Topic - Dangerous Minds

Across the world tonight, millions of people are tuning-in to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. There will be the usual twinkly, pant-suited, satin-draped performers, with an excess of dry ice, singing about love, broken hearts, world peace and the weather. While I like the idea of Eurovision, I doubt I’ll be watching, as I’ve always thought this fun competition tends to overlook better songs by greater artists, who know how to write an unforgettable tune. The first that comes instantly to m...

In 1964, The British Labour Party was elected into government with a slim majority of 4 seats. Such a small majority made governing the country difficult for canny Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. Therefore, after 17 months in power, Wilson called a second election. In support of winning re-election, the Labour Party’s magazine, Tribune asked a selection of writers and artists who they would vote for in the 1966 General Election. In response, sensing Labour might not hold to their socialist ide...

Wait for The Carpenters interlude. I don’t know why these folks are kickin’ it Third Reich meets P. Diddy stylee in this remarkable music video and I’m not sure I want to know either. No wait, I do want to know… WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Via Nick Abrahams by way of Chris Campion

“Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.” You might think that arriving in NYC and checking into the Chelsea Hotel only to experience, in rapid succession, a fire, the murder of Nancy Spungen and a robbery that this would put you off the Big Apple, but this was not the case with Quentin Crisp, England’s “stately homo.” After bringing his famed one-man show, An Evening With Quentin Crisp from London’s West End to the Off Broadway Player’s Theatre in 1978, Cr...

An Iggy pop clock made by artist and designer Ron Winnick. I like the creative touch as Iggy’s arms move around he smears peanut butter on himself. That’s absolutely brilliant. Below, this incredible live footage of The Stooges comes from the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970 (AKA Midsummer Rock Festival) and features the infamous peanut butter smearing incident. Note the announcer’s reaction: “That’s… peanut butter!” Years later Stiv Bators of The Dead Boys took credit for bringing the ...

Sour Death Balls is a 1992 short film by Jessica Yu where mostly children and a few adults test their tolerance on film while trying to withstand a “sour death ball” candy. As you’d expect, the expressions are priceless. Via Have You Seen This

The video, by business major and aspiring comedian Eric Dunn, is only six seconds long because it was originally a Vine. It was uploaded to YouTube a few days ago. You can follow Dunn on Twitter. Via Gawker

This is a guest post by New Delhi-based social media consultant, Kartik Dayanand. “We’re getting closer to a world where technology takes care of the hard work—discovery, organization, communication—so that you can get on with what makes you happiest… living and loving. It’s an exciting time to be at Google.” These are the concluding lines of a recent announcement by the CEO of Google, Larry Page. It sounds great: technology will make our lives easier and we don’t have to work hard anymore. T...

; As punk rock was throbbing in the clubs downtown, Manhattan cable TV was experiencing its own kind of anarchy . D.I.Y programs from cats like Efrom Allen were offering some demented and surreal stuff to get us energized before hitting the clubs or to soften the crash as we wound down from a night on the Bowery. The coaxial pipeline was sending signals into our decrepit little apartments that were raw, spontaneous and often exhilarating, punk rock’s cathode equivalent. In this episode of The...

Nick Cave reads the lyrics to “Dead Joe” and manages to keep a straight face.

Ken Russell had thought about making a film on Debussy for some time. He was ‘hovering on the feature film fringe,’ having just made his first movie French Dressing, in 1964. But it had sadly flopped and he had returned to work as a producer and director for the BBC’s arts series Monitor. Making a feature film had encouraged Russell’s ambitions, and he now had a revolutionary idea for a new kind of documentary arts film, but he wasn’t quite sure how best to achieve it. This was when Russell m...

King Crimson’s Robert Fripp turns 67 today, just one day after his frequent collaborator Brian Eno became an OAP. They both look great for their age. Previously on Dangerous Minds: In the Court of the Crimson King: Intelligent BBC documentary about Robert Fripp Dislocated: Robert Fripp & The League of Gentlemen Fripp and Eno: The Heavenly Music Corporation Below, Robert Fripp demonstrates Frippertronics in 1979:

I think it’s safe to say that the music composed (and performed alone) by Jimmy Page and intended for Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, but not used, was/is among the very most sought after Led Zeppelin, or in this case Zep-related, bootleg recordings. The story has long been a foundation of the Led Zeppelin mythos: Page and the mercurial Magus of Cinema had a falling out, then Anger did his patented “curse” routine very publicly going so far as accusing Page of being a mere “dabbler” in the oc...

The cameraman probes the lovely Ms. Hardy like some kind of feral animal in this weirdly composed video. If the lens had a tongue she’d be streaked with saliva. The chanteuse looks like she’s coming off a rough night. J’adore les pimples. “Mon monde n’est pas vrai.” 1971.

