Jota_Bosco

A photo series created to show the world that there are more than 100,000 people living in these “cubicle apartments” throughout the city of Hong Kong.

More pics and info here.

 
Guest post by the great Mick Farren—an exclusive extract from his contribution to Mark Goodall’s Gathering of the Tribe: Music and Heavy Conscious Creation, a collection of essays on music and the occult, featuring contributions on The Fall, The Beatles, The Wu Tang Clan and more. Now available in paperback for the special price of $20.77.

Even the most cursory theological (or even Reichian) shakedown will reveal that rock’n’roll has quantum multiples of the potential mythic/mystic power ever commanded by conventional Satanism. Where so much of contemporary Satanism—with its upside down crosses, modified but still liturgical robes and rituals, its ammended litanies, the serving of a faux-Eucharist from the naked torso of an immobilized cooch dancer on bad acid (shout out, hey, Susan Atkins!)—reveals it as nothing nothing more than an inverted critique of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. (Much in the way that Marxism was essentially a critique of Victorian capitalism rather than a stand alone philosophy.)

Rock’n’roll, on the other hand, arrived on its own mythical half-shell and right away went about its own anarchic rites and wild communions. Jim Morrison, although decidedly from the death-star dark-side, and a fully accredited Agent of Chaos knew he didn’t need any contracts with Beelzebub. He was the Lizard King. He could do anything. The only deal he’d cut would be with Dionysius. John Lennon had stood in the power-eye of the rock’n’roll hurricane and knew what he was talking about when he made his famous “the Beatles are bigger than Jesus” remark.(That is, oddly, rarely quoted in full.)

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock’n’roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.

A full decade before Lennon and Morrison, however, some of the preachers who railed against rock’n’roll showed an awareness this brand new back-beat-from-the-pit might not be an instrument of Satan at all but a whole new independent threat to the god-fearing. In April of 1956. Lutheran minister W. Carter Merbreier attended an Elvis Presley show in Philadelphia where he observed “nervous, giggling girls screaming, falling to their knees as if in prayer, flopping limply over seats, stretching rigidly, wriggling in a supreme effort of ecstasy.” A few months later Des Moines Baptist, the Rev. Carl Elgena, warned his congregation that “Elvis Presley is morally insane and leading other young people to the same end. The belief of unholy pleasure has sent the morals of our nation down to rock bottom and the crowning addition to this day’s corruption is Elvis Presleyism.”

The concept “Elvis Presleyism” brings us to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ album The Firstborn is Dead. In the opening song, “Tupelo”—a radical reworking of a John Lee Hooker classic—Cave makes the vividly dramatic suggestion that the birth of Elvis Presley, coupled with the death of stillborn twin, Jesse Garon, was the product of a supernatural, of not apocalyptic, event horizon.

The black rain come down
Water water everywhere
Where no bird can fly no fish can swim
Where no bird can fly no fish can swim
No fish can swim
Til The King is born in Tupelo!

Cave wrote ‘Tupelo’ in 1984, seven years after Presley’s death, when it was plain that many of Elvis Presley’s more obsessive fans maintained a personal relationship with their idol that was wholly akin to born-again Christians professing to have an exclusive one-on-one with Jesus. When the Reverends Merbreier and Elgena hinted, way back in 1956, that Elvis might be the dangerous pied piper of some form of neo-paganism, they had the protection of the pulpit. For a lay person to explore such a concept would have been to court accusations of being certifiably crazy or worse. Who in their right mind could seriously suggest that the Son of Gladys might be—in addition to all his other accomplishments—a 20th century fertility symbol inately desired by a frightened world, maybe even before the mushroom clouds had fully dissipated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Humanity had developed the chain-reaction capacity for global-scale species-destruction, but had failed to evolve a philosophy to handle such hideous and overwhelming power. Couple that with plans for cookie-cutter totalitarian capitalism in one hemisphere with mirror-image Marxist repression in the other, plus new and tricky concepts like consumer uniformity and the pharmaceutical-brainwash tyranny of the psycho-civilized society (a major favorite of Sidney Gottlieb and the gang at MKULTRA), and a great many people—especially young people—wondered if they’d be better off back in the jungle for some animalism among the Old Gods.

Could the Elvis, the hillbilly cat, also be a Avalon mist-figure from an Arthurian Lord-of-the-Dance saga, or the myths of wounded Fisher Kings that stretched clear back to the megaliths of prehistory — and were so seriously and ironically invoked when Constantine and St. Augustine were mixing up Jesus Christ with Mithras to create the official deity of the Roman War Machine? Elvis the Fertility God may have also found himself cross fertilized by the horned and phallic, dark Legba divinities of Dahomey with their human sacrifices and Amazon girl soldiers, but, hell, isn’t that the just story of rock’n’roll?

If the pop culture of the mid-20th century was indeed a neo-pagan theocracy on the half shell, Marilyn Monroe could well have been drafted in as goddess-consort—although that might well cause a measure of temporal confusion that perhaps Jack Kennedy was the true Boy King from Camelot who actually took the hit. This would leave Elvis—who, by 1963, had been shorn and symbolically grunt-castrated as a conscript in what had formerly been George Patton’s Second Armored Division (Hell On Wheels)—as a much more esoteric entity.

But did anyone promise theology would be fast? Religions do not coagulate overnight. Christianity has had two full millenia on the game, plenty of time to work out its tortures, terrors, inquisitions, witchhunts, and multiple varieties of auto-da-fé. Rock—should it really prove to be a pagan belief system, or, more likely, a suspension of disbelief—has only been rolling for a tad over half a century, and, although it has exerted a profound effect on the culture of the times, its behaviour has been remarkably benign. It has provoked a number of peaceful mass gatherings, a few riots, only a very modest number of actual death cults, and made something of a junkie mess of the war in Vietnam.

Rock’n’roll has yet to pull any kind shit that stacks up against the Crusades or the Malleus Maleficarum. Although the second decade of the 21st century is hardly a halcyon time for paganism of any kind, and Evangelical Christianity—in the USA at least—is being allowed to get away with wholly unreasonable acts of fundamental stupidity. Route 66 runs now through a cruelly synched Bible Belt, and bands I don’t even care to name sell holy relics of what was once truly sacred. Perhaps some minor reformation might be about due, although the time is hardly ripe for burning corporate rock bands or even Simon Cowell in the cathedral square. At best we might reflect on Nick Cave and his speculations on what wonders might have attended the birth of Elvis Presley on January 8th, 1935, and wonder where they may take us.

In a clap-board shack with a roof of tin
Where the rain came down and leaked within
A young mother frozen on a concrete floor
With a bottle and a box and a cradle of straw

And Robert Johnson? Well hell, maybe he was taking about a wholly different devil.

The King will walk on Tupelo!
Tupelo-o-o! O Tupelo!
He carried the burden outa Tupelo!
Tupelo-o-o! Hey Tupelo! [Repeat]
You will reap just what you sow

Mick Farren

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Punk Esotericism: The Occult Roots of the Wu Tang Clan
 

 
The Who give one of the best live performances of Tommy at Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts, July 7th, 1970.

If anyone wants to know what The Who were like at their best, then they need only take a look at the talent, passion and energy of these 4 exceptional, young musicians, who together make this an incredible and unforgettable concert.

Track Listing

01.“Heaven and Hell”
02. “I Can’t Explain”
03. “Water”
04. “I Don’t Even Know Myself”
05. “Young Man Blues”
06. “Overture”
07. “It’s a Boy”
08. “1921”
09. “Amazing Journey”
10. “Sparks”
11. “Eyesight to the Blind”
12. “Christmas”
13. “The Acid Queen”
14. “Pinball Wizard”
15. “Do You Think It’s Alright?”
16. “Fiddle About”
17. “Tommy Can You Hear Me?”
18. “There’s a Doctor”
19. “Go to the Mirror!”
20. “Smash the Mirror”
21. “Miracle Cure”
22. “I’m Free”
23. “Tommy’s Holiday Camp”
24. “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
25. “See Me, Feel Me”
26. “My Generation”
 

 

 
Sublime performance clip of Neil Young and Crazy Horse doing one of Young’s greatest numbers, “Like a Hurricane,” on a French TV show called Jukebox in 1977.

Young wrote “Like a Hurricane” for a girl named Gail that he’d met in a bar after his break-up up with actress Carrie Snodgress.

In Jimmy McDonough’s Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography it quotes Young’s neighbor, Taylor Phelps talking about the song:

Neil had this amazing intense attraction to this particular woman named Gail – it didn’t happen, he didn’t go home with her. We go back to the ranch and Neil started playing. Young was completely possessed, pacing around the room, hunched over a Stringman keyboard pounding out the song.

