made me laugh my ass off.
He joked about homosexuals, and nazis, and jews…. oh it was wonderful. I now realize that nazis were still relevant in 1983, because those folks (of Hackett’s generation) saw it happen.
A lot of this comedy is pretty hackneyed and dated now, but there are some real gems in this. Buddy Hackett was fucking funny! The most famous anecdote about the Tonight Show, the Johnny Carson days, is the legendary joke Buddy told the Tonight Show audience during a commercial break. When the show came back from break, Johnny, Ed, and the audience were all in hysterics, but the folks would never know what was said.
If you’ve got the 74 minutes to kill, you should watch this. It’s the funniest shit ever.
My wife introduced me to the music of Etta James, back in 2000. She always played Etta’s Live from San Francisco CD, in her car when we were out. Over the years I’ve heard a good deal of her catalog, mainly her later career, from 1980 onward… and it’s all amazing.
Etta had been suffering from myriad diseases over the last few years, including dementia (a heartbreak) and leukemia. She lost the struggle today, and is gone. We are the poorer for it.
This song is one Etta wrote back in 1968, and sang constantly thereafter. I’d Rather Be A Blind Girl is soulful, powerful, strong, weak, and everything Etta was. This version if from one of her many appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1989. FYI – John Paul Jones played bass for her at the festival in 1974.
This is just fucking great. Remember the beginning of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? The breakfast machine? It’s like that but better, because it’s clever as hell. Joseph Hersher is the genius behind this contraption. All hail.
Thank you to my antipodean friends at Daily Grail for posting this amazing contraption. It wrecks so much shit just to turn a page. Pure Goldberg. It’s the coolest thing ever.
I like it that the Stones are delving through the archives, and releasing some of the cool stuff they find. Things like the expanded Exile On Main Street, or Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones (1972 concert film) are actually worth the release. They have a vitality that’s their own.
The latest Rolling Stones release, a concert filmed in Texas in 1978, Â is also worth buying. It shows a newly clean (of heroin, not so much of coke, booze, and demon weed) Keith Richards, and a not yet burned out Ron Wood, playing most of their best selling album, Some Girls. I always keep two Stones albums on my playlists, Exile and Some Girls. Two entirely different vibes, coke and pepsi… or rather coke and smack. Some Girls in New York in the Studio 54 era, 1970′s. Â You can read a nice review of this release by clicking the image above.
The Stones were still incredible in 1978, as you will see here. Beast of Burden is one of my favorite songs ever, ever, ever. That riff is insanely soulful, like Otis Redding, and the energy is high because it’s the 70′s and cocaine wasn’t thought to be addictive so… the show bounces along a bit like the Ramones. That’s a good thing. This is rock and roll, and Mick’s voice is brilliant (there are rumors of of some tasteful use of autotune, but… that’s what it’s fucking for), Keef is back in charge after a few years on the nod, and Ronnie can still demonstrate why he got the cushiest job in rock. Enjoy the coolest thing ever.
PS – For bonus points you can watch a live version of Shattered from this show, and it’s hot! Watch about 30 seconds in, Mick runs back to the drum riser, almost stepping on Ronnie’s joint, which Ronnie then offers to Mick, who declines with a swift shake of the head. Love it.
Let’s hear it for Femtophotography. What it is, is crazy complicated, with lasers and algorithims, and various maths and sciences. What it does is easy. It allows video recording of a nanosecond event, in slow motion. A half trillion frames per second. Yikes. Check out the Camera Culture webpage, and see what else they’ve come up with.
This video is really cool, but there are a couple others that are even cooler, on the MIT page. One of our loyal readers is an MIT person. Perhaps he will steal the contraption so we can take over the world. Perhaps. It’s the coolest thing ever.
I was shocked to hear that we lost comedian Patrice Oneal. He died following a stroke brought on by diabetes. It’s unusually surprising, as I have had a Patrice Oneal video clip in the queue for about six weeks, but I’m as busy as fuck with work, and I just haven’t had the time to post it.
I watched Patrice Oneal’s recent stand up video, Elephant In The Room, after seeing his performance on the (otherwise tepid) Charlie Sheen Roast. Everybody joked about how he was fat, black, diabetic, and dying. I didn’t realize they were so right. Anyway, his humor is brilliant, dark, really, really spot on. He rarely finishes sentences, when he’s making observations. He just trails off, leaving you to finish the thought. Which you can, because all he did was say what you (just) realized you believed all along. That’s genius. I was delighted to find another comic genius to admire, and see live (for once), but no. Patrice Oneal has left us, and we are the poorer for it.
Do yourself a true favor, and get on Netflix, bittorrent, or parse the clips on Youtube, and watch Elephant In the Room. It’s so fucking funny, you’ll miss Patrice Oneal too. He was the funniest thing ever.
This clip starts at :35 because that’s where the joke starts. The previous 35 seconds are the remains of another joke, and it makes no sense out of context. Enjoy.
It’s been awhile, but I have sung the praises of James Brown before. There was no one like him, and his music was so intricate and fast… like Motorhead meets Miles Davis. There’s nothing like funk. It’s deep, and from the hips, but it’s not raw, like the blues, or stupid, like metal. The band is so tight that they look bored, but their churning out funk so badass that I, a 43 year old white Led Zeppelin fan, who grew up in New Hampshire (where the only minorities were greeks and french canadians)… even I tap a genteel loafered foot.. offbeat of course. It’s the coolest thing ever.
