Love

I vote that Love's 1st album is the greatest fucking piece of 20th century pop songwriting. I'm a bit of a late bloomer here, I know, and perhaps I'm guilty of bandwagoning ye olde Forever Changes bus. I regret that.

But GOD CHRIST ALMIGHTY. I can't stop listening to this record.

If you hear My Little Red Book and you don't get half chubb, you're a lost cause.

If Can't Explain can't shake a hangover, you must hate living.

If No Matter What You Do doesn't make you pine for every old love that fucked you up, you have no soul.

This album is like therapy. Or like beating a piñata. Raining bittersweet, yet delicious treats.

Sweden, Heaven and Hell

Italian Mondo documentary about liberal Swedish culture (read: softcore porn). I came across it for it's soundtrack song, Mah Na Mah Na, a song adopted in the 1970s by the Sesame Street gang. This association is especially strange as the film features biker gangs, suicide, and meter maids who pose as nude models by night. I guess the nutshell of this 60s freakshow is about the double edged sword of freedom, or rather a mondo window into good 'ole cine-depravity.

Easy Tempo reissued the Piero Umiliani soundtrack in the 90s amidst the lounge revival. One of my favorite albums.

Carpathian Forest...

It's Darker Than You Think At Wacke



I have no idea why Im becoming totally engrossed with this band. Oh yeah, it's because I'm retarded.

Messness

Been reading this about Teodoro Obiang, the ruler of Equatorial Guinea...

Who's Africa's Worst Dictator?

At least he has better taste than his predecessor.

From Wiki...

The incumbent president has never equalled the bloodthirsty reputation of former dictator Francisco Macías Nguema, whom he overthrew. On Christmas of 1975, Macías had 150 alleged coup plotters executed to the sound of a band playing Mary Hopkin's tune Those Were the Days in a national stadium.

The Thin White Duke

I'm going through a Bowie-issance these days. Station to Station is the album of the moment for me, and I'm especially fascinated with the coke addled White Duke phase. Here's an interview from Dinah Shore, 1975. He effuses respect for Henry Winkler and the character Fonzie. Holy shit. That's some good coke.



Favorite Wiki Quote:

According to biographer David Buckley, Bowie, based in Los Angeles, fuelled by an "astronomic" cocaine habit and subsisting on a diet of peppers and milk, spent much of 1975-76 "in a state of psychic terror". Stories – mostly from one interview, pieces of which found their way into Playboy and Rolling Stone – circulated of the singer living in a house full of Egyptian artefacts, burning black candles, seeing bodies fall past his window, having his semen stolen by witches, receiving secret messages from The Rolling Stones, and living in morbid fear of fellow Aleister Crowley aficionado Jimmy Page. Bowie would later say of LA, "The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth".