Category Archives: Hedonism

In his first book, TOM FORD 001, Tom Ford charted his era defining work at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent from 1994 to 2004, capturing the hedonism of the decade in the process. Now, in a companion volume out this month, a sober and vegan Ford looks back on the many lives that he has lived since then: as a husband and a father, and as a creative visionary who brought his style to the world of the movies as a lauded director, and subsequently managed a powerful fashion and beauty comeback with his eponymous brand.

I spoke to Ford about what Karl Lagerfeld taught him, how it feels being name-checked in a Jay Z song, and much more.

Tom Ford: Its an honor to have you.

Hamish Bowles: Oh, stop. The honor is all mine, as you know.

How are you?

I am okay. Im okay. How are you?

Oh, Im alright. I have good days and bad days. Its better when Im working because then Im not thinking about everything. You know what its like.

Well, its certainly been an exhilarating lift going through the book, I have to say.

Thank you. Well, Richard [Buckley, Fords late husband] said, when I showed it to him wasvery dryhe said, Well, its a lot of water under the bridge. Then he turns and walked out of the room. Only one comment about the book.

Its intriguing because I suppose in many ways, of course, its a counterpart to the first book from 2004, which was such a cataclysmic year for you. You walked away from the Gucci Group. Looking back at the first one, what do you think of it?

I wanted to continue it and I wanted to continue the same chronological format. I think fashion moves in a chronological way with each season as a reaction to the season before and a reaction to where you are as a designer at that moment. Where youre living, what youre doing, what your experiences are. So, that one really is the first chapter, and this is the second chapter, and I long to have a third chapter. I was turning 60 and my company was around 15 years old when I started the book. Fifteen years and turning 60it was time to look back. The most interesting thing about it is that in fashion we rarely look back. Were always worried about what are we going to do next? And now what am I going to do? I havent seen A Single Man since I made it. I looked at it a gazillion times while editing it, and I went through all its premieres and that was it. I havent seen it since. And same with Nocturnal Animals and fashion. I rarely look back. Because looking at family pictures you immediately go, Oh god, yes I remember. I remember what I was. I remember what I did. I remember what I was thinking. I remember music. I remember this show. I remember what city I was living in. And so it was cathartic in that way and very odd that Richard decided to leave the world at the same time. Really in so many ways, now personally as well, it was the end of the chapter and the end of a period in my life.

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Inside Tom Fords New Book: You Cant Design Things You Dont Believe In, and So I Dont - Vogue

I know were not even a full week into November but compared to all the excitement we had last month with travel continuing to open up and a proper Halloween party season, this month is moving at a snails pace. Maybe its because all we have to look forward to now are New Years Eve parties, and to get there we have to go through Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the dreaded holiday shopping season. Or maybe its just because there are few holidays that are as fun as Halloween especially if you spend your weekends partying the festival circuit.

Festivals, in general, tend to be havens of modern fashion. An environment where you can rock your best fits, no matter how extreme. That gets turned up to 11 when you throw Halloween into the mix, as exhibited by these unhinged photos we received from CircoLoco Halloween 2021 weekend.

Last weekend, Teksupport and Ibizas CircoLoco joined forces to throw their sixth annual CircoLoco Halloween at an undisclosed Brooklyn warehouse where festival-goers were treated to wall-shaking performances from the Grammy-nominated Black Coffee, Virgil Abloh, DJ Tennis, Chlo Caillet, and more. Partiers rocked some seriously intricate costumes, the level of high fashion craft here even rivals some of the best celebrity Halloween costumes from this year, and those people have access to costume designers and make-up artists.

Check out some of the photos from last weekends CircoLoco Halloween below and catch the next CircoLoco event on December 3rd at Art Basel Miami.

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Re-Live Halloween Hedonism With 55 Photos From CircoLoco '21 - UPROXX

For decades, it was the beating heart of Glasgows cultural scene. From clubbing to theatre, the sprawling arts complex beneath Central Station hosted some of the most exciting talent not just in Scotland, but from around the world.

Then 2015, after 24 years of setting Scotland's alternative artistic agenda, it was forced to close after losing its late night alcohol license, cutting at the heart of the budget that helped sustain the space.

Now, two former Arches staff members have written a book, Brickwork , detailing the story of The Arches and examining its history and why it, in their words, "probably couldn't be replicated."

Novelist Kirstin Innes and actor and comedian David Bratchpiece

So what made The Arches so special?

Kirstin suggests that a big part of it was Andy Arnold and the team he assembled around it right at the beginning. People were turning up and mucking in their free time for the love of it for a long time until it became a viable business model.

