like this video

out driving and realized my glass bowl was in my pocket. this song played in my head

Flirting With Fascism: a brief revisit with 1970s Rock's crush on 20^th^ century despotism

"These are a few of my favorite things…" Springtime For Hitler. "Life is a cabaret, old chum." The Thin White Duke at Victoria Station. The Night Porter. Bowie and Iggy in Berlin. Ilsa, She-Wolf of The SS. Belsen Was a Gas. Punk Rock's naïve fascination with the swastika. "Remember the curls of the Deutscher girls." Tomorrow Belongs To Me.

1978: recorded while nursing a broken heart (model Jerry Hall had left Ferry for Mick Jagger), Ferry and beard appear on the premiere episode of the Kenny Everett Video Show to promote his latest single from The Bride Stripped Bare. David Mallet, director of many late-70s and early-80s videoclips, references Metropolis and Triumph of The Will (complete with falcon!) and flies dangerously close to a retrofuturist fascist style. Ferry would go on to complete his transformation in the mid-to-late-80s as 21^st^ Century Bing Crosby while Mallet would revisit this Metropolis-styled fascism with Queen's Radio Ga Ga.

It's interesting to note that both Ferry and Queen had already had brushes with this distasteful yet habitual failing of humanity-at-large: no less than twice did Rolling Stone magazine paint Queen as fascists.[^1][^2]

Art-school-fueled Ferry, on the other hand, did the painting himself. The first was during Roxy Music's 1975 Siren period: he and his backup singers ("The Sirenettes") dressed stylistically close to Sturmabteilung. Ferry said in a 1975 Rolling Stone interview…

With a monocle it’s Third Reich, with shades it’s American motorcycle cop.

The most recent was in 2007, when Ferry, ever the Richard Hamilton-trained pop-art stylist, admitted to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag his admiration of film director Leni Riefenstahl, architect Albert Speer…and the knack for presentation the Nazi Party had during its reign. He immediately issued an apology.

I'm neither condemning nor condoning: I've never had the pleasure of meeting Ferry personally and secondly, I too have made similar observations in regards to early-20^th^ century Nazi (and Italian Futurist-cum-Fascist) "art direction" but I can separate the philosophy (and actions) from its place in art history and visual design. I believe Ferry's comments, "tone-deaf" as they were received, were spoken in the same vein. Then again, I would never sing the praises of that period's aesthetic to a German newspaper as, unless it was your intention, you'd just be begging to be misinterpreted. It would be like talking about the artistic merits of Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah) to child services.

"Artists will be artists" and inspiration comes from wherever it comes from. The Ramones' artistic director, the late Arturo Vega said of his series of day-glo swastikas[^3]…

…I always thought that to conquer evil, you have to make love to it. You have to understand it.

But I also like the way people react to the swastika paintings—people freak out. The paintings are a closet Nazi detector […] They bring out the Nazi in you if you're a closet Nazi because the people that are gonna be offended are the ones that have something to hide. The people that act so defensively are always the people who are closet fascists.

In any case, this song rocks.

[^1]: Testa, Bart (1978), Rolling Stone magazine, Album Reviews: "News of The World", via Internet Archive.

[^2]: Marsh, Dave (1979), Rolling Stone magazine, Album Reviews: "Jazz", via Internet Archive.

[^3]: O'Neill, Legs; McCain, Gillian (1996). Please Kill Me. Grove Press, p. 234-235. ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4264-1.

Hurray! Invidious is back! And speaking of being back…

NEW JESUS AND MARY CHAIN!!!

I Hate Rock 'n Roll BONUS:

• Jesus and Mary Chain on 40 years of feedback and noise

Tangential Public Service Announcement

As of 2024/03/28 (ISO date format), there's a bug with the open-source YouTube front-ends Invidious/Piped access, most likely instigated by YouTube. Both projects aim to defuse YouTube's privacy invasions by serving Google-hosted video and bypassing all the distasteful tracking and algorithm nonsense ("If I'm the product, where's my cut?"). The linked music in my posts all point to the sites in the Invidious network. Until the situation is resolved and in case the situation again appears…

• for past links, substitute the site's address with youtube.com…
  • before: https://iv.datura.network/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw
  • after: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PWgvGjAhvIw

• for today and at least until the problem is resolved, I will link directly to YouTube.

