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‘Riches to Rags’: Long-lost album by former Replacement Bob Stinson and Bleeding
Hearts

04.21.2022
07:47 am
Topics:
Music
Tags:
Replacements
Bob Stinson


 
The following is an excerpt from the liner notes to Riches to Rags, by Bob Mehr,
the NY Times best-selling author of Trouble Boys: The True Story of the
Replacements.

The work of The Replacements’ co-founder and legendary lead guitarist, Bob
Stinson has been well chronicled since his tragic passing in 1995. In addition
to the expansions of The Replacements catalog, Stinson’s post-‘Mats work – in
the prog-psych band Static Taxi and his collaborations with punk vet Sonny
Vincent in Shotgun Rationale – have all been collected and anthologized. But
unaccounted for in that discography is the time Stinson spent as Bleeding
Hearts’ lead guitarist. 

Although Stinson’s shadow looms large over the history of the band, Bleeding
Hearts were the brainchild of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Mike Leonard.
Raised in suburban Minneapolis, Leonard cut his teeth on the punk rock of The
Clash. By his late teens he’d become a skilled guitarist with a Rolling Stones
obsession (and a magnificently exaggerated Keef-style coif to go along with it).

After moving to uptown Minneapolis, the then-21-year-old Leonard launched
Bleeding Hearts in 1990 as a trio initially, with drummer Bob Herbers and
bassist Rob Robello. Leonard was eager to expand the fledgling band into a
two-guitar lineup, but finding the right player proved tricky.




“We went through about four or five guitar players in a short span,” recalled
Leonard. “The last guy we had decided to leave the band when his car caught on
fire after a show with his guitar and amp in it. I guess he took it as a sign to
quit.”

A habitué of The Uptown bar, Leonard made the acquaintance of one of its other
regulars, Bob Stinson. “I was at The Uptown five nights a week then, and Bob was
hanging out there too,” he said. “I struck up a conversation with him. Actually
interrupted him telling a joke—I told the punchline.”

At the time, Stinson—many years removed from The Replacements—was still in the
midst of a long run with his group Static Taxi. “Static Taxi was very much Bob’s
thing musically,” said Leonard. “It was all his favorite stuff: Yes and Steve
Howe and psychedelic Beatles elements—that’s what his heart was really into, and
which didn’t have a home in The Replacements.”

“Bleeding Hearts were actually more like The Replacements, more like a classic
rock ‘n’ roll band. Since we were admittedly influenced by The Replacements, I
figured why not have Bob Stinson play guitar? When I approached him about
playing with us, he agreed.”

Stinson arrived at Bleeding Hearts’ practice space with his Fender Quad Reverb
in tow, several sheets to the wind. “We started playing together, but it was
total cacophony,” recalled Leonard. “The whole time we’re playing, Bob keeps
saying, ‘You guys should get Jamie Garner to play guitar.’ At first, we’re like,
‘No, Bob, we want you.’ But after about an hour of this cacophony, we were like,
‘Uh, Bob, who’s this Jamie Garner guy again? Can you introduce us?’”

Stinson did just that, connecting the band with Garner, a vet of Twin/Tone
Records outfit The Leatherwoods. Garner, a skilled player in his own right,
joined Bleeding Hearts and spent much of the next year playing with the band.
“Jamie was great, a phenomenal guitar player who took us up a couple notches,”
said Leonard. But by the end of 1991, Garner had decided to move to San Diego
and Bleeding Hearts second guitar slot was open once again.
 

Photo: Dan Corrigan
 
This time, Stinson—at loose ends after the breakup of Static Taxi—approached
Leonard about joining the band. “Bob saw us one or two times, and he decided he
wanted in,” said Leonard. “This time I was a little bit skeptical, but he was
determined to play with us.”

At the time Stinson was living with his mother and stepfather, on the other side
of town from Leonard. “It was the dead of winter and he trudged from way down on
East Lake Street to where I lived over on West Lake Street,” said Leonard. “It
was freezing outside, and he was wearing a light windbreaker and no hat or
gloves. By the time he got to my apartment his face was red and frozen.”




“But we sat down and played guitars and he learned every one of our songs in a
single sitting. He could be a really quick study. We banged out all the tunes
and he came up with some embellishments that worked perfectly. Came up with all
these cool harmonized guitar parts. I think he was happy to join the band and
start playing around again. We were almost trying to resurrect him in a way too;
he’d been written off by a lot of people by that time.” 

Leonard also made the generous, if perhaps unwise, move of inviting Stinson to
come live with him. “I had this sense that the only way I’d be able to keep him
in check was if he moved in with me,” said Leonard. Exactly ten years younger
than Stinson, Leonard took on the role of a younger brother as well as
caretaker. The two played together daily, roughhoused like little kids,
rehearsed with the band five times a week, and listened to music the rest of the
time.

“Bob had these stacks of speakers that he brought with him. And he’d just crank
his music so loud,” said Leonard. “Bob would be dissecting the very first ten
seconds of like an Urge Overkill song or something. Needle dropping it over and
over again. He would analyze a one minute section of a song. He really heard
music microscopically.” 

By this point, Bleeding Hearts were about to welcome a new drummer in Pat
McKenna. Stinson —who, by this point, knew how to sharpen a band—would help fine
tune the group.

“Bob really was like a musical savant. He would show the drummer how to do
little detailed parts; he would come up with really good basslines,” said
Leonard. “He was a weird talent. In a way, he couldn’t tell you what he was
doing at all—like what scale or what chord he was playing. But then I’d come
home and he’d be jamming along to Yes records, playing ‘Roundabout’ note for
note. He just had an uncanny ability.” 

In early 1993, the band began doing pre-production for their first album.
Stinson’s old friend and guitar successor in The Replacements, Slim Dunlap,
would help prep the band at its rehearsal studio. “Slim came over and recorded
some songs,” said Leonard. “He was always looking out for Bob, helping out
however he could.”

A couple months later, in March of 1993, Leonard enlisted Twin Cities engineer
Tommy Roberts—leader of the band Fauna—to cut a session with Bleeding Hearts at
Terrarium Studios.

The recording was done mostly live, and found Stinson not only working in tight
six-string tandem with Leonard, but adding other musical flourishes, like the
bongos at the end of “Gone,” and the memorable whistling that starts
“Imagination.”
 

Photo: Dan Corrigan
 
With half of a record complete, Bleeding Hearts seemed to be a band poised on
the cusp of some kind of breakthrough in 1993. The Replacements’ former manager
Peter Jesperson had picked them as a band to watch in the local alt-weekly City
Pages, and they played a triumphant show opening for Tommy Stinson’s new band
Bash & Pop at the 7th Street Entry, in what was an emotional reunion for the
Stinson family. 




But behind the scenes, Bob was suffering, dealing with a combination of his own
escalating mental and substance abuse issues—and reckoning with his son Joey’s
health problems, as the infant had been diagnosed as a quadriplegic with
cerebral palsy. “That really affected him. He’d talk about it but it was very
hard on him,” recalled Leonard. “I think that drove him into a dark place.”

A professional complication in the band’s career came with a SPIN story that was
published in the summer of 1993. Stinson, who’d been off the national radar
since leaving The Replacements seven years earlier, had agreed to a feature
interview in the magazine thinking it would help boost Bleeding Hearts profile.
But the piece would instead focus on Stinson and his troubled Replacements’
past, painting him as a lost and wasted figure, while Bleeding Hearts were
dismissed almost entirely. “We thought that was going to be a door opening for
us, but it almost felt like a door closing,” said Leonard.

The story concludes in the liner notes—by Bob Mehr, author of the New York Times
bestseller Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements—from Riches to Rags,
the long-lost album by Bleeding Hearts.

