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But, Are You Advanced Enough?
Lou Reed, singing with the Blind Boys of Alabama AND he’s singing a Velvet Underground song AND appears to be enjoying it.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Oh yeah, I recently completed a redesign of my entire portfolio. If you or anyone you know is in need of some sort of web or graphic design specialist, you should deeply consider pointing them in my direction.
Foam Rubber, USA
Chris Frantz thought of the titular chorus after seeing a Parliament-Funkadelic show where the crowd chanted “Burn down the house.” The initial lyrics were considerably different, however. In an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” aired on December 2, 1984, David Byrne played excerpts of early worktapes showing how the song had evolved from an instrumental jam by Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Frantz (drums). Once the whole band had reworked the groove into something resembling the final recording, Byrne began chanting and singing nonsense syllables over the music until he had arrived at phrasing that fit with the rhythms— a technique influenced by former Talking Heads producer Brian Eno— “and then I [would] just write words to fit that phrasing… I’d have loads and loads of phrases collected that I thought thematically had something to do with one another, and I’d pick from those.”
According to Byrne in the NPR interview, phrases he tried but ultimately didn’t use in the song’s recorded “verses” included “I have another body,” “Pick it up by the handle,” “You travel with a double,” and “I’m still under construction.” As for the title phrase in the chorus, one early attempt (as heard on a worktape) had him singing a different line, “What are we gonna do?”, and at another point in the process, “instead of chanting ‘Burning Down the House,’ I was chanting ‘Foam Rubber, USA.’”
House!
The one that’s not a TV show about medical-specific Sherlock Holmes.
Coming soon from the Criterion Collection. Huzzah.
And while we’re at it… How badly do you want your TV to be more like this?
The Anti-Capitalist Transition
David Harvey on the future of capitalism has this to say on communism and the anti-capitalist transition:
Communists, Marx and Engels averred in their original conception laid out in The Communist Manifesto, have no political party. They simply constitute themselves at all times and in all places as those who understand the limits, failings, and destructive tendencies of the capitalist order as well as the innumerable ideological masks and false legitimations that capitalists and their apologists (particularly in the media) produce in order to perpetuate their singular class power. Communists are all those who work incessantly to produce a different future to that which capitalism portends.
Reggie Watts Is About to Explode
He just did a battery commercial and this Pepsi product tie-in. I have no objections because I think he rightfully deserves to be the most famous and well paid man in the American ecosystem.
The Sinking of the Titanic
A composition by Gavin Bryars. A year after first hearing it, it’s still my favorite piece of music. The recorded version is below, a live performance is available at the linked site.
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I am not a poster, but a positive toaster.
Watch as Lee Scratch Perry confuses Jools Holland:
What are these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?
From Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans comes one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history:
I’m not sure I really got the point of Val Kilmer’s “Stevie” character. The guy was just kind of an asshole.
Update: Oh, and in other Herzog news, it looks as though the entirety of Mein liebster Feind is now available on YouTube (h/t Perverse Egalitarianism).