Lewdness and obscene music have been around since the dawn of the cave person using the bones of a fallen foe to play a drum that is also made of that same adversary. Censorship in music has also played a big part in keeping questionable material from your delicate inner membranes since the early 1900s. […]
I hate to be so old as to be able to say this, but whenever I talk to younger people interested in learning filmmaking, I always suggest they find an inferior camera and shoot their friend’s bands and local shows. I really believe there is a film-school-class level of value in this sort of activity. […]
Video artist Joe Rees, along with some friends and artists, formed Target Video in the early ’70s. Among many video projects, the group documented bands during the early years of the rise of punk, including many you had little chance of seeing in other contexts, like Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, and The Minutemen. But no […]
Subterranea begins with a (gas)masked narrator surveying and commenting on a post-apocalyptic landscape. The monologue delivered—about consumerism and its impact—is appropriately creepy, with jump cuts to scenes of carnage and infernos. The whole thing has a Clockwork Orange vibe, and its gritty immediacy reminded me of the great film Series 7: The Contenders. The way […]
This recent documentary focusing on the photography and activism of Nan Goldin is both a portrait of an artist’s life and an inspiring journey. The film also creates a cause for rumination on the responsibility of the artist. Goldin left home at an early age and learned to survive on meager jobs and her economic […]
Buffalo hardcore outfit Science Man brings you another twelve minutes of surreal music videos as a companion piece to their latest EP. I reviewed their last video offering Nines Mecca a couple of issues back. Like the last set of videos, these were put together by Johnny Toohill and Lindsay Tripp and, surprisingly, they aren’t […]
Angelo Moore is mainly known for being one of the vocalists for the long-running band Fishbone. Moore is the one playing saxophone, theremin, or keys and wearing wild outfits while stomping around stage doing occasional back-flips. He’s also been involved in countless other musical groups and collaborations with the likes of Prince, Gwen Stefani, Jane’s […]
During the mid-1960s, activist Stokely Carmichael became disillusioned with the concept of “peaceful resistance” being the foreword message of the Black power movement. Inspired by Carmichael’s changing ideas about how to approach equal rights, a Memphis-based civil rights group called The Invaders formed with the intention of giving the local African American community a new […]
Science Man, a hardcore band from Buffalo, N.Y., brings the world a visual companion piece to their record Nines Mecca. That’s right! The video album has made its way back from the dusty shelves of the rental store where Green Jellÿ’s Cereal Killer and Public Enemy’s Tour of a Black Planet immediately come to mind. […]
In 1971, the FBI had its own prime time TV show, a crime drama where bold agents thwarted evildoers and heroically saved America, neatly, in a one hour time slot. Two years previous, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. It was also three years into the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, a violent escalation of […]
Rev. Fred Lane is a genre unto himself. He’s a singer few have ever heard of who inspires deep devotion among the converted. Admittedly, that’s a familiar template, but no one’s ever bent that template quite like Lane. With Icepick to the Moon, director Paul “Skizz” Czykz tells the many-layered story of Fred Lane and […]
In 1985, Makoto Tezuka, a twenty-two-year-old film student, directed a zany tribute to films where bands play themselves in fictional situations á la the Beatles’ Help!The Legend of the Stardust Brothers wasn’t seen by anybody outside of Japan until 2018, when it was finally translated and re-released in theaters and eventually on home video. The […]