MyTube

As I’ve probably mentioned before, YouTube satisfies most of my current music needs. Whether that says more about Jahsonic than about the quality of the current batch of YouTube footage, I leave up to you. This aside, I thought I’d let you know that from now on I will be favoriting both my audio and video finds on Youtube. The address is quite simply http://youtube.com/user/Jahsonic (I’ve even managed to give it the vintage clay/day-glo green Jahsonic.com color scheme).

I hope you enjoy and do let me know if you have an interesting YouTube channel.

Nobody’s Fault But Min…

KeniLeeBurgess

Very nice rendition of a blues classic, by a bible-lover.

Rainbow brown feat. F…

Some old Patrick Adams material

LNR - Work It To The B…

Old skool house music

steve poindexter/WORK …

Old skool house music (and hard too, many of you may be unfamiliar with this jam)

Lizzy Mercier Descloux…

From the recent August Darnell offshoots project

Machine - ‘There But F…

From the recent August Darnell offshoots project and classic tout court

Dr. Buzzard’s Original…

More Darnell.

Richard Thompson - Wal…

An old love of mine, by guitar player extraordinaire Thompson

This city is famous for, or, cult fiction #6

This post is part of the cult fiction series, this issue #6

“This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs and lesbians. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don’t make the mistake of bothering me.” –Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces

Introducing August Darnell

[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

August Darnell aka Kid Creole (Montreal, Canada, 12 August, 1950) is a Canadian musician who has been involved in several dance-oriented projects in New York in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s. Projects include Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band[0] (led by Darnell’s brother Stony), Don Armando’s Second Avenue Rhumba Band[1], Gichy Dan’s Beechwood #9, the “mutant disco” of Aural Exciters and, of course, Kid Creole and the Coconuts[2], as well as “solo” projects involving Andy “Coati Mundi” Hernandez[2,5], Taana Gardner[3], Fonda Rae[4]. and Lizzy Mercier Descloux[5]. Some of the more (and less)obscure offerings of Darnell have been released on an music compilation in 2008 by Strut Records as Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1976-1983.

Click the number to listen to the tracks, not all tracks are Darnell projects, but also just of the artists mentioned.

Fonda Rae in Machine’s “There but for the Grace of God Go I”[4] is world music classic 38, and has an interesting bit of music censorship history behind it, perhaps more on that later.

Haunted telephone booths

This film is the 47th entry in the category World Cinema Classics.

La cabina (1972) by Antonio Mercero

A remarkable score which reminds of Bernard Herrmann ’s screeching violins in Psycho (of course, it may as well be Herrmann’s original Psycho score set to a “La Cabina” slide show¹). Very accomplished trailer. This film generally cited as an example of Surrealism and cinema.

Tip of the hat to the apparently defunct site Wayney of Chaotic Cinema, skeleton preserved at my wiki.

Update: 1. Yup, that’s what it was ^Youtube

Will you talk about yourself?

This post is part of the cult fiction series, this issue #5

The Swimmer (1968) Frank Perry

The famed John Cheever short story appeared in the New Yorker and people talked. Now there will be talk again. When you sense this man’s vibrations and share his colossal hang-up . . . will you see someone you know, or love? When you feel the body-blow power of his broken dreams, will it reach you deep inside, where it hurts? When you talk about “The Swimmer” will you talk about yourself?“

J’aime le striptease

“J’aime le Strip-Tease” by Franck Horvat

Via Zines, a lovely series of portraits of nobrow strip-teaseuse Rita Renoir, the tragedienne of strippers.

This post is Eye Candy #14

World music classic 37

“I’m looking for the party people, to get down”

“Wicki Wacky‘” (1974) by Fatback Band

“Wicki Wacky‘” (1974) is a single released on Event Records by the Fatback Band. It was featured on their album “Keep On Steppin’“. The proto-disco song is noted for its driving hi-hats and was a blueprint for subsequent four-on-the-floor dance records. Other notable songs from Fatback include the 80s groove “Is this the Future,” currently unavailable on Youtube. Enjoy and let me know how you like it.

I love abecedaria

I love abecedaria and I’ve wikified the following abecedarium by  Peter Wollen: “An Alphabet of Cinema,” which was posted over at Girish’s. Wollen delivered this piece as the Serge Daney memorial lecture at the Rotterdam film festival in 1998. It was then published in the New Left Review in 2001, and also appears in Wollen’s essay collection, Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film (2002).

“A is for Aristotle … the first theorist of film”; “B is not for Brecht, although of course it could be. Or even for B-movies, much as I always loved them. It is for Bambi”; C for Cinephilia; “D must certainly be for Daney, but it is also for Dance—Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly”; E for Eisenstein, a “ruined filmmaker, an image-maker ‘haunted by writing’ (Daney’s phrase), by the shot as ideogram, obsessed with the synchronization of sound, movement and image”; F for film festival; G for Godard, “for anti-tradition”; “H is for Hitchcocko-Hawksianism—and a pathway towards avant-garde film”; I for Industry and Ince; J for Japan; “K is for Kane, the film maudit par excellence”; L for Lumière; M for Méliès; N for Narrative; O for Online; “P is personal—for The Passenger, a film directed by Antonioni, which I wrote with my script-writing partner Mark Peploe”; Q for Bazin’s Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?; R for Rossellini, Rome, Open City, Renoir, and Rules of the Game; S for Sternberg, Shanghai Gesture, and Surrealism; T for Telecinema, Third Dimension (3D), and Television; U for Underground film; V for Voyeurism; W for Snow’s Wavelength; “X stands for an unknown quantity—for the strange fascination that makes us remember a particular shot or a particular camera movement”; Y for Les Yeux sans Visage, Franju’s Eyes without a Face; Z for the final frame of the zoom shot, Hollis Frampton’s Zorn’s Lemma, and for Zero.

Via An Alphabet of Cinema

Brigitte Bardot and music (wmc #35 and 36)

Brigitte Bardot photographed by Michel Bernanau in 1968

Brigitte Bardot participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including “Harley Davidson”[1], “Je Me Donne A Qui Me Plait“[2], “Bubble gum“[3], “Contact“[4], “La bise aux hippies”[5], “Je Reviendrais Toujours Vers Toi“[6], “L’Appareil A Sous[7]“, “La Madrague[8]“, “On Demenage“, “Sidonie“, “Je danse donc je suis”[9] “Tu Veux, Ou Tu Veux Pas?“, “Le Soleil De Ma Vie“[10] (the cover of Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life“) and notorious “Je t’aime… moi non plus“.

Click the numbers to listen to the tracks.

“Je t’aime moi non plus”, which I’ve mentioned here, is World Music Classic #35, and the philosophical “Je danse donc je suis”[9] (I dance therefore I am) is World Music Classic #36.

What’s on

A juxtaposition of Guy Peellaert for David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” album cover, 1974 and Fernand Khnopff, “The Caress” via gatochy

“The age of maturity” (1894) by Camille Claudel

The man is Rodin, the imploring woman Camille Claudel and the woman who is leading Rodin away is his wife Rose Beuret. This sculpture was made after the break-up of Rodin and Claudel, after which she went “mad” and was locked up by her family and influential brother for life.

• PopEye with work by Guy Peellaert from May 7 until June 15 in Hasselt
• Camille Claudel in Paris at the Musée Rodin retrospective from April 15 to July 20.