Year: 1997
Original Format: cassette
“Freedom is free of the need to be free.” —Funkadelic
Playlist:
One Beautiful Mindless Orgy Joe Silver
This is from David Cronenberg’s first movie, Shivers, a.k.a. The Parasite Murders, a.k.a. They Came from Within, a.k.a. Frissons. Spoiler alert: The scientist’s plan does not work out so well.
Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow (excerpt) Funkadelic
Absolutely 100% goddamn right.
Fell Off the Floor, Man dEUS
Research reveals that: 1) dEUS are Belgian. I knew they were European, but never from where exactly. Belgium seems right somehow. 2)They are still going today, though they haven’t released an album in a while. 3) As with so many songs from the 90s, there’s a video I’d never seen before:
Ninety Day Cycle People Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band
“When you look at successful people, they get a lot more done than other people can. Despite breathing the same air they breathe and having the same 24 hours a day, they get ahead in life. Some people might attribute this to luck or that successful people have special abilities that others don’t have. Only a few top achievers have exceptional abilities but for the rest, it also comes down to their approach. I have observed over the years how they use 90-day cycles to achieve more than they could otherwise. Average people who aren’t aware of this phenomenon only achieve mediocre results at best.” —Addictedtosuccess.com
The Wise One Is Not Ambitious for Power Alan Watts
Alan gives good copy, as they used to say.
Freeloader Throwing Muses
I see that Kristin Hersh is playing in Belgrade, Serbia today. She gets around. There were some shows in California last November that I might have made it to had I known they were happening. Well, maybe next time.
French Fries with Pepper Morphine
Sadly, Mark Sandman didn’t make it to 9/9/99 — he died of a heart attack onstage in July of that year. Here are some things I just learned about him, thanks to Wikipedia:
- He was born into a Jewish American family in Newton, Massachusetts. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts, then worked a variety of blue-collar jobs, including construction, taxi driving, and commercial fishing.
- Two tragic events affected Sandman’s life and would later influence his music: he was robbed and stabbed in the chest during a robbery in his cab, and his two brothers died.
- In addition to his work as a musician, Sandman was also an amateur photographer and artist. He created a comic titled The Twinemen, starring three anthropomorphic balls of twine who form a band, become successful, break up, and later reunite.
Primitive The Cramps
Just an absolutely fucking perfect song. R.I.P. Lux.
Sandor 21 Coyle and Sharpe
How much would you pay for a filtered compound Sandoristic sentence? I might know where I could get one.
Chapter 24 Pink Floyd
The words here are from hexagram 24 of the Wilhem/Baynes translation of the I Ching. I only wish Syd had gotten around to doing the other 63.
Transport Is Arranged Pavement
“No other band satisfies my soul the way Pavement does. I keep thinking that someday I’ll get sick of it and just like I did with Thin Mints when I was a girl scout, I’d get queasy at the mere mention of them… but it’s been almost 30 years, and I love them at least as much as, if not more than I did when I first tasted their sound.” —YouTube commenter Jyl Johnson
Come Together The Beatles
Today one of the top search results for the phrase “come together” was this grim but accurate headline from the Babylon Bee: Nation Comes Together During Tragedy To Engage In Tradition Of Hateful Bickering. (Another was Ritz and Oreo Come Together for the Ultimate Sweet and Salty Mashup.)
Lord Only Knows Beck
“Sometimes one sound can inspire an entire song. In this case, it was the shout at the beginning, a sample from folk rocker Mike Millius’ 1969 track ‘Lookout For Lucy.’ ‘It was a great record, another one that we all just listened to and vibed off,’ the album’s co-producer Mike Simpson explained in a MusicRadar interview. ‘Basically there’s this yelp sound at the beginning of this song that was Mike Millius and I don’t know what happened but Beck heard this yelp and it inspired everything else that came out on this track.’” —Songfacts.com
It Continues to Evolve Mary Tyler Moore & Richard Jenkins
“Among the other pleasures of Flirting with Disaster is the way we cannot predict the movie’s next turn. There are conventions in this sort of story, and [director David O.] Russell seems to violate most of them. He allows the peculiarities of his characters to lead them away from the plot line and into perplexities of their own. To watch that happening is a lot of fun.” —Roger Ebert
Fill Your Heart David Bowie
“An odd and goofy singer/songwriter who didn’t fit in any comfortable niche when he emerged in the late 1960s, New Orleans pianist Biff Rose was like a vaudeville entertainer reincarnated as a spacy hippie. It isn’t quite accurate to call him a rock artist, but he fits in rock about as well as anywhere else. If he’s remembered by rock audiences at all, it’s because David Bowie covered a Rose song — ‘Fill Your Heart’ (co-written by Rose and Paul Williams), from Rose’s 1968 debut album — on Hunky Dory. Bowie also covered another song from that album, ‘Buzz the Fuzz,’ in live performances (it can be heard on a 1970 bootleg), and Tiny Tim did ‘Fill Your Heart’ on the B-side of ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips.’” —Allmusic
Since I Lost My Head, It’s Awl-right Julian Cope
I see that JC’s Facebook page was updated yesterday for the second time in three years. Commenter Mark P. Simpson asks, “Does this mean Julian is finally rising from his great slumber? As foretold in the legend of King Arthur, in that he would rise when England was in its greatest need….”
It’s the Law William S. Burroughs
It’s amazing how even now, conservatives around the world fail to grasp this very simple principle.