BarNoneRecords · Bleeding Hearts - Riches To Rags

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.21.2022
07:47 am
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Brown Acid: Heavy Rock from the Underground Comedown

04.18.2022
08:59 am
Topics:
Music
Tags:
Brown Acid


 
THEY’VE DONE IT AGAIN. The crate-digging maniacs behind the legendary Brown Acid
record series—Lance Barresi of Permanent Records and Daniel Hall of RidingEasy
Records, by name and reputation—have compiled yet another stellar compilation of
proto stoner metal and heavy rock obscurities.  For this, their fourteenth trip
to the seemingly bottomless fuzz box well of the late 60s/early 70s, they’ve
assembled such unknown hard rockers as Harrisburg, PA’s own The Legends
(featuring a pre-Edgar Winter Group Dan Hartman and his brother Dave); there’s
the Moogified Mijal & White (“runaway oscillators and modular synths spurt and
sputter over some Tommy James & The Shondells bubblegum garage psych”); the San
Francisco Trolley Co. (“13th Floor Elevators meets the MC5”); and West
Virginia’s Blue Creed, not a real band but a studio entity funded by coal miner
& songwriter Bill Rexroad. Their (his?) song “You Need a Friend” might be my
favorite track from this installment. Dig the sound of his guitar amp stuck
inside of a metal oil drum! And then there’s Transfer, described as a proto-punk
“mashup of the Velvet Underground and The Flamin’ Groovies.” Their number, “Play
It Cool,” is about smoking weed.

These and many more heavy rock obscurities in Brown Acid: The Fourteenth Trip.
Have a listen below. Out on 4/20, because of course it is. Order vinyl here.
 








Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.18.2022
08:59 am
|
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‘1970’: Spectacular, nearly unseen shots of Iggy Pop from an underground
magazine called ‘Earth’

04.03.2022
09:22 am
Topics:
Art
Music
Tags:
Iggy Pop


This is the shot available as a limited edition print
 
Bud Lee (1940-2016) is a great American photographer whose work has somehow been
overlooked. A prolific contributor to Esquire, Life, Rolling Stone, and other
magazines in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who regularly ran extensive
portfolios of his work, he took iconic photos of figures as varied as Warhol’s
Factory and its superstars, Tennessee Williams, Al Green, James Brown, ZZ Top
and Norman Rockwell. Lee covered the Newark riots, and the funerals of Robert
Kennedy Jr and Martin Luther King Jr for Life, trailed transgender performance
troupe the Cockettes from San Francisco to New York for their ill-fated
off-Broadway debut, and shot production stills on the set of Fellini’s
Satyricon, Alice’s Restaurant, and Fiddler on the Roof.

Lee ‘retired’ from magazine work in the early ‘70s and and moved to Iowa, where
he founded the Iowa Photographers’ Workshop, as a companion program to the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop. He later moved to Tampa, Florida, where he married art
teacher Peggy Howard and started a family. He became very active in the local
arts scene around Tampa, Ybor City and Plant City, helping to stage a number of
outrageous happenings, as the Artists and Writers Ball, an annual themed
costumed ball that harnessed the same freaky anything-goes energy had had
experienced in the company of the Cockettes and on Fellini’s movie sets. An
aspiring filmmaker, Lee also shot a no-budget remake of Gone With The Wind with
a cast entirely made up of children from local schools.

In August 1970, Lee turned his lens on Iggy Pop while attending one of the
Stooges’ legendary shows at Ungano’s in New York, which was recorded by Stooges
A&R, Danny Fields, heavily-bootlegged, and reported on extensively by
underground rock magazines like Creem. During the show, backstage, and even at
Iggy’s digs in the Chelsea Hotel, Lee took a series of incredible, candid photos
of the Stooges frontman at the very height of his ‘Ig’-ness. A few were
published in a short-lived underground magazine entitled Earth (as seen here).
Most have never been seen.

Bud Lee’s estate, which oversees and manages his archive, has begun releasing
limited edition, hand-numbered archival prints of Lee’s work as a way of raising
funds to preserve his extensive archive of images and help realize special
projects, including a planned monograph of his work. The second print in this
series—the first was an amazing portrait of Al Green—which is only being made
available for one week only, is a spectacular image of Iggy lying prostrate
among the audience at Ungano’s. You can purchase a print HERE.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cover of the short-lived Earth magazine.
 


Posted by Richard Metzger
|
04.03.2022
09:22 am
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The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart speaks to the makers of post-punk doc ‘Rip It Up +
Start Again’

03.25.2022
09:12 am
Topics:

Tags:
The Pop Group
Mark Stewart
post-punk


 


“BALLSED IT UP AND BEGAN AGAIN”
A TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE SCREAMPLAY




(SPOILER ALERT – SCENE 1: – MOSTLY FICTIONAL – SCENE 2: 100% FACTS)

Written by Mark Stewart, answers by Russell Craig Richardson & Nikolaos Katranis

MARK STEWART IN CONVERSATION WITH FILMMAKERS RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON & NIKOLAOS
KATRANIS



INT.  LACK-LUSTRE RECORDING STUDIO SUITE, IN LOCAL STATION ‘RADIO ZIDER’. BUILT
IN ‘80s, STAINED BEYOND REPAIR IN SHADES OF ‘COFFEE & CREAM’.  SOMEWHERE IN THE
WILD, WILD, WEST, OF SOMERSET, 2022. DISSECTED SPLIT SCREEN SHOT. STUDIO GLASS
BETWEEN RECORDING BOOTH AND CONTROL ROOM RUNS VERTICALLY DOWN THE MIDDLE. IN THE
CONTROL ROOM IS A TV SCREEN THAT CLINGS TO THE WALL BRACKET WITH ½ ROLL OF DUCT
TAPE AND A WING AND A PRAYER. IT ROLLS 24/7 WITH PRE-RECORDED MUSIC
VIDEOS/SHOWBIZ & CELEBRITY GOSSIP. MARK STEWART’S MIC IS PERMANENTLY ON.  SA 1 &
SA 2’S ARE OFF, ALTERNATING TO ON, WHEN STATED.  NIGHT.



SCENE 1



MARK STEWART (Peter Pan of THE POP GROUP), casually dressed in one of his band’s
T-shirts emblazoned with the title of their track “She’s Beyond Good and Evil’
and a ‘man/cash/bum’ bag round his waist. He stands,  one side of the glass in
the recording booth.  He grapples to familiarise himself with his new, temporary
studio surroundings (courtesy of his insurance company), after having been
forced to evacuate during a flood, from his usual state-of-the-art studio of
choice – in the Hamlet of EVANELPUS. Excited, in anticipation of hosting a
transatlantic call with (Filmmakers RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON & NIKOLAOS
KRATRANIS), he is committed to creating a convivial atmosphere for his 2 guests
and collaborators.  Radio Zider’s Producer is on extended leave (again).  In his
absence, his 2 frazzled Sound Assistants (SA 1 & SA 2), deputise, behind the
desk in the control room. SA 2 (Millennial) irascible, dressed in ‘street gear’,
stands twiddling his knobs. SA 1 (Gen Z) lacks confidence by comparison to his
slightly senior colleague, dressed in ‘smart casual’, he sits perched on edge of
seat, neck craned, firmly focused on TV screen. With their once high-hopes of
high-earnings now jaded and putrid pallors further faded, they no longer
consider sharing personal details such as their names with their Manager’s
clientele, necessary. 