If you haven't already installed this add-on for your browser, I highly suggest the LibRedirect extension. This extension not only redirects from YouTube to open-source networks but also redirects from Twitter/X, Reddit, TikTok and a plethora, a myriad of other privacy-invasive sites. As they say, I'm not connected with the devs, just a satisfied client.

Like most things in Marco Pirroni's repertoire (for the archeologists, see below), the footage in this video is brilliantly ~~stolen~~ appropriated from the surfing documentary, Riding Giants (2004, Stacy Peralta).

Archeology: some past musical appropriations

• Feed Me To The Lions (solo break) = Born Free/Lawrence of Arabia Overture

• Killer In The Home = Rumble

• Jolly Roger = March Of The MacGregors

• Prince Charming = War Canoe

• Vive Le Rock = Don't Bring Me Down

• Jackie Says = The Price of Love

• Better Days = Gudbye T'Jane

!detroit ☆ !michigan

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10434345

🤦

Day-Late-Dollar-Short Dept.:

On March 28, 1971, Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” the legendary recorded track, was the nation’s top Rhythm and Blues chart song. […] At the time, Gaye, a Washington, D.C., native and Motown Records legend, lived on Detroit’s Northwest side. It was recorded at the Hitsville USA record studio in Detroit.

~In~ ~2021,~ ~a~ ~portion~ ~of~ ~West~ ~Outer~ ~Drive~ ~Street~ ~in~ ~Detroit~ ~was~ ~renamed~ ~Marvin~ ~Gaye~ ~Drive.~ ~Photo:~ ~Ken~ ~Coleman.~

In 2021, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer named Jan. 20 “What’s Going On” Day in the state, marking the 50th anniversary of the recording. That year, a portion of West Outer Drive Street in Detroit also was renamed Marvin Gaye Drive.

For you five troglodytes that have never left your caves…

• Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

MARTIAN-TIME-SIGNATURE BONUS:

• King Crimson - The Great Deceiver Dub

!detroit ☆ !michigan

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/10295525

The phrase living legend is almost nowhere more applicable than describing today's honoree here at c/Detroit…singer, actress, entrepreneur, diva, the lovely Ms Diana (Diane) Ross, born today here in Detroit in 1944.

Today, I'll let the music do the talking. A short selection of Ms Ross' works:

• Ain't No Mountain High Enough, from Diana Ross (1970)
• You Are Everything, with Marvin Gaye, from Diana & Marvin (1973)
• Love Hangover, from Diana Ross (1976)
• Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To), from Diana Ross (1976)
• Upside Down, from Diana (1980)
• Endless Love, with Lionel Ritchie, from Endless Love single (1981)
• When You Tell Me That You Love Me, from The Force Behind The Power (1991)
• All Is Well, from Thank You (2021)
• Turn Up The Sunshine, with Tame Impala, from Minions: The Rise of Gru OST (2022)

Best wishes on your 80^th^ birthday, Ms Ross, from all of us at c/Detroit. We love you! 💘

---

This post is lovingly dedicated to Mr and Mrs Joseph and Angela Arco (RIP), our neighbors whom I loved dearly and schoolmates of Diana Ross.

Hooray for Doctor Spalding…

Esperanza Spalding is a delightfully weird being with three, possibly four, separate brains who was sent from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization. She has to be: she could easily be "just" a pretty-faced entertainer or "just" a wonderful vocalist or "just" an amazing ~~jazz~~ bassist/multi-instrumentalist…but she's all three, doing it all at the same time effortlessly, chuckling to herself at us mere mortals. Not only…only!… but she's also an incredible composer, stretching from the more traditional to "Top 40 from Alpha Centauri" with musical arrangements like trigonomic formulas. I am in awe of Dr Spalding in an way I'm rarely in awe of anyone, ever since I'd discovered her music way back in 2008 with her second album, the eponymous Esperanza Spalding. She continues to astound. I must be in love.

For the dedicated/hypnotized:

• Esperanza Spalding: Live at BRIC | NPR MUSIC FRONT ROW

Have a nice Sunday, everybody -- r^2^

!detroit@midwest.social ♥ !michigan@midwest.social

BONUS:

• Asian Dub Foundation - New Way, New Life