30 July 2011 The drummer in the band Blondie has been made a 'Doctor of Rock' by a British university.
Clem Burke received an Honorary Doctorate of Music at the University of Gloucestershire, in recognition of the work he has done on a scientific project researching the physical effects of drumming.
Judy Nylon is an American artist who moved to London in 1970. She was half of the punk act called Snatch, which also featured Patti Palladin. Only those who lived in New York and London during the era that spanned glam rock, punk and no wave are likely to appreciate her importance, most of which isn't preserved in print, vinyl, or CD. In terms of cultural significance, she has been ranked with Patti Smith, The Raincoats, Chrissie Hynde, of The Pretenders, The Slits, Lydia Lunch, Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees and even Nico.
Q1. What was the first record that you bought and how did it change your life?
For me it was never about records, it was ‘live performance’ and it was ‘broadcast’. I was in ‘foster care’ so I had no allowance or adults to coerce into buying records. My income was what I shook out of cards on birthdays and holidays. But the place where I lived the longest was a home with a lot of music. The foster father played keyboard in different bands at night and worked as an engineer by day. I was allowed to touch an amazing floor console radio with all the bands for international shortwave broadcasts. I spent a lot of my childhood kneeling on the floor in front of it spinning dials, listening to sound from all over the world. Static and feedback were part of my audio universe early on and I was really lucky to see music performed and lived when I was that young. My favorite uncle had a Western Swing band that played ‘live from the bandstand’ on KXLA, for the Squeekin’ Deacon (Moore) show out of Pasadena. When he would pull into town, I got to see him in his Nudie’s western shirts surrounded by guitars and hot rod magazines. Later he went full-on Rockabilly and sported a haircut he described as a ‘balboa with a waterfall’. I took it ALL in. When I saw The Duchess (Norma-Jean Wofford), in the sixties play a low-slung Gretsch in a long silver sheath, I wanted to be cool as that. I didn’t buy records, didn’t care about them. I never had a record collection, even much later when I started having friends give me copies of their recordings; it was more of an accumulation than a collection. It wasn’t until I saw and heard Nico with the Velvet Underground at The Boston Tea Party that ‘my time’ began. It was pretty much there, in the dark under the Joshua Light Show, with my bones vibrating in a cloud of smoke that I shape-shifted from receiving to sending.
Q2. You work spans the worlds of music, contemporary art, video storytelling and sound montage/cut-up techniques. Would you classify yourself as an artistic revolutionary or an evolutionary?
I don’t know. I’m intuitive about my choices, but I have no big plan. Every time I have tried long range planning, the universe has thrown a spanner into the works. I learn about what interests me, process it into my own voice and let it out. It only seems like a straight path when I look back. I suppose it is reasonable to say that I connect to a line of self-taught artists whose work is based in personal experience. Some of the obvious early ones like, Kerouac or Melville or Ella Fitzgerald, were certainly not ‘outsider artists’ and there seem to have been a high percentage of people who lived, picked up their own influences, then turned up in the arts. Originally art rock/punk/no wave music was an open door for a lot more people like that, now this too seems to require self-funding and a university background. In my tribe, speaking of a New York long gone, if I think about who was self-taught and cross-disciplined, John Lurie springs to mind, Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega. There are probably a few more. We all started when nobody needed a last name or an academic resume. It has become easier to evolve in the pursuit of art, information is less hidden, but it is hard to be an artist revolutionary if you don’t die young. I didn’t die so I have a shot at a long artistic life that will be classified different ways at different stages by other people. It’s not my call. Q3. You are credited as being the muse or originator of Ambient music. Can you elaborate on the backstory to this?