"It was the first place in the UK - and, I think, the whole of Europe - to do that public/private funding where all the revenue from the clubs funded an arts programme."

The title itself hints at a reason why the space was so successful as a venue, especially for live music and clubbing. Kirstin explains that the secret lay in the brick arches that gave the venue its name. "The way that they work is that the sound goes up into them and straight back down again, which is a really intense experience for a clubber. The bricks, she suggests, soaked up the hedonism over the two and a half decades it ran.

David agrees.

"That space was filled with the energy of all the different creative people that came through. No matter what they were doing, if they were working on a gig or a club or an exhibition - it creates an energy within the building, you could always sense that buzz around the building. You could even sense it in the basement after the refurbishment where there were new rehearsal spaces in there.

But, as with any performance space, it was the shows themselves that were the real star. Hosting everything "from a club to a Beckett play", Kirstin says that the ethos of the venue allowed for a variety of voices, genres and media to be explored.

It was fun-loving, irreverent, but also really caring about the interesting stuff. And crucially, not elitist - absolutely not elitist.

Both writers hold fond - if occasionally hazy - memories of the time they spent there, as punters as well as employees. For Kirstin, her time there saw her shift from an indie kid to a a fan of house and techno, and a highlight for David is when the funk legend George Clinton played (and a pint got spilled over the lighting board).

"He went up onstage wearing an Arches staff t-shirt, and when the crowd saw that they went absolutely wild."

It's clear from listening to them, and from reading the stories in the book itself, that the space shaped not only the professional lives of the people who worked their, but their creative tastes.

"It was just a gigantic playground for the imagination," Kirstin says. "You could come in there and it could be so many things. This gigantic open free space that was just into possibility and experimentation.

The Arches may have closed but it legacy lives on - both in the careers it shaped, and the memories of the people who played, danced and performed there.

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'A giant playground for the imagination': New book looks back at Glasgow's iconic venue The Arches - Glasgow Live

For over 25 years, the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) has been recognized as the most influential gathering for the electronic dance music industry. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world come together for the massive summit and ADE Festival, which take over Amsterdam every October.

In the wake of the region's #UnmuteUs protests, which were carried outin response to the Dutch government's restrictions on nightlife and music festivals instated weeks before ADE 2021, the conference's organizers managed to produce another wildly successful event. Opting to ax the conference portion, they gave attendees just what they needed: dance music hedonism.

Nicky Romero headlining the Protocol Recordings Label Night at Escape Nightclub for Amsterdam Dance Event.

Jarett Lopez

ADE offers an abundance of events that are educational as well as entertaining.Part conference, part festival experience, the Amsterdam Dance Event is able to offer not only the biggest celebration of the EDM industry, but also build a solid foundation for future generations of electronic music professionals to learn and grow.

It's essentially a networking haven.

Circoloco Ibiza at Amsterdam Dance Event

Jarett Lopez

ADE's programming is designed and meticulously curated for DJs, music producers, label execs, tech start-ups, brand managers, agents, and many more industry pros. Hosting hundreds of guest speakers at approximately 450 events across the city, there is no shortage of learning opportunities for aspiring artists.

ADE In Conversation.

Amsterdam Dance Event

The main thing to focus on for any young artist is the fact that there are thousands of influential people who in attendance during any given year, so it's an ideal opportunity to network and get your work out there.

You never knowyou could meet your favorite artist in line at a coffee shop, share a boat ride with the manager of a label you want to sign to, or meet a fellow artist to collaborate on a breakthrough song.

Amsterdam Dance Event

While not a feature of the 2021 edition one of the most direct ways to be heard is through Demo Pitch. Demo Pitch is a daily 1.5-hour session where rotating sets of A&Rs, sound engineers, artists, and managers sit across from you and listen to your music for approximately 10 minutes. They'll provide you will their expert advice and feedback on the spot.

Roughly 2,500 dance music artists are tapped in, and they come with their circles. It's one of the only events in the world where you can experience impromptu, intimate DJ sets by some of the biggest artists in the world, like the one we captured during the 2021 edition featuring Laidback Luke, Dada Life, Don Diablo, Dannic and more.

Laidback Luke, Don Diablo, Dada Life, and more DJ at Jimmy Woo's for ADE 2021.

Jarett Lopez

Another thing to keep in mind for anyone considering attending ADE: come prepared.

There are so many events going on every moment of the dayspread across hundreds of locations around the cityso be sure you have an idea of what you want to do and who you want to meet. It can be easy to get sidetracked and party too hard and miss out. By arriving organized, you can ensure that you're able to hit the right events to help advance your career or, at the very least, become inspired.

