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“Once in a great while, a natural phenomenon occurs that is so beautiful, so dramatic, it overshadows everything else. Sergio Valente has created a phenomenon the whole world will be watching: Sergio Valente black denim jeans. They’re more than beautiful. They’re out of sight.” This is the narration for a Sergio Valente denim ad in the jeans collection. The voiceover is so deeply impassioned. The slowly-revolving pan shots around a backlit, denim-clad behind are so intensified. The tight shots of tight asses are so all encompassing. The ad is dramatic to the point that it must be hyperbole. But you can tell that it’s actually in earnest. And the funny thing is that behind the inflated language, there’s a grain of truth to the ad. Jeans have become an unstoppable phenomenon in the world of fashion and apparel. The ubiquity of jeans has become so universal that they are almost hidden in plain view. The phenomenon really is "out of sight."
Anthropologists Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward of the Global Denim Project consider the global denim phenomenon a perfect example of the “blindingly obvious.” The sheer scale of denim’s presence has made us take that presence for granted. In Miller and Woodward’s estimation, in the majority of countries in the world, the majority of people on any given day are wearing jeans. With the exception of rural areas in China and South Asia, Miller found that when he stopped and counted the first 100 people to walk by, about 50 percent of the population wore jeans everywhere from Brazil to India, from Turkey to the
On tour in 2011, I found myself in New Orleans with my only place to stay being a squat house without a working toilet, gas, or hot water. It would have been fine, it was charming enough, and it would have been with the comraderie of genuinely good people, but I'm incredibly glad I ran into Drew Ziegler/Londo Sandooglebaum instead. Some of you may know him as the genius behind Complicated Horse Emergency and Egg Baloney Pardon Me Calypso Germ Food Mumu or the vocalist for a very convincing Laibach cover band called "Budweiser". Drew helped me get to the shows I had booked, and also helped me jump onto a bill at a clandestine metal bar speakeasy rather than playing at a sports bar in the suburbs. He and his roommates let me stay at their place, which was an old iron ore factory converted into a dadaist/surrealist paradise.
Some areas of the building were just full of tons and tons of barbeque grills and bathtubs. Other areas were stacked with vintage juke boxes alongside what I could only call "circus memorabilia" for lack of a better word, and a great deal of the stuff Drew used for his absurdist plays, seemingly easily acquired and in casual abundance. Another part of the building seemed to be a separate house unto itself, I'm still not sure as there were several floors, some of which were accessible only by a ladder. Bizzare makeshift lofts with clothing hanging from the walls and a huge room with nothing but pool table, for instance. Mysterious rooms made up of torn and damaged turn of the century Victorian decor, complete with water damaged paintings, long, skinny, ripped velvet couches, and ornate green patterned paisley wallpaper. They had an absolutely adorable pit bull, and some of the tenants' rooms were built entirely out of doors.
A few of my memories include being drunk, while Drew hand fed us arugula like baby birds, or while he played the above song on an old beaten up hand crank 78rpm player. The speed would warble Godfrey's words at different speeds, taking the song into even more eerie territory. "The MAAAN WITH THE WEEEEEEIRD BEEAAAAAAAAAAAARD". Unfortunately, I heard that place has burned down. Nobody was hurt to my knowledge, but I find it to be absolutely tragic, as it was an experience that I will never forget, and it was an undeniably special place. Drew has relocated and all I can do is speak the world of him and wish him the best.
*UPDATE* - I am completely incorrect about the burning, apparently that was a different place.
Flick through any glossy fashion magazine today and more-than-likely,
you’ll be faced with the legacy of Guy Bourdin. This maverick French
photographer was no stranger to controversy both in his work and private
life, and he singlehandedly changed the face of fashion advertising due
to his uncompromising and highly innovative style.
