The Music For Your Eyes site has been added to my weekly visit list of RapidShare download blogs, which also includes Garden of Delights, 8 Days In April and others. While the latter offer full-album mp3 downloads as .rar or .zip archives, Music For Your Eyes offers an impressive selection of "vintage rock music videos from a past glorious age." There's Punk, Post-Punk, Folk, Brit-Folk, Krautrock, Tropicalia, Psychedelia and lots more to warm a music lover's heart. (The path to downloading the actual clips is somewhat protracted, however, and if you're not paying for a RapidShare account, you're only permitted to download 1 "free" clip every 80 minutes or so.)
Much to my particular delight is the selection of clips by artists from the Canterbury school, some of which I've offered here:
Robert Wyatt is an artist that I especially admire, both for his outstanding musical career and for the supreme quality of his character. The Robert Wyatt biography, Wrong Movements (SAF 1999), is an inspirational read. In the first video clip, Wyatt is seen on Top of The Pops in 1974 performing "I'm A Believer"; he's assembled an all-star band, including Fred Frith, Nick Mason (who produced Wyatt's Rock Bottom album), Richard Sinclair and Andy Summers, for what is essentially a mime session. The latter clip is a BBC Four performance from 2003 of "Sea Song," originally from Rock Bottom. More clips from the BBC Four concert can be streamed on YouTube. [download mpg 1 31MB] [download mpg 2 48MB]
Here's Kevin Ayers (like Wyatt, a former Soft Machine member), with his band The Whole World (from The Old Grey Whistle Test 1972), in a live performance of the song "May I." Ayers is flanked by British rock greats Lol Coxhill and Mike Oldfield. [download mpg 39MB]
Caravan (Pye Hastings, Richard Sinclair, David Sinclair and Richard Coughlan) performing "Golf Girl" on the German show Beat Club (24th July 1971), from the album In The Land Of Grey And Pink. I'm amazed by the great Beat Club segments that continue to surface, especially seeing as they're live performances, rather than lip-synched. [download mpg 86MB]
This last clip, of Soft Machine, is from my personal download archive (not via Music For Your Eyes.) It's a performance of "Composition Based On Three Tunes" also from Beat Club (27th March 1971), featuring the quartet that formed the core of the Third and Fourth albums: Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Elton Dean. [download mpg 120MB]
(Public Screening of Nightclubbing coming up March 31 in NYC)
"I just watched a screening of "Nightclubbing: The Original Punk Rock Music
Video Series," by Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong. These two women hauled
video equipment around and filmed some extraordinary footage of the nascency
of New York punk.
Highlights for me included:
The Dead Boys, both by themselves and "assisted" by Divine;
Debbie Harry singing the VU's "Femme Fatale";
A wrinkle-free Iggy Pop assaulting his mike stand, with the Sales Brothers
in tow;
A short-haired Bad Brains blasting through "12XU";
The Heartbreakers in two different decades -- out of tune in both;
The Cramps being creepy and stunning, and mixed so that the vocals were
pretty damn audible;
Max Blagg's harrowing heroin poetry;
A teenaged Talking Heads doing their uneasy, all-acoustic "Psycho Killer";
So many incredible songs in there, by Suicide, John Cale (in a leg cast and
surgical scrubs), Stilettos (feat. Tish & Snooky of Manic Panic fame),
Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, the Contortions, DNA, Suicide, the Dead Kennedys,
the Bush Tetras, lots of Richard Hell... and hell, even the Go-Gos were cute
and fun... And everybody was so damned YOUNG in these
clips......................
* * * * * * * * *
So anyway, there will be a public screening of this footage on Friday, March
31, at 6pm (doors open at 5:45) at NYU's Cantor Film Center (36 East Eighth
Street). After the viewing, the filmmakers will be discussing the film and
its cast of characters (they knew everyone back in the day, and were
throwing fun anecdotes around, all this evening)...
It's a bit early, but it's all freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
There will also be an after-party at CBGB from 8:30 to ???. Lots of scary,
over-the-hill, Pun Krock Kollektors playing scary, over-the-hill, Pun Krock
Kollektible music. Max Blagg doing a reading of some sort @ 10pm.
Hotcha!!....
Posted by: Emily Armstrong | March 30, 2006 at 08:53 AM
Wow, this stuff is all great. Especially the all-star R. Wyatt jam. Thanks for the heads up on the other sites you track. Too bad rapidshare sucks...
Posted by: Art | March 30, 2006 at 10:57 AM
Caravan - a wise choice ! I have some of their albumns. . . their sound is on the verge of being brit-funk !
Posted by: hoax | March 30, 2006 at 04:22 PM
Thank you so much for this -- I'm a huge Wyatt fan and I've of course seen pictures of him but had never seen any footage of him singing. Watching him sing "Sea Song" literally made my eyes well up a bit, so gorgeous and so sad and beautiful.
YouTube doesn't behave right on a Mac, so if you feel like posting any of his others, please know that it'll be appreciated.
Posted by: Nom De Plume | March 30, 2006 at 06:54 PM
Thanks a lot for mentioning my blog. I have more Soft Machine and Robert Wyatt's videos to upload in the future...
Bye from Italy ;-)
Posted by: Mirco | March 31, 2006 at 07:37 AM
Great videos, great blog, thank you.
Posted by: Carlos Henrique | April 13, 2006 at 10:00 PM