MARK STEWART: (crooning into mic)
Testing, testing, Mario Testino… testing, testing, tes-tos-te-rone, are you
there?
SA 1:(turns mic on and yells)
YOU’RE LIVE
SA 2:
Fucking Muppet.  What’s his band called again, Poptastic?
SA 1:(with mic still on in unexpected, but self-congratulatory pride)
The Pop Group
MARK STEWART:
(beaming) Yeay, that’s us.  Freaks R Us.
SA 2: (stoney faced)
That figures.  Speak for yourself you tosser.  Never heard of ‘em.
NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: (voice down the line)
Hey, Mark, Hi.  Good to hear you. Busy? What have you got on right now?
MARK STEWART: (chortling)
Thermals and a face-mask… Of the cucumber variety you understand?
RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON & NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS:
(silence)
SA 1: (squinting into recording booth, his eyes deceiving him)
What did he say? What the…? What is it? A strap on?
SA 2:
Nah, you plank. He ain’t got nothin’ on, other than his handbag and that dumb
fucking Tee.  He’s getting ‘em at it.  I pity ‘em. What does it say?! ‘She’s
Beyond What?  Beyond anyone with a brain, for sure. Who is this clown? He’s
worse than pissing Partridge.
MARK STEWART: (cheerily)
Jo-king! Seriously guys? I’m groaning under the sheer weight of it all.
(laughing)
SA 1: (hesitantly)
My best mate, says his Dad’s mate, is one of his homies.
SA 2:
Oh yeah, who’s that then?
SA 1:
Daddy-G.
SA 2: (scoffs in incredulity)
Bollocks is he.  G’s super-cool.  He wouldn’t entertain this geezer, G’s
massive, literally mate.
SA 1:
I know his Dad, he wouldn’t BS, he’s solid.
SA 2:
What in – shit?

(SA 1 looks disheartened)




MARK STEWART:
Guys? Russell? Nikolaos? Did you catch that stateside? I’m groaning under the
weight of all our gifts, that are ready to go.
SA 2:
Now he fancies himself as one of Santa’s little ‘elpers – Jee-zus. YOU’RE NOT
RELEVANT MATE, WHO YOU TRYIN’ TO KID?!
RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON & NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: (together)
Hey Mark, great, got you back, we can hear you now.
MARK STEWART:
Cool, Parkinson had nothing on me, you know.(Laughter)
SA 1:(Suddenly excited, fixated by TV, tugging SA 2’s shirt, pointing to TV)
LOOK!!!! Seen what he’s wearing?!! It can’t be, can it?… It Kanye, ye know.

(SA 2 turns to face TV screen, eyes wide)

SA 2: (reading, in disbelief,)
She’s…Beyo… Fuck me!
SA 1: (feeling self-assured)
No thanks.
SA 2:
Fucking fake news!!! Fucking Photoshop!!!

SCENE 2

MARK STEWART: Russ, Nik, OK, we’re ready to roll and in control again now. 
Sorry about that, few technical issues there.  I blame the scrumpy.  The locals
can’t get enough of it. “Let’s start at the very beginning…” So, joking aside,
I’m stoked to be catching up with you. Having now had the pleasure of working
with you both twice – firstly on your film Rip It Up And Start Again and
secondly on the making of the video with myself and my collaborators – Stephen
Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire, Wrangler) and Eric Random (Nico and The Faction) –
which accompanies my new single Cast No Shadow (taken from the forthcoming album
VS).  For context, I should add that Cast No Shadow was made in response to Rip
It Up + Start Again, which in turn, you both made in response to Simon Reynold’s
2005 book of the same name.  The film boasts a wealth of material previously
unearthed, which is a credit to yourselves and your contributors – of which
there are too numerous to mention here – so will instead just urge people to go
and explore, follow the links.  It’s a real treat to turn the tables – as a
Clairvoyant might say – and conduct a Directors’ Q&A with you both.  You’re
busy, I know, so I’ll try to butt out and stay on-piste.  Here’s a starter for
10, to both of you: What was your personal mission statement prior to embarking
on this journey, in your joint creation of the rarified gem that is your
Post-Punk documentary film –  Rip It Up + Start Again?

NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: The era was pointedly anti-star, and if there is ever going
to be a comprehensive view of this era as a whole, then that should be the
approach.  The central character of this film is the Zeitgeist itself.  There
seemed to be one, across the world, and we are letting the artists of that time
show us its source and shape, its sound and flavour.  Also, many of the best
acts put out a record or two and it was over… It was an ocean of artists, not an
Olympic pantheon… a constellation of daring sorties rather than a field of
careerists. Once “stars” inevitably did emerge, you then have New Wave.




MARK STEWART: Truth. Russell?

RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: We wanted to do a film where the protagonists
themselves are given time to tell it from their perspective – and to follow
their leads on what and who was important from inside the scene(s).  Though
there was no formal ‘movement’, it’s surprisingly and hearteningly clear that
there most definitely was this Zeitgeist, stretching from the rust belt in
America, through the grey 70s of the UK, and on to culturally reconstructed
Germany.  It ended up being an incredibly fertile and diverse field.

MARK STEWART: What was Post-Punk for you at the time ‘78 onwards?

RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: I came to London in early 1979 and immediately fell in
with a disparate bunch of filmmakers and musicians.  At that time we’d all been
shaken up / inspired by the energy of punk, though not necessarily fully
convinced of its longevity, or its ability in purely musical terms to go the
distance.  Nobody called it post-punk at that time, obviously, in fact I don’t
think I even heard the term until Simon’s book came out in the mid 2000s.  But
there was new music coming out week after week – as singles – no albums yet –
all by new artists, basically people you’d never heard of.  It was very pure in
some cases and I think that’s what grew into the post-punk envelope, but there
were a lot of chancers, hopping on the punk bandwagon, and many musicians who
were pretty decent, but not really coming up with anything radically new – just
embellishing their previous style with a bit of spikiness.  I’d put some people
I really liked in that group, like Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Graham Parker or
bands like Dexys and the Specials (though I think these latter did break out
into something fantastic, later on, with ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘In The Studio’).  I
even had a few singles by The Police!

But I was much more interested in the very spare and odd sounds that were coming
out from Scritti Politti, Gang of Four, The Pop Group, Rip, Rig & Panic, The
Cure (yes – they were a key band at the start.  ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ was a
real landmark work). The Fall would require a whole interview of their own, as I
am a fanatic, so for now will just say ‘Hex Enduction Hour’.  There was a gap
between the first Public Image single (stunning) and the first major label album
by one of the ‘new bands’ (which might have been Go4’s ‘Entertainment!’?) when
everything was just 7” singles.  There was no real hierarchy, and you didn’t
know who anyone was, or where they came from anyway.  Just lightning blasts from
every direction:  Skank Bloc Bologna, Health & Efficiency, She Is Beyond Good &
Evil, At Home He’s A Tourist, Transmission, Map Reference. It’s really an
embarrassment of riches crammed into a two year period.  When bands did get
their albums out, there were some stunning things like ‘Y’, ‘Deceit’,
‘Odyshape’, ‘154’, ‘Dub Housing’ or ‘The Modern Dance’, and ‘Kangaroo?’ by Red
Crayola.  And, The Slits’ ‘Cut’.  Then ‘Metal Box’ was another huge poke in the
eye from PiL, who didn’t do much, but what they did do, was impeccable.

NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: In retrospect, I can see that my affinity for what came to
be known as “post-punk” began – as a kid growing up in Detroit – as a
fascination with the Sixties outsiders, such as Velvet Underground, the Stooges,
and Zappa/Captain Beefheart, as well as the glam futurism of Bowie, Roxy Music
and Eno. This same set of artists (name-checked repeatedly in these interviews)
set me up quickly to absorb the fast changing worlds of Wire, Pere Ubu, Cabaret
Voltaire, and Talking Heads/Eno, the dark romance of Joy Division and the Virgin
Prunes, the dub-noir of A Certain Ratio and “Metal Box”, the scabrous No Wave
New Yorkers, and the Teutonic electronica of D.A.F. and… and here I think you
have to include Kraftwerk and Suicide, pre-post-punkers in full stride with the
rest of the kids…




MARK STEWART: Breathe fellas breathe. What do you see as major acts carrying on
the post-punk tradition these days? Russell?

RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: I’m too out of touch these days to do more than sound
like a diligent Guardian reader. Nowadays – in the middle of another fashion
wave, there’s a few bands I rather enjoy, like Yard Act or Dry Cleaning.  (Wet
Leg were amusing – mainly for their name, actually, and some decent songs, but
they seem too curated already.) And I’m sure Fontaines D.C. will go somewhere,
not least because for every bit I love, there’s a bit I find too close to U2. 
But still. Interestingly (or not) there was a conscious or subconscious
influence on dub in almost every ‘original’ post punk band, but as far as I can
tell, none at all in any of the new ones.  That stream of influence seems to be
absent. Curious.  But you hear its lack immediately.  I don’t have much of a
background in dub, and what I do know was brought to me via post-punk bands in
the early Scrits, the Slits, the Pop Group, or A Certain Ratio. Once the initial
scenes had matured, I kept noticing that the best and most fascinating bands of
all seemed to secretly source Post-Punk: Sonic Youth, Pixies, PJ Harvey, through
to late 80s and 90s, and acts like Portishead, Massive Attack and Bjork.


NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: My Bloody Valentine ‘Isn’t Anything and Loveless’, Tricky
‘Maxinquay’ and ‘Pre-Millennium Tension’, the Pixies ‘Doolittle’, Stereolab
‘Dots and Loops’, Broadcast/Focus Group ‘Broadcast and the Focus Group Examine
Witch Cults of the Radio Age’, Aphex Twin ‘Selected Ambient works Vols 1 and 2’,
Boards of Canada ‘Geogaddi’ and ‘A Beautiful Place Out in the Country’,  the
Focus Group ‘Hey Let Loose Your Love’, Laurel Halo ‘Quarantine’, P J Harvey ‘To
Bring you My Love’ and ‘Uh Huh Her’, Burial ‘Burial’ and ‘Untrue’, Demdike Stare
‘Elemental Parts 1-4’, Meat Beat Manifesto ‘Satyricon’. Record labels: Ghost Box
Hyperdub, 4AD.

MARK STEWART: Choice stuff cool. What do you think of / how do you define a
D.I.Y ethos?

RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: There’s something about young people and music being
separated by heavy fire doors in the mid-seventies.  Punk, and then Post-Punk,
was the movement from watching to playing, but in 1975 there wasn’t much of a
path forward for beginners and all their inventiveness and enthusiasm.  I think
you (Mark) said to us: ‘it was easier to imagine becoming a footballer than a
musician’. Well, Punk dropkicked that one out of touch. 

MARK STEWART: Ha, I’m hardly George Best.




RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: I’d say that D.I.Y starts with whatever you find lying
around – not just in terms of the actual instruments: guitar, bass, drums, voice
– but also musical form: pop singles, bits of funk, school hymns, doggerel, your
parents’ jazz records, what you heard coming out of shops on the high streets in
the cities, etc. etc. and under all of that, the fact that you didn’t need to be
a musician to be mad about music. The next step being, ultimately, some idiots
had to make a record and get it distributed, without being millionaires. Was it
Desperate Bicycles? Or Buzzcocks? Or Swell Maps? Or Factory Records sampler?
Scritti Politti’s ‘How to…’ liner notes? I don’t think you can separate out all
those strands – everyone did it on a shoestring, crappy jobs, a few quid stuck
away, living on the dole, or in a squat.

I remember there was an awful lot of talking. A lot of reading and a lot of
debate.  Not only about politics, but film, photography, art, personal identity,
sexuality, as well as music. Cheap housing.  One thing that emerged naturally
from that lo-life is that bands tended not to have leaders – there were
certainly some very strong personalities – but it’s hard to think of any solo
‘stars’.  And a lot more women formed or joined bands.  Certainly not a 50/50
parity, but way more than say pub rock or glam prog bands of just a couple of
years before.  Punk was somewhere between.  Not just as ‘sexy singers of Top Of
The Pops’ either: I’ve noticed a weird propensity for female bass players: Tina
Weymouth, Gayle Advert; Gina Birch; Tessa Pollitt, Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Sara
Lee…

NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: Forget Mark Perry’s “Here’s three chords, start a band”-
Wire showed me “Here’s ONE chord, build a new world!” Apply that idea to
everything!

MARK STEWART: Yeeeeeeesssss!  What is ‘messthetics’?

NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS: As a kid in Detroit, somehow that term didn’t trickle down
to me, until the whole era was over… I will defer to Russell’s able verbal
skills.

RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON: The main difference between D.I.Y and ‘messthetics’ is
that the first in an inventiveness born from necessity.  Whereas the latter is
an applied philosophy, whatever your means.  This Heat, for example, could make
a piece from bashing bits of sheet metal and pipes (Metal) or use a 24 Track
console, but play the desk with faders (24 track loop), or they could equally
use a home-made cassette sampler (6 cassette machines tied together, playing
pre-recorded loops, and put through a small mixer) to introduce a random tapemix
as a random instrument.  Allow the faults and the unpredictability to shine
through.  Have resolute non-musicians on stage.  That would be ‘messthetics’. 
Keeping the rough edges and not drowning under heavy production gloss.  [There’s
a close parallel in filmmaking, too: those years spent trying to do things for
zero money meant everyone had to be able to do everything with at least a
minimum degree of competence – people just became ‘filmmakers’.  Video promised
to level all that even more, but in the end, it didn’t: you can now spend
millions of a video production with a massive crew.  The Danish ‘Dogme 95’
movement were very post-punk, and a lot might be learned from adapting their
commandments to music.  There’s probably a book to be written somewhere in there
about manifestos too.]

MARK STEWART: Sorry I can’t provide you with any of the luxuries that the BBC
provide their Desert Island Discs guests – and I will deviate from their format,
by stating no explanations or apologies please, when now, finally, I ask you
both: What’s your post-punk playlist?




RUSSELL CRAIG RICHARDSON:
Gang of Four: At Home He’s A Tourist
Scritti Politti: Skank Bloc Bologna
The Pop Group: She Is Beyond Good and Evil
This Heat: Health & Efficiency
Public Image Ltd.: Poptones
The Fall: New Puritan
Wire: Map Reference
Joy Division (sorry, I’m from Manchester): Love Will Tear Us Apart
Pere Ubu (off Modern Romance): The Real World
Instant Hit – The Slits
The Void – The Raincoats
Shack Up – A Certain Ratio
10.15 Saturday Night – The Cure
Eugene – Essential Logic
The Milkmaid – Red Crayola (off Kangaroo?)
Private Armies – Viv Goldman
Alphaville – The Monochrome Set
You – Delta 5
It’s Obvious – Au Pairs
Leave the Capitol – The Fall

NIKOLAOS KRATRANIS:
Definitely 2 lists, here – UK and US perspectives.
This Heat – 24-Track Loop
Cabaret Voltaire – Eddie’s Put, Loosen the Clamp
Wire – Our Swimmer
Young Marble Giants – Eating Noddemix, Choci Loni
The Contortions – Dish It Out, Almost Black
DNA – Egomaniac’s Kiss
Rosa Yemen – Rosa Vertov
Swell Maps – Let’s Build A Car, Midget Submarines
Ike Yard – Night After Night
Suicide – Radiation, Cheree
D.A.F.: – Ein Bisschen Krieg, Osten Währt am Längsten.
Byrne & Eno – America is Waiting, Mountain of Needles
The Fall – Impression of J Temperance, New Face in Hell
Ultravox – My Sex
Talking Heads – Warning Signs, Cities, Not Seen
Public Image Ltd. – Poptones, Public Image
Pere Ubu – I Will Wait, The Book Is On The Table.

MARK STEWART: Thanks fellas, respect. it’s been a gas.  Over and out.
&nbsp:






Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.25.2022
09:12 am
|
1 Comment

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Is Keith Richards’ solo album ‘Main Offender’ the best Rolling Stones album of
the 90s?

03.17.2022
09:46 pm
Topics:
Music
Tags:
Keith Richards


Photo by Claude Gassian

For much of the 1980s, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were on the outs. The pair
were feuding about the direction the Stones’ music would take. Jagger wanted to
modernize the band’s sound, while Richards wanted to stick with the blues rock
formula which had already worked—and worked very well for them indeed—for the
past three decades. Subsequently, new music by the Rolling Stones was not
forthcoming for several years, and the 1985 sessions for the desultory Dirty
Work album were notably strained, with Jagger putting his vocals over the
finished instrumental tracks apart from the rest of the group. It was rare that
all five band members were ever in the studio at the same time.




