From Mr. Chinn

We’re not such big fans of nostalgia over here at DG, but three factors have contributed to my sudden interest in the fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes band Southern Culture on the Skids. First, the kids over at fave mp3 blog Dream Chimney posted “Camel Walk” yesterday and now I can’t get it out of my head. Second, DGSF White Lightz has been reliving the dorm dreams of ‘95 lately, and so I hope this fills the empty space next to Teenage Fanclub and Jawbreaker. And lastly: Daddy’s from Michigan (yep, stole that from HLSH). It’s his theme song, dontchaknow. 

Almost forgot: I think there’s some armpit fetish stuff going on at the very beginning of this video. Here’s a roundup.

SIMYP stumbled across this (don’t ask me why they were looking at The Real McCoy’s Flickr–maybe looking for great party photos?) and anyway found this amazing collection of old party fliers from the late 1970s and early 80s, most of them torn, folded, crinkled, and definitely on point. I mean, one says it’s celebrating “10 Years of Hip-Hop” … in 1983. The Treacherous Three. Grandmaster Flash. New Edition. Erik B and Rakim. But I think I’m deciding between this one and this one for my fave. Cool handwriting here, yawll.

How beautiful is this video?! Via Channel 53.

More of Sulzer’s stuff here. Via Creative Review’s uneven collection of new music videos.

Nice pumps.

Via ectoplasmosis

Turns out that spaceships stand in for slave ships:

Echoes of Sun Ra and NOI [Nation of Islam] are audible in the music of George Clinton, who must have had both in mind when he transformed Parliament from a doo-wop group into a mother-ship-worshipping acid-funk congregation in the 1970s. Clinton’s mother ship, of course, was likelier to drop megatons of booty and cocaine than warheads, but hedonism wasn’t the only goal. In the opening bars of “Mother Ship Connection,” Clinton announces, “We have returned to claim the pyramids”—a nod to paleocontact theories, which hypothesize that ancient astronauts shared technological secrets with North Africans. Perceptible in this ripple of the Afronaut impulse is the yearning for and fantastical reclamation of an ennobling African history: A trip to space doubles as a return to roots.

The Afronaut universe, of course, comprises more performers than those mentioned here and extends beyond music, from the hero of Brother From Another Planet to Astronaut Jones, Tracy Morgan’s ridiculous SNL creation. Where hip-hop is concerned, though, the first Afronaut to speak of is Afrika Bambaataa. A gang leader turned community activist and DJ, Bambaataa spun Parliament-Funkadelic records alongside reggae, techno, and rock vinyl and wore elaborate African-Samurai-Cherokee-cyborg costumes doubtless inspired by the Arkestra. In the burnt-out South Bronx of the early ’80s, Bambaataa’s Afronaut mythology—championing Zulu valor and an interstellar utopianism—offered both racial pride and an escapist-hatch out of the bleak, inner-city quotidian.

The article failed to mention my personal favorite megaton of booty: Galaxy.

David Byrne is still cool.

Playing the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

More pics / Video

Via DGSF Stefan Gruber

Killer vid for Stereolab’s new single.

It’s getting hot out there. You know what that means.