Business hangout at Fosbury and Sons at ADE 2021.

Amsterdam Dance Event

The conference portion of ADE offers a wealth of industry insights that could prove invaluable to an aspiring electronic musician. One theme of the conference is aimed at inspiring newcomers to this exciting field, while another focuses on sharing knowledge about business trends in the field.

Some conference sessions in the past have been about rebranding, diversity and inclusion, investing, and even discovering new equipment.

ADE 2021.

Amsterdam Dance Event

Aside from the conference and its potential for learning, the entire event represents an opportunity to hear new sounds at the bleeding edge of electronic dance music. There are clubbing nights, basement parties, secret events, boat outings, ice cream socials, meet-and-greets, interactive experiences, vinyl markets, and much more. And that list doesn't even remotely cover the full variety.

Amsterdam Dance Event

For five days and nights, the city of Amsterdam truly breathes electronic music and if you want to experience the culture and open doors for your career, attendance is essential.

ADE returns in full effect October 19th to 22nd, 2022. You can find out more and subscribe for updateshere.

Website: amsterdam-dance-event.nlFacebook: facebook.com/amsterdamdanceeventTwitter: twitter.com/ADE_NLInstagram: instagram.com/amsterdamdanceeventYouTube: youtube.com/user/AmsterdamDanceEvent

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Why Aspiring EDM Artists Can't Miss the Amsterdam Dance Event - EDM.com

Navigating a surreal space between fantasy and reality, The Beach Bum continues the idiosyncratic vision of auteur director Harmony Korine, a director known for his strange independent features that lean on the side of experimentation. Having orchestrated a hallucinatory poetic vision of America in Gummo and extracted the hyper-reality of contemporary life with Spring Breakers, the largely overlooked Beach Bum takes Korines illusory career and defines it through the lead character of Matthew McConaugheys Moondog.

Released shortly after Matthew McConaugheys career renaissance, The Beach Bum followed the success of Martin Scorseses The Wolf of Wall Street and Christopher Nolans Interstellar, coming out at a time when the actors new identity was well established. The tale follows the eccentric Matthew McConaughey as Moondog, a poet, stoner and altogether optimist living on the Florida coastline. Embracing aimless joy and hedonism, Moondog strolls through the colourful dockyards and bars, leaving a psychedelic impression in his wake.

Floating from scene to scene, McConaughey embodies the bohemian Floridian spirit, radiating a certain intensity and lust for life that rubs off on his surrounding characters as well as the viewers themselves. Frequently taking part in existential ramblings about the state of modern life, Moondog is a manifestation of individual pleasure and desire, warping the viewers impression of modern life with his convincing opinions and wild theories.

Representative of a career that had come full circle, Matthew McConaugheys character of Moondog in Harmony Korines contemporary classic is a philosophical slacker and style icon, not unlike the actors character in his debut film Dazed and Confused. Playing the quickly-ageing jock Wooderson in Richard Linklaters seminal film, Matthew McConaugheys character suffuses his charm into the film, eliciting a laid-back slacker philosophy. It is this same identity, merging creative dynamism and a compelling stylistic aurora that made the actor so successful in the long run, with The Beach Bum simply amplifying a nostalgic echo of the past.

Wallowing in the delights of bad taste, sex and general debauchery, McConaughey thrives alongside a supporting cast including Snoop Dog, Isla Fisher, Jonah Hill and Zac Efron. Describing his own character as a verb. A folk poet. A character in a Bob Dylan song dancing through lifes pleasure and pain knowing every interaction is another note in the tune of his life, in an interview with GQ, The Beach Bum is a celebration of the actors achievements to date, showcasing just how far the identity of Matthew McConaughey has come.

Threading a patchwork of hyper-real America, Korine creates a fairy-tale of the patriotic dream, one which mirrors the subversive reality that the video-game Grand Theft Auto famously presents, where Moondog is the eccentric protagonist. If Matthew McConaughey is indeed the laid back, bohemian free spirit that his characters suggest then The Beach Bum is surely his most definitive role. After all, the actors clearly having a good time. When Moondog utters I just wanna have a good time, until this shits over, man. This lifes a fucking rodeo and Im gonna suck the nectar and fucking rawdog it till the wheels come off, it may as well be McConaughey speaking.

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Reflecting on Matthew McConaughey's definitive role in 'The Beach Bum' - Far Out Magazine

Maccas is in the thick of their 30 days, 30 deals promotion, and today theyre slashing 40% off all orders.

