WFMU's Beware of the Blog

FOOD (1972) – Gordon Matta-Clark's Restaurant – Directed by Robert Frank

FOOD is a short film directed by aritst/photographer Robert Frank about Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden's conceptual restaurant. Founded in 1972 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, FOOD brought together many factors of the local community, artists and otherwise, becoming a space for dialogue and conversation as well as a living piece in it of itself. 

70,000 Tons: Metal Mutiny 2012 Edition

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.

 

Ship Shaping 2012 In Shots So Far

I haven't gone to as many shows as I'd like yet this year, but I will be heading off on the 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise next week; expect a special and enough photos to get you seasick! Here are a some shots from some shows I did manage to get out to!  

The three below = Night Birds at Lulu's in Brooklyn. I didn't get any pix of Nuclear Santa Claust, but should have; they're a great band as well who were also on the bill along with the Livids, Foster Care and Pampers. Night Birds were frantically nonstop with their faster-than-Southern-California hardcore and surf mix. It was guitarist Mike Hunchback's last gig with the band; fear not, folks, a replacement has already been working out with them, and he landed on the floor and played his heart out on his back for the fans' sneakers and boots.

Many more pics and commentary below!

Masters of Communication: Charles and Ray Eames

By Robert Ham

The Films Of Ray & Charles Eames (part 2)

Watch Part 1 of The Films of Charles and Ray Eames

The spare beauty and narrative economy of the film work of Charles & Ray Eames should really come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the couple's design work. Their fabric patterns, chairs, buildings...everything they did was approached with an eye for combining simplicity, functionality, and beauty.

Applying those principles to films is a much trickier prospect than one might realize. Just take a look at any Hollywood creation from the last 15 years and you'll see what I'm talking about. In comparison, the Eames films are almost meditative to watch. They unfold slowly and patiently, getting the subject matter across using simple narrations and augmenting it all with a bouncy jazz score. It is impressively easy to drink in and absorb everything they are trying to accomplish and, yes, communicate.

Because for as much as scholars like to point to their 1968 documentary Powers of Ten as being their

Storytelling In Japanese Art at the MET

Up through May 6th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an exhibit entitled "Storytelling In Japanese Art" with a main focus on the Emaki, or Emakimono hand scrolls; some dating as far back as the 12th century. What's interesting about these pieces is that they are physically lengthy, so only certain portions of the scrolls are available for viewing at a time. The scrolls will be advanced during the length of the exhibition, so if you visit more than once, chances are you'll see different sections of the scrolls, which contain illustrations as well as japanese character text. Some are faded and reflective of their age, and some are in phenomenal shape considering the fragility of the medium. The exhibition also includes full views of some of the handscrolls on iPad displays in the beautifully crafted reading room. The current of the presentation of the pieces is very fluid - literally, with a fountain by Isamu Noguchi in the center of the route and a study/bamboo mat room.

When visiting the exhibition, we learn narrative was not only told on the medium of the scroll; visitors will see illustrations on screens, fans, cards, hanging banners, books, kimonos and porcelain as well. Some are showing one or two ideas as a story, and other pieces have multiple scenes and many utilize the stylized cloud formations to separate panels or sections of the stories that is present in Japanese art through the years. Take a look at some of the details of this show in the photos after the jump and see if it doesn't pique your interest!

Thunk Tank Listener Meet-Up Tomorrow

Join Bronwyn Carlton & Jay Bachhuber of WFMU's Thunk Tank for a Meet-Up celebrating the opening of their first ever photography show at the Dino Eli Gallery (81 Hester St, Manhattan) on Saturday, December 3rd, 6-9pm.

The show is titled Thunk Tank: Corpus Absurdum, and runs through December 8th.

Details and RSVP for the Meet-Up here. All proceeds from the show benefit WFMU.

Vintage Photos of a Herculean-Proportioned Record Store

Some of you may be aware of an era where vinyl just wasn't sought after by fetishists, but when it was THE way to hear music.  Voices of East Anglia has posted two great photosets (see one and two) of the "His Master's Voice" record store in the '60s.  A far cry from dusty dollar bins in the hole-in-the-wall record stores of today.  Thanks to Fabio for the tipoff.

The Atomization of The Image

May you live in meme-ingful times.

Gallery: "Casually Pepper-Spray Everything Cop" meme. Endless pics. (Well, as of last count, 502.)