The Black and Blue Bowl at Webster Hall annually features a variety of hardcore bands. Considering my hardcore roots, I thought I would know more people at the show, but the bill was mostly mid-period bands. I did see some great metal shirts throughout, which made me immediatley comfy- Behemoth, Sodom, Gorguts..and at some point I did hear some Celtic Frost over the PA. The sold out crowd surfed, dove, piled-on and stared in awe at the slew of bands presented in this 9 hour day. There were no barriers in front of the stage, what a welcome touch. When the dancing actions of the hardcore genre were misconstrued as 100% aggression years ago, the barriers were born in almost all mid- to large-size clubs. It was nice to see more interaction with the bands. One of the bands on the bill early was Holland's Born From Pain, their new release:The New Future is available as a free download on their Facebook page; recommended. The Dave Smalley led DYS were a band I was really looking forward to seeing; full of fury, the Dag Nasty, Down By Law, and former ALL singer was all heart as usual, punchy as hell; most of my photos of him were blurry -running around on the stage like it means everything to his survival, he always brings all he's got to a live performance. Here is a shot of Dave with guest vocalist Drew Stone of NYC's Antidote. Drew will be a guest on the Peer Pressure segment of my program June 21st; he's the director of ALL AGES, The Boston Hardcore Film. The NY debut of this film will be June 29th-July 1st at Brooklyn's Nitehawk Cinema. From the west coast, the crowd was treated to a swift kick in the butt by Rotting Out from LA, who mixed their hardcore with thrash, in a super-infectious manner. The Mob, who debuted their soon to be released 45, Back To Queens to the sold out crowd, probably goes back furthest in NYHC history than anyone else featured at the BnB Bowl. With a few demos recorded previously, their first release: Upset the System came out in 1982, and they helped push initial recordings from Urban Waste and Agnostic Front in the early 80s as well. Vocalist Ralphie G was a featured guest on the Peer Pressure of DKFM in December; listen here. They were laser tight, heavy, and frenzied revealing their seasoned confidence. Paul Bearer's guillotine edged wit was center stage when Sheer Terror took over, taking out the audience with his barbs and his vocal braun.
I'm afraid that nothing says Spring Has Sprung for me quite so well as recently finding this delicious clip that I had never thought to just search for by name. I saw it once and only once in San Francisco around 1993 at the house where one of my bands rehearsed. A friend there used to go around to the local east Indian shops and collect videotapes that they offered for sale. They were often sketchy, grey-market-ish editions - sometimes with more than one movie on the tape, or a mixture of stuff. Naturally, lots of folks dig over-the-top and peculiar Bollywood musical sequences, but when he showed this clip to the assembled gathering one day, we were really floored. This video really takes it to a whole ' nother level. It was firmly stuck in my head forever, and I determined to see "It's My Challenge" again someday, but could never find it or even who the artist was. Well, of course, now with the incredibly obscure things that keep turning up online, I should have known that this less-than-rare scene would surface for me again someday.
It comes apparently from the film "Pyaar Karke Dekho", and as I re-watched it for the first time in years I at first wasn't sure that it was exactly the same clip (although the title phrase is pretty much a clincher - I thought it might be another version), but, without spoiling it - there is a moment involving tabla drums that is absolutely stunning and when it came to that I knew it was the one - this was the image that floored all of us. And now, enjoy the wonder that is Govinda.
So yes, I certainly miss CBGB and can't even begin to talk about my general disappointment in the state of music venues that exist in Manhattan currently. That is a rant for another space, another time. It has been pointed out recently via more than one source, most notably by This Ain't The Summer Of Love that CBGB's - the brand, is hosting a music festival. A quick tweet of disdain by good friend Zenametal and I take a look...yes it looks dubious to me. The background, as from what I remember -is that the rights to the CBGB name/brand were sold off a couple of years ago, some four years after the closing of the club itself. There's been nary a peep from the punk icon's website, and I've heard background conversations about CBGB's coming back. In Manhattan. What? Was I drunk? So at the moment, there is not actual CBGB's any longer, and the entity known as CBGB is hosting a music conference, it's sponsored by Sonicbids and it's a $25 entry fee to be considered to get on the bill. I've got a pretty good dose of resignation in relation to pay to play things like this with absentee party-throwers' names. Apparently it's going to take over the city. Who's got a good guess as to what's going on here? Say it isn't so, or say it's gonna be killer! I suppose leaving the billing to the public and those interested is interesting, but there is such a thing as curating and caring. You can't put your arm around a memory...
After the release of Derek Jarman’s Jubilee in 1978, Vivienne Westwood, outraged at what she saw as a misrepresentation of punk, took to her then preferred medium, the t-shirt, to express her displeasure. The “Open T-Shirt to Derek Jarman,” with its wordy scrawl, is a rather confusing cultural artifact in that it now seems rather counterproductive. For starters, punk certainly had more important enemies in 1978 than a queer experimental filmmaker and visual artist, a fellow member of the counterculture whether she liked it or not, and what’s more, some of the language seems rather homophobic, being that it attributes the film’s fancier bits to “a gay (which you are) boy’s love of dressing up and playing at charades.” Of course, all of that is to say nothing of the sheer impracticality of using a t-shirt to communicate a lengthy essay. But to be fair, it was a time when what punk meant, what it was trying to say and what it wanted, was a fiercely debated topic, especially in the UK and especially among those who would claim the movement as their own, Still, in hindsight, Jubilee seems to not only encapsulate what was in the air in the late 70s, but also punk’s roots and hints of its future.