Summer is fast approaching and its time to shed our inhibitions. By inhibitions, I mean any semblance of a health-conscious diet weve spent most of the year establishing. For the next two months, we are leaning into culinary chaos. Im talking KFC delivery for breakfast, 2 am Filet-o-Fish meals, Coke No Sugar as a substitute for water. The theme is hedonism and the weapon of choice is hot chips.

Maccas is here to provide for this particular modus operandi, with their 30 days 30 deals promotion, set to run through the month of November.

The mood of today is decadence and gluttony, with Maccas offering 40% off all orders. You can find a list of all the deals throughout the month below.

The deals are available exclusively through the MyMaccas App, check out the full calendar below.

November 1Big Mac for $1

November 2Large fries for $1

Get the latest Food & Drink news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more

November 3Small McChicken meal and cheeseburger for $5

November 440 per cent off, minimum spend $15

November 52 x small Quarter Pounder meals for $9

November 6Small cheeseburger meal and extra cheeseburger for $4

November 72 x Small 10 McNugget meals for $9

November 8Cheeseburger for $1

November 9Quarter Pounder for $2

November 10Large Sundae for $2

November 11Small Chicken n Cheese meal with cheeseburger for $5

November 12Double cheeseburger for $2

November 13Apple Pie for $1

November 1420 per cent off, minimum spend $10

November 156 x McNuggets for $2

November 16Large shake for $2

November 17Cheeseburger for $1

November 18McChicken for $2

November 19Small Big Mac meal with cheeseburger for $6

November 2020 per cent off, minimum spend $10

November 21McFlurry for $2

November 22Large fries for $2

November 23Big Mac for $3

November 24Large Sundae for $2

November 25Small Quarter Pounder meal with cheeseburger for $6

November 262 x small McChicken meals for $9

November 27Small cheeseburger meal and extra cheeseburger for $5

November 2820 per cent off, minimum spend $10

November 29Double cheeseburger for $2

November 30Fillet-o-Fish for $2

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Everything is 40% off at Maccas today - The Brag

During that first seemingly unending lockdown in 2020, while most of the world was watching Tiger King or baking bread, British pop maverick Charli XCX wrote, recorded and released a whole album. A collaborative effort with her fans, titled How Im Feeling Now, it distilled the boredom, frustration, grief, gratitude and mania of that period into hyperactive club-pop that offered up escapism and introspection when they were needed most.

That record is the focus of Charlis first post-lockdown UK show. Arriving on stage dressed as if shes hosting a Matrix-themed aerobics session in sunglasses, a black floor-length laced jacket, combat boots, cycling shorts and a cropped black sweater with GAY emblazoned on it the 29-year-old barely stops moving during a rocket-paced set.

Opening with Visions, the optimistic closer from How Im Feeling Now, Charli whizzes through the first three songs in a hedonistic rush that lubricates fans for Anthems, an industrial hyperpop explosion that causes a mosh pit. Just because youre on the balcony, doesnt mean youre not in it, she shouts to those on the upper level, before thrashing around like a child at a party after too much sugar.

This energy is maintained for most of the set, Charli and her fans egging each other on over the chaotic synths and rap of Pink Diamond and the scratching electronics of C2.0. This uproarious atmosphere leaves no space for sentimentality: stage chatter is kept to a minimum, while the ubiquitous lashings of live Auto-Tune blur the lines between her vocals and backing track, although this ultimately strips any rawness out of her voice on the more reflective moments like during the pensive Enemy.

But displays of emotion are clearly not the objective. Instead the focus is on exorcising the trauma of the past 19 months by partying, as evidenced during the encore, which Charli kicks off with Frankenstein banger Vroom Vroom causing the crowd to throw themselves with exuberant recklessness. It might not mark the end of the pandemic, but this show certainly feels like a euphoric and cathartic farewell to an era of Covid-necessitated repression, all orchestrated by one of pops most adventurous auteurs.

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Charli XCX review explosive hyperpop hedonism to exorcise the trauma of lockdown - The Guardian

Grace Wing was born in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, but it was on the other side of Americas great expanse that she would make her mark. Her father worked in the suited and booted industry of investment banking and shepherded the family around the States in search of profits.

By the time she was in her teens, young Americans had started hot-footing around the continent for reasons unclear even unto themselves. The beat generation and most notably Jack KerouacsOn The Roadhad inspired a hysterical generational onset of wanderlust. The zeitgeist was changing, and the world became far more bohemian, a place befitting of someone like Grace. In short, there was absolutely no way that she was going to follow her father into finance.

On August 26th, 1961, at the age of 21, she became Grace Slick when she married an aspiring filmmaker named Jerry. Things were going steady in the pleasant marriage of Grace and Jerry. They were enjoying the slowly swelling boon of pop culture and plotting out their way in the world, mindful not to succumb to the pitfalls of their forebearers, but not quite developing a full-on punk attitude just yet.

