(Via Gala Darling. Bear with the janky visuals and audio! It’s worth it.)

Confession: I am a terrible dancer. Really, truly awful. Nothing graceful, mysterious, strong or sexy about me on a disco floor. More like a capuchin monkey being electrocuted. Once, in my early twenties, partying at a club in downtown NYC (land of folded arms, reserved weight-shifting and ambivalent head-nodding) a friend pulled me aside and frankly informed me “sweetie, you look like a twat out there.” For one immensely painful split second, I was deeply wounded. But the bullet passed through non-vital tissue. No permanent damage.

“I know. So what?” I pinched my friend’s cheek, went right back out there and recommenced shakin’ my monkeymaker.

Yes, many of us are terrified of making asses out of ourselves for all eternity. Me too. But when it comes to dancing for the sheer joy of it, all bets are off. All of you cool coordinated kids in the peanut gallery can point and laugh, but babies, you’re the ones missing out. Mark Twain knew his shit, and like Maude once said, “everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves. You can’t let the world judge you too much.”

Who knows? Maybe the world just wants to join in the fun.

Much more wacky wiggle dancing after the jump.

California-born dancer/singer Heather Parisi isn’t a household name in the US, but some of our Mediterranean readers might recognize her. Back in the late 70s, an Italian producer discovered the flexible 19-year-old sunning on a beach in Rimini. Parisi was set up with the best thrustiest jazz choreographer liras could buy, pimped out in one seriously bedazzlicious wardrobe, and became an Italian TV pop sensation overnight.

There are so many transcendentally Stupid/Awesome aspects to this video for her song “Crilù”, it’s hard to know where to start. Just… enjoy.

Gyrations atop a giant Rubik’s cube? Check. Uber groiny, hardbodied ballet dancers in metallic bowler shoes? Check. Intimated BJ three-way with male Moschino models? Check. Glittering Mickey Mouse butt cleavage? OKAY NOW THAT’S JUST GOING TOO FAR.

Clip via DJ Dead Billy, thanks. More Parisi videos after the jump. Additionally, if you appreciate this level of Stupid/Awesome 80s kitsch, you may also like:

• Murder Rock (Italian horror director Lucio Fulci’s answer to Flashdance)
• Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright
• Scream queen Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout
  
• Futuristic spiritual disco/rock opera cult classic, The Apple
• The “Rock Me Tonight” video (arguably Billy Squier’s finest moment)
• Last but not least, Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart“

Top of the morning to you! Although it’s noon here in partly-cloudy Los Angeles, the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, which can only mean one thing on a Monday: an installment of Better Than Coffee! This week, we have sexy Marlene on the musical saw. Whatever goofy shenanigans were taking place to elicit audience laughter when Marlene finally starts playing the saw at 1:25 have been lost to time, for only the audio survived in the clip above.

If Marlene has inspired you to take up the saw, you can either buy one online, or you can make one from scratch using the instructions on Dennis Havlena’s DIY folk instrument site. Dennis also provides instructions for making a banjo out of a cookie tin, a 4-string bass out of a washtub, and a hang drum made out of a propane tank. You can see Dennis playing some of these wondrous instruments on YouTube.

Bon matin! May flowers are blooming, kites are flying, a dirigible is idling on the wind above my good city by the bay, and for some reason I can’t stop thinking about this film:

La grande finale of Le Ballon Rouge. Watch the entire movie here.

Written and directed by Albert Lamorisse, The Red Balloon has got to be one of the most gorgeous and enduring depictions of childhood ever committed to celluloid. 34 minutes depicting youth’s resilience, playfulness, longing, loneliness, passion, violence, innocence, fearfulness, and most of all, JOY! It’s all here, presented in glistening primary colors and awash in natural Parisian light.

Cheers, mates. Enjoy the beautiful day.

I am unwavering in my conviction that Auto-Tune will somehow bring about the destruction of civilization as we know it. And yet… I’ll always have a soft spot for early 80s talkbox/vocoder robot vocals. This morning I’m grinding my beans to Michael Jonzun and his band of space cowboy brothers, The Jonzun Crew.

Left: Michael Jonzun in Manhattan, 1983, photographed by Janette Beckman. Right: LP cover art for Jonzun Crew’s single, “Space is the Place”.

The Boston-based band’s sci-fi theatrics borrowed heavily from the likes of Sun Ra and Parliament, but their electro-funk/hip-hop sound was something quite different. Jonzun Crew had several releases on Tommy Boy between ’81 and ’85. For the most part, their over-the-top costumes kept them sidelined as a novelty act. Eventually, tragically, Michael and his brother Maurice embraced the dark side of the Force, ending their epic space adventure to become executive producers for the likes of New Edition and New Kids on the Block. (Actually, if you click below, you can watch a Jonzun Crew video that includes footage of baby Bobby Brown pop-and-locking for his lamé-clad uncles.)

Howdy! How about a lively morning cartoon to go with your fruity pebbles? Zoetica’s recent post on the lamentable declension of MTV’s programming reminded me of this little gem:

Created as a senior project by animator and RISD legend, Christy Karacas, “Space Wars” aired internationally on a charming, offbeat MTV show called Cartoon Sushi back in 1997. The content and mood of Cartoon Sushi was sort of a cross between Liquid Television and Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Sadly, it barely lasted a year on the air. Suprise, surprise.

