We’ve mentioned Justin Kelly here quite a lot already, for good reasons: he’s a filmmaker from San Francisco and responsible for a whole bunch of great music videos of queer artists from the Bay area such as Gossip, Hunx And His Punks, the Younger Lovers, Hey Willpower and Alexis Blair Penney (check out his website Den Of Hearts for more about his work as a director). For Catch Fire he has put together a list of his five favourite YouTube moments, which have in common that they make you smile and feel awkward at the same time, although the qualities of awkwardness differ. Thanks Mr. Kelly!
1. “I Gorilla Press 100 lbs while ‘Strange Currencies’ Plays in the Background”
“I can’t remember who sent this to me but… I’m obsessed. This man ‘coordinated his movements with the music somewhat in a way that is somewhat pleasing to him.’ Um, okay, cool. I feel you. Note to self: check hair immediately after a workout.”
2. “Dancing with Bears”
“This video should make you feel good. To be young again, free, without responsibility… but for some reason it makes me want to cry. I plan to watch it over and over and over ’till a tear at last forms in the corner of at least one eye. And drops.”
I’ll keep it short: I already featured Alexis Blair Penney and his first official single “Lonely Sea” a couple of days ago, see below. Shortly after publishing the posting I thought it would be nice to have Penny as a contributor for the PICK-5 series and wrote him a message, which he answerd quickly within a couple of hours. So here we go of Alexis’ list of his five favourite web clips:
1. Outtakes from Skyscraper featuring Anna Nicole Smith
“This is kind of sad but also just kind of amazing, I mean she looks stunning, I love Anna, she was so sweet and beautiful. RIP girl.”
2. Farley Jackmaster Funk, feat. Darryl Pandy – Love Can’t Turn Around
“Oh, you know, just the coolest person alive working it out on a pier.”
Berlin based queer electro punk / performance duo Nuclear Family has released its new album “Fuck My He Art” in December last year, and since then constantly release remixes of the album songs by acts such Kool Thing and Mr.Kitty as well as wild videos that are regularly banned by YouTube. For CF Nuclear Family songwriter and mastermind Nikolaj has put together a list of his five favourite web clips and gives an insight on his influences, be it queer core or the Pet Shop Boys. You can check out + buy “Fuck My He Art” on Bandcamp (I love the cover) and the duo’s other stuff such as their videos, concert photos and their latest coups on their blog/website. Click here for more PICK 5s by Kool Thing, Hard Ton and Discodromo!
1. Huggy Bear – Pansy Twist
“I have to start with Huggy Bear. To me they are the essential Riot Grrrl band, and this is the ultimate punk rock faggot anthem. To me working consciously as a queer artist in music is very much about creating a space for identification which stands both as a queer opposition to a dominantly straight subculture as well as a subcultural opposition to a mainstream gay culture. And this song and video do both so beautifully I wanna scream and jump with joy. And then I always thought guys wearing animal heads was the sweetest mix of childlike innocence and total kink.”
2. Screamers – 122 Hours of Fear
“You cannot say ‘queer’, ‘punk’ and ‘synth’ without mentioning The Screamers. It’s primitive, raw, and punk in every sense of the word, and still highly intelligent and defying the restrictions of any possible label. And the stage performance of singer Tomaty Du Plenty is totally awe-inspiring.”
3. Pet Shop Boys – Domino Dancing
“Bringing queer art into the mainstream with some of the best and coolest pop songs ever. I was gonna pick ‘Being Boring’ but we’ve all seen it a million times. And here you have eight minutes of squeaky clean baby-faced construction workers showing off smooth tanned torsos while dancing around the same girl which the camera mysteriously seems to not care about. Fantastic! And again, the music is brilliant too! Let’s admit it, we all wish we could make a song like this.”
Kool Thing is a Berlin-based band I already mentioned in the last music ticker a few days I ago. I contacted Julie Chance, one half of the duo (who also goes by the name Julie Fogarty, under which she works as a photographer), after falling in love with their self-titled debut EP, and she liked the idea of contributing to our PICK 5 series, for which artists pick out a couple of their favourite web clips and comment them. The result is really nice and offers a nice little insight in the duos’s creative sources. Check out Kool Thing’s bandcamp page for the EP and to check their upcoming live gigs in Berlin as well as their Myspace page for the new video their song “The Sign”.
1. David Bowie – Putting out the Fire (live)
“The first vid is by David Bowie, we were in a record shop in Dublin and came across the sound track to the movie Cat People. We hadn’t seen the movie but the sound track was by GiorgioMoroder so we bought it and LOVED it. This is the title track ‘Putting out the Fire’ from David Bowie’s 1983 ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour”
2. Grizzly Bear – Shift (live)
“Jon Dark loves Grizzly Bear, and this video stuck out because she found it just before she moved to Paris, and it takes place in a Parisian apartment. Its kind of absurd a band doing a concert in a bathroom, but somehow it works, and is a really beautiful version of the song.”
Hard Ton are Max and Mauro, a duo from Venice that manages to melt together three decades of dance music: While in their tracks they mix disco and italo disco with nineties house and chicago house, singer Max’ outfits and his stage appearance make you instantly think of queer icons such as Divine, Leigh Bovery and even Rob Halford (Judas Priest). The guys have recently gotten a lot of attention for the cover of their “Selfish”-E.P. – a remake of Grace Jones’ “Island Life” album cover (remember?). For PICK 5 they have put together a nice collection of their favourite webclips. But see yourself…
1. Phyllis Nelson – I Like You
“It’s the perfext party track… since 1985″
2. Stefano e Bene Feat. Hard Ton – “Why Your Love”
“This is our lastest collaboration. Stefano & Bene are not Italians but they love italo disco. You probably know them by another nickname… but we should keep it a secret.”
Discodromo are Giacomo Garavelloni and Giovanni Turco, an Italian DJ duo based in Berlin. Together with their DJ colleague Boris (Berghain) the guys are hosting a monthly party called “Cocktail D’Amore” here, which has become something of an institution of Kreuzberg’s gay scene, while as producers they have already released two 12″ singles called “Cosmorama” (2008) and Guinea (2009). The style of both their own music and their DJ mixes is very energetic and Eighties-oriented – on their Resident Advisor profile it is described as journeys “from house to disco through italo, hi-nrg and sometimes even techno”. To make clearer what exactly this means Discodromo have put together an awesome list of their five favourite dance tunes available on YouTube for CATCH FIRE. It’s the first edition of the a new column/section called “PICK 5″.
The next “Cocktail D’Amore” will take place on the 24th of July at St.Georg, Ritterstr. 26 by the way, the guys have promised to fight this year’s summer heat with fans and ice cubes and stuff like that. You find more of Discodromo’s current DJ gigs on their MySpace page.
UPDATE: I just got the information that this week Discodromo and Boris are releasing a re-edit of the 12″ track “Better than Italians” by another duo from Berlin called “Los Massieras”.More here.
1. Blue Russel – I Wanna Fly Away( Vocal Version)
2. Gwen McCrae – Keep This Fire Burning (The Revenge Need II Edit)