Who listens to this douchenozzle, anyway? I can’t believe this man still has an audience. Are they just too old and feeble-minded to know how to use a TV remote? What gives? Here’s former Southern Baptist minister Pat Robertson giving advice to a woman whose husband cheated on her. He tells her “he’s a man” and to “make a home so wonderful that he doesn’t want to wander.” Now here’s Pat giving advice on what to do if your wife suffers from Alzheimer’s disease: Divorce her. Mighty Christian of...

Some kind soul uploaded Gang of Four’s full appearance on German music television show Rockpalast from 1983. Why it wasn’t uploaded in a single YouTube video, I don’t know. but it’s a wonderful treat nonetheless. This is the incarnation of the group that saw bassist Sara Lee (formerly of Robert Fripp’s new wavey League of Gentlemen group) replace Dave Allen who had by that time left to form Shriekback with XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews. “We Live as We Dream Alone”: “The Republic”: “Not Great ...

It’s surprising that one of the most cherished of all of David Bowie’s American TV performances hasn’t been posted to YouTube in better quality—pristine digitally-sourced bootlegs are easy to find that even include outtakes as DVD extras—but this truncated version (which cuts off the dancers forming the show’s title and omits most of the guests) for now, is as good as it gets. (It’s also surprising that Bowie himself hasn’t seen fit to release it on DVD, but apparently he doesn’t really like ...

This is a jolly little film on the opening of the first Legoland Park, Billund, Denmark, in June 1968. More than 50million people have visited Legoland since its opening, and 1.9m people visited the park in 2011, making it the most popular tourist attraction outside Copenhagen, in Denmark. Previously on Dangerous Minds Lego my video: Tim Pope reacts to seeing one of his videos for The Cure recreated in Lego

The London offices of Shell, BP, Statoil and Platts, the world’s leading oil price reporting agency, were raided yesterday by European Commission inspectors, investigating allegations of collusion in price-fixing over the past 11 years. After last year’s Libor scandal, these new allegations of price-fixing look set to be a further damning indictment (if ever that were needed) of capitalism and the unfettered greed of its corporations. If the allegations are true, then it again shows how price...

Dennis Hopper plays a Norman Lincoln Rockwell-like neo-Nazi in this creepy 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone. Written by Rod Serling and directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke), “He’s Alive” is Serling at his preachiest but it’s a message that when it aired in January of 1963 was particularly relevant. At the time, The American Nazi Party and it’s psycho leader Norman Lincoln Rockwell were getting International attention. The roots of the White Power movement were beginning to take root...

A glorious televisual moment from Comic Relief 1999, when Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) channeled Kate Bush for a stirring version of “Wuthering Heights”, A-ha! Bonus: David Bowie plays the recorder. With thanks to Tara!

Francis Bacon indulged the myths about his life. All those tales of Bacchanalia were always far more preferable to the hushed reality of his rising at 6am and working till early afternoon, while his drinking buddies slept-off hang-overs in the watery, morning light. Bacon was no slacker, but he tended to hide his industry and discipline behind endless tales of excess. As for the drinking, well, I have been told that often while out boozing Bacon would pay a visit to the gents, where he would ...

The recent Rolling Stone cover story on The Rolling Stones alludes rather bluntly to something that, frankly, I think about with every new clip I watch (in horror) of the current Stones tour: Can Keith even still play? This time, before there could be any serious preparations for a 50th anniversary tour – something Richards wanted to see happen – Jagger made it plain that there would have to be some sort of reckoning. The details of whatever transpired between the two men remain private, but ...

British comic Adam Buxton does deadpan readings of YouTube comments on his Adam Buxton’s BUG TV series. He shows videos—some really good ones, too—-but the real draw of the show is the hilarity Buxton wrings from ordinarily mundane YouTube comments, especially when anonymous people with ridiculous web handles start arguing and insulting each other. He’s really funny. It’s a low budget program with some of the deepest laughs belly-laughs of anything currently on television. I highly recommend ...

Simply sublime. If you haven’t seen Japanese dance artist Miyoko Shida’s hypnotic performance on the Spanish TV program Tú Sí Que Vales—it’s been making the rounds for a while now—it’s well-worth the seven minutes you’ll spend on it. You’ll feel like you took a Xanax afterwards, trust me… As someone points out in the YouTube comments, “I would not like to play this woman in Jenga.” Probably not. You can subscribe to Shinda’s Facebook profile here. With thanks to Red Cell!

Thomas McGrath’s post this morning about Kenneth Anger, Bobby Beausoleil and the Manson Family reminded me that I should look for a live clip of It’s A Beautiful Day’s classic “White Bird” and post that. It’s been lingering on my DM “to do” list for quite a while now. “White Bird” is a song that most music fans (at least those of us of a certain age) will instantly recognize. It’s a Beautiful Day were “Summer of Love” San Franciscan contemporaries of The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and ...