In 1975, when Neil Young wrote “Like a Hurricane” he was unable to sing, or even speak, due to a recent operation on his throat. His friend, artist James Mazzeo, recalls Young handing him an envelope with just two lines: “You are like a hurricane. There’s a calm in your eyes.” Crazy Horse messed around on the song for ten days before hitting on the inspired take on 1977’s American Stars N Bars album.

Note that Young—one of the greatest guitar players ever born, as this song ably demonstrates—is seen playing his highly customized 1953 Les Paul Goldtop, “Old Black.” I guess the wind machine was meant to stand-in for an actual hurricane or something…
 

 
Musician Deke Dickerson’s blog posted a collection of vintage religious album covers featuring little people including Watcha Gonna Do by The Gospel Midgets.

Sadly, from what I can tell, the South Carolina-based Gospel Midgets are no more. Perhaps they changed their name to something else?
 

 

 

 
Via WFMU on Twitter

 
Ferocious live footage of the Ramones at the State Theatre in Minneapolis from Wylde Rice, a super-hip Minnesota PBS show of the time. Backstage, the boys discuss the punk scene in England, dismiss the notion of punk “politics” and the reporting of violence at punk gigs as overblown.

They start off with a great “Rockaway Beach” and later rip through “California Sun” and “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Shot on January 21, 1978. The Runaways were the opening act!
 

 
Thanks you, Michael Ferrier!

 
According to j.viewz, eggplant makes for a good bass drum stand-in.

 
Via Nerdcore

Some might say all art is a reflection of the times we live in.

If back in the day comics and movies were pretty naive and faced only as pure escapism, today’s fiction has to evoke reality to create something truly meaningful… and frightening.

This series is an experiment where a dictator, a psycho, a murderer (sometimes they are the whole package) or even a suspicious figure from real life is mashed with a comics bad guy - strangely related some way or the other with his counterpart.

The depressing thing? Realising that if the comic book supervillains were actually the ones threatening real life, the world wouldn’t be such a bad place.

by Butcher Billy on Behance

David Reeves did an awesomely cool papercut work based on various geekdom universes. You can watch his papercut work on Limbo (on of the most beautiful games I ever played), but check his other attempts on Batman, cowboys, zombies and samurai in the full article, along with cool WIP pictures from his blog !

David Reese a réalisé un travail incroyable de découpage basé sur les univers variés du geekdom. Vous pouvez admirer son boulot de découpe sur Limbo (l’un des plus beaux jeux auxquels j’ai pu jouer), mais retrouvez ses oeuvres inspirées par Batman, les zombies et autres samurais dans la suite de l’article, ainsi que des photos du “making-of” tirées de son blog !

via

More artworks and pics in the full article !

fuckyeahdementia:

[tastefullyoffensive:via]

We certainly love to sleep — to some of us, sleep is a luxury; to others, it may even be a hobby or a favorite pastime. A common problem for almost everyone you know in this generation would...

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

 
According to my husband, it’s pretty well-known that Nick Nolte used to be a male model in 1960s and early 1970s. I have to admit, I did not know this and had a hearty LOL at h.i.s. jeans, the “jeans that turn a dude into a stud” advertisement from 1972.

The image below is of Nick Nolte and Sigourney Weaver modeling for Clairol’s “Summer Blonde.” Apparently the pair were also featured on the packaging.
 

 
Via WOW

Bolan with girlfriend Gloria Jones (who wrote sang “Tainted Love” in 1965), and son Rolan. Yup… Rolan Bolan. I suppose Rolan had play-dates with Zowie Bowie?
 
Though clips of Marc Bolan’s 1977 after school Granada TV series, Marc, have been floating around YouTube for a while, this is the first time I’ve seen all the episodes up in their entirety. It’s quite the visual parade. It’s got some really cool moments, though at times Bolan looks positively bleary, lip-synching to T. Rex tunes with what appear to be “The Marc Bolan Dancers” (one of the weirdest/awesomest parts of the show).

Many of the artists are were up-and-comers who came and went, but you can also catch some great performances by bands like Thin Lizzy, Hawkwind, The Jam and Generation X. David Bowie even makes an appearance on the final episode where Bolan trips over a microphone wire and falls off the stage. Not having time for a reshoot, they kept it that way as the paired giggled and Bowie allegedly asked “Could we have a wooden box for Marc [to stand on]?”