Signed as a solo artist on the back of the Stones move to Columbia-CBS
Records—something the rest of the group was initially unaware of—Jagger produced
She’s the Boss in 1985 alongside a star-studded cast of musical luminaries that
included Bill Lasswell, Sly & Robbie, Jeff Beck, Nile Rodgers, Herbie Hancock
and Pete Townshend. Richards was pissed about what he saw as Jagger’s lack of
commitment to their band. When Jagger refused a tour to promote Dirty Work,
choosing to concentrate instead on his solo career, things between the Glimmer
Twins deteriorated even further.

Restless at the lack of musical activity, Richards worked as a bandleader on
director Taylor Hackford’s Chuck Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll,
assembling a supergroup for two concerts that included Eric Clapton, Etta James,
Linda Ronstadt and Berry’s longtime songwriting partner pianist Johnnie Johnson.
The drummer for the band was a young musician by the name of Steve Jordan who
had played in the Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman house
bands. Richards and Jordan got along great musically—Jordan had already
performed on Dirty Work—and formed the X-Pensive Winos for the purpose of
recording Richards’ first solo album, the well-received Talk is Cheap, and a
support tour (documented on the Live at the Hollywood Palladium, 15 December
1988 album.)
 

Steve Jordan and Keith Richards in 1992, photo by Claude Gassian.
 
The X-Pensive Winos were put on hold when bridges were finally mended between
Jagger and Richards prior to the Rolling Stones induction into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in early 1989. The tour in support of the Steel Wheels album was
their biggest to date, seeing the Stones trekking all over the globe and raking
in around $200 million. When the tour ended, Richards, feeling creatively
energized, set about writing songs again with Steve Jordan that eventually
became 1992’s Main Offender album.

For Main Offender the X-Pensive Winos added guitarist Waddy Wachtel to the
group. Wachtel, a musical sideman of some renown who has worked with the likes
of Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Warren Zevon, Bryan Ferry, and
Jackson Browne, was brought in to co-produce the album with Richards and Jordan,
and he co-wrote four of the albums songs with them. Main Offender was critically
acclaimed, and featured some fantastic performances, but just barely made the
bottom rungs of the US album charts. The subsequent tour, however, was a big
success, but the X-Pensive Winos were put on ice again when the Rolling Stones
regrouped for the Voodoo Lounge album and the $320 million grossing world tour
of the same name.  The Winos would eventually return in 2015 for the Crosseyed
Heart album.

Today marks the release of the Super Deluxe 30th anniversary edition of Main
Offender from BMG. The box set is presented in a unique art book format with the
album pressed on “smoke” color vinyl. Main Offender has been newly remastered
under the supervision of Steve Jordan. Also included is the Winos Live in London
’92 album (exclusive to this set) and an 88-page book with never-before-seen
photos, and a packet of reproduction promo materials.

CLICK HERE TO WIN A FREE COPY OF THE MAIN OFFENDER SUPER DELUXE BOX SET FROM
BMG.

The 1992 music video for the “Wicked As It Seems” single.




Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.17.2022
09:46 pm
|
6 Comments

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Dennis Bovell MBE on the Pop Group’s ‘Y in Dub,’ with exclusive live audio!

03.14.2022
07:40 am
Topics:
Music
Punk
Reggae
Tags:
The Pop Group
Dennis Bovell


Dennis Bovell, Mark Stewart, and Gareth Sager (photo by Chiara Meattelli)
 
On Y in Dub, released digitally last year, producer Dennis “Blackbeard” Bovell
MBE and the Pop Group revisit every track on their 1979 Radar Records album Y
and single “She Is Beyond Good and Evil,” creating looking-glass complements to
the originals that seem long overdue. In advance of the album’s vinyl release on
April 8, Bovell gave Dangerous Minds a tour of Y in Dub‘s vast, echoing mental
space. 

If you can cast your mind back to when you first encountered the Pop Group, what
was it about them that made you want to work with them? What were your first
impressions of the band?

My first impressions of the band were that, here was a bunch of budding young
musicians who could handle jazz riffing and were also into, not tuneful singing,
but meaningful lyrics, you know. I think to say something is better than to be
beautifully in tune and saying nothing. I applauded their militancy and their
approach to music in general, their likes and their dislikes. And in fact, later
on in life, Bruce Smith, the drummer, joined Linton Kwesi Johnson and me with
the Dub Band.

I wanted to ask about that too, because I think the Pop Group and Linton Kwesi
Johnson co-headlined a number of shows together, right?

Absolutely.

Can you tell me about that? Were you at the controls ever for the Pop Group—




No, no. I had worked with both of them, and then by that time I was, like, more
in the studio person than being out on live gigs, because by then, I had had it
with live gigs, to be honest, you know: the confusion, the lack of organization,
the long traveling hours and then being expected to perform like a circus flea,
you know, I’d had it with that by then, and they hadn’t! So they were about to
experience that, while I was about to crawl back into the studio with my normal
self, work at my own pace.

Are you maybe ten years older then they are? They were quite young when they
recorded this.

They still are quite young. [Laughter] I never really thought about how much
older I was than them, but I guess that made them listen to me as the producer.

Nowadays, when I listen to the original record, but also this dub set, it
strikes me that they were such young people—I think Mark was still a teenager.

I think he was about seventeen or something, yeah.

But the music in a way—I know what you’re saying about everything not being
perfectly in tune—but at the same time the music is kind of sophisticated.

Absolutely.

It doesn’t sound to me like a bunch of young people playing.

Well, a lot of people said that about Coltrane. [Laughs] He was never on time,
he was never in tune, but he was genius.
 

 
So how did you approach this dub set of Y?

First of all, we made sure the tapes were still playable, were still audible,
and then we passed them over from analog to digital files. File by file, right?
Each file: the kick drum file, switch it over, the snare drum—the whole
recording. And then we went into a digital room with a young lad called Dave
McEwen, and he kind of helped us to put them on a digital level where I could
actually revisit each channel and have full control over it, as it were.




So I had the files transferred to digital files, and so we could manipulate them
on the Pro Tools level. And then we put them in a computer and then sent them
back onto an analog desk, right? So I was just using the computer to synchronize
the files, but when the files came back, they were coming back to an analog
desk, and I was equalizing them as I felt for that room, for those speakers, and
giving the right amount of delay, et cetera, just to kind of take us back into
the analog age, but using digital files.

More after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Oliver Hall
|
03.14.2022
07:40 am
|
2 Comments

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‘Wormwood’: The Bible according to the Residents

03.07.2022
07:21 am
Topics:
Art
Belief
Music
Tags:
The Residents


‘KILL HIM!’: ‘Wormwood’ on stage (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)

The new Wormwood box set, the latest installment in Cherry Red’s pREServed
series of Residents reissues, runs to nine CDs etched with nearly nine hours of
music. Not quite James Earl Jones Reads the Bible territory (sixteen CDs,
nineteen hours), it nevertheless presents the Residents’ 1998 biblical epic at a
scale appropriate to the form. Perhaps God, sufficiently enraged by humanity to
send plagues, pestilences, fires, and hurricanes, has also seen fit to unleash
this mighty flood of scriptural content, which makes the meager 203 minutes of
the Charlton Heston Presents the Bible four-DVD set look like a positive insult
to the Almighty.

Wormwood: Curious Stories from the Bible, by one count the Residents’
twenty-third album, draws most of its lurid tales of rape, incest, and murder
from the books of the Old Testament (though they also give us a Judas who
understands betraying Jesus as his divine calling, as well as a
five-and-a-half-minute instrumental based on Revelation). There are surprising
takes on familiar stories—the same chapter from the Book of Daniel that inspired
Johnny Cash to write “Belshazzar” moved the Residents to write “God’s Magic
Finger,” and “Bathsheba Bathes” gives a decidedly less pious take on David than
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”—and songs based on tales few other songwriters have
dared to tell, like Jael pounding a tent peg into Sisera’s skull while he
sleeps.

