Recent Posts
Skating With Your Unkle
Spike Jonze & Ty Evan’s created an explosive titled open for the Lakai - Fully Flared skate film. Brilliant slow motion footage is seen as skaters perform in an urban environment that is literally blowing up around them. This footage was reworked into a music-like piece for the UNKLE track heaven.
Hanging with...
David Lynch and Moby while they jam in a studio together, oh and meditate.
H a lf A sl eep
School of Seven Bells just dropped this moody little video for the single Half Asleep.
Because Supply and Demand is the Problem...
…with the music industry (oh lord), itunes has been forced by the major labels to change their model and raise prices. The big wig execs see growth in download sales coming from itunes and figure now is the perfect time to stand by their outdated ideas, to try and squeeze every penny out of an approach even if it risks systemic failure. Seems to me the best thing major labels can do is let some of their dinosaurs go; maybe those people can find new jobs at AIG.
Dear Alito: You Are Not Cool
Justice Alito is a bloviating conservative windbag of questionable morality who has made a career out of marginalizing the rights of a staggering number of Americans.* We all already know that; there’s no story there. But what is noteworthy is the fact that, in a recent opinion, Judge Alito made several allusions to John Lennon’s Imagine, and at one point, even went so far as to quote all the lyrics of the song. This is funny because John Lennon would definitely have found Alito to be a horrible person and would probably have loudly contested his use of his lyrics, since he’s pretty much dedicated his life to everything John Lennon was against.
Brian E. Gray, a law professor at U.C. Hastings, also noticed the…um—let’s call it the “incongruity”—that exists between Alito’s decisions and his choice of Lennon’s words to describe them, and he has expressed his observations in a hilarious Morning News piece called, appropriately, You Are Not Cool. A quote from the article:
At this point, I began to imagine how John Lennon would have reacted both to Alito’s cooptation of his lyrics and the justice’s decision in [another] case to deny monetary compensation to Diana Levine, a professional musician. Levine’s right arm had to be amputated after she developed gangrene because of faulty labeling of the pharmaceutical company’s anti-nausea drug Phenergan, which she received by inadvertent intra-arterial injection. “[T]ragic facts make bad law,” was Alito’s only lament. It is a far cry from a world in which there is “no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.”
Justice Alito is a conservative whose views on government promotion of religion and corporate evasion of responsibility for violations of state health and safety laws may or may not comport with the intentions of the framers of the Constitution. But whatever Justice Alito’s legal philosophy, one thing he isn’t is cool.
Pretty awesome and very funny. To read the whole thing, go here.
* So is Scalia, but I don’t have all day here.
Downloading SXSW 09
Perhaps you really wanted to make it to SXSW 09 and it just wasn’t in the cards. NPR has posted several full performances. Enjoy!
Sesame Street Blows My Effing Mind
Shows may come and go, but the perennial Coolest Show of All Time—and I mean this—has got to be Sesame Street. Whenever I hear that a musician has made an appearance on the block, I can’t help but think higher of that person. I guess spending your time with muppets, for me, just adds a certain amount of cachet. Anyway, MusicRadar compiled the 11 Greatest Sesame Street Guest Songs and they are all pretty amazing—and that includes those selections from musicians who may not be your favorites. Watching Johnny Cash strum a tune about a grouch he knows as Oscar shows his support (for the aforementioned grouch, of course), or Stevie Wonder play Superstition while a nearby kid headbangs (!), or Feist count to four surrounded by gleeful monsters, or R.E.M. jump up and down with a gaggle of furry creatures makes you feel good and chases your cynicism away. There are lots more big names mingling with the locals on what’s arguably the world’s most famous street. To see them all—and I cannot stress how much you should—go here. [Music Radar]
More Free Goodies from Trent
I recently wrote about Trent Reznor’s summer plans with Jane’s Addition. Tom Morello’s newest project, Street Sweeper has been added to the tour. Additionally, a website has been launched in which you can download a free EP with recordings from each band.
But Offstage, Things Were Falling Apart...
Laugh if you want, but without VH1’s Behind the Music, I never would’ve known that Def Leppard used to go underneath the stage in the middle of huge stadium concerts to get blowjobs from mother-daughter duos or that Rick Allen’s first words upon being discovered by a farmer after losing his arm in a car crash was, “Help me. I’m a rock star.” I wouldn’t have known those things—or a million other incredibly useless rocktoids that take up space in my brain that might otherwise be used by rocket science and various other subjects that can actually get you a job. Anyway, the point is, VH1 is bringing back Behind the Music (!), and finally doing right by me and so many other people who have been lost—adrift in a sea of tabloid media that pale in comparison to the mother of all scientific studies of The Rise and Fall of the Rock Star—since the show ended in 2006. Now if only those witholding VH1 execs would bring back Pop-Up Video!
Reuters has the whole beautiful story.
Artist Annie Kevans Presents All the Presidents' Girls
Annie Kevans is a woman after my own heart. While Portraits of Our Presidents proliferate, there are few artists creating homages to their recreational pursuits. Kevans has created a series as cheeky as it is brilliant: Portraits of Our Presidents’ Mistresses. To look over these tastefully rendered oil paintings, visit Kevans’s site, where they’re displayed. Below is a Kevans painting of Sally Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson’s intimate “friend” and confidante.
