Category Archives for Uncategorized

One from the Desert Files: "The Mark of the Mustache" (Eagles of Death Metal, June 2004)

I’m pretty sure this was the first “major” feature on the band, for whatever that’s worth. Originally published in LAWeekly (June 10, 2004)…

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Voodoo Boogie
Eagles of Death Metal: anointed by the spirits of rock & roll
by Jay Babcock

It’s never enough for some people.

I’ve explained to Jesse “the Devil” Hughes, singer of the Palm Desert/Los Angeles rock & roll band Eagles of Death Metal, that I’ve seen his group perform not once, not twice, but three times in just the last six months. This sort of attendance record might suggest a certain amount of enthusiasm for the band. But Jesse (calling him “Hughes” would be like calling Ozzy “Osbourne”) has got to know.

“Hey, why didn’t you go to the Henry Fonda show?” he asks. He looks at me with searching, sensitive eyes, like he’s been reluctant to ask but now, pride be damned, he’s decided that he really needs an answer. Like many great stage performers, Jesse is genuinely insecure. “I don’t get stage fright anymore,” he says, “but I get scared if people don’t love me.”

What’s not to love, one wonders. Witnessing the Eagles of Death Metal live is like encountering an embodiment of all that once made early rock & roll so wonderful: There’s a simple beat, you can sing along to it, and the singer is bizarrely charismatic. Jesse is a rock star as imagined by John Waters: greased-back hair, glasses, what he calls a “soft wonderful boomerang of love” mustache, gloves, tattoos, tight jeans, a Fender Telecaster and (sometimes) a rayon cape, delivering up the best Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Canned Heat–inspired rock & roll to leak out of America in some time.

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DOES IT HURT? Part 2: "Some other breed of man has won out."

Continuing from Does It Hurt?…

“I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans—the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world which is in the making fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue-print. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress—a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal.”

Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)

(thank you, Molly F. and Mark F.)

Herzog on venturing into Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc

Werner Herzog discusses his current 3-D film about the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc. Filmed by Roger Ebert at the 2010 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder

A recommended book on this subject, by scholar David S. Whitley…

cavepaintings

Another recommended book that’s still in print, by French archaeologist Jean Clottes…

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And two more speculative books on the subject by scholar David Lewis-Williams that we’ve spotlighted here before…

mindinthecave insideneolithic

DJ Awesome Tapes from Africa at Treehouse in Brooklyn, tonight!

Treehouse012

Arthur pal Raspberry Jones hits us with this last minute update on tonight’s festivities in Brooklyn featuring the dude from Awesome Tapes from Africa, one of our daily must-listen audioblogs:

Hi friends!

Forgive the late notice, but…Treehouse returns tonight, with special guest Brian from the excellent Awesome Tapes From Africa blog. Like the name implies, Awesome Tapes features rare/obscure African music. We’re excited to have Mr. Africa on the Littlefield hi-fi this month, unearthing treasures from his pan-African bag of musical treasures and secrets. Raspberry Jones and Treeboy will likely branch out into the realm of global music as well for the evening.

So if you ain’t going to Coachella – or if you’ve packed already and want a freaky night out with friends and good tunes — we’d love to see you.

Looks like a beautiful night too. Note the later start time again (10pm).

And hey, Treehouse turns 1 this month!

Click the flyer up top, or find all the details after the jump!

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New Dead Families

Musician/writer Zack Wentz has started a new online SF literary journal called New Dead Families.  They have already featured short works by Blake Butler and Colette Phair.  With this outlet Zack intends to share an “exceptional selection of stories and visual art by a variety of writers and artists I both admire and enjoy.”

In some alternate universe there is my ideal periodical:  a cross between H.L. Gold’s Galaxy, and Gordon Lish’s the Quarterly, and/or Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds and Bradford Morrow’s Conjunctions.  In the 70’s there were a number of original paperback anthologies that came close: Damon Knight’s Orbit series, Judith Merril’s numerous SF bests, and Harry Harrison’s Nova.

But where are those sorts of literary venues now?  Where could that kind of work go now?

Perhaps New Dead Families is that periodical, in that place, and by some quantum trick I have pushed/pulled that alternate universe into my own.  This.

Perhaps.

We can certainly try, can’t we?