Though Wormwood boasts more circumcisions than any rock record since Saccharine
Trust’s Surviving You, Always, not to mention the winning contributions of Molly
Harvey and Carla Fabrizio, it has never been my favorite Residents album. But
listening to this box set has given me a new appreciation of the size and
ambition of the Wormwood project, and how fruitful this period was for the
group. In context with eight discs of supplementary material, the original album
comes to seem like a preliminary sketch for a sprawling creation that kept the
Residents busy for about four years, and included some remarkable work.




The Residents do not, of course, grant interviews, but I was able to contact
Homer Flynn, the president of the Cryptic Corporation, and Richard Anderson, who
oversees the pREServed series at Cherry Red Records, and subject each of them to
a battery of haranguing and hairsplitting questions about matrix numbers, obi
strips and session dates. Choice excerpts follow. I should mention that Richard
drew my attention to a Residents compilation LP that had escaped my notice
called Leftovers Again?!, issued for Record Store Day last year. It starts with
a concentrate of the legendary, unreleased early recording Rusty Coathangers for
the Doctor and proceeds through material from the Residents’ tape archive
throughout the Seventies. Much of the LP consists of “RDX” (as in “redux,” I
believe) mixes, new presentations of the original recordings of beloved
Residents songs that often feature sounds from the multitrack tapes that didn’t
make the final mix.


The Residents, 1998 (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)

Homer Flynn

 
As it happens, I was in the audience at the beginning of the tour in Boston, so
I didn’t really realize how much the material evolved and changed after that.
Could you talk a little bit about how the show changed when it went on the road?

Well, you know, Residents stuff usually does change. They do albums and
then—maybe this is typical of a lot of artists, I don’t know—but it’s kind of
like, when somebody writes and records something, in a lot of ways that’s just a
kind of first, brief glimpse into the material, and then as they start to
perform it, they find out more and more what they feel like it wants to be, and
more how it works, and particularly how it works in front of an audience. So
honestly it’s kind of an unpredictable path that it takes, many times.

Another example: when they were doing the Cube-E tour, which was like ten years
earlier, you know, the second half of it was all Elvis songs, and one that just
really came to life so much in performance was “Teddy Bear.” You know, Elvis
sang it as such a light, upbeat pop song, and the Residents just felt like there
were all these really incredible, almost like S&M undertones in it, and that
then really came out in terms of the performance. So it’s kind of typical, I
think, in a lot of ways with them for these things to change.

Part of being in front of an audience, maybe, seeing what works and what
doesn’t?




Exactly. What brings out the attention and reaction of an audience makes a lot
of difference.
 

‘Mr. Skull Superstar’ (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)
 
There are a lot of things I learned reading the liner notes to this box set. I
guess [show opener] “Nober” was only played in Boston and then dropped from the
set.

I’m not really sure what the thought was behind that, at this point. Maybe they
felt like it was a little too long or a little too slow of a way to get into the
set, and they felt like they needed something that grabbed the audience’s
attention more? But, like I say, you’re reminding me of something I’d long
forgotten about, really.

Well, in the Fillmore show—maybe you can help me sort out the chronology, here,
Homer, I think the Fillmore show came before the tour?

Yeah, I think so. I think everything was put together in San Francisco at the
Fillmore, and then they took it on the road.

The live version of “KILL HIM!” towards the beginning of that is really a fierce
piece of music.

Well, I think that was one of the stronger pieces from that show and from that
album.




Did that show have the big gamelan orchestra?

It had the gamelan in San Francisco, yeah. And then I think they came back later
and did some shows at the Brava Theater in San Francisco, and I think they
brought the gamelan back for that again, too. But once again, it was a long time
ago, and while I’ve been through the box set, I haven’t actually revisited and
listened to all that stuff again. So you’re more up on it and more familiar with
it at this point than I am.
 

A Resident (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)
 
If you can remember, then, maybe you can talk about the origin of the project.
Did the Residents read the King James Bible, or how did the project come into
being?

Well, they were looking for a project, and for the Residents, often they start
with some kind of a concept. Things can work in different ways; sometimes they
just start recording, and the concept finds itself in that process. But often,
they would like to try to find a concept first, and I don’t remember exactly
where the idea of the Bible came from, but when it came out, it was like
instantaneously: “Yes! Yes! The Bible!”

You’re looking at a bunch of people who all were, you know, White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants growing up in the South, and they moved away from that; almost
needless to say, they’re not really that religious. But they started seeing the
Bible as so much of the underpinnings of Western culture on so many levels, and
the more research they did with it, the more true that became. There’s just a
million things in terms of so much of our laws, and morals, and stories, even
people’s names, people that you run into on a very common basis. You find out,
this woman’s name is Ruth; okay, well, that comes from the Bible. And there’s so
many like that, it then became a very fascinating subject to explore and then
dig into.

And I think particularly, once again, so much emphasis over recent culture has
been put on the New Testament, which is Jesus, and love, and all that. But the
really meaty stuff is the old stuff. That’s what really got them excited.

I remember wondering at the time if the Residents ever felt overwhelmed by the
heaviness of the material. It’s not like the Residents’ material is always
happy, but this is just like unrelieved rape, murder, God wants more foreskins—




Yeah, mountains of foreskins. Yeah, right, exactly. I think they were kind of
blown away by a lot of it, honestly. But once again, that just reinforced that
decision to be moving in that direction, using that as content for their music.

When they were choosing the stories, were they looking for anything in
particular? Was it the stories that jumped off the page?

They did research. One of the things they weren’t necessarily aware of—it’s
obvious, I guess, when you think about it, but they weren’t necessarily aware of
it—you know, what we call the Old Testament is the Jewish Bible, and it’s kind
of ironic in a way that you can have these ideological conflicts between
Christians and Jews when they all kind of base so much of their religion on the
same writing. But there was a book that they found that was written by a rabbi.
I’ve had reasons, for interviews like this, where I’ve wanted to name that book
and I have not been able to locate it. I even looked on Amazon at one time
trying to find it, I don’t know if it’s still in print or not. But this rabbi
went through all of these Old Testament stories and brought out the deeper
meaning in so many of them, so much of the stuff that was buried or kind of
glossed over. In a lot of ways, that was probably the primary source of a lot of
the material that they chose.
 

Detail from an early print on the ‘W***** B*** Album’ label (via Discogs)
 
Well, you mentioned that the Residents aren’t super-religious, but there does
seem to be a preoccupation—I mean, not exclusively, the Residents’ catalog is so
huge—but it does seem that the theme of religion comes up. At the end of that
Mole Show video, there’s the joke Penn Jillette tells that one of the Residents
told him, “Why did the little moron resurrect Christ?” Do you have any idea
about the context of that joke?

I know exactly what you’re talking about: “Why did the little moron resurrect
Christ? To get to the other side.” And it’s one of those kind of jokes that,
it’s funny on so many levels, once you stop and think about it? I certainly
remember that, but I’m drawing a blank trying to think of what the origin of it
was.

You know, another thing that was inspiring to them in terms of the Wormwood
choice is, the Residents in general are not especially political, but this was
around the time that the religious right started, the very beginning, I think,
of it starting to become a political force. Which now, God, has turned into who
knows what, but certainly not positive from my perspective or the Residents’.

But there’s so much hypocrisy involved in that. You know, I went to the
Methodist Church when I was young. I think of so much of what the rhetoric and
the dialogue and the content was, and it was so much about love and inclusion at
that time, and they pretty much stayed away from politics. And it’s gone so far
away from that. I think that the Residents, in some ways, were kind of delighted
to pull out these weird, dark Bible stories, to kind of put it in the face of
the religious right that would just as soon pretend that stuff didn’t exist.
 

via residents.com




This was the end of a period of not touring for the Residents. I wonder what
their sense of being on the road was—there’s that funny version of the Grand
Funk song [“we’re coming to your town, we’re gonna worship it down”]. But
there’s a sense in which it’s the most traditional form of American show
business to go on the road with a bunch of Bible stories. Do you have any
insight into how they felt about that, or if they perceived themselves as
participating… it’s not that far from a kind of revival show.

