Originally released in February 1971, I Drink Your Blood was one of the first motion pictures to be rated X for violence.  Trying to beat Night of the Living Dead at its own game, this film is shot straight from the gut.  This film was originally distributed on a double-bill with a cheap zombie film, Zombie:  Voodoo Bloodbath, originally made in 1964, which was retitled I Eat Your Skin.   I Drink Your Blood, though, is far from black-and-white tame:  it's an explosion to the bone marrow.  Rabies, meat pies, hippie killer maniacs, rednecks foaming at the mouth-it's all in their!

Witness these amazing scenes:  a dead goat is dragged across the screen, an old man in his underwear vomits up his dentures while he's being strangled to death, an electric knife slips from a side of meat and....well, you get the picture.

Between the bad-taste instincts of exploitation legend Gross (who gave the film its lurid title and distributed it on a double-bill with an cheap black-and-white zombie film he'd rechristened I Eat Your Skin- a.k.a. Zombie, Voodoo Bloodbath, 1964) and Durston's twisted imagination (rabies, meat pies, LSD, hippie maniacs, construction workers foaming at the mouth), I Drink Your Blood plays like a double-barreled shotgun blast, a sugar fix for gore freaks. Just when you think Durston can't push the delirium any further, somebody drags a dead goat across the screen...or an old man in long underwear pukes up his dentures while being strangled...or an electric carving knife strays from a side of ham with disastrous results...or...well, you get the picture.

But the MPAA did not approve.  Graphic scenes of dismemberment, stabbings, self-immolation, barbecued rodents, decapitation, and stake impalement upset the censors of the day.  The film was originally released uncut, anyway, despite the code of authority, but prints of the film were heavily edited by projectionists, theater owners, and small-town vice squads.
 
Its ad campaign read:  "Two Great Blood-Horrors to Rip Out Your Guts."
Here is a movie that begins with the demonic howl of one Horace Bones who tells his disciples:  "Satan was an acidhead.  Drink from his cup.  Pledge yourselves, and together, we'll all freak!"  What else is there to say?

The biggest idea I came out of SxSW with this year was that free is dead. Over. Overdone. We killed it. Because so much is free online, we expect it; where's the value in that? It seems to me that the folks in Austin weren't quite on this one yet... even SxSWi keynote speakers Guy Kawasaki and Chris Anderson seemed slow to the punch [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Guest post this week from an astounding singer-songwriter who mysteriously remains relatively unknown (working on fixing that!), my friend Michael Miller. Dear Hearts, I have a friend who constantly asks me how to be happy [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

I have not written about a TV show on this blog yet, so let us now praise my favorite TV creation of all time:  Uncle Floyd.  This is the masterpiece, I think, that we are all still seeking, hipster and squares alike....even only we could slow down just to watch some episodes.

My devotion to this teevee character and his throw-it-against-the-wall programming broadcast via UHF out of New Jersey is rooted in the fact that for years I never saw the program-but only heard about it from my friends in the New York area. The Uncle Floyd Show was what the rock elitists watched while everyone else was focused on, say, Saturday Night Live. The comedy shtick of Floyd and his cast of misfits suggested a paradise where whatever you could think of you could actually do on television.

Much of what we take for granted now-especially the homemade ineptitude of a youtube video or the intentional messiness of hipster TV commercials-were all present on this program taped in what seemed like someone's garage.

And as you can see from just one visit to the Uncle Floyd website, the garage bands flocked there and rose to the challenge.

Back in the days of NY punk and garage sensibilities-when it was riskier and certainly more harebrain-I used The Uncle Floyd Show as the barometer of whether or not I would want to associate with someone.

When I was asked-as we always were back then-what I was "into" these days, I'd say: "Uncle Floyd, of course." Invariably, someone would respond with, "yeah, well, I like PINK Floyd, too, but they haven't been the same since The Piper at the Gates of Dawn." At that moment, I would simply walk away.

Not everyone was hip to Uncle Floyd then. But now, you can buy his programs on DVD, VHS, and the Internet, and long for the day when discovering a TV program really meant something.

With this blog, my purpose is to link you to cultural debris from a particular critical perspective, and as it takes shape, that perspective becomes the meaning behind a culture that has often remained neglected, underground, forgotten. (Discovery is at the heart of most blogs, after all.)  And so, I have begun, in a way, with my heart---with visions of Uncle Floyd dancing in my head.

.

...for those who want to be extra-afraid of Coco....

