Jdanehey

My love for Prince is well established by this point, but there is something I must confess--between Morris Day & The Time’s performance of “The Bird” and Prince & The Revolution’s “Purple Rain” in the film Purple Rain, Morris Day hands down should have won. You know deep in your hearts it is true. Together we can enter our new, free reality together.

Read more Morris Day and The Time Should Have Won In Purple Rain at The Toast.

 
Kevin Smith has caught a lot of hell for not “maturing” as an artist, but if you go back and watch Clerks, it’s pretty obvious that his strengths have always been juvenile humor with a shot of modern neurosis. And, while Clerks is certainly a product of its time, I maintain...

 
By the time Pops Staples sang “Papa Legba” in David Byrne’s movie

Via Jesse Jackman: This guy's Tiffani Thiessen Speedo is 9021OMFG.

BURNING THE GROUND EXCLUSIVE 1991

REQUEST

“(I Just Wanna) B with U” was a single released by UK band Transvision Vamp in 1991 and was the first to be taken from their final studio album, Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble. It was also the first of their singles to be co-written by Wendy James. After a two-year gap since their previous UK single “Born to Be Sold”, it fared poorly on the UK singles chart reaching #30, although it fared better in Australia where it peaked at #16.

On Side B “Swamp Thang” and “Straight Thru Your Head” are listed as seperate tracks however they are one continuous track.

SIDE A:
(I Just Wanna) B With U (The Nightripper Mix) 4:53

SIDE B:
Swamp Thang/Straight Thru Your Head 6:28
Punky Says 3:14

VINYL GRADE:
Vinyl: Near Mint
Sleeve: Near Mint

RELEASE INFORMATION:
Label: MCA Records ‎– TVVTG 10
Format: Vinyl, 12″, Limited Edition, Numbered, 45 RPM
Country: UK
Released: 1991
Genre: Rock
Style: Pop Rock

CREDITS:
Mixed By – Alan Moulder
Producer – Duncan Bridgeman

NOTES:
Numbered, gatefold sleeve, includes poster

Find the 12″ on DISCOGS

EQUIPMENT USED:
Turntable: Pro-Ject Debut Carbon (DC)
Cartridge: Ortofon 2M
Stylus: Ortofon OM Stylus 30
Platter: Pro-Ject Acryl-It platter
Stabilizer: Pro-Ject Record Puck 
Phono Pre-amp: Bellari VP130 Tube Phono Preamp
Tube: Tung-Sol 12AX7ECC803-S Gold Electron Tube
Soundcard: ESI Juli@
Record Cleaning: VPI HW 16.5 Record Cleaning Machine
Artwork Scans: Brother MFC-6490CW Professional Series Scanner

SOFTWARE USED:
Recording/Editing: Adobe Audition 3.0 (Recording)
Down Sampling: iZotope RX Advanced 2
Artwork Editor: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Click Removal: Manual
FLAC/MP3 Conversion: dBpoweramp
M3U Playlist: Playlist Creator

RESTORATION NOTES:
All vinyl rips are recorded @ 32bit/float
FLAC (Level Eight)
MP3 (320kbps)
Artwork scanned at 600dpi

Username: btg
Password: burningtheground

You can help show your support for this blog by making a donation using PayPal. Thank you for your help.

Any excuse to run a picture of Francoise Hardy

“I am done buying trendy sunglasses,” writes a reader named Jessica. “I want some sunglasses-for-life. I would like to spend about a hundred dollars, although I will spend more for the perfect pair. I will not spend two hundred dollars even if the sunglasses are pure magic, because I totally just can’t.” Well guys, I feel like I’ve owed you this one for a while, because you never see anything but stupidly expensive sunglasses here, as that’s all I ever buy. You know better than to do that, of course, and I’d like to think I could learn to. So what follows are five brands with decent selections in Jessica’s—and possibly any sane person’s—range.

This winter when I was staying at The Standard in Miami, they had a Warby Parker pop-up shop going on in the lobby, and the only thing that prevented me from buying some of their sunglasses was that there were too many cute pairs to choose from (and I am a very decisive person). This is such a good example of what they do well: chic and retro, but somehow quite classic at the same time. And the quality is rock solid.

It doesn’t get more sunglasses-for-life than Ray Ban, and on the right person, there’s nothing sexier than their aviator. But if I were looking to invest, I’d go for Clubmaster. It’s sturdier, and also just that much more unexpected.

