MTV Cuts ‘Music Television’ From Iconic Logo

When MTV beamed itself into our television sets for the first time on the 1st of August 1981, it blew the music world wide open, adding an extra dimension to music and changing how we chose to accept and absorb our rockstars. It changed the game, changed the kids, changed the planet. The MTV logo has become as much as a globally recognised symbol for American capitalism through consumption as Coca-Cola and McDonalds.

Of course, MTV has changed with the game over the years. Now you’ll be lucky to see a music video on the channel unless it’s being reported on by their showbiz news report. Today Music TV is a slick and saccharine home for semi fictionalised reality tv shows, featuring the air headed children of the first MTV generation and their idols.

So the corporation has decided to stop pretending it’s even remotely interested in music anymore, and drop the words ‘Music Television’ from under the iconic logo. Considering there’s probably not a person under 40 on the planet that doesn’t recognise that MTV stepped out of that game years ago, it’s still a sad day. Yes, they still broadcast their spinoff genre specific stations like MTV Base etc.., but as a home to new popular music of all genres, one that raised a generation of music fans on a diet of popular youth explosions like Hip Hop and Grunge, that had the power to shape the youth consciousness through their playlists (for good or bad), we’ll never see it’s like again.

The MTV logo itself, whatever it represents in these hollow days, is still cause for celebration. It was the first major logo to eschew a corporate colour, so that it could change with the times, with its subject matter, daily if (and was often) necessary. You can read the story of the MTV logo by the guy who helped design it, Frank Olinsky, at his site RIGHT HERE.

So to salute what was the most significant development in modern music since the electrification of the guitar, here’s a little video produced to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of MTV to transport you back to better times.

Iggy and The Stooges ‘Raw Power: Legacy Edition’

Raw Power, Iggy and the Stooges legendary but initially unsuccessful 3^rd album has been pencilled in for a reissue this 13th of April. It’s not the first time it’s been reissued. Back in ’97, Columbia Records goaded Iggy in to digitally remixing the album, giving him the chance to redeem himself for the hash he made of the initial original mix, and to outdo David Bowie’s subsequent rescue mix, which both he and the rest of the Stooges have publicly lambasted over the years. The 97 reissue turned out to be a bit of a pointless exercise, as fans poured scorn on Iggy’s digitally distorted remix, with the Stooges themselves eating humble pie by admitting that Bowie’s mix still came out on top.

This time around they’ve stuck with Bowie’s mix, but have thrown in a bin-load of extra’s over 3 CD’s. For your dollar, you’ll get the original album, a slew of out-takes and a bootleg recording of a ’73 Atlanta club show. Not so great, but if you opt for the Deluxe Box-Set which drops 2 weeks later on the 27^th, you’ll get some nice shiny bits and pieces like reproduction 7” artwork, photo prints, the Making of Raw Power DVD and a nice book of Raw Power testimonials from Lou Reed, Joan Jett, Tom Morello and perpetual gobshite Henry Rollins.

Get over to Stooges HQ to sign up to the mailing list for any advance on the down-low.

An introduction to Charles Bukowski's ‘Bluebird’

From a ruined mask, perched on the heavy hunch of a lumbering vessel, spewed forth seventy and more years of filthy woe and slanderous bellows. Beaten hard and hard to beat, life in the gutter bars, five dollar rooms, relentless heat.

A face as hard as the words it spat, hate wrapped in beauty, beauty cloaked in wrath. But though the black air and sour malt stench which kept guilty hours and only grew thicker, against the grain, a light would flicker, for which the Bluebird would wait and imagine a path. Its cage was strong, had its rules to obey, live by the lights of the night, and bear the shallow day. But the Bluebird would plead ‘til his voice drew thin, and once in solitude its cage would begin... “There’s a Bluebird in my heart that wants’ to get out, but I’m too tough for him.....”

King of the Soundtrack: Kenny Loggins

Some dude called Tory L has gone and dropped THE BOMB over at PopCandy. He’s blogged on his Top 5 Kenny Loggins Soundtrack Hits. That’s right, cuts from ‘Over the Top, ‘Footloose’, ‘Caddyshack’ and ‘Top Gun’!