Wanda Jackson is the shit. So hopefully the listeners of BBC Radio 4 news program Broadcasting House viewed this as an awesome random yodel-bomb. The song was “Jesus Put a Yodel in my Soul.” Apparently, the mishap occured when: ...the battery in the radio car Lord Jones was speaking from in Warwickshire began to run out and the engine had to be restarted. Yodel-bomb on, Ms. Jackson! Via Arbroath

Manson murderer Bobby Beausoleil, it’s probably fair to say, is an entirely star-crossed asshole. Take, for example, the anecdote Kenneth Anger has been wheeling around town for a good few decades regarding how the two of them came to part company, in which a nineteen-year-old Beausoleil, who was Anger’s intended protagonist in Lucifer Rising and also living rent free in the filmmaker’s Haight-Ashbury home, purportedly spent money given him for film equipment on dope, leading Anger to send hi...

When The Damned’s guitarist Captain Sensible hit with his whimsical solo cover of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Happy Talk” and “Wot?” it looked to me like one of the original punks wanted to host a kid’s program. He could have been the Pee-wee Herman of Britain (Oh, come on, you know what I mean! How dare you disrespect the good Captain with your filthy minds!!!). At the very least they could have given The Damned their own Young Ones-type sitcom. That would have been classic, what a tragically ...

Newt Gingrich must be politicking hard for this year’s Captain Obvious prize… Exactly who does Newton think he’s talking down to in this video? Or does he really think that he’s somehow got a “point” to make about the supposed (huh?) confusion (again I must ask: HUH?) over what to call today’s newfangled smart-phones…? Or is Newt just confused? I’m confused. But the most confusing thing of all is why this pointlessly pointless video even exists… Is there a prize if you come up with something ...

Yesterday when I posted “‘Pepper Box’: The funkiest space-disco synthpop rare groove record of 1973,” it occurred to me that I should also post another long-forgotten instrumental one-hit wonder, “The Crunch” by The RAH Band, a studio “group” helmed by Richard Anthony Hewson. Hewson is an English producer, arranger, conductor and multi-instrumentalist who has worked with the likes of The Beatles, James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac and Carly Simon. He was the sole member of The RAH Band and played al...

In 1965, a year before hooking up with the musicians who would form The Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young had a brief stint in a Canadian rock group called The Mynah Birds fronted by Rick James (yes, THAT Rick James). At this point in James’ career he was known as Ricky James Matthew and did a stellar imitation of Mick Jagger. The group had a raw exciting sound that hinted at The Stones, Them, and various American garage bands. The Mynah Birds nailed a deal with Motown Records (the first white ...

When I was a teenager growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1980s, on Saturday nights, a pirate radio station would sometimes elbow its way to the fore, past the college stations in the lower FM band. One piece I very clearly recall being introduced to on one of these illegal broadcasts was “Music on a Long Thin Wire,” by Alvin Lucier. Lucier’s curious acoustical installation was originally set up in a shopping mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1979 and broadcast for five uninterrupted days an...

In celebration of the great Bea Arthur’s birthday (the “Golden Girl” would have been 91 years old today) here she is demanding “some marijuana” by YouTuber DewFuzz. Previously on Dangerous Minds: WTF? Bea Arthur and Rock Hudson sing about coke, meth and weed

I dare you to listen to this insanely catchy instrumental number and then try to scrub it out of your head. As with Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” and “Apache” by The Incredible Bongo Band, two similar hit instrumental songs of the same vintage, it cannot be undone. You’re stuck with this one for life after one listen (not that this is a bad thing!) Pepper Box was originally supposed to be a TV commercial jingle, but producer Roger Tokarz, thinking he might have a “Popcorn” on his hands, held back an...

Claude Lelouch’s Vivre Pour Vivre (“Live for Life”) tells the tale of a torrid affair between Robert, a philandering war correspondent (Yves Montand) and a volatile young American fashion model (Candice Bergen, looking incredibly gorgeous here) and how it causes the disintegration of his marriage to Annie Girardot’s gentle, sorrowful Catherine. Vivre Pour Vivre was one of the most successful French films of all time and nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film in 1968. Tod...

Either Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has been successful in her life-long effort to convert her brain into a 3 lb mass of snot or else she has finally seen the error (and hypocrisy) of her ways and converted to the holy light of Islam! Isn’t it amazing that Bachmann now agrees with Osama bin Laden and other, lesser Jihadis who truly believed that they were on the side of God in delivering judgment to the US on 9/11/01 and in Benghazi? I mean, she’s claiming that those events were ...