Well, yeah, in a way, I can see what you’re talking about. It’s almost like it’s
an anti-revival show.

Yeah.

But in a way that kind of doubles back on itself and becomes sort of the same
thing. They really weren’t seeing, I don’t think, that much implication in it.
That Boston show, as I remember, there were people that protested that. There
were maybe a handful, very few, instances of something like that. But from the
Residents’ point of view, other than to their fans, they consider themselves to
be fairly invisible, and consequently don’t warrant that much attention from the
culture at large. So they never really had any sense that that would garner that
much attention. And for the most part it didn’t, really. They’ve done other
things, the whole Third Reich ‘n Roll stuff, whatever; it got a little outrage
here and there, but on the other hand, it was pretty much ignored.

It seems like some of the outrage comes up in Berkeley. [Jim Knipfel’s liner
notes mention that a Wormwood date in Berkeley was suddenly canceled.]

Well, and that’s where it came up for Third Reich ‘n Roll.




At Rather Ripped, right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, Rather Ripped was one of the first stores to
really push and promote the Residents’ music, and it was the fifth anniversary
of the store, and they said, “Okay, you can have the window of the store, do
whatever you want to.” And they did [laughs] and Berkeley wasn’t happy with it!
They were kind of shocked, I think, in a way. What’s fascinating to me is, I
suppose it’s not so much the power of the swastika and Nazi imagery, it’s more
that it still resonates so loudly within the culture, and from my point of view,
and I think the Residents’ too, more so now than it did in the mid-Seventies,
which, if you think about it, seems kind of strange. But we’re in strange times.
 

‘Fire Fall’ (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)
 
I know the Wormwood DVD I have is from Germany. Jim Knipfel mentions a show at
the House of Blues in Las Vegas. Is there a video of that, too?

I don’t think there is. The most notable things about that to me was, one—I
mean, the Residents were thrilled to play Las Vegas, but at the same time, what
was notable was how few people showed up for the show. The Residents are not
really a Las Vegas kind of an act. It wasn’t a mistake from their point of view,
they were thrilled to be there, but I think, from the promoter’s point of view,
if you think about it, the Residents are not the kind of act you go to Las Vegas
to see.

But the other thing was that Penn and Teller came to the show, and they loved
it, they just totally flipped out, they thought it was great.

I seem to remember the Residents appearing—maybe Penn and Teller had a variety
show around that time?

Well, they’ve had a couple of three variety shows. There was a [video] that we
put out for the Residents called The Eyes Scream. It was kind of an early
best-of, in a way, but then [Penn and Teller] would do segments in between the
videos to kind of glue it together.




I think there was maybe one show that the Residents and Penn and Teller did
together in San Francisco?

Yeah, I’m trying to think which one that was. It was the end of a tour. It would
either have been the 13th anniversary show or Cube-E. I remember it was a Bill
Graham show, it was a big show.
 

‘A Sight for Sore Eyes, Vol. 1’

I love the Residents’ A Sight for Sore Eyes book, and I notice it’s hopefully
titled “Volume One.” Are there gonna be more volumes, as far as you know?

The plan is three volumes, and I know that this one has done pretty well. So
that should guarantee at least Volume Two [smiles], we’ll see from there.
Everybody around here is extremely happy with it. As the keeper of the visual
archives, I worked with Aaron [Tanner] pretty closely, and really enjoyed
working with him and thought he did a fantastic job.

Do you ever come across stuff in the archives that’s surprising to you, doing
this kind of stuff, or is it all pretty familiar to you?

I’ve run across stuff that I haven’t seen for a long time, that can surprise me:
“Oh, I kept that!” [Laughs] I used to say that all the Residents’ imagery neatly
divided up into two twenty-year segments. Well, now, it’s a lot closer to a
twenty-year and a thirty-year [segment]. The first twenty years was all analog.
I went digital with Photoshop and those tools in the early to mid-Nineties, so
there’s not as many interesting artifacts.




I always tell people, if you are a production artist trying to create things
that have to be reproduced, digital tools are fantastic. If you like the weird,
old, crazy artifacts that got spun off one way or another through analog work,
well, you don’t really get that very much anymore. Like so many things in life,
there’s an upside and a downside.

I have a cabinet right over here with photographs in it, and a lot of those have
never been digitized. Sometimes, I can find myself going back and looking for
something, and that’s what can really surprise me—that picture got made, or that
picture got made. Because, like I say, a lot of that stuff has never been
digitized.

I’ve donated a lot of the Residents’ analog tape archive to the Museum of Modern
Art, and at some point, I expect to be donating all of this film stuff, and I’m
hoping that I can talk them into digitizing all of it so I will actually have it
all in that form.

It must be a massive amount of stuff at this point.

It’s a lot. It’s a lot of stuff, yeah.


‘Burn Baby Burn’ (courtesy of Cherry Red Records)

Richard Anderson

 
It just happened that it was originally going to be six, then seven, then eight,
then nine [discs], because people reached out to Carla Fabrizio, and she ended
up coming up with a whole disc’s worth of extra stuff, and also Hardy would ask
this guy Chris Kellas to record shows, and he recorded the [two-disc] Wormwood
at the Fillmore show. That was kind of a late addition, so it kind of leapt from
six to nine discs at the very last minute, actually.




And it was particularly interesting because the Fillmore show is different to
the tour. It was just the album, whereas obviously for the tour they wrote a
whole load of other songs.

And there’s the gamelan orchestra.

Yeah, right. I think the idea behind it, and with all of the box sets, really,
is to show [how] these Residents live projects tend to evolve. They seem to do
like a couple of dress rehearsals in San Francisco, figure out what was right
and what was wrong about it, change it for the tour. So the idea for each of
those is to, in a perfect world, I suppose, play them almost chronologically:
demos, first live show, later demos, album, tour, whatever it is. Wormwood’s a
strange one, obviously, ‘cause they went back and re-recorded the Roadworms
thing in the middle of a tour.

So they themselves weren’t huge on the album; for some strange reason, they put
the album out, and immediately decided to write loads more songs, and then
re-record it whilst they were on tour. So it’s a strange project in the first
place. In the early 2000s, Hardy talked about revisiting it and completely
reworking it, and then nothing came of it, so this is, I suppose, the extension
of that idea. It just grew and grew.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Oliver Hall
|
03.07.2022
07:21 am
|
4 Comments

1.1k Shares
979
25


15

A one-of-a-kind saucepan with David Bowie’s face on it exists – and can be yours
for $600

02.21.2022
08:27 pm
Topics:
Amusing
Food
Tags:
David Bowie
Ziggy Stardust
saucepan
Bowie Gallery
Teru Noji


 
This one-off David Bowie aluminum saucepan will run you $611.78. The only person
I can conceive of who would use such a thing is the Maid of Bond Street (you
know the fancy ones who drive around in chauffeured cars?) and even she threw a
side-eye toward this exorbitantly-priced piece of glam rock cookware.

The person behind this 2020 creation is Japanese artist and graphic designer
Teru Noji, a graduate of the Vantan Design Institute in Tokyo. Noji has lived
and worked in Arles, France for the last dozen years, and cites the work of
renowned Japanese psychedelic artist Tadanori Yokoo as his biggest influence.
Exactly what inspired Noji to etch an image of Bowie (pictured with his astral
sphere created by make-up artist Pierre La Roche) on the bottom of a 20 x 20-cm
aluminum pan is a mystery. All I know is that it is the only one Noji ever made
and you can buy it over at the online shop for the Bowie Gallery which is
physically located in Totnes, Devon, UK.




As for the pricey pan, well, I’ll let the images of it speak for themselves.
Cooking with Bowie! It’s a thing.
 