Marc by Marc Jacobs has a selection that is both fun and witty and trendy and somehow utterly safe at the same time.  This seems like the lowest-risk version of cat-eye frames ever (which is a good thing).

You’ve got to pick through Wildfox‘s selection, because a lot of it is way too young and trendy, but they aren’t afraid of color, which I like. And they do the occasional very successful “tribute” (these remind me of far more pricey Karen Walkers).

Yes, Toms, the shoe company makes sunglasses and a lot of them are rather sophisticated and cute. I totally don’t have the correct head shape for these, but I love them.

 
I don’t like beer. It’s not that I didn’t like it “back in the day.” Budweiser was truly the king of all party beverages when I was in high school. Which is also probably the reason I don’t drink beer anymore. Nostalgic thoughts only meaningful...

Tina Turner's Private Dancer is coming back—it will be re-released in June with a whole new disc of B-sides and other goodies in celebration of its 30th anniversary.

 
This is a guest post written by Kevin C. Smith, author of Recombo DNA: The story of DEVO, or how the 60s...

 
Tim Cappello is the legendary “sexy sax man,” most famous for his rendition of “I Still...

There are many beautiful pictures of young Elizabeth Taylor, who was perfectly formed for the fashions of the 1950s. But I am not here to talk about her retro style.

Read more...

In the ’80s and ’90s, the Beastie Boys made music that makes you a more fun person when you listen to it. It was the perfect combo platter of smart, hilarious, and bratty as heck—they are the magnificent goons behind “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party),” for cripes’ sake. We at Rookie are eternally obsessed with their back catalog; if you’re unacquainted, start at the beginning with their 1986 debut, Licensed to Ill, and charge right on through their whole archive. Or? Say hey to the band’s Adam Horovitz, aka Ad-Rock, RIGHT THE HECK HERE ON WWW DOT ROOKIE’S MAG DOT BEAST, where Ad-Rock has graciously agreed to share his knowledge as “part of the Ask a Grown Person program,” as he calls it. Tune right in, party animals, and if you’d like MORE of His Excellency Ad-Rock, catch him in the new Noah Baumbach movie While We’re Young, which is out now in theaters and features our dude playing a way stodgier Grown Person. (After watching this video, you’ll understand just how good of an actor this makes him.)

If you’ve got pressing questions that you’d like a Grown’s help with, email your biggest LYFEPROBZ to youaskedit@rookiemag.com with “Ask a Grown” in the subject line, and please include your first NAME (or your nickname or initials), CITY, and AGE.

Crystal O'Connor of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, has her finger on the pulse of what gays want at their weddings: pizza. But thanks to her home state's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act , she can deny those carb-loving queers the sauce and cheese that they're just probably going stuff up their butts, anyway.

Read more...

 
It’s dark, it’s smooth, it’s Metallica and Hall & Oates all in one.

This mashup of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” is...

Cultural critic Fran Lebowitz is the perfect dresser if you enjoy women in men's suit jackets and cowboy boots, and the perfect speaker if you enjoy words. ELLE.com's Kathleen Hale recently sat down with Lebowitz at Burger Heaven (after Lebowitz threatened to cancel the interview if Hale was going to conduct it via the cell phone she used to contact Lebowitz) for a wide-ranging interview on a bunch of shit that Lebowitz hates (yoga pants, men in shorts, glasses jackers) and a few things Lebowitz likes (Dolly Parton). You should read the whole thing because it's absolutely the best celebrity interview of the year so far, but I'm pasting in some highlights below:

Read more...

Women have their fingerprints all over the history of mankind, but men have had a larger role in filling the pages of history books. 

 
There’s no way that the director of Pink Flamingos

Stop calling your fetish videos makeup tutorials. Not one person has learned one thing from them except maybe that they're into fetish videos. This is not a tutorial:

Read more...

 
Estately, which supposedly has “the most accurate index of homes for sale, straight from the MLS,” kindly put together this super-handy chart which allows us to see what our state “has more of per capita than any other.”

I’m impressed with the results! Apparently Texas has the most pet...

UPDATE: The T-shirt can be found here.

Read more...

So sad to read that Lesley Gore, the great singer of “It's My Party” and one of my all-time favorite songs, “You Don't Own Me”, has died of lung cancer at age 68.