Despite what the title might imply, there’s nothing sexist or Stepford Wives-ish here, rather it’s the frantic, rubber-faced hubby who is badly in need of a chill pill. Or an entire bottle of them. If you’ve ever seen the Dr. Seuss-scripted kids film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, this weird little 1957 industrial film puts me immediately in mind of that. With all sorts of amazing WTF flourishes, like a desk that hands you a newspaper! Thank you Binky Prod! (if that is, in fact, your real name)

Due to the release of what is supposed to be the final final unheard cache of Jimi Hendrix recordings, People, Hell & Angels, worldwide interest has been stirred in a tantalizing bit of memorabilia currently residing in the collection of the Hard Rock Cafe in Prague: A 1969 telegram from Jimi Hendrix inviting Paul McCartney to record with him, Miles Davis and jazz drummer Tony Williams in New York. The telegram, seen below, was sent to the Apple offices in London on October 21, 1969: “We are ...

This is all kinds of fantastic. This surreal lost Dragnet episode was made by Frank Conniff of Mystery Science Theater and former Mr Show and Chris Rock Show writer Mike Upchurch as a presentation pilot for Adult Swim. They’ve digitally inserted popular alt-comedians into the 1967 cop show Dragnet, and turned it into a story about bad cops trying to eradicate a powerful strain of medical marijuana. It’s technically stunning, exceeding Forrest Gump and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in both ambitio...

Etta Lopez, 31, of Sacramento is charged with assaulting a cop. What was her motivation for the unprovoked attack on the police officer you might ask? Well, she wanted to quit her smoking habit, naturally! She thought by slapping the cop, she’d be put in jail and that would help her kick the cancer sticks. “There’s easier ways to stop smoking besides hitting a cop,” Roger Spearman, a neighbor, said. Spearman, who knows Lopez says she does smoke a lot, and they used to smoke together. “I have ...

When I set on writing about 1979’s Ashanti, I was initially daunted. Not because of any issues of complex plot or obtuse dialogue, which are missing anyways, but due to one bit of research that turned up in my pre-planning notes. The bone chilling information in question, courtesy of IMDB, is that star Michael Caine has been quoted stating that it was of the worst films he has ever worked on. We’re talking in the top three and while Caine is undoubtedly a great actor, but he also undoubtedly ...

Sad to hear that Taylor Mead, underground movie star, Lower East Side fixture, bon vivant, Warhol Superstar, poet, feeder of stray cats, teller of funny stories and sweet and charming old guy died yesterday in New York at the ripe old age of 88. A gay icon who was never in the closet, Mead was the subject of a documentary Excavating Taylor Mead, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. Mead had been in the news recently over his travails with his landlord. Above, Marcel Duchamp, Ul...

Their name is Unlocking the Truth. The Brooklyn-based band consists of three 11-year-old kids who write and create their own heavy metal music. Rock on, little dudes! Here’s their Facebook page. Previously on Dangerous Minds: Hell Yeah! There is a Future for Rock ‘n’ Roll: 3 Children Play Rammstein Via reddit

Street interviews conducted by Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker in Colorado, Springs where people were asked “When did you choose to be straight?” It’s interesting to watch—you can tell by their expressions, naturally—how viscerally taken aback some of these folks are by the question. h/t Brian Morales

Credit: Tim Moyer A flock of around 40 Bald Eagles having what looks like, an eagle tailgate party around a Nissan pickup truck in Unalaska, Alaska. Apparently the pickup truck was full of dead fish. I wouldn’t want to get between these birds and their meal, uh-uh, no way, not me… Via Neatorama

Legendary music impresario and Creation Records founder, Alan McGee has announced details of his new record label 359 Music, which will be a joint venture with respected indie Cherry Red In a statement issued with co-founder of Cherry Red Iain McNay, McGee said he hoped 359 Music will provide “an outlet for new music artists that have been shut out by the system.” McGee has also pledged to listen to all submissions personally. The joint statement reads in full. Alan McGee: ‘Recently I found m...

This kid deserves a medal for sticking up for what’s right and what’s wrong with America’s educational system. Good for you, dude with the nice hair. According to an alleged fellow student in the YouTube comments, the young man in the video was seen getting high-fives after school. Via reddit

My god does this guy suck. He’s the pits! What VHS rock did the merry geniuses at Everything Is Terrible turn up to find this garden slug of comedy? As one of the commenters quipped, “I didn’t know Carlos Mencia was white and had a mullet back in the 80s.” This nameless goofball is apparently a big part of their latest found footage opus, Comic Relief Zero, made entirely out of the world’s worst stand-up comedy clips. Comic Relief Zero will be getting a sneak preview at Chicago’s Up Comedy Cl...