The Nazz was Todd Rundgren’s band in the late 60’s. This psych-pop song was highly influential on 70’s power-pop bands as they formed. Interestingly, these guys, along with the Move, were pioneers in both power pop and progressive rock. Genres were fluid then, still formulating, so bands picking up on the experimental pop of the Beatles often found themselves pulled in both directions. By the mid 70’s the lines were clearer, and by the late 70’s prog-rockers and power-pop/punk guys barely spoke to each other.
Cheap Trick, Rock ‘n’ Roll Juggernaut
https://youtu.be/FQDc9loiFuk
Prime Cheap Trick, one of my great obsessions.
Comrade Simpsons
This is, um, not sure what to think about this…
Winnipeg Gets It
As reported by The AV Club …
In most cities around the world, Brian De Palma’s 1974 rock opera-ish The Phantom Of The Paradise is a cult classic, appreciated mostly by self-proclaimed cinephiles with a taste for over-the-top strangeness. (As our own Ignatiy Vishnevetsky describes it in a piece recommending the film: “[Phantom Of The Paradise] represented the pinnacle of Brian De Palma’s undisciplined early excess: a smorgasbord of camp, Grand Guignol, and bird imagery that thumbed its metal beak at commercial considerations.”) In Winnipeg, Manitoba, however, it was a box-office sensation, and is still a pop-cultural touchstone on par with Star Wars.
This documentary premieres on July 12, and you can bet your bastard ass I’ll be seeing it as soon as possible.
Full article here.
Another Fucking Watch
This time I fell for the Vostok Amphibia, a ridiculously affordable Russian diver. Watch the video for a little history – it’s fascinating stuff. There seem to be hundreds of styles to choose from on this site. Here’s mine.
Oh! For you trivia-obsessed bastards, this is the watch that Steve Zissou’s crew wore in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, only it was this dial …
The Last One With Connery
Enjoy this making-of documentary for Diamonds Are Forever.
Informative!
Gonna Learn Me Some History
Trump delivered an inspiring speech to celebrate our nation’s independence yesterday, and dropped a little unknown history in doing so. I had no idea that our army controlled the air in the Revolutionary War, and we also controlled all the airports. George Washington was a pilot not to be fucked with…
Here’s the video proof…
we’re doomed…
Shit
Vulture remembers.
It Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This
Wiki-Wiki-Wikipedia provides a little history and significance.
“Teenage Kicks” was the debut single for Northern Irish punk rock/new wave band The Undertones. Written in the summer of 1977 by the band’s principal songwriter, John O’Neill, the song was recorded on 15 June 1978 and initially released that September upon independent Belfast record label Good Vibrations, before the band—at the time unobligated to any record label—signed to Sire Records on 2 October 1978. Sire Records subsequently obtained all copyrights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire’s own label on 14 October that year, reaching number 31 in the UK Singles Chart two weeks after its release.
Upon first hearing “Teenage Kicks” in September 1978, BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel is reported to have burst into tears, and readily admitted to still being reduced to tears upon hearing the song in interviews granted to journalists up until his death. To judge songs he had heard for the first time as to worthiness of airplay upon his show, Peel often rated new bands’ songs with a series of asterisks, with each song judged upon a scale of one to five asterisks: Peel was so taken by “Teenage Kicks”, he awarded the song 28 stars. On one occasion, he is known to have played the song twice in a row, with the explanation given to his audience being, “It doesn’t get much better than this.”
In a 2001 interview given to The Guardian, Peel stated that apart from his name, the only words he wished to be engraved upon his gravestone were the opening lyrics to “Teenage Kicks”: “Teenage dreams so hard to beat.”
In February 2008, a headstone engraved with these words was placed on his grave in the Suffolk village of Great Finborough.
Yet Another SYFY Artists Alley
This time, living legend Neal Adams sketches Deadman.