Gore had been out as a lesbian .She is survived by her partner of 33 years.

 
I realize I’m blogging about this the day before Valentine’s Day, so it’s probably a little too late to get these puppies and give ‘em out. (Do adults give away multiple Valentine’s cards, anyway? I mean, I haven’t since I was in the ...

 
Though Ken Russell wanted to be a ballet dancer, his father wouldn’t hear of it—no son of his would ever be seen in tights—so the young Russell turned his attention to photography, a craft he thought he could make his name with. He attended Walthamstow Technical College in...

Rebellious teens, party princesses, and rule breakers are the life/style icons du jour. Borrow a couple looks from ’80s cinema’s greatest button-pushers, and you’ll be strutting your own badass stuff in no time!

Before she was drinking cosmos and talkin’ about love in Sex and the City, Sarah Jessica Parker was dodging her overprotective dad and showing off her dance moves in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985). She plays Janey, an army brat with dreams of becoming a dance star, even though her pa is all, “YOU BETTA NOT.” Doesn’t hurt that her dance partner is one HUNKETY HUNK. SJP is a style icon, but Helen Hunt, who plays Janey’s BFF Lynne, takes the fashion crown in this movie. I’m sorry, but Lynne drops the style-mic again and again. Please note: a hat with a big plastic grasshopper on it, ginormous dinosaur hair clips, and a FAUX-FUR-TRIMMED PLAID VEST. She makes my heart scream, people. So much, in fact, that I once made my own insect-topped headwear. I spray-painted a giant tarantula GOLD and glued it to a ruffled headband. Then I went to an event and the costume designer for Clueless, Mona May herself, asked to take a picture of me. OF ME! I challenge you to make your own outrageous bug-themed hat, and to send your pics to damngirl@rookiemag.com. THANK YOU. May Lynne inspire you, too!

Clockwise from top left: UFO skirt, $88, Joyrich; Confetti Sprinkle lip gloss, $2.50, Lip Smacker; jumbo plastic grasshopper, $28, School Outfitters; popcorn socks, $8, Unique Vintage; Chuck Taylors, $55, Converse.

Having to take care of your younger siblings can be, like, suuuuch a drag, but what if it leads to some… Adventures in Babysitting (1987)? After being stood up by her boyfriend, Chris (Elisabeth Shue) takes a babysitting gig. That night, her best friend, Brenda, calls freaking out and asking to be picked up at the train station. On the way to rescue Brenda, wild hijinks ensue as Chris and her charges find themselves in predicament after predicament, each stranger than the one before. Chris is the coolest babysitter a kid could wish for, so why not give her responsible-but-fun-as-heck look a try? Find a cute black-and-white gingham skirt and pair it with a fitted, long-sleeve top. Chris keeps her makeup light, if she wears it at all, so a sheer lip gloss will do the trick. Now you’re ready for your own adventures (babysitting optional).

Clockwise from top left: Ribbed crop top, $52, Topshop; Cha Cha Balm, $18, Benefit; heart pin, $5, Girlprops; gingham skirt, $90, eShakti; faux patent-leather flats, $23, Forever 21.

Modern Girls (1986) is about three young chicas named Margo, Kelly, and Cece. They live together in a badass apartment in L.A., and then a fun Friday night out ends up turning into a REALLY bananas adventure. Pay close attention to the decor in the girls’ rooms, and, seriously, be prepared: They have wardrobes that’ll make you droolll. These girls are truly outrageous! Get some of their ’80s party-girl style by mixing bold colors with funky tights. Paint your nails a bright, glittery pink so they’ll pop when they’re peeking through a pair of fishnet gloves.

Clockwise from left: Crêpe dress, $25, H&M; Jen Cheema sparkle cocktail ring, $24, Pygmy Hippo Shoppe; fishnet gloves, $8, Pink Princess; tights, $6, Target; Deborah Lippman nail lacquer, $20, Sephora.