I even read the word ‘muse’ and I feel the safety deactivate on my internal Glock. The word ‘muse’ comes up whenever someone wants to divest themselves of partners. Nobody is a muse if you get too close. The credit for having the insight to see an opportunity with the Ambient Music LPs goes to Eno for being able to sell his idea of presenting a series of extremely low budget records to David Enthoven and John Gaydon (E G Music Group) which would subject contemporary composers, languishing in a small genre world, to rock n roll exposure. Their work would make money for Eno and EG and introduce Brian, a self-trained composer, into those circles. You will have to ask artists on the label how the arrangement worked for them. This is not the sort of thing that is fascinating reading unless you are in the business and aware of the pie chart of royalty breakdowns, so his version of the inciting incident was printed on the back of the first sleeve instead. I stand by my version of how I offered comfort to Brian, in the way I had been comforted as a child. He was lying immobile with a collapsed lung while I balanced the sound of the driving rain outside the windows 1.5 meters away, on his right with the harp LP I brought, playing it on his turntable very softly, on his left, also 1.5 meters away. My memory of what happened was only published more than 30 years later in 3AM magazine, and then it blasted around the net from blog to blog. To this I can add that the long ago deceased musician who first played Martin Denny very softly, with the arm of the turntable pulled over so it would repeat, washing over me crying sleepless in the dark, was the same man who opened the door to worldwide sound for me with his shortwave radio. “Quiet Village” was a huge hit in 1958 and the first ambient music success in the purest sense of the word. I don’t think anyone ever played “Quiet Village” loudly.
Q4. New York City has certainly changed since the early 1970's. Is it still the as a 'creative petri dish' it once was?
NYC has always been electrifying; really… even now I feel like I have my finger stuck in a socket the entire time I’m there. I haven’t performed there in a long time. I do my work home alone or in a virtual landscape but I still hit the streets to pump up swagger and just to feel that amount of electricity and radio waves. There’s no place else I have ever been where the cultural substrata runs so close to the surface of the mainstream. There’s a virtual favela of ghosts that surrounds the new high-end New York. They are immortalized in every song, book, street sign etc. and upcycled constantly from the most obvious billboard to the almost subconscious meme. At all times you can see the city through their legacy. New York keeps the ideas even though it has no mercy for the flesh and the stones. I can’t be in New York all the time now. As I get older I care about different things; I can pass on most of the opportunities to do it all again. New York is easy to arrive to and hard to leave. Yes, it’s still the ultimate crucible for creativity even if the business side is on a down cycle. Q5. How do you think the Internet and online and information exchange is influencing artistic expression?
I have access to so much now that I am less dependent on other people immediately around me and concerned more with establishing my own personal filters. I think we’ve all become smarter now that we have a worldwide group memory. I feel like I am part of a pack of collaborators, building something. The challenge is to keep adapting to override all attempts to make any part of the world cut off from the whole. Remember the nights when you were up late and looked out, across the cityscape, for other windows that were lit up? Now I can see the green Skype lights of my friends who are on-line regardless of how many time zones apart we are. It has the same cozy feeling. In the project aether9 that I was involved in, we rebroadcast live traffic cams even though we didn’t control them, within our 9 frame streams to locate the story we were telling. Once I learned how to hack into live public cams, I watched the riots in Athens by jumping from traffic cam to traffic cam as if I were running in the street. In all the arts now, the whole spectrum of experimentation you can expand upon, from the extremely intimate to the universal, has become far more subtle/nuanced because everything is archived from many angles. Almost any moment can be re-examined, and almost as it is happening. Making art can seem spontaneous, but the thought process is disciplined, otherwise you’re just gaming.
Recent projects: » Andrew Poppy » Ash International » Autofact Records » Bobsoho » Comme des Garçons » David Sylvian / Samadhisound » Faster Than Sound » Fractured Recordings » Guiden » Helmut Newton Foundation » Hildur Guðnadóttir » Isis » J Smith Esquire » Jamie Reid » Landscape-perception » Martin Gustavsson » Ostgut Ton » People Like Us » Salvo/ZTT "Element Series" Reissues » Short n Curlies » Steve Jansen » Sweet Billy Pilgrim » The Elgaland-Vargaland National Anthems » The Opiates » The Rights Workshop » The SPZ Group » The Suffolk Symphony » Touch » Trevor Horn » Velorose » Voiceworks » Whispering in the Leaves » ZTT Records » Zerocrop
Here is the cover done for a vinyl release by The Opiates - the work of one of our all-time favourite artists Billie Ray Martin.
Q1. What was the first record that you bought and did it change your life?
Parker: As a very small child I had various pop singles of the early seventies but the first album I painstakingly saved up for was when I was seven years old. It was a cheap compilation of songs by Marc Bolan mostly from his Tyrannosaurus Rex period but including the T.Rex hit single Ride A White Swan which was also the album title.
