Featuring The Fall, Peaches, Slayer and much more. Cheq out this video for "C'mon Every Beatbox" by Big Audio Dynamite from 1986. Mick Jones continues his hip hop obsession with this promo featuring the sadly departed human beatbox, Sipho. The ex Clash guitarist looks like he's playing the same white Gibson semi-acoustic that he used in the London Calling video which was shot by sample firing rent-a-dread Don Letts. The eagle eyed among you may also spot future pop-star Neneh Cherry, who can be seen hanging tough in her trademarked buffalo stance.
Black 2 Comm 10th December 2017
Featuring the MC5, Bo Diddley, Beastie Boys and more. Cheq out this footage of Lou Reed being interviewed at Sydney Airport, Australia on the 14th of August, 1974. The rock and roll animal had just arrived in the country to tour with AC/DC. The answers he gives to the assembled hacks are mostly untrue. He's avassive, contradictory and amusing in a style that is part Dylan, part Warhol.
Black 2 Comm 3rd December 2017
Featuring Dio, Amon Duul II, 808 State and many others. Cheq out this video of Tampa, Florida death metal band Amon performing "Sacrificial Suicide" on public access television in 1988. The band would record two demo sessions before signing to Roadrunner Records and changing their name to Deicide. The clip is preceded by a short interview with singer Glen Benton from 1991, by which time he had repeatedly branded his own forehead with an upside down cross.
Black 2 Comm 26th November 2017
Featuring Aztec Camera, Autechre, Strawberry Switchblade and many others. Cheq out this incredible footage of The Band playing "King Harvest" in guitarist Robbie Robertson's house in Bearsville, NY, just down the road from Albert Grossman's Bearsville Studios. The sound quality is top surprisingly good. Pianist Richard Manuel and drummer Levon Helm's voices mix perfectly and Robertson puts in a fine solo too, picking out those piercing harmonics. The song would eventually appear as the final track on their 1969 self titled second album.
Black 2 Comm 19th November 2017
Featuring Just-Ice, Skeletal Family, Sleaford Mods and many others. Cheq out this clip of The Clash performing "Train In Vain" at the Lewisham Odeon on the 18th of February 1980. The footage was shot during their 16 Tons tour in which The Clash were joined on stage by Blockheads organ player Mickey Gallagher, who also performed on the "London Calling" LP. The song was a late addition to the album, so late in fact that it doesn't appear on the artwork as the covers had already gone into production. The Mick Jones penned number was supposedly written about his recently ended relationship with Slits guitarist Viv Albertine. He used to get the train 'round to her flat and she would refuse to let him in!
Black 2 Comm 12th November 2017
Featuring Thin Lizzy, Baby Washington, Underground Resistance and lots more. Cheq out this incredible footage of Washington D.C. hardcore legends Minor Threat playing live at Buff Hall in Camden, New Jersey in November 1982. The gig showcased many of the East coast hardcore groups of the time including SS Decontrol from Boston, Agnostic Front from N.Y.C., Flag of Democracy and Crib Death from Philly. Just before the show, a speeding car crashed into SS Decontrol's van and Minor Threat's singer Ian MacKaye had to be taken to hospital to be treated for concussion and a broken toe. Needless to say he made the gig!
Black 2 Comm 5th November 2017
Featuring Lene Lovich, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Paragons and plenty more. Check out this footage of James Brown off his gourd on CNN talk show "Sonya Live in L.A." in 1988. The hardest working man in show business had just been bailed for beating his woman with a lead pipe, shooting up her car and evading capture in a high-speed car chase through Georgia and South Carolina. The only time during the interview that he straightens up is when he talks about a gospel magazine that he had published. Other than that he seems to be having a whale of a time!
Black 2 Comm 22nd October 2017
Featuring Johnny Winters, Tina Robin, Talk Talk and much more. Cheq out this promotional video for Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind" filmed at the Tropicana Motel, West Hollywood in 1979. The promo features some real footage from Lowe's actual wedding to singer Carlene Carter who was the daughter of country music legend June Carter and step daughter of Johnny Cash. Fellow pub rocker Dave Edmunds plays the limo driver and Stiff Records label boss Jake Riviera plays the best man.