Jubilee started life as a planned 8 mm film about the actress/model Jordan, whose outrageous couture and attitude fascinated Jarman, but the project soon grew into something more ambitious, “a film about punk”, before transcending even that broad description. Writing in The Guardian, Stuart Jeffries explains that,
WFMU's 2012 Marathon is approaching! Our annual on-air party throws down Feb 20th - Mar 4th.
Check out the new 2012 swag, featuring our Biker T-shirt designed by Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale (left), a truckload of new DJ Premiums, and more!
Yo La Tengo will be playing cover song requests in exchange for pledges on Friday, March 2nd (9pm-mid) on Pseu Braun's show with co-host Gaylord Fields, and WFMU's Hoof & Mouth Sinfonia close out the Marathon on Sunday March 4th with drunken live band karaoke. Don't miss out on our biggest on-air bash of the year!
1 cruise ship, 4 days, 42 bands, 2,000 fans! Yes, I had to do it again! 70,000 Tons of Metal, 2012! I had such a great time last year that I had to go for a reprise and see what would happen! I've got a photo album here with many more photos, and this entry is the companion to my radio show, airing Thursday Feb 2nd at noon. When the archive is posted, it will be linked here.
It's true, I had a lot of prior experience, so I had already been on the same ship, Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas, and knew my way around. The weather I was leaving was not nearly as horrendous as it was last year, but I was still looking forward to punishing my ears and my body for a possible 84 sets of music in 4 days. I arrived in Miami a day early to trek up to Ft. Lauderdale with one of my partners in crime for a Cannibal Corpse show, and to also pick up another partner in crime to head back to Miami. Why not get an early start on bludgeoning my senses? I have to admit we did find time to view a certain sporting event involving a NY team that day also. On to the cruise! Last year I never noticed how much was loaded onto the boat via crane; the pool stage was composed mostly of large items, let alone all the rigging, backline, etc. I watched the crane pluck pieces off the ground and onto Deck 11 for hours on Monday morning.
Last week the web was wriggling with outrage over The Disney Store Corporation offering for sale a Mickey Mouse™ T-shirt in the graphic style of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures albumcover -- not that the iconic white-on-black waveform image (plucked from the Cambidge Encyclopedia of Astronomy by drummer Stephen Morris) was any stranger to absurd marketing schemes.
Besides being WFMU’s first callerless call-in show, Thunk Tank rarely features music. Every week we go through the new CDs that have come into the station, and find a few we like, and bring them into the studio, and then don’t play them. If we were playing music, though, right now we would be playing a lot of banda, a style of brass-heavy oompah music from the Mexican state of Sinaloa—also home of the pointy boots!
But that's tribal music, not banda. Banda instrumentation includes accordions, tubas, sousaphones, slide trombones, clarinets, and a drum with no kick pedal and a manual hi-hat. Diligent viewing of Mun2 TV has convinced Bronwyn that banda songs are mostly about fat pizza delivery guys who get beautiful girls, and young busboys who get beautiful girls, and school janitors with beautiful janitress girlfriends who can’t stop looking at the high school girls.
I went to St Louis for the Old School Tattoo Expo, where world renowned tattooer Lyle Tuttle celebrated his 80th birthday; here's a photo of his cake (it's the Frisco Flyer tattoo machine that he made and made famous). The highlight of the weekend, aside from reconnecting with Lyle and other great friends in the business for me- was the visit a few of us made to the 10 story City Museum there. A cross between the works of Antoni Gaudi and Mad Max, it's an amazing playground created for the most part, from junk! There was a ferris wheel on the roof, alongside the praying mantis dome, and on the same level was a schoolbus that was perched precariously with 2 wheels hanging off the roof for patrons to explore. There were slides on every floor; nope, not visual slides; the kind you plant your ass on and tumble down! One was a 10 story spiral slide, not unlike the style that comes to mind when referring to water parks. All types of sculpture and found object placement that was delightful, including an area with discarded architectural features - lions and gargoyles and lampposts, oh my! There is a section called the Enchanted Caves, which looked just like it sounded. Part of the museum had an aquarium within it; stocked with turtles and catfish, completely accessible if you wanted to pluck a turtle out of the water and walk around with him, you could! The aquarium (pictured left) was part of the maze of walk through/get lost in sculpture that made up the majority of the ground floor. I may not be describing it accurately, mostly because that's a difficult task; The City Museum defies categorization, which is a breath of fresh air this day and age. There's also a couple of bars, a smoothie joint and a thrift store within the museum's expanse, not to mention the fuselage of an airplane, a series of monkey bars that stretches countless yards, animal sculptures made of gears, a castle turret and more.
