honey mustard

Remember when Terror Danjah did all that R&G - rhythm 'n' grime?  LA's DJ Mustard made a similar move last year  - into Ratchet & B. This recent effort oozes out of the car radio like wave after glistening wave of honey.

Kraftwerk in 3D!

Those are the chopstick-sachet style packets for the 3-D glasses provided at the Kraftwerk concerts last night at the Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles.

Big up to Wilson Neate, my benefactor. Below is his pic of Ralf Hutter at performance's end, last to leave the stage after taking his bow:

A near-religious experience, of course. To hear "The Hall of Mirrors", "Metal on Metal", "Neon Lights" and (during the greatest hits part of each concert), "Autobahn", "It's More Fun To Compute", "Computer Love", "Tour De France"....  at such vivid volume....  An uncommon elevation.

 And those 3D projections..... "Amaaaaaazing visuals, man!"

This is actually the third occasion I've seen Kraftwerk, which in gig-frequency puts them only slightly behind the Pixies and The Shamen (no really, and let's just say, it wasn't always by choice: they seemed to be on a lot of bills back in the late 80s).

The first time was in London - the 1991 tour around The Mix.
 

The second time was in New York when they were doing their first tour of North America in decades. I was working at Spin then and organised a mega-feature (starts page 114) based around the concept of Kraftwerk's autobahn ride through pop history, with exit ramps leading to areas of influence.  The design team did a really nice job with that.

Also found myself in the strange position of having to edit Lester Bangs -  the higher-ups felt that an interview with Hutter & Co was essential, but the group weren't giving any, so I went to the archives. Naturally, word-counts not being as sprawling as in the 1970s, cuts were demanded. The Estate of LB was totally cool about it. But seldom have I felt such trepidation as when I approached the sacred text with a scalpel...

Even if a fake, still too good not to post...

Neil Kulkarni, in top form, on that Alex Turner Brit Awards acceptance speech and the subsequent NME ediToryal (which side of the line do you stand on etc)


(Neil Kulkarni, also on top form, praising the new solo record ((buy it here, it's great)) by Ian Crause, formerly of post-rock'n'roll outfit Disco Inferno, firmly on the "wrong" ((ie. right)) side of that line for 23 years and counting) 

Still....  Neil's "parting company" with the NME at this point seems a tad tardy... perhaps it's just a rhetorical ploy?....  i mean, everybody knows, surely, that the "New" Musical Express hasn't been a compelling read since, well, 1984 at the very latest...  in the ensuing decade, now and then it'd have something fairly interesting in it ( albeit usually by one of its older writers still hanging on in there)....  but, even by the most generous assessment, the magazine's finger's been nowhere near any sort of pulse for at least twenty years  

right now, with sales shrinking such that The Wire could take it in a year or two, it is, as Neil says, more like a specialist leisure publication,  akin to a periodical for traction engine fans or something like that....

RIP Bob Casale