Two years into their marriage, the patent for LSD expired. Thereafter, there was a three-year period where acid was legal. This turned out to be quite a big deal for Grace Slick. From that moment on, her life and indeed the whole counterculture movement was accelerated, launching at Roadrunner pace towards some unknown future, perhaps a cliff would befall them, but at least they were getting away from the stilted past.

While the Vietnam War and various assassinations might have stolen the headlines, the retrospective narrative of the sixties now can be defined by two words:swinginganddrugs. Far from just the perceived psychotropic hedonism, the era was awash with all kinds of pharmaceuticals. Purple Hearts, for instance, were pills that were a form of the Benzedrines that had been used toperk-upsoldiers in World War II, and with a surplus following its resolution, people began popping them like Smarties.

This craze of pick-me-up amphetamines and diet pills aplenty werent even seen as drugs, at least not in the narcotic sense. They were merely the modern miracle of Western medicines continued progress. If idiocy and hatred had plunged us into the depraved horrors of the war, then technology, progress and pills were going to get us out of it. In fact, your average churchgoing housewife in the late 1950s was full of so many appetite-suppressing amphetamines that if she were busted her street value would make the evening news but fuck me were the houses clean!

Whilst British prime minister Anthony Eden was literally popping so many pills that he cant be said to have been of sound mind during the Suez Crisis, he went unchallenged, as did everyone else because the pills came with a label. The rising use of psychedelics, however, was met with disdain, judgement and extreme condemnation (outside of the CIA where wild experiments began). As far as Grace Slick was concerned, this was rank hypocrisy. Whats more, it wasnt just rank hypocrisy that illuminated a divergent drugs policy, it was the sort that shone a spotlight upon the whole perked-up finger-pointing stuffy status quo and Grace Slick wasnt going to have it!

Music was now the medium to make your point known. This was a truth that had been germinating in the coalescing world of culture since Slicks youth when she first dipped her toe into guitar playing. In 1956, Elvis Presley had gyrated the world into light to such a degree that following his performance onThe Ed Sullivan Show, CBS made the decree that hereafter he was only to be filmed from the waist up.

Meanwhile, inthe literary world,Peyton Placeby Grace Metalious became the uber-salacious and provocative best-seller that thrust sexual liberation into the living rooms of the masses. Of course, there had been countless precursors to this, but for the first time the movement seemed to be escaping the clutches of niche subcultures and beginning to seed into society at large and when that happens, invariably the demimonde shifts further into the margins while simultaneously the less daring elements of the liberating movement become accepted and engulfed into the mainstream.

With this sort of blue material on most bookshelves now, the beats got even more audacious.At the forefront of this liberation was Greenwich Village. In the early part of the 1960s, the village was the hub for something very stirring,give it a name: counterculture. The streets were awash with folk troubadours with copies ofJack Kerouacs bible to American disenfranchisement, sticking out of the top pockets of gingham shirts as art, culture and forethinking conversation disposed of industry as the mainstay of society in a small concentrated pocket of Manhattan.

Then, the evil jazz genius Enoch Light, found a brilliant way of piping the heady zeitgeist of Greenwich Village into the living rooms of the nation to such a faithful degree that it was almost the Real McCoyhe invented stereo sound. These records were changing the world.Less than a hundred years on from the biggest names in music remaining exclusive in grand concert halls, songs were now available for everyone. Old 78 RPMs had infused music with all sorts of eclectic influences and now, 45 RPMs were pushing it towards the youth culture reverie of rock n roll.

In a strange twist of fate, however, the insatiable appetite for musics first commercial rock stars meant that LPs, which were first invented in 1948, gained popularity. Swapping 45s was all well and good, but nobody wanted to listen to the same Elvis song a thousand times over before school the next morning, they wanted to relish in his whole oeuvre in one steady hit.All of this was gradually unfurling before Slick who witnessed it all from the transitory view of her fathers car and scattered neighbourhood homes. She keenly but tentatively watched on as a travelling outsider, but the Kerouacian point remains, that the spectator sees more of the game. Grace had her finger to the cultural pulse.

The next swooping change was that these longer records called for more introspection. After a while kids likeBob Dylanfound the endless variations of Rock around the Clock a little bit endless and vapid. LPs allowed for greater depth and diversity. Suddenly not every song that a commercial artist put to record had to be a radio smash. While it took the Motown hit parade a while to catch on to this notion, the troubadours flocking to Greenwich Village were about to get arty with what you could do on a 42-minute LP.