No words can really convey what goes on there; the photos featured after the jump will do some of the inventiveness and beauty of it justice, and the real experience can only be yours if you visit. Yes. It's an experiential kind of place. Show up in sneakers!
And now, some Friday cheesecake served up by one of WFMU's esteemed lady DJs, Monica, who rocks the headphones every Sunday evening 7-9pm. Monica says: Stock photos and publicity shots of Lady DJs rocking headphones and other gear while in various states of ecstasy and undress. Watermarks and all. (Some images NSFW).
These images are the result of a Google image search using "lady dj" and "female dj."
A number of weeks ago, I was contacted by my friend Roderic, who plays in the Hydra Head band KNUT, for a quote about how different NYC is since 9/11 from an artist's point of view. He works for Swiss publication Le Courrier, and I thought it would be interesting to contribute to foreign language media. Here is the article for anyone curious. This past Friday, the issue came up again, but in a different way. I ran into good friend and local maniac Zenametal; curator of Zena Metal Wants to Conquer the World blog among other things. It was lunchtime on a crowded corner of Canal St., and we both were happy at the turn of events that led us to almost literally bump into each other. She works nearby and was donning fashionable duds for the office, and I wasn't looking too shabby myself. We talked for about 25 minutes, and in that time, the same gentleman approached us several times to vend what I thought he termed "dime bags". At some point I made a comment to her, since we were both looking so damn sophisticated I couldn't imagine he couldn't find anyone else in the throngs of people on a sunny Friday more suited to vend "dime bags" to. Zena, working near that section of Canal St., set me straight. In a quick debriefing, I realized that I heard "dime bag" - an old, almost expected way I had of listening to people mumbling towards me on the street. She let me in on the real words he was uttering: "diamonds, bags!" Oh! Well that sort of elevates us to tourist trash looking for a cheap but expensive looking bargain! I hadn't even noticed it was bootleg bag and bling central there. And I thought he thought we were scum! Still not buying, but a little less confused, I then saw that she was in fact, not toting a pocketbook on her lunch break, which was probably a good reason we were being hounded, not because we looked like we wanted to get stoned. So I'm really comparing from a much earlier time than 9/11; but it is interesting to notice that the things being whispered about on streetcorners are handbags, not dime bags any longer.
The content presented herein will most likely offend someone's sensibilities, in some capacity or another, and there are profanities as well as haphazard juggling of taboo subjects in an insensitive fashion involved, and the reader should consider herself WARNED about them! If every generation is doomed to fear for the following one, Trenton Willey may be one of our foremost warning signals. Some of his shenanigans might be unsettling, but they do at times bring to mind how we are in a time where the swastika is almost as innocuous as the fanny pack. We are drowned in the tedious irony of bad fashion in a decade without any distinctly remarkable cultural shifts beyond that of the push for recycling, and in light of this, Trenton, a Maine native, comes off like some kind of ham fisted crankhead beatnik of a spiritual leader.
While it may seem buffoonish at first, Willey's surrealistic stream of brutish puns and psychedelic one liners eventually seem like they are transcendent; Some kind of ultra reality where humor is only the pretext for the sort of nonsense that finds us leaving theaters feeling drug-addled after a particularly mind bending movie, or just guiltily laughing our asses off. He appears as someone who happened to take mental imagery of dinosaurs, care bears, made for TV movies, and soap operas, along with mass murder, racism, sexual abuse, daily news, political correctness, and various media histrionics all into the blender of his mind, set on liquefy. But rather than presenting these sometimes turbulent concepts as a means to shock people with the severity of them, he presents them with the sort of aplomb that one might expect from Mister Rogers and in the context of total madness. When I heard that Trenton was talking about going for the Guinness Book of World Record for the longest stand up comedy set (40 hours), I invited him to do stand up on the phone for 6 hours with no audience, to be aired on my radio show.
I'm fascinated by the concept and the purported benefits of image streaming, and I'd be happy to uphold someone who would be able to go through with it, especially if he is keeping with this style of slinging ludicrous word diarrhea throughout. It would certainly add to his body of work; endeavors such as interviewing his father about gay animal marriage, making a play with a dead cat, the animated film "Hair Camp" (featuring Venus, a vegan cannibal Venus flytrap with a British accent), teaching invisible children about death (WARNING: this one is particularly viscous), a group protest where every person protests something different, stabbing himself during a knife dance, and getting chased by hecklers. In this case, Trenton didn't make it 6 hours, his phone kept dying. I believe he can do it. Instead, the series of recordings start off with a pretend interview with a dinosaur, and a decline into drunken depression/distant, pitiful domestic arguments that bring to mind Happy Time Harry. Trenton granted permission to air the entirety of the recordings unedited. Below is a video clip of Trenton's stand up, as a tooth sandwich appetizer.