We all know Prince (Thee Purple One) is the bomb, but do you know about his Purple Rain (1984) costar, Apollonia? She is a goddess among goddesses! In Purple Rain, Prince plays the Kid—the lead singer of the Revolution, a popular nightclub act. Apollonia walks in one night while he’s performing, and it’s lust at first sight. Next thing you know, they’re zooming around town on the Kid’s motorcycle and purifying themselves in the waters of Lake Minnetonka (!!!). Apollonia wants to shine on stage, too, and all hell breaks loose when she decides to join the Kid’s rival band. The Kid throws a fit while Miss A looks SO FLY: head-to-toe leather, lots of lace, and a signature red feather hanging in her hair. Get her look with some elbow-length gloves, a bold burgundy lip, and lacy li’l top—and throw a faux-leather jacket over it if your mom threatens to ground you. Don’t let her catch you singing the lyrics to “Sex Shooter,” either!

Left: Lace top, $44, Lulu’s. Clockwise from top center: feather earrings, $9, Pugster; satin gloves, $15, Walmart; Kat Von D Studded Kiss lipstick, $21, Makeup Alley; faux leather booties, $49, Go Jane.

1969 WITCH protest in front of Chicago Federal Building.
 
Of all the second wave feminists who exploded into action over the 1960s and 70s, no group seems to have had quite as much fun as WITCH—the fabulous acronym for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Like so many other groups, WITCH...

 
The Fools were big in Boston. Their 1979 single “Psycho Chicken,” a goofy take on Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” made them local heroes in Beantown but their attempts to break out of the novelty tune ghetto were pretty much fruitless.

As parody songs go, Psycho Chicken is well-executed and funny. The song...

November 20, 1964
 
I’m always trying to find absurd vintage National Enquirer covers from the 1960s. They’re mildly amusing and usually make me chuckle. Anyway, I’ve collected a few I’ve found online from various sources and posted them here. Hopefully you’ll find them as funny as I do.

Auctioning off the Elvis memorabilia at Graceland Too.

Photo: Eileen Townsend

The Absolute Auction of Graceland Too was over in one fell swoop. This past Saturday morning, about a hundred warmly dressed bidders, journalists, and rubberneckers had assembled on East Gholson Avenue in Holly Springs, Mississippi. The auctioneer informed us that the sale was over not even a minute after it began. Everything available—some six hundred items of variously worthwhile Elvis memorabilia—had sold to an unnamed online buyer for the sum of $54,500.

The crowd was visibly distressed at the news. There were groans, shouts of false advertising. The auctioneer, Greg Kinard, an immaculately dressed man of considerable stature, apologized and explained: this was the way it had to be. This was how Paul MacLeod would have wanted it. Kinard thanked everyone for coming out, assured us that there had been no false advertising, and reminded us to pick up one of the pink or blue T-shirts for sale: GRACELAND TOO FOREVER!

Stripped of its lurid speculative detail and Southern Gothic charm, the story of Graceland Too and its ill-fated proprietor, Paul MacLeod, is a sad and simple one. MacLeod was seventy-one when he died suddenly this past July, a victim of undiagnosed and untreated paranoid obsession. He’d spent the last years of his life poor and without family, in a rotting house without running water. His neighbors, for the most part, disliked him, and though he had multiple visitors nearly every night, he died alone and friendless.

Throw in some moonlight and magnolias, though, and a different story appears. Paul MacLeod was Elvis Presley’s number-one fan, a self-designated job if there ever was one. He dedicated his life to Presley in a way that makes other legacies of cultish Elvis devotion—and there are many—seem like the work of Sunday hobbyists. MacLeod lived for upwards of thirty-five years on East Gholson, a block from Holly Springs’s historic town square, in a two-story house that he christened Graceland Too, after Presley’s only slightly-less-weird Memphis mansion. MacLeod was infamous among regional college kids and roadside-Americana enthusiasts, the likes of whom he welcomed into his home at any hour, day or night, for his tour.

The tour was a forty-five minute trek through Graceland Too’s overstuffed lower rooms, graphically narrated by MacLeod, who claimed to hold millions of dollars in Elvis memorabilia. He bolstered his Elvis stories with apocryphal anecdotes about rough sex and famous visitors, all told in a well-rehearsed verbal onslaught. MacLeod guided his visitors through Graceland Too’s almost Masonically curtained interior, past Love Me Tender–emblazoned jukeboxes and gilded posters of the King. His tours led to the backyard, where MacLeod kept his “Jailhouse”—a cement courtyard complete with a fake electric chair. For five dollars, you got the tour and a snapshot next to an Elvis poster. For fifteen bucks, MacLeod made you a lifetime member of Graceland Too.