By COCO HAMES

The computer game The Sims was released in the spring of 2000, the same year I left for my first semester at the University of Florida.  I am an unapologetic Luddite, so when I received this game for my birthday, I figured I'd never play it.  How very wrong I was.  Nine years later, it is still the only game on my computer, and I am still involved.  With the original.  I've been told new versions have come on the scene, but they don't interest me, mostly because I can't be bothered to learn new technology.  I barely use a telephone.  These "apps" you speak of intrigue me, but I wouldn't know the first thing about using one.

When I write songs, as I'm currently expected to, as we're working on our third album, I have to have complete privacy.  I have to be completely alone.  So everyone knows, when Coco gets her Sims out and nestles down into bed, she'll be infuriatingly impossible to reach for a day or two, but my time in the Sims k-hole will yield, usually, about two or three new songs.

It's not just that I enjoy building houses, furnishing them, designing landscaping, and controlling everyone's every move.  It's not just that I have all of the original expansion packs, so my Sims are wizards, animals, and movie stars.  There are stories.  There are lives!  There are long running undercurrents of love, loss, frustration, anxiety, and despair.  Sim neighbors gaze upon Sim neighbors and lament never making a move before the mustachioed doctor got married, etc.

One of the most intriguing story lines running through my current Sims world is that of Rome Bidgert.  And yes, part of the fun is naming them.  Rome is a simple, time traveling conduit of magical energy, placed in these modern times, currently in the form of a big black guy with an eye patch.  Luckily, there exists a magical village where the magic-at-heart can get away from all mod cons and go shopping for dragon scales and participate in wizard duels.  It was in this very magical village that Rome heard tell of a strange cat, a stray that had wandered into town and been picked up by -- who else! -- the Sim community's most powerful wizard, Charles Moribund.

Rome made his way to Charles' home and knew, from the very moment he laid eyes on the cat, that it wasn't a cat at all, but the age old time traveling spirit of the legendary witch Minuit!  Rome convinced Charles to cast a spell on the cat, a spell which would restore it to its true form, that of a tall, pale mocha skinned woman.  Charles was reluctant, but cast the spell, and lo and behold, the cat turned into an elegant, bespectacled lady: Minuit!

Initially, Minuit was confused and cagey; she didn't know where she was or who the people were around her.  Rome left Charles' house discouraged, but hopeful that Minuit would return to herself in time.  But Charles -- being the experienced and resourceful Sim wizard that he is -- brewed her a strong potion that inverted her personality, and Minuit instantly remembered who she was!  BUT THEN!  When Rome returned on a visit to check up on her that she recognized the soul of the love of her life, deep behind Rome's eyes, the eyes that had of course instantly recognized his beloved Minuit in the guise of a stray feline.  Um, eye.  Because of the eye patch. . 

So now Rome and Minuit live together in a compound on the edge of the magical forest where they raise children and send them off to magical "military" school one by one to form a dark army in preparation for the battles they know are coming.

Poni says I can't go near the World of Warcraft.

*****

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose latest album Look At Life Again Soon (Take Root) is still a hot item-but look out for a new EP, Danger Is, on April 7 (already out digitally, www.myspace.com/theettes), and a Dan Auerbach-produced limited-edition single this month. They tore it up at the Hold Steady showcase At SXSW in Austin, by the way. The real Austin, not the Sims-world Austin.

As always, the idea is that what unites us is more than music, an axiology that extends from the music to our music-lover lifestyles: how we vote, what we drive, what we eat, what we wear, etc. The point is, we’re a tribe connected by vibe… hence, this month’s compendium: 1. Nerdcore [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

By Martin Bisi


On the way to an event last night called "Dances Of Vice," I was planning this blog post about irony, and trying to define the different possible threads of irony in music.
 
So the event is themed, with most people in Victorian or fantasy clothing, and all the musical performances involve cellos, violins, and harps - everything very baroque. I walk to the side of the stage and I see a Flying V guitar. I think, OMG, how ironic ! The Flying V is a staple of hard rock/metal -almost the opposite of what the event was about. Then i see a capo clipped to the guitar. (A capo is a common accessory of folk music, and metal guitarists as a rule will not use them.) So the irony pleasure-center in my brain goes into double, triple overload. I ask the people around me about the guitar, excitedly pointing out the irony. The guitarist (for performer Fern Knight) is somehow summoned, and he says "don't see one of those (a capo), on a Flying V too often, huh". I think that might have been a first in history actually.

 So that's almost a textbook definition of irony - something being in a context outside of how it's normally defined. But something about our use of the word with music, has always suggested to me the assumption that it was a new phenomenon.
 