This collection of images is noteworthy for a number of reasons. Let's get the obvious ones out of the way first — sort of clear the quad of the passive resisters, as it were:

1. Holy Hell! There must be a LOTTA people out of work, or slagging off while AT work! (Duh.)

2. Humans are creative things, once given a fun theme to riff on.

3. Humans demonstrate a persistent need to distance themselves from the heinous.

4. Gee, that cop's had his share of donuts.

5. Lotta art majors among the out-of-work creatives mashing photos up...

Meet Me In St. Louis? Only If You're A Giant Praying Mantis!

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!

Lady DJs Rocking Headphones

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."

Lucas Blalock

Wild Live Zounds on Saturday For Shock and Awetober!

To be more specific, this past Saturday, Terre T hosted on her Cherry Blossom Clinic, 2 live bands::  Wild Flag (all female quartet containing members of Sleater-Kinney, Minders and Helium) and UK DIY anarcho punk rockers Zounds! Yowza, now that's a show! I was asked to engineer both, and responded with a HELL YES, and so our work was cut out for us! Check out the archive of the program. Shock and Awetober, indeed!

The Best of the Northwest - Joe Preston and Seattle's EMP

I made a quick visit to Seattle's Experience Music Project not long ago. The current main exhibit is titled: NIRVANA: Taking Punk To The Masses, and coincides with the 20th birthday of the band's Nevermind record. The exhibit not only has tons of Nirvana memorabilia, but is really a goldmine of great music sources from that same period of time. The facility is right next to Seattle's Space Needle (it's that dented looking brass thing to the right of it), and is full of cool exhibits having to do with music and film. Here's a giant guitar sculpture that lifts 35 feet into the air like a stringed cyclone. In the lobby they were showing parts of the movie Avatar, but the filming was of the actors pretending to fly, pre-special effects. Interesting the prep involved and the faux wetsuits they wore that tracked their body movement so it would be easier to morph them with their rendered additions (wings, dragons, etc.) at a later time. Something about it reminded me of a short I saw once that was the filming of the dubbing of Poltergeist. It was a hilarious process actually. You'd think that dubbing a film is at least some kind of large production? That is what I thought and I was certainly proven wrong. Imagine a group of people sitting in a room all on folding chairs facing a screen. On the screen is a tickertape of words going by, and the lines spoken by each actor are in a different color and run across the screen in a different vertical position. The voice actors focus on their lines and stand up and shout them at the screen. There is a condenser microphone mounted in front of the screen in a central location. People were standing up, saying their lines, and sitting back down. They weren't watching the movie - it wasn't even playing! They all had scripts on their laps and were facing forward as if they were forced to. When the movie got a little nutty, those people were standing up, shouting their lines at this screen full of text, and quickly sitting back down again. It was surreal and deflating all at once- not exactly glamorous! It may be the same kind of activity going on at the stock market right now, and you know I'm not gonna go there!

Ivan Julian and Deniz Tek at WFMU and at the Bell House-> The 1-2 Punch

Before the storm, I was given the opportunity by fellow 'FMU DJ's Terre T and Joe Belock to engineer 2 sessions. Check the blog posting here for the FMA tracks of Ivan Julian's live set from the Cherry Blossom Clinic! A mere 5 days later, Deniz Tek and the Golden Breed occupied the very same room and blasted out a set of 5 killers for Joe's Three Chord Monte program, which are posted below for your ingestion -check out the interview as well in the archive! Both guitar heroes along with their bands combined for a live perfomance at Brooklyn's Bell House - and as it turned out it was the only of 3 shows they had scheduled together that survived the weather! Here's some of the best shots of both bands at the Bell House (Fleshtone Keith Streng joined Deniz & Band for a couple of songs), copies of the juicy set lists; yes, Deniz Tek covered both the Stooges and the Vibrators, and Ivan Julian played Voidoids faves plus tracks from his new release: The Naked Flame. I've included photos of each band with their hosts from each WFMU set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left: Deniz in the Live Room at WFMU;Deniz with Joe;Terre with Ivan Julian & band

 

When the forces of nature prove to be too much, the FMU archives are there to document it all!

 

Bell House set lists at right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No guitar strap? No problem! Ivan Julian and band at the Bell House.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deniz Tek and The Golden Breed at the Bell House -Keith Streng guest gtr, center.

Here are the FMA tracks from Deniz Tek's set:

Alice Cooper's Fall Fashions Are A Hit!