Nothing like basing a live television show around a guy with a serious drug and alcohol problem. Still though, it’s hard to imagine some honey-cooing glam rocker getting his own live musical variety show in this day and age, and the concept is golden. “If only…” you know what I mean?
 

Thumbs up, and although both.
Finger and thumb, mean the world or meant cavort in enormerAnzahl on Ditology, there namely the extremities our hand to pop culture or historical significant personalities.
These manipulations also our wonderful thumb inevitably wanders to the top. Moreover, we can at this Vetsionen of Jesus, Hello Kitty, see the Dalai Lama and others hardly get enough.
Applause would also not be out of place.

For more visit dezignHD

So touching story! Read it!

 
Here’s security camera footage of a nun—dressed in a traditional habit stealing beer (and some Four Loko?) from a convenience store. If she even is a nun, and not just a clever grifter disguised as a nun, because everyone knows that nuns don’t shoplift. Whatever the case may be, she’s a dangerous mind, indeed…
 

 
Via Geekologie

 
“Angel Face” by Shock was a minor hit in the UK and on European dancefloors, but not in the US. Music fans here knew the song because it was included on a (well-known at the time) “loss leader” $1.99 “New Wave” “sampler” from RCA called Blitz that you can still easily find in the used record bins for around the same price. Aside from introducing adventuresome early 80s American listeners to Bow Wow Wow, the album also contained songs by great songs by Sparks and Polyrock, a minimalist synthpop band that Philip Glass sometimes played with and produced.

But for me, the best track on Blitz was “Angel Face” a cover of an old Glitter Band song. Shock were a dance troupe, incorporating mime artists (Tik & Tok from Return of the Jedi were members). I realize, of course, that this probably sounds fucking terrible already, but give it a chance. Were they musicians? No, but they did have “a look” that record companies, searching for the next big thing—the New Romantics and Boy George were just around the corner—could get behind.

Shock’s Barbie Wilde would later play the female Cenobyte in Hellraiser II. Other than that there’s not a whole lot more to the story, but amusingly, one of them, Carole Caplin, went on to become a “style coach” for Cherie Blair, wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. She became tabloid fodder for her connection to Australian con-man Peter Foster, who she introduced to Mrs. Blair, during a scandal dubbed “Cheriegate.”

The song’s propulsive beat comes from the use of a then-new (and prohibitively expensive) Roland MC-8 Microcomposer and in many ways provided the template for the New Romantic sound soon to be taken up by Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Blancmange and others. The song was co-produced by Blitz club DJ Rusty Egan (later of the group Visage and London’s Camden Palace nightclub) and technological innovator Richard James Burgess of Landcape (who produced hit albums by Spandau Ballet and designed the first electronic drum).

I used to go the Mudd Club in London, practically every Friday in 1983-84 and “Angel Face” was always played once a night without fail, which always made me very happy.

Below, Shock performing “Angel Face” live when they opened for Gary Numan at Wembley Arena in 1981:
 

Illustratios for “The Communist Manifesto” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Visit Fernando Vicente

 
Incendiary pro-shot Dead Kennedys set from the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, 1984. This was the infamous “International Event” concert held on August 10th that ended in a riot (like many hardcore shows in Los Angeles did at that time, especially ones held at the Olympic, once a boxing area, now a church). Note that tickets were just $7.50!

Also on the bill: Italy’s Raw Power, BGK from the UK, Finnish hardcore group Riistetyt, Mexico’s Solución Mortal and Reagan Youth. Dig Biafra’s boss Carl Jr.‘s tee-shirt.
 

 
Reagan Youth’s fantastic set that night:
 

 
Raw Power:
 

 
BGK performing “Arm’s Race”
 

tastefullyoffensive:

[box guide I] [simonscat]

 
Redditor spinjump‘s costume as the “restored Jesus fresco” photographed at the Anime Weekend Atlanta last weekend is all kinds of clever.
 

 
Via Super Punch

 
It’s called rock ‘n’ roll and it can change your life.

01. Love and Only Love
02. Powderfinger
03. Born In Ontario
04. Walk Like A Giant
05. The Needle And The Damage Done
06. Twisted Road
07. Fuckin’ Up
08. Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World (w/ Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Taylor Hawkins [Foo Fighters], Dan Auerbach [The Black Keys] and K’NAAN)

Watch it in 720p.