This sexatronic fan-made cover for Janet Jackson’s single “Feedback” has been taunting and circling the Internet for a couple of weeks. Now the video is out, YouTubed and miss Jackson is back in full fetish fashion force. This look has become Janet’s signature, though few things could ever top the purple latex bustle+pants number she wore in 1999 for Busta Rhymes’ glorious, if a bit confusing, hyper-futuristic “What’s It Gonna Be?” video.
In Feedback Janet slithers around a tiny planet in domme gear – gloves, knee-high boots and hooded catsuit. There is even a dance sequence toward the end and Janet still has it, though the moves are more fluid than the mechanical Rhythm Nation style we love. But there are also shiny face shields, hair-pulling, floating in open space, and a giant bowl of what I can only hope is milk. Michael would approve.
As for the song, eh. So mute the video, play something thumpy and click below.
“Wait, he didn’t burn you a CD, he made you a tape? Aww, that is so romantic!” – Lee, Tarantino’s Death Proof
I have nothing left of some people other than a little cassette. This may not seem like much, but for anyone who’s ever engaged in the mating ritual of mixtape-swapping, it’s possible to extrapolate someone’s entire personality out of the mix that they made you. Song pacing and order convey temperament, a sense of humor; tape artwork gives hints about sloppiness/neatness/artistic ability, and so on.
Mix tapes used to be my primary means of flirting; many of my relationships can be measured by the miles of magnetic tape that accumulated between us. There were sad tapes and happy pop tapes; tapes with themes like Seven Deadly Sins; mixes intended to indoctrinate, communicate and seduce.
It was always so ritualized. As you recorded, mulling over every song, doodling around your track list, maybe even collaging together some cover art, you imagined your intended recipient taking the music in for the first time. Would they feel what you had felt when you first heard that song? Would they feel jarred by a certain song combination? The final product involved sound, sight and touch (and smell and taste, if you were really creative!). A gift that was half narcissism and half generosity, it always begged for a response.
Did you make mix tapes too? Did someone give you a tape that changed you? Slap it on the scanner, scan every piece, and send it to us. Or make a brand-new tape, for other Coilhouse readers. But don’t just send a playlist, really make it! Think up a new theme (here’s some inspiration), decorate the the tape/stickers/box/track list, scan the whole thing and submit the images. The most creative mix tape art will be published in Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 1! You don’t actually have to mail a tape, but I will seek out everything on your mix and listen, in the exact order that you intended.
Top Image: “Don’t Take My Word For It Mix” by Jonathan Marx from the band Lambchop. Published Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture by Thurston Moore.
Thew new issue of Elegy is out! Actually, I think it’s more that the cover got leaked, which means that it’s about to come out. On the cover, a mask by Madame Khufu, as photographed by Spanish photographer Eccehomo.
Every time I get a new issue of Elegy, I mourn the fact that I’ve forgotten all my French. Luckily, every issue of Elegy is so packed with gorgeous full bleeds of photos and art from all over the world that even though I can’t understand a thing, the magazine is worth every penny. As Elegy’s main focus is music, each issue comes with a CD sampler; last issue, it included Neil Gaiman, Neubauten and Nurse with Wound.
Alyz Tale – Rédactrice en chef, photographer and muse
In 1997, director Alex Sichel was given a grant to make a film about the riot grrrl music scene. She created the film All Over Me, an intense coming-of-age film with a unique cast. The film is about many things: sexual orientation, trying to start a band, drug use, losing your best friend and being just on the verge of discovering all that makes you who you are.
The film’s greatest strength is the way it shows how emotional your relationship with music can get, especially as a teen. Almost every scene has something to do with music, right down to the opening, where the main character tries to play a guitar that she finds on the street. There are scenes of singing along to a song while crying, awful but earnest music rehearsals, rooms covered with drawings and posters of musicians, meetings at guitar stores and gigs.
The score is raw and emotional, and the sounds of Babes in Toyland, Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Patti Smith and Tuscadero figure heavily into the film’s soundscape. The cast is full of musicians as well. Pat Briggs from industrial/gothy/glam band Psychotica appears as a charismatic next-door neighbor, and Leisha Hailey from The Murmurs and Uh Huh Her plays one of the lead roles. Mary Timony from Helium also appears in the film, and together with Hailey they appear on stage in the form of a fictional band called Coochie Pop (video after the jump!). Also of note is non-musician actor Wilson Cruz, who many will remember as Ricky from ahead-of-its-time teen drama My So-Called Life.
I’m making a post on Christmas day, which if nothing else should indicate the degree of reverence I have for the holiday season.
Christmas, and the train-wreck of bad taste that ensues, is not entirely without its benefits, particularly the unquestionably awful effect it has on rock music. Artists struggling to maintain their hair-flicking, could-give-a-fuck bad-assery through a three-and-a-half minute ditty about magic always makes for priceless entertainment. So without further ado….To the YouTube!
Dee is an unknown superstar, casting songs like blessings… She is one of the most remarkable and unclassifiable artists I have ever encountered. Muse, manic, maniac, possessed by such beauty and pain, so intensely real and yet so mythical. Songster, trickster, breaker of hearts, with songs so cruel and kind that it leaves me spinning.