 

 


Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a
girl, 1989
1970s glam rockers Cuddly Toys cover ‘Madman’ a song written by David Bowie &
Marc Bolan
Beautiful images from David Bowie’s least favorite film role, 1978’s ‘Just a
Gigolo’
David Bowie, Dennis Hopper and/or Dean Stockwell bring blow to Iggy Pop in a
psych ward, 1975
Heartfelt letters written by a young David Bowie (and some of his youngest fans)
Intergalactic pimp: Donny Osmond dresses as ‘David Bowie’ and covers ‘Fame’ in
1976
Intimate photos of David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly & more from the set of
‘Labyrinth’



Posted by Cherrybomb
|
02.21.2022
08:27 pm
|
8 Comments

348 Shares
310
13




You can now own your own ‘Red Right Hand’ & other cool ‘Cave Things’ designed by
Nick Cave

02.21.2022
01:20 pm
Topics:
Amusing
Art
Books
Fashion
Tags:
Nick Cave
Cave Things


Stickers featuring Nick Cave in his famous ‘Suck My Dick’ t-shirt.
 

> “It’s the obsessive and dangerous end of granny-core. Fetishistic and
> deranged.”
> 
> —Nick Cave describing his newly launched Cave Things online store in 2020.

Nick Cave’s online store Cave Things has been offering up material possessions
designed by Cave since 2020. This is good news if you, like us here at Dangerous
Minds, are all about all things Nick Cave. Why use boring old No. 2 pencils when
you can use Nick Cave’s Sex pencils? While I’m not sure when I might actually
need to use a pencil these days if I had to, Nick Cave’s Sex Pencils would be
the ones I’d want in my collection. If Satan is more your speed then Cave’s red
Devil pencils with printed quotes by Cave on them should be more than evil
enough for you. Do you still have hair and are in need of a fashionable comb?
Look no further than Cave’s specially-designed Warren Ellis’ “Pure Exploitation”
comb, named for Cave’s long-time contributor, the multi-talented Warren Ellis.
There are so many ultra-cool items in the Cave Things store, from small delights
like Nick Cave stickers (!!!), greeting cards designed by Cave, a dog sweater
modeled after Nick’s famous “Suck My Dick” t-shirt, and even wallpaper with
Cave’s illustrations of The Hyatt Girls. If you’re not familiar with The Hyatt
Girls, here’s Cave explaining them to one of his fans via his Red Hand Files
site:




> “Just so that everyone knows what we are talking about, The Hyatt Girls are a
> group of beautiful and very naked women who live in my imagination and perform
> pornographic acts with each other, provided I stay at a Hyatt Hotel. For years
> I have drawn them, to the best of my ability, on the hotel’s notepaper
> whenever I have stayed at a Hyatt.”

Of all the covetable things in Cave’s store, if I had the money to blow, I’d be
proudly wearing one of two necklaces designed by Cave—his eerie Red Hand chain
and charm (in honor of his 1994 single “Red Right Hand”),  or his “Little Nick”
necklace and charm, featuring a shirtless Cave flexing. So let’s take a look at
some of the cooler Nick Cave things that could now be yours. You can see
everything in the Cave Things shop here.
 

Little Nick charm (comes with necklace). Extra Cave points for the red right
hand detail. $122 USD.
 

Devil pencils.
 
More Nick Cave merch, after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Cherrybomb
|
02.21.2022
01:20 pm
|
2 Comments

790 Shares
691
72




‘23rd Century Giants,’ the incredible true story of Renaldo & The Loaf!

02.11.2022
09:06 am
Topics:
Movies
Music
Tags:
Residents
Renaldo & The Loaf
Ralph Records
Snakefinger


 
Since much of Renaldo & The Loaf’s work experiments with time, it makes a funny
kind of sense that, on 2017’s Gurdy Hurding, the duo picked up right about where
they left off with 1987’s The Elbow Is Taboo. Perhaps, like all the tapes
they’ve run backwards over the years, their music really does borrow from the
future. In the early days especially, they liked to play songs unsinging
themselves, the sound of speech sucking itself back up through the lungs to its
point of origin in the brain. And wouldn’t it be wonderful, inhaling song and
speech out of the environment into your nervous system?

You would be unlikely to mistake Renaldo & The Loaf’s music for someone else’s.
The sound, an emergent property of Renaldo Malpractice and Ted the Loaf’s
decades-long musical friendship, is entirely homemade, but ingeniously fitted
together and sturdily constructed—each song a miniature feat of engineering,
built to last. “Primitive modernism,” Ralph Records called it in 1981,
announcing the release of Songs for Swinging Larvae.

So while the timbres and harmonies can be bracingly unfamiliar, Renaldo & The
Loaf’s songs teem with earworms, and probably brain- and spineworms, too. In
fact, let me take this opportunity to recommend that the songs themselves be
classified and studied as new zoological discoveries. (These days, when I listen
to Klanggalerie‘s pristine and greatly enlarged editions of the Renaldo & The
Loaf catalog, I often picture the menagerie of intergalactic pilgrims in Clark
Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame.”)

Alex Wroten’s excellent new documentary 23rd Century Giants, out March 8 on
Blu-ray and streaming platforms, tells how two teenage Tyrannosaurus Rex fans
from Portsmouth became the weirdest band on Ralph. Along with Renaldo
Malpractice and Ted the Loaf themselves, the documentary collects testimony from
the Cryptic Corporation’s Homer Flynn, Jay Clem, and the late Hardy Fox; the
visionary director behind Renaldo & The Loaf’s Songs for Swinging Larvae video,
Graeme Whifler; veterans of the Ralph and T.E.C. Tones labels, and patient
recipients of my adolescent correspondence, Tom Timony and Sheenah Spece; album
illustrators Poxodd and Steven Cerio; and DEVO archivist Michael Pilmer, among
others.




Some highlights follow from my recent conversation with director Alex Wroten and
the two learned rotcods.


Renaldo & The Loaf, 1982 (courtesy of Well Dang! Productions)



Under the Lights



 
Is this the first time the two of you have been in front of the camera very
much, Brian and David? The “Backwards Film Study” that’s in there seems to come
from the early Eighties—

Brian Poole (Renaldo Malpractice): Oh, you’ve seen that, have you? [Laughs]




Well, I’ve just seen the little bit that’s in the documentary. I’m looking
forward to seeing the full thing on the Blu-ray.

David Janssen (Ted the Loaf): That’s it. It’s only very short, that’s all there
is.

Brian: Basically, yeah. Three minutes, that’s it!

David: And no, we’re not really used to being in front of the camera much.
There’s that three-minute thing; there’s, I suppose, the filming we did for the
“A Convivial Ode” video…

Brian: And that’s it, really, isn’t it?

David: I mean, unintentionally, the stuff that was filmed live. I mean, that was
just, someone happened to film it, so we weren’t really conscious of being in
front of a camera.

This is the Vienna show you’re talking about?

David: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I suppose Alex’s documentary is kind of the longest
we’ve ever been under the lights of movie cameras.

Brian: Yeah, that’s right. But of course, we didn’t have to do makeup or
anything like that, or costumes. [Laughs]

Alex Wroten (director, 23rd Century Giants): Well, not totally true, ‘cause
there’s the part where you’re wearing the glasses [designed by Poxodd], so you
did a little costumes.

David: And the masks.

Brian: In answer to your question, no. We’re really not used to being the center
of attention, if you like. There have been stills done. Up in the Eighties and
that, we did sort of go into a studio and have some photos done of us, but apart
from that, no. In fact, the material that Alex asked for—I mean, obviously, as
the documentary was coming to fruition and that, he wanted to say “What visual
material do you have?” And it was a very, very useful thing looking through the
archive, which, fortunately, I’ve got it here, our stuff, because I haven’t
moved house, and it’s just here. So I was able to find quite a lot of stuff,
but, you know, there’s some creative stuff that Alex had to do in the film to
illustrate certain things, let’s say.
 
More after the jump…

READ ON▸


Posted by Oliver Hall
|
02.11.2022
09:06 am
|
8 Comments

789 Shares
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