Black 2 Comm 15th October 2017
Featuring Morrissey, Ghostpoet, Shelly Fabres and much, much more. Cheq out this footage of The Pretty Things performing their slacker anthem "Midnight to Six Man" on Beat Club way back in 1966. The West German music TV programme was broadcast from Bremen and aired from 1965 to 1972. The show was presented by Uschi Nerke (who can be seen briefly at the beginning) and co-host Gerhard Augustin who would eventually be replaced by disgraced disc jockey Dave Lee Travis. The band were known for having the longest hair in the business. Singer Phill May's barnet looks considerably longer than the mod cut that most of the studio audience are rocking. Guitarist Dick Taylor had previously played in bands with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and even featured in an early Stones line up before quitting the group to go to art school . . . not the greatest of career moves!
Black 2 Comm 8th October 2017
Featuring Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, The Tights, Devo and many others. Cheq out this footage of The Doors performing "Touch Me" on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1968. The lizard king's in fine croon and looks clean and sober in this clip, although he does miss his cue for the "c'mon, c'mons" at one point. Guitarist Robbie Kreiger supports a black eye which 1. he got in a bar fight over a pool table, with a group of rednecks who took exception to his long hair, 2. Jim had given him the previous night, or 3. he got in a car accident. It seems that the answer you got depended upon who you asked. If I were forced at gunpoint to partake in karaoke, this would be the song that I would have to choose.
Black 2 Comm 1st October 2017
Featuring The Damned, The Electric Light Orchestra, Little Walter and more. Cheq out this mega bucks video featuring hip hop star, Instagram sensation and former stripper Cardi B. She left home aged eighteen, started work as an exotic dancer, made some Benjamin's and got her breasts, ass and, more recently, her teeth fixed. In 2015 she made her musical debut on Shaggy's "Boom Boom" remix and now she's topper most of the popper most! Her vertical ascendence has meant that she don't have to dance to make ssschhhmoney anymore. Set in the United Arab Emirates, the promo sees the New York rapper in the desert, rollin' on a camel in red bottom Christian Louboutin’s . . . pure style!
Black 2 Comm 24th September 2017
Featuring Talking Heads, Suzanne Ciani, Carl Perkins and many others. Check out this footage of the reformed Dinosaur Jr. performing a session on Seattle radio station KEXP FM. Bass player Lou Barlow plays with his distinctive style, strumming all four strings of his Rickenbacker as laconic frontman J Mascis rocks the Gandalf. The clip also features the thinking man's weightlifter, Henry Rollins doing what he loves . . . talking. The big necked former Black Flag singer asks Mascis (without any trace of irony) if he's "enthusiastic" about playing live.
Black 2 Comm 23rd July 2017
Featuring Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, The Bags, Plastikman and more. Cheq out this footage of the Happy Mondays playing "Performance" on Tony Wilson's Granada Television show "The Other Side of Midnight" in 1989. This is what I consider to be the best display of freaky dancing ever to be captured on film. In an unusual turn of events, it seem as though it's Sean and not Bez who's shaking his maraca's at the frackers in this clip.
Black 2 Comm 16th July 2017
Featuring Big Audio Dynamite, Nicki Minaj, Peter & The Test Tube Babies and lots more. Cheq out this footage of soul legend Curtis Mayfield pleading for world peace on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1972. Curtis and his band perform an incredibly tight, stripped down version of "We Got To Have Peace" minus the strings and brass of the original which appeared on his 1972 "Roots" album.
Black 2 Comm 2nd July 2017
Featuring Motorhead, Ike & Tina Turner, Sleaford Mods and much, much more. Cheq out this footage of The Cramps performing "What's Inside A Girl?", "Hot Pearl Snatch" and "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?" on The Tube in 1986. The much loved music show was presented by the sadly departed Paula Yates and Jules Holland (long before he began inflicting his boogie woogie piano on an entire nation). The band had recently recruited a bass player for the first time since their inception in 1976. Proving the theory that women are capable of multitasking, new bassist Jennifer "Fur" Dixon and guitarist Poison Ivy both chew gum while playing their Fender Precision and Gretch 6120 respectively.
Black 2 Comm 25th June 2017
Featuring Robert Wyatt, The Expelled, Big Joe Turner and others. Cheq out this footage of The Dead Kennedys playing their liberal baiting single "Holiday in Cambodia" at Target Video's San Francisco Studios in 1981. Front-man Jello Biafra gesticulates in his green surgical gloves as East Bay Ray plays his distinctive death surf style guitar, bespectacled bassist Klaus Flouride holds down the low end and D. H. Peligro keeps the beat. Like a lot of the Target material, the live performance is inter-cut with footage from the Vietnam war, which while visually effective, could also be described as being geographically inaccurate.