It had a stupendously vile, glossy purple cover (http://www.connollyco.com/discography/trex/ride.jpg) but the record itself is a triumph. The final track was my favourite - a seven minute verson of the classic Elemental Child which concludes with an extended heavy-duty freak-out on electric guitar, guaranteed to make my Dad scream at me to "turn off that Jungle Music." Had he but known, he was on the verge of inventing a hugely important music genre and cultural phenomenon twenty five years too early.
The record didn't change my life - an attraction to other-worldly sounds and unusual voices had set in from a very early age. Alas for my parents, I was the youngest by eight years of three, music-obsessed brothers, and I too was obsessed from the time I took my first little dancing steps. We were interested in very little else but playing records all day long and either lying motionless on the floor listening to them or in my case springing about the room, fancying myself a member of go-go dancing troupe Pan's People. I still love Marc Bolan and I still have the record.
Philip: As far as I can best recall, the first album I bought was a 1978 waxing on the Pye imprint, "The Muppet Show, Volume Two". The second track on its flipside, wherein Miss Piggy pleads with Captain Link Hogthrob to let her press the mid-course correction button, still gets a regular airing round our way. "You pushed the wrong button, bacon brain…"
Q2. Your company is called ‘Rebels In Control’. What would you say you are you rebelling against?
Philip: It's partially a sly wink, acknowledging that we are not just another agency, we have no interest in having a business card. We simply want to do strong work for our clients with none of the corporate self-branding bullshit and to enjoy what we do.
Parker: Our name encompasses a lot of things for us personally. It is partly a reflection of way in which we have designed our working lives to be distinct from a corporate approach. Since we began working together we have alternated working for commercial businesses with arts, music and fashion creators as well as working continously on our own private arts projects.
Q3. Rebels In Control has a very specific and refined aesthetic. Can you tell me where you find inspiration and what influences your approach to design?
Philip: Our basic visual influences are relatively routine - so, a list: Muller-Brockmann, the cover art of my teenage years (Saville, Farrow, Wozencroft, 8vo, v23). Also, the attitude of Rei Kawakubo, the clarity of Charles & Ray Eames, the inky teenage words of Penman and Morley and the anger of Wyndham Lewis. If one thing unites these people, it is possibly; taking a classic, pure structure and then twisting it ever so slightly - reconsidering it, making the cold into human. What interests us is, stripping away the unnecessary, the ornate, the mere styling of it all and then looking for a way to make the basic structures sexy, somehow. Oh - and good humour - that's incredibly important to us both.
Wyndham Lewis - Blast 1
Q4. Can you tell me about the work Rebels In Control did for ZTT Records 25th anniversary and some of your other recent projects?
Philip: We have really enjoyed working with Ian Peel on the ZTT reissues - it has been almost literally child's play, as many of these covers were the ones I copied and traced at the kitchen table, when I was a kid - and, quite probably, the first real understanding I had of what design could achieve. Most of these reissues have been "extended remixes" of the original albums' artworks - taking the works of Dave Smart, Mat Maitland, Mark Farrow and others, then spinning them out. So, it's been back to the kitchen table, back to my youth. Then there have been fresh designs for Art of Noise, 808 State and Claudia Brücken, where the task is to direct a release to feel present yet with winks to the labels past. Working with Paul Morley and Claudia Brücken on her "Combined" compilation was a particular pleasure.
Parker: One recent project stands out for us both - a thrilling experience earlier this year working as artists in residence at Guidhall School of Music and Drama - part of our work on the Voiceworks project. It was a great pleasure and a completely new experience for us to travel daily to the Barbican centre and spend time with music students from classical disciplines, learning a little about how they work, seeing them perform and understanding something about the problems of singers and composers. As a regular punter, most classical music is experienced from a seat in the audience. It's very unusual to get a chance to sit six feet from a full orchestra in rehearsal. What impressed us both was that far from being a theoretical and hi-flown existence, the life of a musician in the classical field is physical and visceral.
Q5. You have established long relationships with a large number of pioneering creative women. Do you feel that women are treated with equal respect in creative arts compared to say twenty years ago?
Parker: While it is true that we have worked with a large number of creative women, this is not something we have deliberately aimed at or even think a great deal about until the rare occasions transpire on which we are confronted by reactionary behaviour. I guess that a lot of our work for clients centres on being designer-as-facilitator. Does that way of thinking have connections to a more nurturing, feminised role, in terms of our relationship with clients?