Everything culminated in Bob Dylan. He rode the wave of beat introspection, Elvis dazzling attitude, the rising tide of rock n roll, he glared at the rank hypocrisy of society and stretched it all out over a poetic freewheeling album. Thus, when the already tentatively bohemian Slick filled her head with acid and decided she wasnt going to take any shit for her tripping either, sat in a bar in Americas newly gay capital of San Francisco and watched a band called Jefferson Airplane play live, she saw her future through a sonic oracle. It was a future that would perfectly define the 1960s as though she herself was a living allegory.

She joined a band. The Great Society consisted of Grace and Jerry Slick, Jerrys brother Darby and David Milner. She started writing songs, one of which was White Rabbit.I always felt like a good-looking schoolteacher singing White Rabbit, Grace Slick once said, I sang the words slowly and precisely, so that people who needed to hear them wouldnt miss the point. But they did. The analogy of a schoolteacher is, of course, madder than a hermit crab with a mortgage, but there is no doubting that her near-unrivalled chanted incantation-like vocal performance was a bid to get a message across, albeit a madcap surrealist one. Slicks searing singing performance could haunt an empty house. While she rattles the rafters of thunderclouds, it is the words that emanate out from her that tell the tale of the sixties and the racing melody that prophesied its inevitable demise.

The song might seem as though it came out fully formed, as though it was fashioned in the studio in a violent eruption of sound, but the truth is that it took a long time in the making. Slick had dropped some acid in her Californian condo when she plopped the needle into the murky depths ofMiles DavisSketches of Spainrecord. [It] was drilled into my head, Slick explained as she sat there listening to his haunting horn over hours and hours, and then it came squirting out in various ways as I wrote White Rabbit.

It was a flop. As was Somebody to Love a song that contains a smidgen of the meaning of life itself. But good God, everyone was in a band and everyone was good at it, so what chance did the adrenalised meaning of life have of making itself heard in the crowd where the next Promethean feat was a week away? The Great Society failed to escape the Bay Area. But soon, Jefferson Airplane were looking for a new singer. And boy oh boy if it wasnt the irony of their professional manner that lured Slick to join. The sixties was swinging but it was still a business and The Airplane had the structure to fly Slicks songs to the top.

1967 was the Summer of Love, but if you were to give it another name you could well call it the Summer of Slick. It was a summer that White Rabbit would soundtrack, and a cultural event that the world is still rattling from, as Bob Dylans proclamation that the times were changing and those left behind should not criticise what they cant understand, was finally realised. That summer counterculture announced that it was not some niche fad, but a subversive force. The issue was that it was underpinned by a tailspin of hedonism impossible to sustain, but at this point, the song hadnt reached its throw the radio in the bath peak yet. It was still in its authority-defying maelstrom of a middle eight.

Up until the summer of love, the sixties had journeyed to the precipice, now as Grace Slick explained, it was ready to jump down the rabbit hole, the old pills were out and the new were in: I identified with Alice [in Wonderland]. I went from the planned, bland 50s, to the world of being in a rock band without looking back. It was my Alice moment, heading down the hole. The same can be said of everyone who revelled in the music that the bands produced. The kaleidoscopic colourings ofSgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Bandcame to the fore as technology caught up with the times and everything proved rapidly unyielding.Slick welcomed them into her developing work.

This was a generation brought up in the despair of war, or at the very least the depressive rationing era that followed.Therein lies the heart of all 60s movements, whether that be the beatniks or the black panthers a singular determination to march to the beat of a different drum and forgo this thing almost in defiance of theirforebearers. If the kids of the summer of love were going to fail, then they were going to do so on their own terms, not the banal ones laid out by previous generations.

And fail, they would. The glorious unfulfillable crescendo of White Rabbit is the perfect allegory for the era, that sped at 100mph with a tailwind of progress and hope right towards a red light. It was a whirlwind of beauty, teetering on the line between a tragic overture and ecstatic fun, it sounded glorious and by God if the first verse of Somebody to Love (When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies/Dont you want somebody to love?) didnt get close to answering the whole thing! But that rattling build-up forecast the delirium for Alice that lay ahead.

Joni Mitchell once said:[In the 1970s] You watched that high of the hippie thing descend into drug depression. Right after Woodstock, then we went through a decade of basic apathy where my generation sucked its thumb and then just decided to be greedy and pornographic. What followed the high point of The Summer of Love for Slick was a grim comedown. New ideals borne from the emboldening power of sex, drugs and rock n roll soon found themselves dwarfed beneath the gaudy surface of that unholy trinity.