Black 2 Comm 11th June 2017
Featuring Elvis Costello, This Mortal Coil, The Byrds and much, much more. Cheq out this footage of The Birthday Party performing "Fear of Guns" at the Brixton Ace on the 29th November 1982. By this point, original drummer Phil Calvert had been given the old heave ho and second guitarist Mick Harvey had inherited his battered crash cymbal. The group sound great here with staggering Roland Howard's scratching guitar and Tracy Pew's relentless driving bass-line propelling the song forward. Nick Cave's in fine growl and looking super cool to (pointy) boot. He eventually gets dragged into the baying mass and seems to push away the stage crew that are trying to rescue him, losing his Jesus t-shirt in the process.
Black 2 Comm 21st May 2017
Featuring Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Follakzoid, Nico and many others. Cheq out this clip of The Germs performing "Manimal" in late 1979. It was recorded at Cherrywood Film Studios soundstage as the group were banned from virtually all of the local venues at that point. The footage was shot by director Penelope Spheeris and appeared in her film "The Decline of Western Civilization" which documented the early L.A. punk scene. Intoxicated frontman Darby Crash appears incoherently barking his lyrics while a member of the audience scrawls on him with a marker pen. He would eventually take his own life in December 1980 in a suicide pact with his female friend Casey Cola who survived the attempt. Guitarist Pat Smear's career would later go into a terminal nosedive when he joined Nirvana and eventually the Foo Fighters . . . what a waste.
Black 2 Comm 14th May 2017
Featuring PJ Harvey, Metal Urbain, Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys and many, many more. Cheq out this spellbinding footage of singer, songwriter Judee Sill performing "The Kiss" on The Old Grey Whistle Test in February 1973. She seems to be rockin' the librarian look but looks can be deceiving. As a child she was involved in many physical fights with her parents who moved her from a public to a private school where she fell in with the wrong crowd. She started a relationship with a man and together committed a series of armed robberies. Once caught she was sent to a reform school for nine months and some time after her release, moved in with a notorious LSD dealer. She eventually became addicted to heroin and died of "acute cocaine and codeine intoxication" in 1979.
Black 2 Comm 30th April 2017
Featuring Joy Division, Leikeli47, Ritchie Valens and many others. Cheq out this footage of Black Sabbath performing "Children of the Grave" at the California Jam in 1974. The festival took place at the Ontario Speedway and at the time was the most successful event of it's kind, attracting between 300 to 400,000 paying punters. The bill also included rock behemoths Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Sabbath put in a super heavy performance beneath the incongruous rainbow and palm trees backdrop. Ozzy is clearly having a great time, hyping up the massive audience and throwing his fringed jacket into the ecstatic crowd.
Black 2 Comm 23rd April 2017
Featuring Blondie, Cypress Hill, The Fall and many others. Cheq out this vintage footage of my favorite second wave punk band Discharge playing in their home town of Stoke-on-Trent in 1983. They perform "Never Again", Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing" and "The Nightmare Continues". During the first song, guitarist Peter "Pooch" Purtill ends up playing out of synch with the rest of the group and Royston "Rainy" Wainwright's bass cuts out for the majority of the last number. Despite all of these setbacks they still put on an exhilarating show.
Black 2 Comm 2nd April 2017
Featuring The Dead Boys, Jefferson Airplane, Run-D.M.C. and many others. Cheq out this footage of Bob Dylan performing "I Threw It All Away" from his Nashville Skyline album on the first episode of ABC-TV's weekly series "The Johnny Cash Show" in 1969. He also played "Living The Blues" and was joined by Johnny Cash for a duet of "Girl From The North Country". Around this period Dylan sounded very different, singing in a country croon which may have had something to do with the fact that he had just given up smoking.
Black 2 Comm 26th March 2017
Featuring Public Image Ltd, Dead Meadows, Aretha Franklin and many others. Cheq out this vintage footage of west coast jangle merchants The Byrds performing Dylan's "All I Really Want To Do" on Top of the Pops in 1965. It's a lip synch disaster on a par with All About Eve but I guess singer Jim McGuinn didn't write the lyrics and Gene Clark more than makes up for any errors with his tambourine technique. The band are certainly ahead of the curve dressed in their dog tooth tweed jackets, freak glasses and bowl cuts . . . you could be forgiven for thinking that Brian Jones had stood in on drums!