Bow down, lowly dogs, to the King of the feelgood fistpumper. All Hail KENNY LOGGINS!!!!

The Art of Collision: JG Ballard’s Crash

‘Crash’ by JG Ballard is a perverse and thoroughly engaging hellride through the dead-ended lives of a few’s obsession with the sexual unification of the human body and the cold, protruding, projectile shards of automobiles during harrowing collisions, on the highways and overpasses of the protagonists minds and bleak environs. Ballard’s words can be as cold as mirror glass entering the cornea and as removed as the approaching ambulance sirens in the distant greyness.

Some elements will need to be mentally abandoned just as soon as they are absorbed, such troubles can the sexual mechano-violence cause in an unprepared mind. As addictive as it is repulsive with a fine line in characterless characters, it can inspire the unimaginable in even the most glacial of readers. So what can it inspire in the most absorbed of artists? Here are some of the better ones.

From Cover Project

By Leona Clarke

By Alex Pines

“A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status -- all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing).”

JG Ballard

Mahalia Jackson: Queen of Gospel

“When did I first begin to sing? You might as well ask me when did I first begin to walk and talk. In New Orleans where I lived as a child, I remember singing as I scrubbed the floor. It would make the work go easier.”

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the words of the undisputed Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson. You see, Mahalia came from a time and place where the physical abuse, abject poverty and racial tension sent you early to one of two places, to the grave or to the lord.

We all recognise that true soul can be the product of true hardships, true suffering. Well the Good Lord chose to lay that shit on thick with Little Mahalia Jackson. Born in to a three roomed household that sheltered her 13 strong family, her early life in early 1900’s New Orleans certainly provided her with enough inspiration to find any kind of solace she could. She developed bowed legs and her mother died when she was 5, leaving her at the mercy of her cat-o-nine tails wielding Aunt, who took the leather to her if she hadn’t sufficiently scrubbed their dilapidated dwelling spotless. The family was so poor that as a child, Mahalia would have to walk barefoot to school before she was pulled out by her aunt for a young life of domestic chores that would only end when the sun quit the southern skies. The solace that she finally found was in the house of God, where Mahalia opened her mouth to reveal a voice that legendary gospel songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey described as “...a voice that nobody ever had or ever will”.

At sweet sixteen, she made the well trodden migratory trip north to Chicago with only her voice and her faith to see her safe. When her body was returned to New Orleans in 1972, over 60,000 turned up to show their respects for the lady who had escaped poverty to become the first superstar of gospel music. Her impact on the world of Gospel Music was underscored by her influence on the world of Soul Music, and ultimately, Black American History. Her breakthrough song ‘Move On Up A Little Higher’ sold over 8 million copies, she mentored a young Aretha Franklin, she stood and sang at the side of Martin Luther King Jr’s during the 1963 ‘March On Washington’, and above all stood firm to her faith, refusing to sing secular music, regardless of the greater wealth that she would have been able to wade in to.

There’s no need to go deep in to the details of Mahalia Jackson’s career, I just wanted to highlight that from nothing, she became everything. Did I need to tell you, or should I have just posted this song? The voice, it holds it all.

Kasabian: Vlad The Impaler

Kasabian tend to divide opinion of those with fully operational hearing capabilities. The flimsy and floppy haired indie kids hate them because they remind them of the scary lads down the pub who stand by the bandit and drink pints of cider with Blue WKD chasers. The scary lads down the pub like them because they’re not pretentious indie kids, and they’re a good alternative to Oasis who, and lets be fair, took their eye off the ball years ago.

Regardless of what camp you’re in, you’ve got to give Kasabian their props for their video for ‘Vlad The Impaler’. Directed by the super talented Richard Ayoade (of the  Warp Films stable), we get Noel Fielding charging around the moors, driving a huge iron spike through the sternums of various unsuspecting damsels and dudes. It’s dark, it’s camp, there’s blood, hot chicks and a fine moustache.  It’s so awesome that I’ve seen it about 20 times without ever paying any intention to the song in the background. Anybody know if it’s any good?

Kasabian - Vlad the Impaler from Kasabian on Vimeo.