Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Happy Birthday, Alice!
Today we celebrate the birthday of Vincent Furnier who was born February 4, 1948. Better known as Alice Cooper, the black-clad rocker made a name for himself when he pushed the outrageousness of his proto-glam theatricality toward the macabre, becoming the primary architect of shock rock. Here’s Furnier in a Rolling Stone interview from last [...]
Lucifer Rising
Annie Besant was a rabble rousing labor activist, a religious non-conformist, and a proto-feminist during a time before and after the turn of the 20th century when none of these preoccupations was the province of a proper English lady. I found myself looking up a documentary about Besant after finding an online catalog of Lucifer [...]
Exile on Hate Street
The news is recently filled with images of protests triggered by the murders of black teens by white police. However, reports about the similarities between these happenings and the Civil Rights protests 50 years ago are tightly controlled and focused on fantasies of reconciliation without retribution. It’s as if we’re suddenly all supposed to wake [...]
The Coming of the King
Many folks think of the Ed Sullivan Show when they think of The Coming of Elvis Presley. Closer to the mark, folks often remember his third appearance on the Dorsey Brothers Stage Show in March of 1956 when he sang “Heartbreak Hotel.” Presley’s national debut actually occurred on January 28 of 1956 on the same [...]
Wild at Heart at 25
This year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of my favorite David Lynch film, Wild at Heart. Released in 1990, Wild tells the tale of Sailor and Lula, a red-hot couple who are reunited when Sailor is released from prison. The pair take off on a cross-country road trip that turns into a journey that resembles [...]
Past Present: Virtual Reality
We’re about to be submerged in the hype surrounding Virtual Reality, but it’s important to remember that we’re witnessing the second coming of VR which began its life as a cultural artifact/technological prophecy in the 1980′s and early 1990′s. Fiction authors like William Gibson, films like Lawnmower Man and magazines like Mondo 2000, gave us [...]
Beautiful Dreamer
Kim Fowley is dead. Los Angelino, garage rock professor, underground icon and architect of The Runaways, Kim Fowley has been ill with cancer for some time and as of tonight, he’s no longer with us. If the name Kim Fowley doesn’t immediately have your bells ringing, here’s some of his Rolling Stone obit to fill [...]
Gentleman Cybernaut
Today I have 1013 followers on Twitter, but last night I had 997. The milestone seemed like an opportunity to interact with some folks and get some help scrambling over the hump. A while back, a literary journal I review books for was in a similar position: The folks in charge of their funding were [...]
All Dolled Up
This New York Dolls documentary was just uncovered by Noisey and it’s required viewing for anyone interested in punk’s early greatest days. From the site… Directed by Nadya Beck and Bob Gruen, All Dolled Up: A New York Dolls Story is a feature-length documentary that was filmed in 1972, and sees the then-married pair follow [...]
Black Planet at 25
This year is the 25th anniversary of the release of the Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet. The ambitious concept album followed-up on the success of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. That album’s socio-political observations found the band comparing that record to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On, but the [...]