–David Tibet of Current 93
A gusty spring evening in Manhattan in the late 90s. It’s sort of dead in the East Village, not a lot of people out. I’m sitting at some sidewalk cafe nursing a hangover when I hear the distant wheeze of an accordion and this implacable, warbling voice. At first I figure it’s music on the cafe stereo so I don’t look up, but I’m thinking… who on earth does that vocalist remind me of? Mel Torme? Biff Rose? My great auntie? Such an oddly comforting sound. Gradually it dawns on me that the music is actually coming from up the street and getting louder. I finally look up from my cappuccino to see this wild-haired, cat-faced lady gliding up to the curb, perched 12 feet in the air on a custom-built tricycle with an enormous gilded harp lashed to the back.
She parks her trike next to a Harley Davidson, carefully dismounts with her accordion and croons a sad, sweetly funny song about a sailor… or a girl… a small crowd gathers, beaming her beatific smile back at her. At the end of her ditty she graciously curtsies, accepting coins and small bills from all of us, then gets back on her tricycle and pedals away, cackling insanely. She is an irresistible creature. The cheers and applause continue long after her waving form has disappeared around the corner.
Fast forward a couple of years. A band called Antony and the Johnsons is taking the city by storm, and I recognize the harpist by her contagious cackle. Her name is Baby Dee, and apparently she’s made it her life’s calling to charm the pantaloons off everyone she meets, including Will Oldham, Michael Gira, Marc Almond and David Tibet, the last of whom started releasing Dee’s solo albums on his record label Durtro a few years ago.
Guten Morgen. Or should I say, unhealthy Hallogallo…
No visual conveys the wide-eyed, wondering delight of NEU! quite as joyfully as this video.
The music of this seminal Krautrock duo lives up to the name. How these songs have retained their aura of newness over the years is a mystery. For the briefest window in time, elements of glimmering psychedelic prog, robotic disco and thumping space rock coalesced and one of the most understated yet influential sounds in 20th century music was born.
NEU! formed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1971 after wunderkinds Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger split from a more well-known outfit called Kraftwerk. Their self-titled debut was recorded in four days (with Can producer Conrad Plank). An eye-blink later, NEU! had disbanded. Yet their influence on music spans multiple decades and genres. Everyone from Julian Cope to David Bowie to Sonic Youth to Negativland to Stereolab has cited the duo as an inspiration. As the above video attests, the love fest will undoubtedly continue well into this century.
“They can say that I couldn’t sing, but they can never say that I didn’t sing!” – One of Florence Foster Jenkins’ releases
Ah, the glory days before computer software, when only the very talented, or wealthy eccentrics such as Florence Foster Jenkins could have access to recording facilities.
At sixty years of age, and a lifetime of fantasizing about becoming a singer, Miss Jenkins struck gold when her mother croaked and left her a free woman with a small fortune. In 1930 she set about making her mark in history, albeit inadvertently, as one of the worst recording artists in history.
She was almost an instant comedy sensation. Sporting a sensationally flamboyant wardrobe of her own design and accompanied by a hapless pianist who hilariously compensated for her tone-deaf-ness, her live performances were so coveted that scalpers would sometimes fetch ten times the price for a ticket. For what she absolutely lacked in pitch, rhythm, tone, or what is otherwise known in this dimension as ‘singing talent’, she made up for in stubborn confidence, insisting until the very end that she was a master. That end came a month after a sell-out show at Carnegie Hall in 1944, topping off a paradoxical career.
Behold, the genius of Florence Foster Jenkins in the form of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night’ aria from The Magic Flute:
Florence Foster Jenkins, beyond being the subject of popular ridicule, actually leaves us with a unique legacy. She set out to do the very difficult, with very little ability, very late in life and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. There’s also a nod to be given to the concept of contentment, a state of zen rejected by most true artists, regardless of their achievements. Her bewildering success lies as much in primitive hilarity as it does her balls to look inevitable failure in the face and say ‘I don’t give a fuck, I’m having this’.
Proto-emcee Slim Gaillard, the great grandaddy of flow.
In 1941, a musical comedy farce called Hellzapoppin’ made the jump from stage to screen. It’s a very silly film (about a film within a play about a film), rather sanitized in comparison to the original anarchic revue (which featured little people, clowns, trained pigeons, and Hitler speaking in a Yiddish accent). There isn’t much of a plot and many of the jokes are corny even by 40s standards. The premise wasn’t nearly as successful on celluloid as it was on Broadway. Still, Hellzapoppin’ has two invaluable things going for it: an appearance by sainted Slim Gaillard, and the most impossibly freakin’ insanely amazing Lindy Hop dance sequence ever filmed, courtesy of a fearless troupe called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Behold o’rootey:
Felt animals! They are so cute! The images above come from Chika Photography, where adorable felt squirrels, doves and elephants await you. You can get your own felt feline and simultaneously help out a person in need over at Kittyaid, and if you want to make one of your own, there’s a great Flickr tutorial that will show you how to make any kind of monster you want. Need more specific instructions? Here are some more little DIY felt projects:
And if text-and-photo instructions aren’t enough, here’s some time-lapse footage from indie/experimental/noise band Deerhoof to help you. Featuring Satomi Matsuzaki, the clip is called “Stuffed” and I love it because she’s just making the weirdest shit. You get to see her create a log, a video cassette, and a nippled jock-wearing bear:
Incidentally, Deerhoof is playing tomorrow (Monday) night in LA at the Avalon (details here), with our girl Mer opening for them as part of Faun Fables, the same band that she toured Europe with last month. See you there?