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 Widow accompanying 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.

Per Billgren

 

 

Kyle Knodell

 

 

The Wondrous World of Bosch or Welcome to Hell!

Recently I went to The Netherlands for the Roadburn Festival. Thanks to Duane Harriot for running the Fun Machine for a week and not wrecking the gears! Last weeks episode was a full three hours of music and photos from the most enjoyable fest I have ever been to, and if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it (not because it's my program, mind you - it is my taste, but it was really programmed by those who put Roadburn together- thank them, not me)!

Since last year's festival was disrupted by a pesky volcanic eruption, I thought it would be wise to take an extra day ahead of the festival and eliminate the stress factor. I made my ever important sleeping bag connection ahead of time, and decided to head over to the town of 's-Hertogenbosch to check out the Jheronimus Bosch Art Center.

All of Bosch's works are in name museums, so I was not sure what to expect. This town probably would have no one paying attention to it except for their famous, intensely talented son. I'm not going to even go into describing his artwork here; if you are unfamiliar, go check out a link or two and get the scoop on this man.

The Art Center is housed in what had once been a church. It looks like a church, but when you step inside, all your senses tell you nearly right away (there's a large red curtain that separates the entrance from a lot of the exhibit area) that you may have actually stepped into a delightfully quirky version of hell. There is a telltale sculpture outside as well to tip you off, that in most ways, this was not going to be a religious experience, at least of a churchgoing nature.

The helpful women at the desk were concerned with the size of my backpack and could see I was being taxed by it's weight. They took it off my hands immediately although there was no coat room. The entrance fee was laughably cheap and I was given an audio guide to boot.  It was when I got to the other side of the curtain that I thought to myself "I'm going to be here for hours and hours"...

 

 

Introducing Saul Bass

By Pat Kirkham

I believe that there are very few artists in our time who have created as memorable a series of designs and objects. Saul Bass truly shaped the vision of our time. (Milton Glaser)

Great people like Saul Bass should be immortal...The incredible wit of Saul, his intelligent ability of reaching the essence of things, to grab form and content in powerful meaningful ways. (Massimo Vignelli)

 

When Saul Bass (1920-1996) died these tributes were among the many sent to his wife Elaine with whom he collaborated from 1960 onward on film titles and on a series of short films. I knew him in the last five years of his life and came to greatly admire both him and Elaine as I wrote articles about the film title sequences they were then creating for Martin Scorsese. Before he died, Saul was working on a book about his work, including that with Elaine, and since 2003 I have been working with their daughter, Jennifer Bass, on a book (to be published this coming October) about all the main areas touched by his enormous talent and creativity.

One of the most famous, influential and versatile visual communicators of the twentieth century, Saul worked as both graphic designer and film-maker. During a sixty years working life he produced a body of work that is as diverse as it is powerful. He set up his own design office in 1952 and one of the joys of my research has been to unearth many of Saul’s advertisements from the 1950s. They show him developing identities for companies and products just as he did from 1954 onwards for film when the flame around a rose was made to move at the opening of Carmen Jones. It was in the mid-to-late 1950s that he expanded the boundaries of graphic design to include film title sequences, a genre that he transformed.

He made his name with title sequences, posters, and trademarks of reductive and evocative intensity created for films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Otto Preminiger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Circulated worldwide, they provided some of the most compelling images of American postwar visual culture. By the late 1950s, Saul was probably the best-known graphic designer in the world. He went on to serve as visual consultant on five feature films (Spartacus, 1960; Psycho, 1960; West Side Story, 1961; Grand Prix, 1966; Not With My Wife You Don’t, 1966) and direct the now cult feature film, Phase IV (1974). From the 1960s Saul also became known as a leading designer of corporate identity programs, for companies and institutions as diverse as Quaker, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Bell Telephone, AT&T, Minolta, the Girl Scouts and United Way and further enhanced his international reputation.

Elaine joined the office in 1956 and together they created an impressive series of award winning short films, including the Oscar-winning Why Man Creates (1968), Notes on the Popular Arts (1977) and The Solar Film (1981), and an equally impressive series of film titles - from Stanley Kramer’s Spartacus (1960 – Elaine directed it while Saul was at the World Design conference in Japan) to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence and Casino in the 1990s.