The first time I was confronted with the issue of irony, was in the very early days of 80s indie rock, around the time I was recording bands like Live Skull and Sonic Youth. A friend of mine who specialized in Middle Eastern string instruments, and worked with Bill Laswell, said to me disparagingly: "there's a whole lot of irony going on" —in reference to indie rock. I thought he meant that elements, primarily lyrics, were going into the music for the sake of being funny. I'm sure you can find funny songs in every culture. And all cultures have at least 2 distinct musical disciplines - sacred, and social music. In social, popular music -music for the people- you will have had humor, for as long as people had a sense of humor. So maybe when a type of humor in music is old and established, we just wouldn't call it ironic. Somehow Johnny Cash singing "A Boy Named Sue", or "I killed a man in Reno.." isn't ironic, but Sonic Youth singing "We're gonna kill the California girls.." is. (And that's ironic in itself)

The other type of irony is using an instrument or method that is normally considered bad, and suggesting that it's actually good, and doing it consciously. The way I just described it, you'd think we'd encourage that, and we do - when it works. But when it doesn't work, we can dismiss it as a fad, or a pointless, vacuous attempt at irony. So when you add a kazoo solo in a rock song you're ironic, but when you add distorted guitar to polka beats it could be the record of the year - hello Gogol Bordello.
 
Very recently, I threw the irony card at someone. I said to Amanda Palmer (from Dresden Dolls) who has been doing more songs on ukulele, that the ukulele was an "ironic instrument". I asked: "where is the Jimi Hendrix of ukulele ?"—"why hasn't Philip Glass composed for ukulele ?". For those who've missed this, using a ukulele has been falling into a sub-genre called Steam Punk - people with a punk attitude who use non-electric instruments, such as one would find during the time of steam engines. (Can I write irony in all caps here ?) Well innovation wouldn't be innovative, if it made sense to everyone at first, and what if the steam-punks prove punk doesn't need loud guitar ? A little more time might tell.

 I've suggested that traditional music is insulated from being thought of as having irony. Same holds for so-called serious music. In my young engineering years, I worked with Fred Frith who is a notable avant garde innovator, viewed by many as serious. He once said to me: "sometimes when music is really good, it's funny". And Frith is well known for laughing copiously during sessions. I think it's because of the combinations of things he would try—and when they'd sound good to him, it was like the irony in a good joke.

I think if he had found that the right choice in a piece of music was a Flying V guitar with a capo on it, he would have laughed his ass off.

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.
 

THE MOON MAN CONNECTION

In the late '70s, disco video was all the rage. TV programs such as Kicks, Hot City, and Soap Factory Disco marred the broadcast airwaves. As long as folks had the desire to celebrate their beautiful brawn on the set of some sleazy soundstage, the ecstasy prevailed and became perfect visual wallpaper for the winking TV eye.

But for sheer spunk, no disco program ever approached Moon Man Connection which I first experienced on UHF Channel 20 in Washington DC. This low-cost program was visual wallpaper so extreme that its very insubstantiality became hypnotic.

Filmed in a rat-infested basement, Moon Man opened with a blast from an echo chamber. Ten years after Neil Armstrong strolled on the moon, Mr. Moon Man milked the scratched footage of the NASA moonwalk, splicing it in at random intervals. Moon Man was a true trash auteur from Scuzzville.

Moon Man's backdrop scenery was a moonscape painted on cardboard sprinkled with glitter and Day-Glo.  Compared to other disco programming of this era, Moon Man's dance floor seemed nearly vacant; the dancers, puppets on Sleep-eze. Tipsy camera angles, cheap simulcasting, color filters, "psychedelic lighting"-all combined to create the best example of dope TV ever made.

After months of indulging in Moon Man Connection, I began to notice several similarities between supposedly different episodes:

--Moon Man always seemed to play the same ten records (he was the only cat who ever misspelled Rod Stewart as "Rot Stuart")

--The regular dance sequence, where couples are paired according to their astrological signs (to the strains of Danny Pearson's "What's Your Sign?"), always featured the same couple.

--Every time the dancers did the "Moon Walk" (which could only be performed to a Bohannon record), it was the same bunch.

Finally, I realized that, not only did Moon Man Connection contain similar sequences merely rearranged for each show, but that it was actually the same show repeated endlessly! (Boy, Moon Man, what a card!)

Nothing could explain the Moon Man phenomenon at a time when disco video supplied an endless stream of visuals illustrating the physical dynamics of going tapioca with one's limbs. I mean, Moon Man-and his whole stupid show-just sat there.

Hey, Moon Man!  How bout that...he got away with something!! Give him a hand or a hand job or whatever you wanna do....the guy deserves it.

