Incredibly Hot Sex With Hideous People #51!

It’s a bit frightening being friends with Bryce Galloway, who has just completed the 51st issue of his long-running zine Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People. Although Bryce is generally—his immense amount of superstar indie cred notwithstanding—the very sweetest of souls, he tends to caricature and incorporate into his autobiographical work just about anyone who might be passing through his daily orbit. But rather than skewer his associates, his tendency is to quite gently and perceptively render the mind-numbingly everyday as unexpectedly fascinating, perhaps because it is an everyday so many people (particularly artsy folk in Wellington) will be accustomed to coping with. Rather than spoil the zine’s considerable charms, I will simply highlight the cover above and especially for non-Wellingtonian zine aficionados, transcribe the small blurb buried in the midst of the issue: “Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People is a quarter-yearly fanzine created by Bryce Galloway. Free in Wellington at time of issue, back issues are available for $2 ea., CD/zine issues are available for $8 ea. PO Box 27527 Wellington, NZ. Two-yearly subscriptions are also available at cost of $28. Email contact: stinkispinkis [at] yahoo [dot] com. Printed on recycled paper.” Scoop ‘em up! (PS Yes, I made a cameo appearance in a dream sequence this time around which prompted the above thoughts…)

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a  fascinating chronological collage of 16mm footage originally shot for Swedish television, but left dormant until the director Göran Hugo Olsson reassembled the material as a “Documentary in 9 Chapters” which “does not presume to tell the whole story of the Black Power Movement, but to show how it was perceived by some Swedish filmmakers.” The film incorporates a funk music soundtrack and new voiceover materials interspersed throughout by Erykah Badu, Robin Kelley, Talib Kweli, Abiodun Oyewole, Harry Belafonte, and Angela Davis, among others. Disarming and intense, it becomes a haunting visual evocation of meaningful responses to a turbulent historical period. A must see.

The Replacements Hit The Fans...

I was (well, still am...) a rabid fan of the band The Replacements and as I mentioned them a couple of posts ago, I thought it might be of interest to inform other potential 'Mats junkies that there are a lot of cool links to their sounds out on the web, and of course a lot of shaky camera footage of their onstage "reunions" (featuring only the original members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, as Bob Stinson died in 1995, Slim Dunlap [the irreplaceable Bob's replacement] suffered a stroke in 2012, and drummer Chris Mars devotes his time to visual art these days) occurring last year. You can find loads of early live Replacements courtesy of an entity known as bobstinsonsghost. Check it out! And there's the effort to archive tapes of the Replacements (notoriously inconsistent) live shows. (Wow a queasy glimpse of the Grateful Dead just floated by...) And below the 1981 attempt to showcase the band for record execs. Also see if you dare the strange doco on the band (well, their fans, really) Color Me Obsessed.

Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

The great one-man folk music institution Pete Seeger died this past Monday at the ripe young age of 94. He was a powerfully significant individual in American culture, both in terms of his ideas regarding music and his lifelong dedication to progressive politics and activism. He was a friend of such musicians as Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and in his group the Weavers was a pre-Rock and Roll pop star with recordings such as Goodnight Irene. He was blacklisted from broadcast media in the US from the 1950s well into the late-1960s due to his refusal to testify before Congress, to whom he stated: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." Nevertheless his concerts remained popular and he appeared until the end of his life at rallies, protests, and benefits for countless causes. I saw him perform twice, once at a miniscule protest against Pinochet's Chilean government, and once at a considerably larger "No Nukes"  rally (both in Washington DC in the late 1980s). He was a stalwart civil rights supporter, popularized the banjo, wrote the song "Turn Turn Turn" which in The Byrds' version would become a classic rock staple, and in the 1960s, Seeger traveled widely, filming all manner of "world music" decades before the term was widely used (and abused). More recently Bruce Springsteen won a Grammy for one of his best records We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), inspired by Seeger's arrangements of traditional folk songs and ballads. You can read his obituary here, and the Pete Seeger Appreciation Page has a vast amount of material as well. I'm posting below a link to a very good 2007 documentary on Seeger's life and work. In the intro, Bob Dylan states: "Pete Seeger, he had this amazing ability to look at a group of people and make them all sing parts of the song. You know, make an orchestration out of a simple little song with everyone in the audience singing. Whether you wanted to or not you found yourself singing a part! ... and it would be beautiful." Rest in peace, Pete.

Controversy Around the Museum of Modern Art's Expansion Plans Continues

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is planning to expand once again, and as with most such efforts is courting controversy for a variety of reasons. One is the demolishing of the Folk Art Museum next door, another is the fact that the giant glass-walled architectural plan might not actually be addressing the primary reason for the expansion: spaces to install more of its amazing pre-WWII art collection. The firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been working on drawing up the project, and they are no strangers to museum culture having been themselves the subject of a major exhibition and the architects of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. You can read more about the project from the museum's perspective here, a scathing letter to MoMA from one of the US's most important art critics Jerry Saltz, an article from the New York Times, as well as an interview with architect Elizabeth Diller in which she responds to the criticism.

Swinging Party: Lorde/Replacements

It's great that New Zealand's own dear Ms. Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O'Connor (aka Lorde) kicked some serious ass at the US Grammy Awards. She's made some of the best popular pop music (as opposed to unloved but entirely worthy pop music that's always shifted to the side until much later on...Big Star, etc.) in a very long while! And this rather long in the tooth writer was very impressed by her cover of the Replacements' song Swinging Party. Here's a live version of the song by the band I once (along with a lot of other geeky boys) worshipped from 1985, and Lorde's updated take.

Inside Pat Patrick...

Watching the Coen Brothers' new film Inside Llewyn Davis brings to my mind the fact that the setting they use in the film, early 1960s New York was where my parents met and they frequented the milieu fictionalized in the film, that of the "folk revival." My father was an amateur musician from Texas who loved the folk and "old time" music which was enjoying a  resurgence among denizens of NYC's  bohemia at that time. My parents went to see acts like the young Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, whose autobiography The Mayor of MacDougal Street became the Coen Brothers' inspiration. A few years later my dad took up a position teaching English at a small college in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, largely because he wanted to hear the local musicians, many of them the last surviving links to traditional ballads and folksongs that were rapidly disappearing. Here's to Pat Patrick (1933-1967) and the song-chasers of the folk revival. You can also listen to the late, great Dave Van Ronk here and read his ex Terri Thal's recent appraisal of Inside Llewyn Davis here.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Godmother of Rock & Roll

Here's a fascinating 2011 BBC/PBS documentary on the once-megafamous, now lamentably almost forgotten Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973), an amazing singer and pioneer of the electric guitar.

James Franco's "Actors Anonymous"

What is to be done about this person??? Beats me, definitely beyond my pay grade and roles and responsibilities, so to speak. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed Choire Sicha's perverse review of the recent opus penned by the supposedly polymathic mutant-like creature that is Mr. Franco posted on Bookforum.

Chester Burnett a.k.a. Howlin' Wolf (1910-1976)

''When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said: 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.' ''

-Sam Phillips

Live Performance of Howlin' Wolf with "Meet Me In The Bottom". Guitarist Hubert Sumlin (1931-2011) on left.