I never took the tour myself, though I grew up about an hour away in Memphis, where I still live. I told friends about it, especially out-of-towners in pursuit of a certain kind of storied Southernness. If my friends went, they often came back shaken. “That’s a scary guy,” a friend from New York told me last March after a midnight visit with MacLeod. I dismissed her discomfort as city-kid unfamiliarity. Then came the news, this past July, that Paul MacLeod had shot and killed someone on his property. I was surprised. I’d wrongly assumed, as I think most everyone else had, that MacLeod’s casually threatening spiel was just talk.

MacLeod’s victim was a man named Dwight David Taylor. He had done some work for MacLeod, who—owing either to poverty or to miserliness—failed to pay him. When Taylor showed up late at night to demand his pay, there was an altercation, and MacLeod pulled one of his many guns. Not even a week later, Graceland Too made headlines again: someone found MacLeod dead on his porch, seemingly from natural causes. When I asked locals in Holly Springs about the two deaths, they said both men were “angry guys.” There seemed to be no blame assigned.

Photo: Eileen Townsend

Plenty of people bemoaned the loss of Paul and his project, but there was never any serious talk of keeping Graceland Too intact. After all, greater obsessive folk monuments, built by similarly single-minded old bachelors, have not been spared. The consensus seemed to be that the true value of MacLeod’s home—quantifiable, among other ways, in the tourist dollars wayward Presley fans brought to Holly Springs—had passed with the man. What remained were piles of junk, some of it with nominal value to an aging community of collectors. MacLeod’s distant, if not quite estranged, daughter organized the auction.

Ordinary estate sales are like pop-up museums of our lives as unremarkable consumers. They attract all kinds, and not solely for commercial reasons. The Graceland Too auction was no different, except that the melee of bystanders was interspersed with photographers, documentarians, and an unofficial coterie of the tristate area’s cultural columnists. We were there alongside Paul MacLeod devotees (mostly art students) and some white-haired Elvis fans; many of us had arrived the day before for the auction preview, when we were invited to look at the considerable inventory and decide what we wanted.

Memorabilia collecting is particularly weird in that memorabilia is, by definition, cheap. There was no such thing as memorabilia before about the 1930s—you can trace its rise alongside that of middle-class tourism. The value of tchotchkes is entirely dictated by living memory. Sites like eBay don’t just sell memorabilia; through continuous crowd input, they help create its worth.

Photo: Eileen Townsend

MacLeod was one of those undiscriminating collectors who hoard anything that reminds them of their chosen theme. Having never made it to Graceland Too myself, I hadn’t known what to expect from his collection. The guts of Graceland Too were laid out along the sidewalk in plastic and fiberboard crates. There were stacks of newspaper clippings, cigar boxes, Playboys, piles of photographs two feet deep, unlabeled VHS cassettes, action figures, Christmas decorations, guest books, and printed quotations from people who’d visited Graceland Too. One of these spoke to the Christo-Judaic heights to which Elvis fandom sometimes ascends: “I have been saved by Jesus Christ and the grace of God. Almost equal is the grace of Elvis, and no other place do I feel as close to the King as Graceland Too.”

But mostly there were binders, stacks and stacks of them, containing MacLeod’s carefully typed records of every single mention of Elvis in any media, anywhere, even in passing.

In other words, on Saturday morning, for $54,500, an anonymous online buyer purchased three hundred or so records, a couple tchotchkes, and a ream of Elvis references. He or she bought a totalizing document of a life in inanity.

There’s a small public library on East Gholson where, after Paul’s plumbing failed, he would go to use the restroom. He befriended a librarian there, Robert Patterson, a quiet man—another “weird guy like Paul,” according the local who advised me to seek him out. When I asked Patterson about MacLeod, he printed out a short memorial he’d written for Facebook, which gave a brief account of how Patterson taught MacLeod to use the Internet. It also explained, in unsentimental language, how Patterson worked with Paul to compile pictures and videos relating to Graceland Too. Patterson was the only person I met in Holly Springs who seemed unaware or apathetic about the auction. “I feel that [Paul] considered me a friend,” his post concluded, “and I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know him better.”

Eileen Townsend lives in Memphis, Tennessee. She writes about art for The Memphis Flyer and is a contributing editor at Memphis Magazine.