Slick would succumb to these forces like many others. She appeared on the cover of Teenset Magazine blacked up with the crazy subheading of Grace Slick and Jimi Hendrix on being black. Thereafter she ended up in an armed confrontation with the police after they were called to her property following reports that a drunken woman was firing a shotgun in the house.An armed stand-off ensued but fortunately, the gun was wrestled away without any casualties.

And perhaps the ultimate acquiescence of the sixties to a glib future and the defining paradigm of her allegorical life is the commercial queasiness of We Built This City a track that ironical highlights that the sixties empire had returned into sand, and vanished from the hand of Slick and the likes who once held it aloft so gloriously that it almost seems as fabled as Slicks life in retrospect. Thank God, weve still good the epochal triumphs of Surrealistic Pillow to prove that all of this really did happen.

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Grace Slick: The Acid Queen who defined the 1960s - Far Out Magazine

Rock n roll is a weird and wonderful world. While the genre has given us some of the best music in history, it has also conjured up some of the worst along with no end of crazy tales. Its almost as if to be a successful musician, it comes as a prerequisite that you have to be slightly unhinged.

Thankfully though, these days, the age-old stereotype of the rockstar seems to be dying out. It has been proven time and time again that as a way of life, it is futile, and all the excess and total commitment to hedonism will only end in one way.

Nonetheless, there still exist those who we still perceive as rockstars. Theyre either part of a dying breed, like the surviving Rolling Stones or Beatles members, or are now a total walking caricature. The likes of Mtley Cre and Kid Rock are those that instantly spring to mind. Either way, rock music continues to be the gift that keeps on giving whether it be in the form of good music or material that is so awful its funny.

Musicians are musicians, theres no getting away from it, and there will always exist a degree of going against the grain due to just how naturally different from your everyday Joe they seem to be. Whether it be backstage fights or crazy drug-addled stories, there will always exist these kinds of tales, just maybe not in the massive volume that they did once upon a time.

Given that this set of individuals have a penchant for a surprise, theyve also given us something else on numerous occasions across the years; the duet. There have been so many, it is truly dizzying. However, there does seem to be a common thread with duets, whether its in rock, pop or otherwise theyre rarely good.

Duets tend to rank among some of the worst pieces of music ever released, serving only as a vanity project for those involved. If you quickly cast your mind back to some of the duets that have sent shivers down our spines over the years, youll heed this point loud and clear.

This got us thinking, then, what are the worst rock duets of all time? With an innumerable amount to pick from, this was no easy task. Weve stripped it down to just five in the hope of giving you a concise picture of what a rock duet should not sound/look like.

Unsurprisingly, expect to see some of the most ridiculous characters in rock and roll history.

This truly is an abomination. It is a sonic embodiment of everything thats wrong with modern rock, a total vanity project, and theres no surprise that it features U2.

Apart from the fact that both bands managed to ruin the Skids classic punk track via U2s overdone, overproduced sound, they take all of the organic fury out of the original and water it down to a flimsy husk of its former glory via their very, very mediocre musicianship. The guitar playing is so vanilla that the late Stuart Adamson would be turning in his grave.

Additionally, Billie Joe Armstrongs pointless recital of the verse of The Animals The House of the Rising Sun is nothing but cringe. The 2000s were crap, werent they?

Ok, there were parts of the 2004 Linkin Park/Jay-Z EP,Collision Course, that were decent. Separately, early Linkin Park and Jay-Z are untouchable, theres no denying it.

However, the Numb/Encore mashup is pure cheese. It doesnt matter if its the studio version or the live version that features Paul McCartney; again, it is a case of the 2000s being too ridiculous. It doesnt hold up well, and the self-awareness of all involved ranks at about 0.5%. Its just too much.

Even in 2007, it was hard to believe that this sort of music still existed. An awful blend of cock-rock and heavy metal, this is the sort of music that has been parodied so many times over the years. It is in this realm of music where we still get our musicians who are guilty of taking themselves very seriously, the Aldous Snow prototype.

The worst part about it is rendition is that its an Aerosmith cover, and they do Perry, Tyler and the rest of the band no justice. Taken from ex-Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bachs third solo record,Angel Down, this is just one of three tracks that featured Axl Roses unmistakable vocals. Two words: not good.

On paper, ex-Van Halen vocalist, Sammy Hagar, everyones least favourite Dixie rocker Kid Rock and guitar virtuoso, Joe Satriani, sounds god awful. To everyones total and utter surprise, it was! One of the worst songs Ive ever heard, its hard to believe that theres even a market for this kind of effort.

