Movie of the Week: Your Mind and We Belong Together (Love, 1968)

Before & After: Danzig (2015) vs Elvis (1968)

Before - Elvis Presley Comeback Special (1968)

After - Glen Danzig Legacy Special (2015)

I can't believe this video exists: Dyke & The Blazers performing You Are My Sunshine (1968)

Now I can cross this off of the list of things I thought I'd never, ever, see. Color me astounded.

Movie of the Week: Garth Hudson Returns to Big Pink After 46 Years with Rolling Stone

Garth Hudson

The new Basement Tapes

Its not not often I get to tip my cap to Rolling Stone magazine, but in this case I definitely have to. This short film of instrumentalist, Garth Hudson (who still lives in the area), returning to the house where he was a part of rock mythology with his fellow members of The Band and Bob Dylan, is a gorgeous & touching piece of work. 

The house itself, located between Woodstock & Saugerties in New York State, about 100 miles from New York City, is really nothing to look at. Every time I've ever taken someone to see it, I always feel like its a bit anti-climactic. Its really just another somewhat run down house in the woods. The interior looks much better than I imagined seeing it through the camera lens, and with some music flowing through it, it becomes a magical place.

The Band in front of Big Pink by Elliott Landy

The real Basement Tapes!

Before & After: Springtime For Hitler

Before - The Producers (original soundtrack, 1967)

After - Henry Mancini (1968)

The Big Read: The story of White Light/White Heat by the Velvet Underground

As you may know, The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat will be getting the deluxe reissue treatment shortly (order here). This morning, Mojo Magazine ran a great article by David Fricke about the album that looks like it may be a new(?) feature for Mojo's website called the Big Read. Anyway, the article is excellent, including great quotes from all concerned, and the layout online is gorgeous. The images contained here are from it, and i thought this a good excuse to run them. Read the article here.

Movie of the Week: Who Is Sonny Rollins (1968)

Filmed in 1968 by the BBC, Who Is Sonny Rollins looks at the jazz giant towards the end of his self-imposed break from the music business during the mid-60's. It contains wonderful footage of the lower east side near the Williamsburg Bridge, as well as a wooded area near the city just off of the Palisades Parkway. Visit Sonny's website.

Friday Ephemera: Ornette Coleman (1968)

Source

Incredible! The Yardbirds cover the Velvet Underground!

Hat tip to Doom & Gloom From the Tomb for pointing this one out...Its the Yardbirds playing the Velvets then not-yet-classic "I'm Waiting For My Man" on their final tour in 1968. The quality isn't great, but what do you want, fer christsakes?

From the final U.S. tour in the spring and summer of 1968. Recorded at the Shrine Exposition Hall in L.A. Personnel are Keith Relf (vocals & harp), Chris Dreja (bass), Jim McCarty (vocals & drums) and Jimmy Page (guitar). The British quartet were the first major group to cover a Velvet Underground song.

Before & After: Johnny Thunders

Before (1968):

During (mid 70's):

After (1990):

White Light White Heat: Chicago 1968

 

Yours for $2250.00: Offered here is an extremely rare handbill for a 1968 Velvet Underground show and "the unveiling of the new album--White Light/White Heat with Andy Warhol, movies and dance." This was the launch party for the Velvets 2nd album at the Aardvark Cinematheque in Chicago, taking place the week the album was released. This handbill comes from the collection of the late great Sterling Morrison, guitarist of the Velvet Underground, and comes with a signed letter of authenticity from his widow, Martha Morrison. On the back Sterling wrote the name and phone number of a 60's Chicago record store, Wecord Woom. Folded in quarters by Sterling, but long flattened, in Very Good condition. 5 1/2" x 8 3/4".

Hell no, we won't go!

The Baez sisters can't resist draft resistors, 1968.

According to the post over at How To Be A Retronaut: “Joan Baez encouraged draft resistance during her concerts, and is believed to have suggested that women opposed to violence should go for men who were resisting the military draft. This suggestion soon turned into the poster featuring Baez, which was created by Larry Gates and sold to raise funds for the Draft Resistance movement. The poster features the Joan Baez, along with her sisters Pauline and Mimi.”

Movie of the Week - Rome Is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke)

In honor of Shirley Clarke's The Connection getting a revival of sorts, here is a documentary on Clarke called Rome Is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke). Filmed in January 1968, it was released in 1970.

Shot By: Christer Strömholm

Christer Strömholm, with subject, 1968

1963

Via. More after the jump...Visit the official website for Christer Strömholm here.

Ogden's Nut Gone Television: The Small Faces on Colour Me Pop (1968)

Just over 26 minutes of uninterrupted miming Small Faces on Colour Me Pop, a late sixties UK show that ran for only two seasons. See a complete list of who appeared here. Courtesy of DM.
  

Movie of the Week - Mingus (1968)

What did Vincent Canby of the NY Times think at the time?: "MINGUS," the 60-minute documentary that opened here yesterday at the New Cinema Playhouse, is a very personal, very moving portrait of a man dispossessed—a freely photographed, large-pore close-up of Charlie Mingus, the jazz composer and bass fiddle virtuoso.

Most of this cinéma vérité feature, which was produced and directed by 23-year-old Thomas Reichman, was shot on a night in November 1966, when Mingus awaited the arrival of police and eviction from his Bowery loft for nonpayment of rent. As Mingus, a hulking but gentle man, moves back and forth through the clutter of crates, playing with his small daughter and talking to Mr. Reichman, who remains off-screen, it becomes obvious that his dispossession is more than just physical.

He talks tenderly to his 5-year-old Carolyn and asks her if she remembers the good old days when they lived on Fifth Avenue. He then observes that he'd like to live on Sutton Place, adding: "I'll kill—if I have to—to get there. I mean—people go to war and kill for locations."

At another point, at Mr. Reichman's suggestion, he pledges his allegiance "to the white flag of America" and almost moans: "How I suffered in this goddam society!"

Mingus also manages to touch on the sex life of his parents, describe a television commercial for a "zap" dress he has invented ("Zap! And it comes off!") and blow a hole in the ceiling with a shotgun. ("Hey, Tom, you dig that, man? That's not bad for not aiming!")

As this consciously choreographed, real-life performance progresses, the put-ons overtake one another and the real meaning of Mingus's dispossession is made sorrowfully apparent.

It is that of a black artist in a white world with which he can communicate only through a kind of supertalent.

Mr. Reichmnan's 16-mm. sound system is not, perhaps, the best medium for capturing the essence of the Mingus supertalent.

The director cuts away from the loft at intervals to show the star in action on the bandstand—where the emotion is clear but the sound is fuzzy, so fuzzy, that much of what is essentially a monologue also is difficult to catch. The camera, however, is mobile and unerring in capturing the performed truth.

"Mingus," like Shirley Clarke's "Portrait of Jason," makes no pretense to being the work of a hidden camera. Mingus knows—as we know—that he is being filmed. This frontal approach is, of course, as interpretive as staged, fictional cinema. Although it is one step removed from reality, it is no less true.

Movie of the Week - some shorts shot in NYC

Astor Place 1979 (silent):


Manhattan 1979 (silent):


11th & B:


Excerpt from Last Summer Won't Happen:

Movie of the Week - Revolution (1968)

Surfing 1968

By LeRoy Grannis, 1968

Just Because - Booker T and the MG's - Live and In Color!

Thanks to Modculture for posting this...it's not often we get to see our favorites from the sixties in color. This apparently dates from 1968 on French televison. Groovy!