Blog Archives

Psychedelic All-Star Team

The Avengers, the Justice League, the X-Men, the Village People — everybody loves an all-star team. We can’t imagine a world without Reed, Susan, Johnny and Ben in cahoots, and it should come as no surprise that the same yearning to join forces with the best of one’s peers would find its expression in the [...]

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Jane’s Addiction: Gifted

In the late ’80′s and early 90′s, Jane’s Addiction brought the druggy, draggy Los Angeles underground sound to mainstream audiences with a trio of unforgettable albums: Jane’s Addiction (1987), the classic Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and Ritual de lo Habitual (1990). The fact that Jane’s guitar player Dave Navarro claims to have no recollection of recording [...]

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The Who, The Mods and Quadrophenia at 40

For those readers who are unfamiliar with Mod culture, let’s begin with the Wiki: Mod (from modernist) is a subculture that originated in London, England, in the late 1950s and peaked in the early to mid-1960s. Significant elements of the mod subculture include fashion (often tailor-made suits); music, including African American soul, Jamaican ska, British [...]

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Bourdain and the Beats

Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain recently premiered his new show on CNN. The title of Parts Unknown references both the remote locations the show seems to focus on as well as the odd bits of fruits, veggies and animals that make their way into the more exotic dishes Bourdain puts on display. The title [...]

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The New Joe Nolan’s Insomnia

When I started this blog way back in 2004, I was publishing it through Blogger. A special piece of code allowed me to use their interface while publishing it to my own website. When Google bought Blogger, they decided to get rid of this service and I had to move fast. 963 Collective came to [...]

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The Crazy World of Mondo Hollywood

I just uncovered this forgotten gem at Snag Films and it’s obviously a perfect film for Insomnia. I started to write some comments, but the words at the Snag site had me laughing so hard that I’m just going to lift them directly. Here’s skinny on the flick from Snag Films: The underground cult classic [...]

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Adios, Hugo

Kim Monaghan and I recorded an epic episode of Coincidence Control Network today. It’ll likely go live by Thursday. During the recording Monaghan was moved to declare his love for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The legally elected Chavez has been vilified as a mad dictator despite the fact that his political roots reach back to [...]

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Revolution Rediscovered

Jack O’Connell’s 1968 film Revolution captured the craziness, the chaos, the hope and the hippies that defined the Summer of Love. Some of these interviews seem a little staged, but, for the most part, he captures some really candid moments and some extended music sequences that seem to embody the times. The soundtrack is noted [...]

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Early Erotic Cinema

“As soon as moving cameras were invented people began using them to make pornographic films…” So starts Taboo: The Beginning of Erotic Cinema – a one hour documentary that examines the earliest days of the dirty movie biz, tracing the industry up to the age of the VHS tape. As the quote suggests, Taboo argues [...]

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