Buttermilk & Molasses

Bowie's First Live Radio Broadcast Still Has Kick

When Ziggy Stardust (nee David Bowie) and the Spiders from Mars hit the United States for their first tour stateside in 1972, it's hard to imagine anyone thought the glam rocker was going to have staying power beyond a few years. Much less reinvent himself and his music time and time again, proving his prowess as a performer, a songwriter and an icon. The long-circulated bootleg of a live radio broadcast during that tour is now a official release, according to our friends at Paste Magazine:

Recorded midway through his first ever U.S. tour, this concert finds Bowie and band (or rather Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars) to be tight, high on their own mythos, and crackling with energy; even when Bowie strips things to just himself and guitarist Mick Ronson on acoustic, they perform electrifying takes on “Space Oddity” and “Andy Warhol.” From the furious opener “Hang On To Yourself” through Hunky Dory classics and singles like “John, I’m Only Dancing,” they cast an incandescent glow the exact ruby hue as Ziggy’s mullet.

If you just want a quick taste of the effervescent sounds of early Bowie, click here for streaming audio of that broadcast. Better yet, hang out and enjoy the whole show.

Who Will Watch the Watchmen?

Dear world, prepare yourself for the entertainment event of 2009. They hype starts now. Technically, the hype starts during the opening previews shown during "The Dark Knight," but when your job is to lead the culture it helps to get ahead of the crowds.

If you're familiar with the most compelling graphic novel of its time, "Watchmen" has been on your mental radar for 20 years. Welcome to the movie, which opens in March.

In addition to the teaser trailer which you can now watch here at Apple, Warner Bros. Pictures has updated the official website for the Zack Snyder-directed Watchmen movie as well!

At the site, you can read the synopsis, get new downloads such as wallpapers and icons, view the photo gallery and read the production diary. Oh, and there's a countdown clock and cool Flash animations!!

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly is going all-out with coverage on the movie this week. You can read their exclusive feature that includes more photos here (view the magazine's cover here) and an interview with Snyder is up here.

Here's a snappy update from our friends at Superhero Hype:

Warner Premiere's Motion Comics has launched with debut episodes of "Watchmen" and "Batman: Mad Love." The official announcement:

Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Warner Premiere announced today a new way for graphic novel fans to connect with their favorite characters and the stories they know and love through short-form digital content. "Warner Premiere's Motion Comics" draw on a massive amount of source material to bring a visually engaging experience to life through the use of subtle movements, voice-overs, sweeping music scores and stunning comic book artwork. The highly anticipated debut episode of DC Comics' "Watchmen" is now available exclusively as a free iTunes download for the next two weeks via Entertainment Weekly's website (EW.com/Watchmen).

Sigur Rós Is Trying To Break My Heart

I fell in and out of love with Icelandic band Sigur Rós too quickly, it seems. The trailer for the new documentary about the band, Heima, is one of the more beautiful pieces of video work I've seen in a long time. And the music...

Thanks to Jen Lemen for helping discover another window into my soul. And when you're done with Heima, check out the utterly heart-wrenching joy that is the video for the song Glósóli by Sigur Rós. Here it is:

Hey, Ho! Let's Snow! [Alt.Cool Snow Globes]

Who doesn't love a snow globe? Now, who doesn't love a tricked out snow globe focused on the bleaker aspects of the human condition? Welcome to the world of artists Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz. There's a nice interview with the artists at The Penleaf:

To imagine a world after the worst has happened somehow relieves       some of the anxiety of anticipation and unknowing. Typically our scenes       are after the fact. We don't know how this or that scenario unfolded or       what line of cause and effect brought us to a given point. Most of the scenes       we imagine depend on a history of more than one unexpected turn of events.       They imply layers of unknowable evolution.

Bopst Is Back and Going Strong

One of the great things about Chris Bopst getting his irreverent fanny booted off of 1450 AM is that he's now an iTunes essential. Episode 8 of Bopst's new show on RVANews not only starts off with a hilarious Gary Coleman outtake, but it kicks off with a song I haven't heard in a million years (though I heard it a million times a million years ago) -- "Shake Some Action" by the Flaming Groovies. He may be one of the best things to happen to Richmond radio culture, that Bopst.

Henry Miller Trash Talks New York, New York

"Ah now I know where I am and who I am. Back in that old shit hole New York where I was born. A place where I knew nothing but starvation, humiliation, despair, frustration every goddamn thing. Nothing but misery."