BTW… the woman that dances in the video, does many of the same (upper body) moves as my teenage daughter and her stupid friends, but they’re listening to dubstep.
This was shown on Disinformation and I nicked it. It’s long to watch but it’s all true. If you plan on voting for either major party this election, you’re saying this is how you like to roll, cuz ain’t no difference between D and R.
Ah, British 80′s comedy. Bad News was a Spinal Tap-ish band/documentary created by former Young Ones Rik Mayall (rik), Adrian Edmonson (vivian), and Nigel Planer (neil). They were the subjects of two episodes of the BBC comedy, The Comic Strip. This show was aired on MTV in the late 80′s, and it was funny as hell (most of the time).
Well, the Bad News episodes were very popular, so the boys recorded an album, produced by Queen’s Brian May, and took to playing live, just like a real horrible metal band. They achieved such status as to attract real musicians, like Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the aforementioned Brian May to perform at the concerts.
I love the tshirt for the Checkerboard Lounge (Chicago Blues Club)
Here is a recording of Jimmy Page exchanging some patter with Vim Fuego (Adrian Edmonson) before the song. It’s funny. Vim says, “I said stay behind the stacks!” to which Jimmy replies, “There’s too many back there already. The pushed me out.” Good stuff.
A better partnership than Page/Plant at this point
And you try to tell me with consternation That you have found me a brand new lock Then you try to warn me that there’s only one combination One new sling – the same old rock
I told you I would post this as soon as I found a video, and I have. Ok, This video was around on Sunday morning, but a brother’s got to make his paper, so I had to put this off. Irregahdless, this song, and performance, is truly sublime. I owe my brethren at FBO for this, as they’re always the first with this kind of stuff.
Jimmy played on the original, back in 1969/70, and it was just like this, but not as passionate. They key to enjoying this is to not expect a JIMMY PAGE performance. This is Roy’s night, in Roy’s town, to Roy’s crowd. Roy Harper is a true artist, bard, visionary… in a very English way. He’s magnificent, pure, and (as a result) at times a bit hokey to those not in the same zeitgeist.
This song is an indictment of organized religion and dogma. The rock referred to is not rock and roll, it’s the hurled rock of the defiant against the system. Davy/Goliath. It’s beautiful. Jimmy plays beautifully and really cuts loose at the end (this song is long. folks. Either pay perfect attention, or zone out and come back at the end when the guitar gets good), and it makes me wonder why the fuck Jimmy doesn’t do more work with Roy. After all, he’s made 5 albums with Roy Harper, and they’re all classics. There’s been talk about tendonitis or arthritis impinging upon Jimmy’s ability to really bend strings that well anymore… so play acoustic, motherfucker.
Roy Harper threw a 70th birthday concert on 11/5 (or 5/11 to our brothers across the pond), and Jimmy Page came out for the encore. I have pictures, and I have a testimonial, but I’ve not found any video. I will post it when I do.
This is one of the great SUN Records classics, completely hit out of the park by Balladeer Bob Dylan, the rockabilly troubador. I’m serious. Click the picture of Bob to hear the original. I’ll wait. … not bad, right? A bit tinny, and too fast maybe, but a really good song.
Now listen to Bob Dylan’s cover. It’s a zillion times better, and it’s (relatively) recent (2003 I believe). It’s got swagger, groove, and some of that swampy creeping darkness. Like that point just outside the reach of the streetlight, where there could be trouble. Dylan growls and wheezes the undercurrent of menace that the song has. Heartbreak and betrayal make guys kill people. They make people crazy. Who you been lovin since I been gone? Answer me.
He was long and tall, had plenty of cash. He had a red Cadillac and a black mustache.
[I just deleted some of the darkest, funniest, most alienating stuff I've written in years. Those who know me know how dark and mean and evil I can get... it was like that but funnier. Horribly, unforgivably awful. I'd rather run through Birmingham on MLK day in a white hood, yelling the n word with middle fingers upraised, than publish what I wrote. Lou Reed and William Burroughs would get up and leave. So.. um... listen to the damn song. It's good]
The Occupy movement gets minimal coverage here in the States. If you’re in the States, and don’t think that’s true, take a look at any other foreign news site. My wife followed the police attack on Occupy Oakland, which was just a test case to see how people would react when the Man had enough with we chattel, and put us back in our place.
Why Oakland and not San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Portland (the biggest protest in the country), NYC…. ? Why do you think? Which group of citizens is most used to being whooped on by police. What group in our country is so often brutalized by the police, that the rest of our society doesn’t even see it?
We live in interesting times. Here is the reddit page with this picture. Read the comments. It’s relevant.
This is really the Craziest Shit Ever. The picture you see is from Google Earth. It is a section of the island Al Futaisi. That island is owned by a humble renunciate named… wait for it… Hamad. He’s rich. Oil rich.
This kind of reminds me of Chairface Chippendale, a villain of the Tick’s. Chairface tried to write his name on the moon, but was thwarted. Hamad wrote his name on the earth, and was not thwarted. You can read the whole story about the two mile wide letters here. Discuss.
Silicon Valley is founded on a bedrock of psychedelic drugs. Albert Hoffman, who wrote the above letter at the ripe age of 101, spent years trying to bring the study of LSD back into the realm of “real” science. Ryan Grim scratches the surface in his article. Also… Crick and the double helix? That epiphany came to him while… tripping balls.
