Lacan speaks

How different theory classes would be if, along with texts, one also studied from films and videos the theorists' facial features, expressions, gestures, and delivery, not to mention their cravattes.

Amen

A dissertation on a drum loop. Feel free to turn it off about three quarters of the way through, before it gets to the message.

Someone's cute newborn and Raymond Scott's "Lullaby"

Same baby, not long after, with a piece of music that I can't quite recognize. A pretty stunning clip, actually (read Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida and mentally transfer it to video in the age of YouTube):

Electrofunk 101

Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock":



Source for the melody sample:



Source for the beat sample:



Yes, I know this is really obvious. But it's a good excuse to hear again three great songs.

The Motorhead/Punk connection

Telegram Sam

The other Bauhaus song.

Guy Maddin's "Sissy Boy Slap Party"

The "director's cut," no less:

Parazitii

Being not very nice:

D.C. LaRue: Cathedrals

A 2008 video (well, barely), starring Mr. LaRue himself, for the great 1976 song:

And in case you're still paying attention...

...here's a lollypop.

The absolute pinnacle of progressive rock

Magma, June 29th, 1970:



You'll have to turn the volume way up on this one, but it's worth it.

Before the big eyeballs

The Residents 1976:

Shiny Shiny

Because you just can't have too much Haysi Fantayzee.

Powerhouse!

As performed by the Raymond Scott Quintette:



(Notice the weird dancing lights)

As performed by six guys with harmonicas:



And as someone's pretty cool abstract animation project:

Violins and Helicopters

Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet:



I love the landscape they're flying through. And doesn't it seem that, in using helicopters, Stockhausen was taking dead aim at Wagner (via "Apocalypse Now")?

John Cage, contestant on "I've Got a Secret," 1960

Probably my favorite clip that I've posted so far.

Kraftwerk Expo 2000

"Live" on Top of the Pops:

Requiem pour un con

Serge, of course:

Heidegger speaks

Nietzsche speaks

The Music of Ezra Pound

Literally. Violin solo by Pound, attempting "to set the speech rhythms of a poem by Guido Cavalcanti to music." Better than many a piece by real composers.



And the music of Pound's verse (and voice and, if I'm not mistaken, tympani):

Look! It's the Mekons!

Back when they were rock stars:

The Mexican

Before Jellybean, there was Babe Ruth:

From Jean Renoir's "The River" (1951)

One of the most beautiful movies ever made.



(Renoir reputedly had some of the tree leaves painted to get just the right kind of green on film. It was his first color movie, after all.)

And the great Radha's dance:

Beethoven, String Quartet op. 131

in C# minor, first movement, Adagio ma non troppo e molto espressivo. Budapest Quartet, 1943:



Whoever uploaded this to youtube also uploaded about seven other performances of the same movement. This one's my favorite, but follow the links and judge for yourselves.

Before the Man-Machine: Early Kraftwerk

1970:



1971, part 1:



and part 2:



1973:

A Number of Names

Folks dancing to Sharevari on The Scene, Detroit, 1982:

The first fully animated film

Emile Cohl's "Fantasmagoria," 1908

Reich! Orgone! Freely!

Foucault on Bachelard

This clip makes me like both Foucault and Bachelard a hell of a lot more.

Clara Rockmore, grand dame of the theremin

Playing Saint-Saens and Wieniawski:

Fara Zahar

Peasant-themed Romanian Eminem impersonators.

Manele! (pronounced: Mah-neh-leh)

Romanian Bollywood.

Yves Klein Anthropometries (1960)

And one with music (Stravinsky) and commentary by art critic Pierre Restany:

Dreams that money can buy

Duchamp, Cage, Richter.

Bonus clip! M.D. on taste:

The Cramps' homage to Duchamp

Cold Crush Brothers Cold Crush

Stalker

First Tarkovsky movie I saw, at thirteen or fourteen. Left me completely baffled, which I found incredibly artistically exciting. I remember walking out of the theater (it was daylight still, so it must have been a daytime showing), and talking about it at length with my dad (and with someone else, I don't remember who--a family friend?), without coming to any definitive conclusions.

Greatest opening shot ever

To redeem myself after the last post. I remember watching this movie for the first time when I was about fourteen or so. It completely changed everything I thought about film, or about art in general.

Slowly I Turned

It's not about how funny it is, but about how happy watching it makes me.

Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante, Adagio

and part 2:



Sheer ecstasy.

Screamin' Jay and Serge

Le Nouveau Western

Dolphy.

Albert Ayler and Krazy Kat together at last

Brakhage Brakhage

Bonus clip! "Mothlight":

Tranquility Bass

Where is Mike Kandel now?

Blur in Marienbad

Raul Ruiz, Le temps retrouvé

I was looking for some clip from "Les trois couronnes du matelot" or "l'hypothése du tableau volé." Couldn't find it, but this is beautiful too:

Perec, Un Homme qui Dort

continued here, after some overlap (and with horrible subtitles):

Sarah C. (from Saint Etienne)

Jarvis tells it like it is

And here's the original bad cover version:

Big Leggy

I wanted to embed this (which made me very happy when I found it), but it's been disabled:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m77fRcLWX-I

You'll just have to make do with the original version:



And you're welcome!

Tammy, stand by the JAMs!