Black 2 Comm 19th March 2017
Featuring Deicide, The Turtles, Joan Armatrading and much more. Cheq out this clip of Charles Mingus letting off his .410 shotgun in his apartment at 5 Great Jones Street in New York City in 1966. The double bassist and bandleader was known for his uncompromising musical stance and fierce temperament which earned him the nickname "The Angry Man of Jazz". The footage was taken from the film "Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968" which documented his eviction for non payment of rent.
Black 2 Comm 5th March 2017
Featuring Front 242, The Carpenters, Higher Intelligence Agency and more. Cheq out this incredible 1977 video of The Clash performing songs from their first LP plus new single "Complete Control" and "The Prisoner" with their new drummer Topper Headon. The footage was filmed at Schwabinger Bräu in Munich for the ironically titled "Punk in London" documentary by Wolfgang Büld. The group are on top form and looking great too in their Alex Michon designed red stenciled jackets. The live performance footage is cut with clips of the group backstage. Roadie, Steve "Roadent" Connelley is briefly seen walking in front of the camera. He would go on to work with the Sex Pistols and eventually settle in Germany.
Black 2 Comm 26th February 2017
Featuring The Stone Roses, MC 900 Ft. Jesus, Monsoon and loads more. Cheq out this clip of vintage Napalm Death filmed for a 1989 BBC2 Arena documentary on heavy metal. They perform "Scum" as well as the mega short "You Suffer" which officially lasts only 1.316 seconds. They pioneered a sound which became know as Grindcore, mixing down tuned metal guitar riffs, ultra fast blast beats and incomprehensible growled vocals while dispensing with melody entirely.
Black 2 Comm 19th February 2017
Featuring G.B.H. Aretha Franklin, 808 State and many others. Cheq this video of unlikely sex symbol Mr. Yellowman tearing it up inna Jamaica at the Rockers Awards Show in 1984. He performs "Body Move" intespersed with snippets of the rhythm and blues classic "Sea Cruise" as well as his usual brags and lyrical slackness, sending the crowd into a frenzy . . . go deh Yellow!
Black 2 Comm 12th February 2017
Featuring The Birthday Party, Smiley Lewis, Spacemen 3 and more. Cheq out this early footage of Grandmaster Flash cutting and scratching while graffiti artist and scenster Fab 5 Freddy looks on. The clip is taken from the 1983 film "Wild Style" which captured hip hop culture in its infancy. The footage seems to be filmed in Flash's kitchen as his cooker can be seen behind his mixer and turntables!
Black 2 Comm 5th February 2017
Featuring The Rolling Stones, Black Uhuru, The Fall and more. Cheq out this cool footage of Brooklyn shoegaze ensemble A Place To Bury Strangers performing "Ocean" at the Austin Psych Fest in 2011. The annual 3 day festival has been going since 2008 and has since been renamed "Levetation" after a track by Austin psychedelic forefathers The 13th Floor Elevators. The clip features plenty of strobe action for all you epileptics plus some ritual guitar abuse.
Black 2 Comm 22nd January 2017
Featuring N.W.A., The Plasmatics, Gene Autry and many others. Cheq out this mega cool footage of Suicide performing "Ghost Rider" live at Max's Kansas City in 1979 which was recorded for the cable TV show "Paul Tschinkel's Inner-Tube". Allan Vega does his rockabilly yelps over the incessant keyboard riff while Martin Rev rocks one of his many pairs of top grade designer shades.
Black 2 Comm 15th January 2017
Featuring ZZ Top, Autechre, Run-D.M.C. and many others. Cheq out this footage of Los Angeles group Rose Royce performing "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" on Top of the Pops in 1978. Singer Gwen Dickey puts in a spellbinding live vocal performance which is even better that the recorded version. There are also some natty sequined outfits and 'fros on display.
Black 2 Comm 8th January 2017
Featuring Killing Joke, Yazoo, Wesley Willis and many others. Cheq out this footage of Gram Parsons performing Hot Burrito #1 with The Flying Burrito Brothers. Parsons' looking fine in his specially commissioned "Nudie Suit" made by taylor Nudie Cohn which featured embroidered opium poppies, a mescaline cactus, marijuana leaves, an LSD impregnated sugar cube, pills and a naked woman. Those eagle eyed train spotters among you may have noticed that bass player Chris Ethridge and drummer Michael Clark have swapped instruments for this 1969 lip synched TV performance.
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