Through the DC arts and music scene, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know Kid Congo Powers, legendary guitarist for The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and his own Pink Monkey Birds. Kid is as kind, generous, and down-to-earth, as he is ridiculously talented.
Given his talent and artistic pedigree, it's a shame that he doesn't get the level of respect and exposure that he deserves. So, it's always heartening to see when he does get a little love. Here is a wonderful KC Powers tribute and set from XRAY FM in Portland, OR. The set nicely covers the arc of Kid's career and includes tracks from his various guitar stints and solo work. Read the rest
Andy Gill, founding member, guitar player, and "Supreme Leader" of the hugely influencial post-punk band, Gang of Four, has died. He was 64.
Members of the current Gang of Four line-up tweeted the following:
“This is so hard for us to write, but our great friend and Supreme Leader has died today,” Gang of Four wrote. “Andy’s final tour in November was the only way he was ever really going to bow out; with a Stratocaster around his neck, screaming with feedback and deafening the front row.”
The band continued, “One of the best to ever do it, his influence on guitar music and the creative process was inspiring for us, as well as everyone who worked alongside him and listened to his music. And his albums and production work speak for themselves. Go give ’em a spin for him…”
Read the obit at Rolling Stone.
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In the 1980s, Stuart Swezey was at the epicenter of Southern California's underground culture. The co-founder of Amok Books, Swezey was also known for organizing extreme industrial and avant-garde outdoor happenings in remote locations like the Mojave Desert that featured performances by Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, Survival Research Laboratories, Minutemen, and many other experimental and transgressive artists. Now, Swezey has made a documentary about those extreme experiences. Above is the trailer for Desolation Center.
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Joy Division's post-punk masterpiece "Unknown Pleasures" turns 40 this year. NME just republished an interview with two of the three surviving members of Joy Division -- bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris -- about creating what is arguably one of the most influential albums of all time. Meanwhile, the surviving band members have invited ten video directors to create new music videos for each song on the album. Below is the first video for "I Remember Nothing," directed by Helgi & Hörður. From the NME:
Was there anything that (producer) Martin Hannett did or asked you to do that was a bit too much?
Morris: “I was alright with what he was asking us to do mostly, although he did make me use the aerosol can on the 12-inch version of ‘She’s Lost Control’ like you see in Control. He shut me in a room with a can of tape-cleaning fluid and made me press it in time with the song. By the end, the booth was just filled with noxious fumes. I think he was just trying to kill me. If I’d have lit up a fag, the whole of Strawberry Studios would have gone up in smoke.”
Is it strange seeing that (album cover) design getting reproduced on just about anything and everything?
Hook: “We never actually did an official ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirt until 1994 but they got bootlegged all over the world. When we got investigated by the taxman because of the Haçienda being all fucked up, he said that he couldn’t find any receipts for ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirts.
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"Where do you think Blondie will be ten years from now?"
"San Quentin."
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Last night, The Cure celebrated the 30th anniversary of their Disintegration LP by playing the entire album at the Sydney Opera House. They opened with an array of b-sides and demo tracks, moved into Disintegration, and encored with "Burn" from The Crow soundtrack, "Three Imaginary Boys" from their 1979 debut album, and a cover of Wendy Waldman's "Pirate Ships." Here's the full setlist.
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Ian Curtis experiences the, er, known pleasures of a thrill ride with much more restraint than Billy Corgan.
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Punk historian and music journalist Jon Savage has assembled an oral history of Joy Division to be published in March 2019. "This Searing Light, the Sun and Everything Else: Joy Division" features interviews with all the surviving members of the pioneering band -- Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris -- along with Deborah Curtis, Peter Saville, Tony Wilson, Anik Honore, and others. It sounds to be a compelling companion to the 2007 documentary Joy Division, written by Savage and directed by Grant Gee.
