So i stumbled upon this video at the GetLoFi site, and decided to keep spreading it further across this digital wasteland. It is an old video clip of John Cage performing a piece titled “Water Walk”…because “It has water, and I walk”. It’s too bad people are laughing all through it so you can’t really hear what’s going on, but it is really cool to see as it is definitely a piece that is improved by the live performance of it. It is great to see him work, and watch how he has it all somewhat precisely timed out which i guess makes it a classical piece as opposed to pure improve jazz…in which case he could walk around doing whatever the heck he wanted (or could he!). I guess at the time period it was necessary to have the timing in order to validate it even as music? Do you think the story about the Unions plugging in the radios is real? It is really interesting how the whole show is spun as comedy with the announcer really walking the line close to insulting him…and yet here is one of the most influential composers of the 20th century perhaps. His response to the inquiry about people laughing is really charming, obviously a very engaging intelligent fellow with a good sense of humor.

John Cage: Early performance Water Walk

The video apparently surfaced here at the most excellent: WFMU Blog

Speaking of the mighty wanker himself, check out this damn funny video. Marvel at his majestic chops as he proclaims his new godliness over you. Oh yeah and I have included the infamous Yngwie airplane incident (audio below) where our new God unleashes the fockin’ fury upon a hapless airlline crew of obvious unbelievers…it’s a real recording.

Yngwie I am the new God:

Yngwie: “You have released the fury!”

It’s amazing what you can do with a good bit of video ingenuity…and an amazing cellist. This video was directed and edited…and constructed by Lasse Gjertsen (featured here before for his other amazing videos). In the first scene he actually filmed all the different parts of the song individually, and then painstakingly cut the arms out of each frame…25 frames per second. The second video cello piece is a bit…wanky, but combined with the visuals it’s still damn cool. I mean yeah, the dude is clearly an awesome musician…I’m just sayin’ there is a thin line of spandex between him and Yngwie, which is cool if that’s your thing.

Giovanni Sollima - Sogno ad Occhi Aperti (Daydream) PART 1:

Giovanni Sollima - Sogno ad Occhi Aperti (Daydream) PART 2:

This documentary came out last year, but is now getting posted on Youtube by fans…for free, and c’mon there is no reason it shouldn’t be, it wasn’t about the money. So, if you still don’t quite understand how special and cool the American hardcore movement of the early eighties was, or if you just want to feel all warm and tingly with nostalgia, you can do so for free. Some names are suspiciously absent from the film, most notably the Misfits and Dead Kennedys (perhaps because of the internal lawsuits). The Minutemen were not mentioned or shown much either except for some interviews with Mike Watt, but I guess they have their own movie. The film does a nice job however of condensing a seething moshpit full of information and media into a pretty concise time line of events. There is a wealth of great old footage and some really great inside information on some of the key events that really kicked off a huge movement, ignored for the most part by the mainstream industry. Long live the Bad Brains…

American Hardcore (part 1)

American Hardcore (part 2)
American Hardcore (part 3)
American Hardcore (part 4)
American Hardcore (part 5)
American Hardcore (part 6)
American Hardcore (part 7)
American Hardcore (part 8)
American Hardcore (part 9)
American Hardcore (part 10)

Like I said the Minutemen were pretty much absent from the American Hardcore video…They were probably one of the most influential bands to me (as a young punk bass player anyway). Here is a trailer clip from their documentary, which features alot of the same faces from the AH doc.

The Minutemen We Jam Econo:

The Minutemen DVD: We Jam Econo

I confess I don’t really know much about this Mocky guy he’s from Germany, and has done a bunch of collaborations with some high rollers like Peaches, Feist, and others. He scored a small hit with 2001’s Sweet Music, which is a fairly simple pop/rap song. His newer videos look like some kind of modern interpretation of Morris Day and the Time. This video for I Mickey Mouse Motherfuckers however, which was a collaboration with ad hoc, is pretty damn funny and has of course landed Mocky in some legal trouble with the mighty powers of Walt Disney who have fired off a lawsuit against him. The video is a really great example of how you can create an engaging piece of work clearly targeted at a web savvy audience without a huge record company style budget. Best of luck on that lawsuit Mr. Mocky.

Mocky: I Mickey Mouse Motherfuckers

Mocky: Official homepage

How do you describe the Gun Club? i mean they certainly had punk rock attitude, and lived the lifestyle, but they just didn’t sound like anything else goin’ on at the time. Jeffrey Lee Pierce certainly looked like he could have come more from any of the later 80’s L.A. glam rock bands, yet the swamp punk guitar sound was totally like nothing else. The short run of the Gun Club produced two very influential albums, many classic songs, and yet they never achieved the success they deserved…Sex Beat was certainly one of the great ones with it’s fast pace and lyrics full of lusty youthful angst. Here is a live performance, probably later in the band’s career. Sadly after years of drug and alcohol abuse Jeffrey passed away at the age of 37.

Gun Club: Sex Beat:

Gun Club: The Gub Club story in detail

Well we did have to program the bitch eh? Still it can’t be long off that the machines start creating the music as well. It just seems a logical progression, the melding of man and machine to produce cool music…and visuals. Too bad the music itself still sounds so sterile and robotic, and the visuals are just too smooth and clean. It’s got a ways to go, and certainly needs some more human or shall we say analog circuit bending elements added to rough it up, but it is quite cool to watch. Still it’s not much more than a fancy player piano really is it?

Animusic 2 - 05 - Pipe Dream 2

Animusic: Official site

For his latest effort Nick Cave seems to open some wounds and return to a more gutsy sleazy sound with some success. You can’t say much bad about Nick Cave really, he’s had a long career as an early punk inspired punk pioneer, a novelist, and now an aging song writer who draws comparisons to Leonard Cohen, yet still retains an obvious sense of humor about himself (dig the new mustache dude!). This new project Grinderman (watch the video on their website for a convoluted explanation of the name) contains approximately half of the larger 8 piece Bad Seeds band, and Master Nick seems to have put aside the piano and more lush orchestrations of recent records in favor of raw guitar and stripped down more intimate sound. This works pretty well occasionally like on the popular “No Pussy Blues”, however it comes off somewhat flat on other songs like “Grinderman”, and while i know the sparseness was intended to focus you more on the lyrical content or emotional delivery, just seems to need more attention maybe to the atmosphere of sound around it. The project at this time in Cave’s career reminds me somewhat of the great, more successful Bone Machine album by Tom Waits, without all the wonderful noisy percussive experimentation that filled that classic record. If you don’t enjoy this stuff fear not, or fear more, as Nick claims to be returning to the full blown Bad Seeds type material next, carrying the successful elements of this experiment along with him.

Grinderman: BBC Interview
Grinderman: Officially crappy flash website, try to find the navigation

They state on their website that you could sample all these pots and pans, but why bother…when it’s been done already, and is now being offered for free…I can’t think of a reason. Here are a few of the key selling points for the package directly from the mouth of the Welsh beast.

• Over 140 pots, pans, kettles, lids, bowls, containers and more!
• Multiple hits: bottoms, sides, rims with mallet and light stick
• Recorded with a Marantz EC-335 split-stereo microphone
• Photo of each item included for easy identification!

Learn more and download the samples here: Kitchen Kits
Link via: Rekkerd