BUT HERE'S THE OTHER PERSPECTIVE FROM THE INNER DC CONNECTION:
What a trashy review from a true playa hater...

Moonman provided the ‘real connection' that was missing from the hyped Soul Train broadcast. The so-called ‘endless repeat of shows' was genius, and I laugh... LOL.

You misrepresent information of a genre of Go-Go Playas (not gender specific) who know the truth about Channel 20 and The Moonman Connection. They funked and rocked old school and new beats and rhymes without fail. Perhaps your town could only afford to pay for cut and pasted shows... In D.C., it was real and they dealt funk on a regular.

I watched the show comfortably in my B-More attic (The Playas Clubhouse), with no less than room fulla honeys and some Espirit. The dancers were a bit repetitive, but they danced like no other place, except for maybe a house party.
D.C. and B-More are cousins down south (south of the Big Apple)...we are not ashamed of our funk and you will never find us spinning on our heads or swimming out of water. We funk, we rock, we connect.

To all the playas back in the day, I gotchya back!

Moonman, thanks brother... Thank you for keepin' it real.

Good lord, perhaps the longest week of my life. It's kind of like camp. With no sleep. And lots of drinking. Predominant thoughts for me this year were: 1. Ach, my back is killing me... who knew that a top-tier hotel like the Driskill would have the worst beds ever. I slept on the floor all week. 2. Where is Glasvegas playing? (I saw them three times. Super-fan alert!) 3. Crap, I forgot to eat [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Stop her if you've heard the one about John Mayer and the red umbrella before....

By COCO HAMES

Once in New York, at Mercury Lounge, we played a show with our friends the Friggs, and during soundcheck, the engineer goes, "Oh, by the way, John Mayer is doing a secret set after your show."  And we were like, "Why?" And the always friendly engineer said, "He does that sometimes."  So we said, "Okay, well... he'll be saddling up on the butt-end of a raucous punk rock night, but whatever."

It was an awesome show, Debbie Harry was there, Little Steven Van Zandt was there, and we brought our new album to the mean streets of the LES. And I say mean streets because some punk ass teenagers decided to use some Bond-level pneumatic lock exploder to break into the van, but guess what, morons?  If the band is in the venue, PROBABLY so is their gear.  Idiots.

As it goes, I didn't MEAN to heckle John Mayer, but it kind of, like, happened.  I mean, for the most part, I don't really have a problem with him or people like him. They suck and are super boring, but I don't, like, sit around fuming with hatred for them. I just don't listen to their music. I carry on with my struggle-to-get-up-in-the-morning-demons-are-out-to-get-me-trichotillomaniacal-Franzia-soaked-punk-rock life, etc.

But what a douchebag! He just kept telling these boring twatty stories, and I'm like, dude, you are on another planet, no one here has a sailboat, what the hell are you talking about?  What is this? 

Back in my solo country days, a boyfriend once told me not to tell boring twatty stories up on the mic, and while he was a total dick and READ MY DIARY, it's advice I've pretty much adhered to, because I don't know about everybody else, but I don't go see a show to hear your holy boring self-important stories unless you're Bob Dylan. And John Mayer is not Bob Dylan.

So he gurbled into the mic, "Let me give you some advice..." and I couldn't help myself, it just slipped out, I said, "Please don't..." and I was cracking up. I was like, whoops that was loud, that always happens to me, I am always that guy, we should go back downstairs.  And he got totally flustered and was like, "Yeah, well... You're, like, you're a red umbrella in, like, a bunch of black umbrellas..." And this guy behind me shouted, "What does that even mean?"

I was just dying laughing. I was like, we gotta get out of here before I engage with John Mayer, I don't even care! Because you know, if I HAVE to fight someone I will, trouble and I are just good friends, but in general, I'd rather not.  Or I would... I just thought it was so funny!  I'm like, dude, if what you're going for is, like, a red umbrella in a bunch of black umbrellas means I stand out because I'm not like your fans, or anyone else in the room, I mean... you're right?  Thanks for the propers?

Anyway, my friends kept egging me on to keep hassling him, but I -- being super smart and savvy -- said, "Y'alls, I know people like him, and they ALWAYS travel with bodyguards, especially when they go slumming, and I really can't deal with bodyguards." 

So they called me a wimp, but as John Mayer slummed his way out past my merch booth -- big black bodyguards fore and aft -- I still win!

*****

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose latest album Look At Life Again Soon (Take Root) is still a hot item-but look out for a new EP, Danger Is, on April 7 (already out digitally, www.myspace.com/theettes), and a Dan Auerbach-produced limited-edition single this month. And catch ‘em at SXSW, too.