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The Most Bizarre Celebrity PSAs of All Time

By Alison Nastasi on

As our friends at Open Culture recently pointed out, the heyday of the public service announcement has passed. The Internet is our new gateway for learning about social issues — once you sort through all the false information, of course. When we saw a cheeky anti-smoking PSA from John Waters, we got a hankering for more vintage awareness videos with a bizarre twist. Go henceforth to see what the Pope of Trash had to say about cigarettes, and enjoy other PSAs that mesmerize with their well-intentioned weirdness. … Read More

Music

10 Gloriously Anarchic Music Moments from Live TV

By Tom Hawking on

We’re not generally given to bouts of nostalgia here, but when Dangerous Minds unearthed a video yesterday of Philly punk icons The Dead Milkmen making an unlikely appearance on Club MTV, it got us thinking about the days when music TV used to be live and thus all sorts of whacked-out things could happen. Those days are largely gone, sadly, outside of various late-night shows — the general decline of live TV, along with a series of high-profile controversies, means that networks like to have a whole lot more control over what goes to air today. Still, we’ll always have the memories, and in celebration of the ongoing experiment in riding by the seat of one’s pants that music TV used to be, here are ten of our favorite moments in gloriously shambolic televisual anarchy. As ever, let us know if you have any to add. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. The shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize has been named, with Hilary Mantel’s critical darling Bring up the Bodies and Jeet Thayil’s awesome debut Narcopolis both making the cut. The winner will be announced at a dinner on October 16th. [via Largehearted Boy]

2. Here’s a way too brief… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Are you confused by the new poster for Mad Men that features Don Draper sandwiched in between a pair of mannequins? “This is a dreamlike image,” Matt Weiner explained to The New York Times. “[It's] a nonverbal representation of where my head is at and where the show will be … By the end… Read More

Art

The Sex Pastels: Sid Vicious’ Sensitive Watercolors

By Tom Hawking on

We’re not generally in the business of reading the Daily Mail, but the story of some of Sid Vicious’s early paintings coming to light was too good to pass up. (And that headline was too good not to steal, too.) The paper reported today that a selection of the late Sex Pistols bassist’s work from his time at art college in the early 1970s is set to go under auction as part of a limited edition book, which is expected to fetch some £4,000. The paintings that have been published so far are decidedly un-punk in composition and subject matter –- who’d have imagined Sid painting a buttercup or a mosque, or aping Dalí’s surrealist landscapes? See them after the jump. … Read More

Music

50 of the Best Opening Lines in Music

By Tom Hawking on

A while back, we posted a selection of our favorite opening lines from literature -– everything from Albert Camus from Mark Twain. The whole thing stirred some healthy debate in the comments section (as did the follow-up post about closing lines), and we liked the idea so much that we thought we’d extend it to the world of music. So here’s a selection of our favorite opening lines of songs. As ever, feel free to add your own in the comments section! … Read More

Fashion

10 Fashion Designers and the Musicians Who Inspired Them

By Judy Berman on

As anyone who’s ever cracked open a copy of Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style – or, really, just taken a walk around a trendy neighborhood in a major city — knows, there will always be a relationship between the music listen to and the clothes we wear. And while musical movements and the street style that surrounds them are always fodder for designers, it’s rarer to find entire collections inspired by a single artist. Check out ten of our favorites after the jump, and then continue your fashion odyssey with this roundup of clothing influenced by books. … Read More

Daily Dose

Daily Dose Pick: Punk: Attitude

By Tanja M. Laden on

Veteran British music impresario Don Letts’ feature-length punk documentary explores the philosophy of the subculture, from Elvis Presley to the Stooges, Sex Pistols, and the Clash.

Originally released at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005, the out-of-print film is now back on DVD, featuring cameos from legends such as Jello Biafra, Chryssie Hynde, Jim Jarmusch, David Johansen, Henry Rollins, and Siouxsie Sioux. The two-disc set offers over 90 minutes of bonus material, including short pieces about the fashion, sounds, and spirit of the punk movement. … Read More

Music

10 Useless Members of Otherwise Worthy Bands

By Tom Hawking on

We were saddened (and amused, in a guilty kind of way) to read today that English Heritage – the governmental body that decides on the preservation of historically important buildings in the UK – had decided that the birthplace of Ringo Starr isn’t culturally significant enough to preserve. Poor Ringo. He gets a bit of a raw deal, mainly because his musicianship and songwriting abilities both pale in comparison to his famous bandmates. However, the whole thing did get us thinking about comparatively useless members of otherwise decent bands. We round them up after the jump. … Read More

Music

10 Albums from the ’70s We’d Like to See Performed in Full

By Judy Berman on

Those of us who favor the weird Rolling Stones albums over their more poptimistic fare are busy getting our hopes up, now that rumors are flying that the band is planning to perform the newly reissued Exile on Main Street in full on tour. And the news made us realize that, just as albums from the ’00s may be too young to join the canon, too few records from the ’70s are turning up on the Don’t Look Back circuit.

Since that’s easily our favorite decade in music, we’ve picked out 10 Exile contemporaries we’d like to see performed live, in full. But we made ourselves a few rules: We could only choose albums by artists who are still alive (or, at least, by bands whose essential members haven’t kicked off). So that took care of Bitches Brew and London Calling and Third/Sister Lovers. And for obvious reasons, records that have already fulfilled our live-performance dreams (Suicide’s debut, Gang of Four’s Entertainment!) were out of the question. Still, we could have made a list 200 albums long… so if you don’t see your favorite here, don’t take it personally; just leave a suggestion in the comments. … Read More