A couple of years later, Karacas joined forces with Stephen Warbick to unleash BAR FIGHT upon an unsuspecting world. The film “was rejected from every festival it was ever entered in” and it’s a bit… well, let’s just say it’s more a Better Than Beer experience –or possibly Better Than Dimethyltryptamine– than anything else. Still, it’s under the cut if you think you’re feeling up to graphic, color-saturated gore and toilet humor this early in the morning.

Nowadays, we have no shortage of psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness mindbuggery from Karacas/Warbick; their show Superjail! premiered on Adult Swim last year. (Bless you, Cartoon Network, for picking up where Liquid Television left off.)

Raquel Welch (Crucifixion) by Terry O’Neill.

“Raquel Welch is the rudest, most unprofessional actress I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with, and if I could, I would spank her from here to Aswan.”  -James Mason, on working with Welch in the murder mystery flick The Last of Sheila.

Well, good MORNING. James Mason quote, meet Stroke Material tag! Go ahead and take a minute to visualize the sexily sinister three-time Academy Award winner taking Welch, undisputed Bikini Queen of the 20th Century, over his knee… preferably while you watch a few of Welch’s most VA VA VOOM performances available on YouTube. We’ll start things off with this 1970 clip of the astronomically hot Ms. Welch and two swishy spacemen dancing in the Ruta de la Amistad public sculpture project of Mexico City:

Moog-a-licious, no? The clip originally aired in Raquel Welch’s 1970 television special. Added bonus to the Barbarella bikini action: her killer Parisian Red Riding Hood steez in that latter number!

Morning! Are any of you still in your sleep schlubs? Got 4 minutes to spare before heading to work?

For your consideration:

Shake it sugar, do it to it. Double dog dare ya. Aaow!

Physical fitness doesn’t get more nerdcore than this vintage clip of Judi Sheppard Misset and friends dancing to “Move Your Boogie Body” back in 1982. But let’s not laugh at Judi, let’s laugh with her; Jazzercise turns 40 this coming October. The woman-based, woman-owned company is still going strong, raking in $93 million last year in spite of the lousy economy. At the core of its long-winded success is Misset herself, with her unabashedly goofy Midwestern pep squad accent and megawatt energy level.

At 61 years of age, Misset is still teaching several classes a week and changing up the franchise routine every 10 weeks. Said franchise now incorporates yoga and pilates into its hour-long classes, and provides thousands of job opportunities for women worldwide. Alas, no more wacky 80s hairdos… but hey, legwarmers and sparkly leotards are still kosher. Find it! Feel it! Do it! Aaow!

A couple more butt-blasts from the past after the jump.

The “Sensoria/Do Right” video: a danceypants gateway drug into the complex world of Cabaret Voltaire.

Cabaret Voltaire: underrated, years ahead of their time, and punk as fuck. Not punk in a preening Vivienne Westwood way (although they were quite stylin’). Punk as fuck, like the famed Dadaist nightclub they named themselves after, like the tape-splicing experimental musicians involved in Musica Elettronica Viva in the 60s, like Brion Gysin and Stockhausen, like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Filth.

The Sheffield, UK-based band began as a trio (Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson), mucking about with recorded sounds manipulated by reel-to-reel recorders in 1973. It started out as a very gritty, buzzy, bewildering wall-of-noise project. Later songs, while more conventional, were no less confrontational, helping to define both the sound and the anti-authoritarian attitude of the industrial music genre.

From an early Grey Area of Mute catalogue:

Difficult to imagine, perhaps, but the scratch and break elements of hip hop and rap are partly rooted in the noise terrorism of Cabaret Voltaire… Even as they’ve moved far away from their original all out assaults, their tempestuous beginnings still inform everything they do. The importance of those early years should not be denied, for their great blasts of noise were instrumental in freeing popular music from its narrow, restrictive definitions.

Control, and how to confound or defeat it, was a recurring theme in their work…. They were among the first popular musicians to seriously use “found” soundbytes, lacerating recorded speeches of politicians, pornographers and slot TV preachers, juxtaposing them in odd configurations, not only for comic effect but also to reveal their true nature.

Cabaret Voltaire, 1982.

Watson left in 1983*, right before CV’s decidedly more danceable album The Crackdown came out. The above video –innovative in its own right– was created in support of one of the most addictive songs in their catalog: “Sensoria” from the album Micro-Phonies.

They really were something special. As excited as I am to see Throbbing Gristle reforming, I’d be even more psyched to see these three reunite. Laptop music it ain’t, never was, and hopefully never will be.

More classic CV clips after the jump.

Chances are good you’ve seen Michael Moschen at work and didn’t even know it. Often imitated, never duplicated, the world-renowned physical artist choreographed and performed all of Jareth the Goblin King’s “crystal ball manipulations” in Labyrinth.

The phrase contact juggling hadn’t even been coined yet. Moschen was working blind, crouched down behind Bowie, and those spheres really were made out of crystal. (Nowadays you can buy hardy acrylic ones that won’t shatter when you inevitably drop them.) Moschen is widely regarded as one of the most innovative conceptual performers in the biz.

Heads up: if you’re easily distracted/put-off by the sight of a toned, nearly nude body (or your boss is) this first clip may not be for you. If you’re easily distracted/put-off by 80s new age colonic music (as I am), you may want to turn down the sound and cue up the soundtrack of your choice. That said, it’s a hypnotic, singularly beautiful and accomplished performance.

Click here to learn a bit more about just how much effort goes into doing what Moschen makes seem effortless. More mesmerizing clips of the man at work after the jump.