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Follow the bouncing Trump head in this music video for "Anthropogenic Climate Change Is Real" by Oakland, California post-punk band You Can’t Make This Shit Up Amerika.
Written by Tennessee Mowrey and Kevin Goldberg, the song is a wake-up call to Trump and any other "fucking asshole" who doesn't believe that climate change exists.
It was co-produced by my pal Ampersand, who writes:
"I immediately felt that these spirited and pissed off millennials were giving voice not only to my feelings about our president and his policies around climate change, but potentially to millions of others as well, and that it was important that the song was out in the world."
I agree.
Give it a watch. Be forewarned, it's (rightly) sprinkled with NSFW language.
Thanks, Ampersand!
Previously: Debbie Harry and Joan Jett anchor the apocalyptic news for Blondie's 'Doom or Destiny' music video Read the rest
"I would hate to be thought of that we didn't think about things, y'know?" said Talking Heads guitarist Jerry Harrison. "But I think our music is really meant to be felt as much as anything." Read the rest
Poptone is the new live flashback experience from Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins, being two-thirds of Love and Rockets and Tones on Tail, and half of Bauhaus. Joined by Haskins's talented daughter Diva Dompé, the trio is revisiting tunes from their highly-influential careers at the intersection of glam/goth, psychedelic post-punk, and avant-garde experimentalism. These are artists whose magnificent work shaped the alt.culture underground of the 1980s and 1990s and, for me personally, were a portal to endless streams of high weirdness in art and music. By all accounts, Poptone is a fantastic trip. Tour dates are here.
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Here's The Cure performing "A Forest" live on television at Paris's Theatre de l'Empire on December 3, 1979. Robert Smith was 20 years old at the time.
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I love this new video from Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, from an album I love even more, La Araña es La Vida. I got a chance to see Kid in DC while he was on tour this year and it was one of my favorite shows of the year. The man knows how to bring himself fully to a show.
You may know Kid Congo Power's work with the legendary Gun Club, Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and I would hazard to say, his grossly underappreciated solo career, with albums like 2009's Dracula Boots and 2013's Haunted Head. La Araña es La Vida is Kid's 5th solo record.
The video for La Araña was directed by Alex Terrazas (aka Alex von Alex) and features an awesome Southern California backyard Chicano house party, complete with a visit from La Araña, the Teotihuacan spider goddess (of Pre-Columbian Teotihuacan civilization). A protector of the underworld, she is said to sprout hallucinogenic morning glory vines from her head. Here Kid explains why he chose to thematically invoke this bit of Mexican folklore on the record:
She sprouts hallucinogenic morning glories and protects the underworld. I thought that is very much like our duty as a band, to have the most open mind to vivid psychedelic dreams to create and protect the world of underground music, the music of the soul.
Morning glories, you say?
BTW, if you missed Kid's appearance on Amoeba Record's wonderful What's in my Bag? Read the rest
New Order performs "Ceremony," live in 1981. This was one of the last Joy Division compositions before the 1980 suicide of singer Ian Curtis and the remaining members became New Order.
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Enjoy the psychotronic grandeur of the first DEVO short film, "In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution," from 1976. Directed by Chuck Statler, the video took the first prize at the 1977 Ann Arbor Film Festival. Two key bits of background, via Wikipedia:
• Devo has claimed, occasionally, that the film contains subliminal messages, which allowed it to win at Ann Arbor.
• The ping-pong paddles shown in the Secret Agent Man segment have images of Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong on them.
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Eno performs his first solo single after leaving Roxy Music in 1974. (via Dangerous Minds) Read the rest
In 1983, Downtown NYC post-punk dance band Liquid Liquid released this Michael Sporn Animation Studios video for "Cavern," a killer track whose bassline became the foundation of Grandmaster Melle Mel's pioneering hip hop track "White Lines (Don't Do It)." The excellent Superior Viaduct label has just reissued Liquid Liquid's classic records including Optimo, the EP containing "Cavern." Read the rest