So begins author Henry Miller in a video where he talks about his terrible memories of New York City. The world needs more crotchety old men like Miller walking around pissing on every memory ever created. Or some more optimists.

There Is No Poverty in Hamburger Heaven

Back in 1984, I went to the Mosque with a friend to see Lou Reed play on his "Live and Alive" tour. Not only did I have the misfortune of having to watch The Swimming Pool Q's open, but I don't recall Lou Reed being exceptionally interesting. Of course, this was when my alternative musical repertoire consisted of The Clash, the Angry Samoans, the Dead Kennedy's, and Richmond's own Graven Image and Suzy Saxon and the Anglos.

I have two memories of the show -- backing my 1971 AMC Gremlin into a dumster and getting a copy of an EP from the singer of a Charlottesville-based band called Baby Opaque. I think my friend Wendell and I ran into Lee Harris who introduced us to the singer. I've walked around for more than 20 years with the line "there is no poverty in hamburger heaven/give me a gun and I'll give you a milkshake" stuck in my head. The next year, I picked up a copy of their full-length LP, "Fugue in Cow Minor."

It was one of the better albums released by a Virginia band in the 1980s.

I recently stumbled across a website for Baby Opaque, which has a bit of background on the band and all of their music available for free download. (Startling to discover that writer and cultural studies professor Michael Berube played drums for the band while he was studying at UVa.) Here's singer Michael Dean's blurb on the band:

Baby Opaque was me (vocals, lyrics, bass, keyboard), Todd Wilson (guitar, lyrics), and Michael Bérubé (drums).

Baby Opaque was not popular. We were active in a southern college town about nine years before weird music got popular there. We were too jazzy for the few punkers, and too punky and jazzy for the majority of folks who just wanted to boogie and drink to rehashed white 12-bar blues. We played about 15 gigs, probably averaged 20 people at each gig.

I wrote the songs (or my part of them) in about ten days, locked in my room. Then I found Todd. Asked him "What are your favorite bands?" He said "John Coltrane, and the Ramones." I said "You're in."

I taught Todd my songs and wrote a few more with him, in about ten days' time. Put up ads for drummers. Put up one in the bathroom of the graduate English department at the University Of Virginia where Michael Bérubé was teaching. He answered the ad, we practiced four times, then went and played a gig on a few hours' notice at a frat house, after some other band practiced.

The frat boys hated us.

I Miss 1991 (but does it miss me?)

Thanks for the inspiration, Brie.

In the Beginning, There Was GWAR

Way back in 1989 -- when the Berlin Wall was still a sexy tourist attraction and Iraq was a glimmer in Dick Cheney's glass eye -- a band from Richmond was generating quite a bit of buzz for its furious metalesque onslaught and its outrageous stage antics. GWAR had its moment in the sun with MTV's Kurt Loder. Did I mention that MTV used to be culturally relevant? I probably didn't.

Anyway, thanks to the folks at Topix, we have Kurt Loder's modern day reflections on his time with GWAR and almost five minutes of a youthful, spry Oderus Urungus acting relatively sane with the rest of GWAR snuggling him in a camera-friendly pose:

The guys were promoting Hell-O when we spoke to them — or among them, actually — backstage after a concert in the summer of 1989. I forget where it was, having lost my bearings after being pounded into submission by their loud, fast and ferociously scatological show. I do recall one of the guitarists informing me that his name was actually Dewey, not Flattus Maximus; everything else is a blur, though.

The Gwar lineup shifted a lot over the next two decades (not that anybody could tell, what with all the makeup and prosthetics), but the albums kept on coming with invincible regularity: Scumdogs of the Universe, This Toilet Earth, Carnival of Chaos. And they're still at it: the group's most recent masterpiece, Beyond Hell, was released in 2006, and next month Oderus Urungus himself will be hosting the annual Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards at the O2 Arena in London. Life goes on, and so — on a parallel track — does Gwar.

What else is there to say about this truly one-of-a-kind band? Not much, really. It's all about the visuals.

LINKS:

• Topix's GWR blurb and link
• GWAR's website
• Kurt Loder's epistle on the past

Multimedia Interview with Artist Ed Trask

The Times-Dispatch's Colleen Curran went all digital and stuff earlier this month with a multimedia (audio interview + slide show) look at the world of Richmond artist Ed Trask. It's a nice visual overview of some of Ed's work around town, and provides a small window into his world as an artist. Trask's show at the Schindler Gallery in Church Hill just wrapped up, and by all accounts it was a nice success.

Links:

• Times-Dispatch multimedia profile of Ed Trask
• Ed Trask's website