NYC and the time of Xymox

i'm heading to New York this afternoon. it is raining and cold.


Clan of Xymox - "Stranger" (1984, 4AD)

Clan of Xymox just released a DVD, but it's already gone out of print once. one day i will get a studio version of this song and do a Blue Monday-Stranger interlude for all the kids with borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s.

G.L.O.W.

This video was forwarded to me by a friend with the subject line reading 'Palestina' and her comment being "oh my god".

It's from the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W.) which was a professional wrestling television show launched in 1986 out of the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and co-founded by Jacqueline Stallone (Sylvester Stallone's mother). The show ran syndicated for about four or five years and the wrestlers consisted of "Stallone's Sweethearts" (the good girls) and "Kitty's Killers" (the bad girls), managed by Stallone and Kitty Burke (aka Aunt Kitty), respectively.

Each wrestler had their own rap they performed (pre-recorded), as demonstrated below.

ending of "rock and rule"

when i was young, there was a period during which animators anthropomorphized animals to the logical limit: animals became human in every respect except for a button rodent nose. perhaps the animal features compensated for the characters' highly sexual bodies, but instead of deadening the human-animals' sex appeal, the style imbued the paradoxical creatures with some kind of otherworldly beauty. as a kid, i found myself strangely attracted to these big-breasted chipmunk creatures.

no movie better exemplifies this style than "rock and rule," which features the voices and vocal talents of lou reed, debbie harry, cheap trick, and iggy pop. my friend k gave the movie to me for christmas; evidently it is quite rare. sadly, one night at a party, someone stole the tape from my house.

here's the final scene:

Unwound "Petals Like Bricks"

not in a good mood, and Unwound is always perfect for not in a good mood.

i saw them only once, after "leaves turn inside you," their quiet opus and final work. i miss unwound. i missed all the tours for the "future of what," "new plastic ideas," all the music that encapsulates the prevailing sentiments of my life.

also, sara, their drummer, is one of the best ever noise rock drummers. she captures this perfect conflicting quality of everything falling apart but wrapped up in a tight knot.

dispassionate artistic comments on assassination-themed youtube video (retitled with many apologies by j, fearful of the secret service)

This user's account was banned from YouTube but, fortunately, a lot of people have been reposting the video. It's a young boy talking about how and why he's going to kill the president. It's quite brilliant, really. I'm very curious as to how this video originated... Someone in the comments suggested that he was reading off a cue card but I don't think little kids can read aloud that quickly and smoothly. Maybe a sibling helped him make it. No matter the reason... the kids aren't alright.

"I'm not bullshitting with you, America, right now. I'm goin' through some things."

the boy was a cipher

instead of writing a term paper, i got sucked into TRS-80 (not the old computer) today (via K/V blog). TRS-80 mix up their electronic drums and keyboards with old crap like Coke commercials, network tv crime shows, and, in this case, iconic mormon b-films. here's their mash up of the film Cipher in the Snow and their own track from the album shake hands with danger.




this is pretty stellar editing with great music. but it's kind of illuminating, too, to compare the vid with the plot summary for the original film:

When a teenage boy dies unexpectedly, his math teacher is asked to notify his parents and write his obituary. Although he was the boy's favorite teacher, he hardly knew him. Shy and ostracized, the boy was a cipher, an unknown number in a class roll book. As the teacher unravels the mystery of what led to the boy's death, he commits himself to not letting others suffer the same fate. Now, for the first time on DVD, this classic film will inspire you and your family to reach out to others and care for the one.

Water Balloon Exploding at 2,000 Frames per Second

It's probably against the rules of blogging etiquette to share something that you spotted on your Gmail "webclip" bar, but what the hell. Wired.com recently posted this video of a water balloon explosion captured by a high speed video camera.



My apologies for the cheesy soundtrack.

Title This

Ornette Coleman and Mark Kostabi compete on "Title This," Mark Kostabi's cable-access game show on which celebrities compete to name Kostabi paintings or non-art objects that Kostabi owns and for cash awards.

No kidding.

Love the ambient-noise French conversation before the piece starts. Watching the audience is almost as fun as watching the performance.

Neu! "Hero"

Since Krautrock is always a safe bet and I'm feeling lazy, here's Neu! performing an early version of "Hero" from 1974. Neu! split from an early iteration of Kraftwerk. This video is an excerpt and features ecstatic Germans and bubbles. I first heard a Neu! record in the Fine Arts Library at UT about ten years ago. There was a patron who would come in with a DAT and record all the rare early electronic music we had, and he recommended highly Neu!. Later, I felt exceptionally cool and rock-literate when I heard the Ciccone Youth song "Two cool rock chicks listening to Neu!" featuring Kim Gordon and someone else talking about cool shit while Neu! played in the background. I no longer feel so cool, but the memory of coolness remains.

Bauhaus "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

Nightclubbing Volume 3

File this under videos you've probably seen. From the fast-cut opening sequence to "The Hunger," Bauhaus performs its debut single live in a cage or something. Appropriate for a vampire movie, right? Susan Sarandon still looks hot and unnaturally old in this logical follow-up to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show." Catherine Deneuve is more in "Belle du jour" mode than "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" mode. David Bowie plays David Bowie, first an alien, now a vampire. The guy has range. This video is typical Tony Scott. Compare it to the opening sequence of "Top Gun."

Yello "Bostich"

Quoting directly from this bio: "The ambitious Swiss electronic duo Yello comprised vocalist/conceptualist Dieter Meier — a millionaire industrialist, professional gambler and member of Switzerland's national golf team — and composer/arranger Boris Blank."

Meier directed this video.

Yello bostich
Uploaded by dj-T-goth

Grace Jones "I've Seen that Face Before"

Nightclubbing Volume 2

Off Jones's record, "Nightclubbing." Directed by Jean-Paul Goude, who also did art-direction for Jones after her early disco diva period.

A Roman Scandal "DTs"

I've been dragging my feet on posting because I've been very busy and also someone has been a little slow to get around to watching the Liquid Sky trailer. Since it's hard to top something as bizarre as Liquid Sky, I thought I'd post something more mundane, a low-budget music video Austin resident Michael Connor did for A Roman Scandal's "DTs." A Roman Scandal was in many ways my favorite band to see live. Alex and Tyler from OMD 20/20 played f'ed up 80s beats. Jason from AYWKUBTTOD wore dark aviator shades and sang like Andrew Eldritch on crack. This dude Chuck did food colored amoeba style overhead projector visuals. Sadly, no one from the band appears in this Michel Gondry/Office style video, but the song's pretty cool and the video is clever. For me though, nothing will compare to seeing A Roman Scandal at a "punk rock prom" in Denton many years ago.