Alice Cooper's show at the Community Theatre in Morristown could have been a fashion event! The first item revealed was the "Spider Jacket" (right), with performance of Black Widowaccompanying it, the extra arms may be ineffective for some, but Alice wore them elegantly, and stylishly. Throw in some sparklers for good measure, and Alice is on his way to a stellar fashion season! There was the "New Song" jacket, which I failed to get a photograph of - Alice's runway technique is a little to fast paced...let the audience savor, Alice, savor!! It was a black pleated denim jacket with the words NEW SONG spray painted in stencil lettering on the back in large white letters. Here is a photo of the shirt underneath, which reveals the title of said new song.."I'll Bite Your Face Off" (pitcture disc out soon).....Boas are back, but not the feathered kind. Alice adorns himself with a live creature...much more attractive than the minks and foxes of old!
Studded oversize top hat. This is an example of an article for high end fashionistas: only the daring can really pull this off, Alice Cooper included, but not many others. While it may look great on the runway or on the stage, the combination of spikes and the size itself ranks it right up there with Fergie's daughters hats at the royal wedding. NOT the regular guy look, although Alice wears it well. Do not try this at home, or even at a Destruction or Watain show.
Announced at the recent Comic-Con, Kiss will be teaming up with Archie Comics for "In your face tales of Kiss/Archie". Apparently Kiss will come to Archie's hometown of Riverdale in the pages of Archie #627, that will kick off a 4-part "Archie Meets Kiss" storyline. Yes, to the left is Veronica, Jughead, Betty and Archie donning Kiss makeup. I don't know about you, but the phrase "in your face" was not exactly a phrase that I equated with Archie Comics or any of those characters at all. To my surprise, it looks like others have visualized grown up versions of Archie as well. Here's a trailer for a fictitious movie called "Riverdale," with a new take on the Andrews clan - it doesn't have the naivete and lightness that I remember from the original Archies years ago, but I think it's well done in teen/vampire network style.
My path happened to cross with Mark Barkan, who authored the B-side of the Sugar Sugar single; a song called Melody Hill. I was awestruck at my discovery - he also wrote theBanana Splits theme as well as She's A Foolfor Lesley Gore, and he was kind enough to autograph my copy of Melody Hill/Sugar Sugar on the Calendar/Kirschner label. That single was the number one song in Billboard in 1969, and to this day I still think Melody Hillis the superior track. Just days after getting Mark's autograph, Archie was back in the news with the Kiss team-up announcement. I haven't kept up with Archie as of late, and think I'll leave it that way. My bubblegum pop history and B-sides are all I need. If I want, I can gawk at the cast of Archie in Kiss makeup- at least we know what they look like without it already! My dark side might watch this trailer a couple of times. Am I not getting with the program? I don't think so, certain things I'd rather not revisit, I'll stick with my original preference... I'll take Melody Hill anyday!
I'm not a shopper. I can't stand indecision. Shopping for clothes for me goes like this... does it look good? Yes! Buy 2 in different colors. Leave, and hopefully never come back. It's not a process I enjoy, unless I am shopping for music. So my food shopping experience is done late night for the reason of swiftness. I'm sure you can understand this. This evening, I went to my local weenie mart for provisions. It took me about 5 minutes to select the food and beverages I needed and I went to check out. There was a line of 6 people, and I saw there was only one automated checkout aisle open. The only employee was bagging and dealing with the malfuction of said checkout aisle. I decided to wander around instead of stand on this ridiculous line at such a late hour. After familiarizing myself with all the cooking utensils, plates and felt floor/furniture protectors and all the cakes in the bakery--who knew someone would want a Bastille Day cake-- I circled around to where the registers were, only to find there were now 11 people in the line, which I joined begrudgingly. As a notorious multitasker, standing in line rubs me the wrong way, in a BIG way. All I could do was joke about the ridiculousness of the line with my new neighbors suffering the same fate as myself. And then I remembered. About a year ago I was in the Shop Rite nearest to WFMU. I don't remember what I was purchasing. I had been in the express lane and was about 5 people back and a huge guy cut the line. You would think that he had murdered someone. He pushed past myself and all the others straight up to the cashier, and said something like "I know I'm an asshole, but I got to go!". The cashier didn't want to ring him up because he clearly cut the line in front of us, but he wouldn't leave. My companions in line were pissed and flipping out on him. It was very confrontational, and for some reason I found it really interesting.