Again, it can only be described as a vanity project and a joke. Its because of songs like this that rock lost its supremacy in music. Hagar, Rock and the like should be sent into space via Bezos floating dildo, and stay there.

This one is just weird. It is so very 70s, and the vocal back and forth between Cooper and Donovan is one the clearest examples in music of why you should not abuse drugs. Donovans falsetto thats panned in your left ear is really strange, and almost sinister sounding. He tries to be hard rock, but hes just not. While the track is rolling its almost unfathomable that Mr. Mellow Yellow is attempting to be all rock n roll.

Furthermore, Cooper sounds like hes underwater, giving the song a really jarring feel as Donovans creepy whispers sound like hes stood right behind you. Just like the 2000s, the 1970s was a very weird time. It was projects like this that culminated in punks arrival and attempting to wash all the egos of the classic rockstars away.

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From Jay-Z to Axl Rose: The five worst duets in the history of rock music - Far Out Magazine

Matt Smith and Anya Taylor-Joy star in Edgar Wrights Last Night in Soho.Parisa Taghizadeh/Courtesy of Focus Features

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For Edgar Wrights macabre, hallucinatory ode to Londons swinging mid-1960s, the theme song is Downtown, made famous by Petula Clark: Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city, linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty. And, indeed, in an early scene of Last Night in Soho, we watch the telegenic Thomasin McKenzie as the young and naive Eloise Cooper, soaking up a nighttime street scene of London in the mod time of Twiggy and giddy hedonism.

But where Clarks version of Downtown smiles, what is heard in Last Night in Soho is hauntingly rendered a cappella, asking How can you lose? not in a carefree rhetorical way but as a suggestion of awful possibilities. Wrights visually sumptuous, often satisfying (though ultimately disappointing) psychological thriller gleefully explores the grim side of a beloved era, with a killer soundtrack that just might leave someone dead.

The film is set in modern times, but Eloise pines for the sixties. An orphan who lives with her grandmother in the countryside, she wistfully plays vintage 45s in her bedroom and revels in old-fashioned dcor. The record player spins the sad-sack sounds of Peter and Gordons melancholic 1964 hit A World Without Love: Please lock me away and dont allow the day here inside, where I hide, with my loneliness.

Thomasin McKenzie plays Eloise in Last Night in Soho.Parisa Taghizadeh/Courtesy of Focus Features

A loner, Eloise wants to go to London to study fashion design. Something happened to her mother in the city years ago though, and the daughter seems to share her late mothers fragile emotionality and an extrasensory trait of taking in too much. Her grandmother warns her about London. Will it be a mental overload for Eloise? Does foreshadow have 10 letters and start with an F?

But off she goes to the big city. Right off the bat Eloise runs into a dormitory of mean girls and moves off campus to an old boarding house run by an old woman. Landlady Ms. Collins (played by Diana Rigg in her final role) is a tough dame, all doilies and furrowed brows.

After bad days at school she goes to bed and dreams herself into a groovy London nightlife, circa 65. The effect is literally night and day. She wanders around wide-eyed, quickly becoming immersed in (and infatuated with) the life of the beautiful young singer Sandie, played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Dame Diana Rigg stars as Ms. Collins in her final role.Parisa Taghizadeh/Courtesy of Focus Features

In the time-travelling dream scenes, Eloise and Sandie often become one and the same, with the former sometimes seeing herself as the latter in mirrors. This is where Wrights filmmaking vision and chops shine. The editing and camera work are dazzling. The viewer is liable to be swept up in the magic as much as the storys protagonist.

With films such as Last Night in Soho and 2017s Baby Driver, Wright lives to impress us, in the way of Hitchcock or Tarantino. Of course, Hitchcock is alleged to have treated his female stars disgustingly. Wright takes dead aim at misogyny by presenting the male gatekeepers of the era as monsters. Just like the horrible conduct toward female performers still exists today, Eloises nightmares dont stop when she awakens in the real world.

So, ugliness behind the neon. Something for the young nostalgics to consider.

Despite Wrights best efforts (and a fine turn from the ever-ominous Terence Stamp as the Silver Haired Gentleman), the films second half devolves into schlock. And not even in a fun, camp way. One supposes it was done in homage to the lurid British horror films of the 1960s, but it presents more like spoof.

Occasionally theres a film that you remember fondly from years before, but are embarrassed after revisiting it. I got that feeling with just one viewing of Last Night in Soho. A story in which the dead have voices tells us that some things are better left buried.

In the interest of consistency across all critics reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critics pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)

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Review: Director Edgar Wright paints an impressively lurid picture of 1960s London in Last Night in Soho - The Globe and Mail