Besides the areas already mentioned, Saul also designed packaging, retail displays, a modular hi-fi cabinet system, album covers, book covers, sculpture, lettering, typefaces, tiles, toys and a postage stamp. He illustrated a children’s book and, in collaboration with architects, designed play environments, a proposed pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair and a series of service stations. His versatility was often remarked upon, as was his problem-solving approach to design. In 1954 American Artist attributed the ‘underlying logic’ of his work to a ‘searching mind...always inquiring into the reason for things’. Forty years later Scorsese referred to his ‘searching eye’. Both mind and eye are central to an understanding of this versatile man who made a distinctive contribution to the visual vocabulary of postwar America.

Saul received many prestigious awards, including Art Director of the Year (1957) and the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA, 1981). He took pride in recognition by his peers and gave back a great deal to the professions and institutions with which he was associated. He was active in the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) as well as the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and poured his prodigious energies into the Aspen International Design Conferences and helped establish the Sundance Institute.

Liberal by outlook and disposition, he had a strong moral backbone. He disapproved of advertising that used snobbery, social status or gratuitous sex to sell goods and refused assignments that offended his ‘conscience or sense of fitness’. He cared about things and gave his services free when asked to design posters, logos and invitations for not-for-profit causes in which he believed. His friends and colleagues described him to me as “A man who speaks up to the world”. “An artist with a soul”, “A person with a conscience” and “An artist with a capital A”. He was all of those things, and more. Most people commented upon his warmth and generosity. Robert Redford talked of “a spiritual energy. One that comes from the soul...an energy born out of talent, generosity, curiosity, wisdom, experience, joy”.

A born communicator (in later years he preferred the term visual communicator to that of designer), his large expressive hands painted their own pictures as he talked. He taught from time to time, mentoring many would-be designers and film-makers including USC student George Lucas. The number of people with whom Saul kept in touch after first meeting them when they were fledglings in their field is remarkable. It can be explained in part by his sociability, but he was also conscious of the importance of mentors in his own life, especially Howard Trafton Gyorgy Kepes who helped him transform from a talented designer into a contender.

Never happier than with an audience of young people, his last public appearance, in March 1996 (a month before his death), was a ‘master class’ presentation and discussion at the School of Visual Arts, New York, where a retrospective exhibition of his work had just opened. Those lucky enough to get a seat, squeeze into the aisles or stand in the stage wings, will never forget that tour de force, his humor or his humanity. Visibly ill, and present against doctor’s orders, he gave his all (as always), insisting on the primacy of integrity and curiosity and conveying his love of process in design and film-making. He made the audience laugh while he made us think. Afterward, he showed infinite patience with each and every question and remained behind with students until the janitors closed the hall around him.

Saul was a master of the dialectic of content and form. He went straight to the kernel of a design problem and then transform it into compelling pictorial signs. There is no definitive Bass aesthetic but recurrent elements include a strong tendency towards a single strong image, reduction, distillation, economy and minimalism – features associated with Modernism – and a concern with fragmentation, layering, addition, ambiguity, montage and metaphor – features more associated with post-Modernism, but which were much in evidence by the 1950s. Wit and humor is never far away. Nor is finely-honed lettering, a passion since his boyhood. 

Not too long before he dies he told me:

In the final analysis, content is the key and I’ve always looked for the simple idea. That is what I did in the ’50s and that is what Elaine and I do now. We have a very reductive point of view … We see the challenge in getting things down to something totally simple, and yet doing something with it, which provokes;… a simplicity, which has a certain ambiguity and a certain metaphorical implication … the idea that is so simple that it will make you think – and rethink. … It’s a risky business: we’re improvising and never know if it will work out.   

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The Week In Live Music Photos

This week was juicy in terms of live shows to attend, I wanted to go to many, but have yet to clone myself and my jet propulsion unit is still at the shop. I cheated a bit, by having a band on the Fun Machine, to be able to provide you, the listener with some tracks aside from these pix, so here's a quick rundown!! Sunday March 27th, I caught Thin Lizzy at the Starland Ballroom. Brian Downey, Scott Gorham and Darren Wharton, all from the Lynott era were joined onstage by Marco Mendoza, Vivian Campbell and Ricky Warwick. The show was great, the set list was very different from the Sykes/Gorham era that ended rather unexpectedly the summer of 2009, and all is well! Here's a few shots from the show! Tuesday, Batillus made their way to Jersey City to douse the Fun Machine with some gasoline, torched