Black Market Baby

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, Radio Scenewash would like to introduce a few old friends around the city back in the day when punk was punk and the agitating youth knew it. Here's Boyd Farrell, Keith Campbell, Mike Donegan, and Tommy Carr, three-quarters of the original lads of Black Market Baby in 1986 at the Roxy performing (We're All) In It Together.Donegan stepped into the band on bass for Mike Dolfi during the 1985-1988 stretch. Dolfi was back to stay by 1992. Moving through several other bands in the Nineties, Boyd Farrell and Mike Dolfi are currently reunited in a band hailed as Rustbuckit.

Joy Division Is Now A Documentary

JOY DIVISION has reached the end of production. The feature length documentary, a US/UK co production, produced by Hudson Productions Ltd partners Tom Astor and Tom Atencio in association with Brown Owl Films’ Jacqui Edenbrow, is directed by Grammy nominated Grant Gee (Radiohead's Meeting People Is Easy, Director of Photography & Editor Scott Walker: 30 Century Man) and co-written by acclaimed journalist/writer Jon Savage (England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond).

In 1976 four young men from ruined, post-industrial Manchester went to see the Sex Pistols. They formed a band, Joy Division. Three years later the lead singer, Ian Curtis committed suicide just as they were on the brink of worldwide success. Together Gee and Savage investigate why Joy Division's collective musical genius and singular vision enjoys a larger audience and influence thirty years on.

Featuring the unprecedented participation of the surviving band members of Joy Division, now known as New Order, the film chronicles a time of great social and political change in England of the mid-70's and tells the untold story of these four men who transcended economic and cultural barriers to produce an enduring and profound legacy, one that resonates fiercely in today's heavily careerist music industry and over mediated pop culture.

The band's remarkable story is depicted through atmospheric never-before-seen live performance footage, photographs both iconic and personal, period films and newly unearthed audio tapes; taking us through the band’s early years as individuals finding their voices and then later as a band, building their ideas and ideals. The documentary situates the band not just in the musical context of punk and post-punk but in the culturally starved, claustrophobic landscape of post-industrial Manchester that surrounded them and suffuses every note of their music.

This unparalleled visual account of a time and place is coupled with heartfelt and animated, present tense accounts from the surviving members of the band Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris, plus other key characters in the story, including friend and similarly isolated musician Genesis P. Orridge, legendary Factory Records owner Tony Wilson, iconic graphic artist Peter Saville, photographer/ filmmaker Anton Corbijn, Annik Honoré and others.

JOY DIVISION is a Hudson Productions Ltd Production in association with Brown Owl Films.

Petition Melanie Into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Does anybody remember flower child singer-songwriter Melanie Safka? Well, she's ailing, and what's more she certainly reserves the recognition of being voted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Of course, I was never a flower child, a bit too young for that, so I became it's oppositite, a punk ruffian with a heart of mush, but I loved Melanie. I mean, I loved her! Bought her albums, her 8-tracks tapes, listened to her in a continuous loop while painting my grandmother's house, while rolling down the highway in my '76 Camaro, while creeping down the highway during a massive fifteen inch snowstorm at two o'clock in the morning from Hobart to Valparaiso, Indiana, so much so that certain songs always dredge up their seminal memories.

And yes, she is thoroughly represented on Radio Scenewash, amidst all the harsh sounds of today, there is Melanie belting out her anthems in the midst of cresendo and chaos, edging all of us towards the softer side of the cold shoulder life often reveals.

An icon of the times, Melanie epitomized the flower child persona sitting squat handling her acoustic guitar and mesmerizing the crowd with her riveting, sweet, ironic, textured, and often silly, lyrics and vocals.

She is known professionally only as Melanie.

She performed at the first Earth Day way back in 1980.

I tried to bring her to DC back in the early 1990s for the Earth Day celebration here, but after tracking her through her agency, and getting initial encouragement from the DC government, I soon ran into the hard wall of agenda politics, and I finally gave up as time ran out to call on a star.

But, here I am today, after hearing of this petition, beseeching those of you who know and appreciate this charming artist's work, as well as those who might wish to check her out at:

http://www.myspace.com/melaniesafkamusic
http://www.melaniesmusic.com/

to also sign this petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/mssrrhof/petition.html

to help bring proper notice to this very worthy artist.

Long live rock and roll,

Gabriel Thy
aka Fatz Bullwinkle
Radio Scenewash