A Character Named Lord Humungus
Last night I watched Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. I always thought that there was something kind of awesome about it. The simple vision of a post-apocalyptic world was certainly intended to be a comment on civilization in the twentieth century (the age of consumption). Humankind had lost it’s way, and would kill for oil (literally). Having not seen the film in several years, I couldn’t stop giggling at the silly representation of the sexually deviant villains. The most prominent of these characters being a twinkish man-boy, his mohawked lover and Lord Humungus (the uber dom). And to top it off, they run around the wasteland clad in used sports apparel and leather chaps with no underwear. I hope the future isn’t that bad.
No Rain Bee Girl
Ever wonder what happened to the “Bee Girl” from Blind Melon’s No Rain music video? She grew up like everyone else.
Heavy Metal Monk
Heavy Metal + Capuchin Brother Cesar Bonnizi = Heavy Metal Monk.
Sampling and Borrowing the Melody
Some of my very favorite music from the last quarter-century utilizes sampling. I can remember an era when the very concept of sampling someone else’s music was up for debate. Public Enemy was a group who sampled more heavily than any of their contemporaries and in doing so created an undeniably original sound. But times changed. The debate about sampling was a red herring and was much less about ethics of borrowing than it was about corporations recognizing an opportunity to cash in. Here Chuck D. and Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy talk about the era.
So where is the ethical line in sampling? What is the difference between homage and just plain thievery? Recently, Lady Sovereign dropped a track called So Human. The hook to the better part of the song is borrowed from the The Cure. As is the entire chorus melody. And presumably, all proper sampling and publishing rights were accounted for. More likely than not, Robert Smith of The Cure wouldn’t mind her doing so. Is this art talking to art? Is it just lazy poor pop music? I can’t help but to think that when the entire hook of the song is lifted and so is the vocal melody for the chorus, nothing has significantly been changed except for the lyrics. Isn’t that what Weird Al Yankovic use to do. At least he had the grace to call it parody.
Kanye Can Afford a Cooler Blog than You
Did anyone ever truly think that Kanye West had the time to single handedly scour the web for every teeny bit of sleek design/avant art/hipster detritus so he could post it all to his blog? I mean, how would such an incredibly busy, super jet set superstar find the hours needed to pump out the many carefully crafted thoughts - in ALL CAPS no less, and followed by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of exclamation marks - that appear on West’s blog? New York magazine, super sleuths that they are, managed to get to the bottom of this oft debated mystery. Turns out, Mr. West (who has insisted in the past that he does all his own blogging) admits that he gets some help. And we quote:
“I have two people that I hired and I tell them exactly what I want - it’s just like how a designer would work. I tell them, you know, Surface magazine, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, Hypebeast, Bossip - go to these different blogs and keep on pulling information. And then they send it to me, and I get like 80 emails, and I have to check and go through them.”
I don’t know how awesome my blog would be if I could pay a few people to dedicate their entire days to searching the InterWebs for cool stuff for me to blog about, but I think it’s safe to assume it would be pretty fucking cool. And yet, this only makes me find Kanye even more endearing (and I’m not being sarcastic). Self-importance is rarely appealing, and yet, somehow, he manages to make it work.
Anyway, for more on Kanye’s blog - in the words of Kanye himself - head here.
The Clash Were Almost Called The Weak Heartdrops
One of the hardest things about starting a band is coming up with a name. In fact, it’s a little known fact that most bands have terrible names. And I’m not just talking about horrible bands and people like Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock. No—this goes beyond that. Upstanding, talented musicians like those in Led Zeppelin and Death Cab for Cutie suffer from the same affliction. At any rate, behind nearly every famous band name there’s a story, and NME has collected 25 of them. Included—among so many others—are the tales that bred Bloc Party, Radiohead, Klaxons, Nirvana, Black Sabbath and The Cure.
Karen Carpenter Was A Monster Drummer
I didn’t first come to appreciate The Carpenters until I saw Todd Hayne’s cult film, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story while in college. At the time, the movie was something of underground culture and to have heard about it was almost as rare scoring a copy. I was fortunate enough to borrow a VHS copy from my film mentor that had already been dubbed down many generations. Using Barbie dolls as stand-ins for actors, the dramatic rise and fall of Karen Carpenter was detailed on super-8 film. Something about this evocative approach to storytelling truly allowed me to hear the music of The Carpenters with fresh open ears. I guess I’ll always think of their cheery AM music second to the sort of ironic dark underbelly that existed. What I had no idea of though until recently, was that Karen was an amazing drummer.
Here Karen sings and drums Dancing In the Street, complete with a hot little solo. And here, Karen shows off her rhythm skills with only a snare and kick drum.
Mastodon Take on The Abominable Snowman
Mastodon have a new album releasing this month. What I’ve heard is AMAZING!!! Watch the band take on the Abominable Snowman in the video for the first single, Divinations.