It seems to me that the respect that women receive varies tremendously by creative profession and to some extent by country. For instance, it's not unusual for a comedy panel game on today's British national television to feature four male comics on the panel and a male comic in the chair. By contrast in the USA there is a very long tradition of female comedy protagonists, from Lucille Ball, to Mary Tyler Moore, through Rhoda to Roseanne (who was number one for seven years) followed by Grace and Ellen and so on. There is clearly not a problem with funny women in the USA, but there remain very few female standups in the UK.
I have often found women musicians more interesting and creative than men. It is interesting to reflect that someone like Joni Mitchell was collaborating with "world" musicians in the early seventies and Kate Bush was an early adopter of the sampler in the early eighties, but the credit for these making these innovations mainstream in pop music went largely to men. My formative teenage years were spent following artists like Siouxsie and The Slits who projected a very sexual image but who were at the same time threatening and intimidating. Their public demeanour and style was about entertaining themselves instead of being sexual for the male gaze. In her earliest days Siouxsie was wearing on-stage, SM gear that hadn't been seen outside of the bedroom, certainly not in a pop music setting, although maybe not pop music as we had known it before. Nevertheless she was much stronger than any man on stage, the strongest person in the room, the opposite of a blond, smiling and approachable figure. Today, some of that pioneering work is in danger of being reversed. Too many music videos seem to feature a scantily clad chick appearing totally overcome at the mere touch of some disgusting, overdressed ogre.
Being a teenager in the late seventies impressed on me how far punk liberated women from being pretty backup singers. A lot of women artists who have had long and influential careers got their chance around that time because for a short period the record companies were confused and their doors were open. Collectively those women created a huge space for others to follow in many fields beyond music, some of whom we are working for today.
Whilst I was interviewing guests for Plum TV on the red carpet at Russell Simmons and Danny Simmons 'Art For Life' event in East Hampton, the lovely CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien drew this stick man portrait of me. Check the mic in hand. It's all in the details. Other celeb doodles included Edward Norton's sketch of Russell as Buddha and Danny Simmons african mask. Soledad O’Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN/U.S. Since joining the network in 2003, O’Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and has produced award-winning, record-breaking and critically acclaimed documentaries on the most important stories facing the world today. She also covers political news as part of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television.” Edward Norton-He invited me to Fight Club...but I only wanted his doodle.
This year's honorees included Mary J Blige, Kimberly B. Davis, Oz Garcia, Tamara Mellon, OBE, and Edward Norton. Rush Kids at The Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn, building a lemonade stand.
Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation is dedicated to providing disadvantaged urban youth with significant exposure and access to the arts, and to offering exhibition opportunities for underrepresented artists and artists of color. Rush was founded in 1995 by three brothers: Danny Simmons, visual artist and community builder; media mogul Russell Simmons; and Joseph (Rev. Run) Simmons of the legendary hip-hop group RUN-DMC. Their goal was to fill the gap that poor and minorities face in both accessing the arts and exhibition opportunities. Taraji P Henson, Danny Simmons and a message from President Barack Obama. Rush is proud of its success to date and is also looking towards a future in which our programs grow to encompass more children and artists, and we can continue to enhance access to arts institutions and arts experiences for minority and economically disadvantaged populations. Our three program areas – education programs, exhibits and special projects – work together to open up the arts to populations facing hurdles to the joy and benefits of these experiences.
It was 20 years ago that British photographer Russell Young first lent his eye to celebrity culture. The assignment was photographing George Michael for the sleeve of an album called “Faith”. That job launched a career and soon Russell was shooting musicians like Morrissey, Bjork, Springsteen, Dylan, REM, New Order, The Smiths, Diana Ross, Paul Newman and many other celebrities. The next natural step was directing music videos; Russell directed a hundred music videos during the heyday of MTV. Ten years into his career, Russell started painting, but his work remained private. Until 2003, when Young showed his first series of paintings called Pig Portraits, this first show sold out. Young has risen to be an internationally acclaimed pop artist, creating larger than life silkscreen paintings of images from history and pop culture. “My work is sort of soundtrack to my life, loves, experiences and influences. My method of working is to search, destroy and create. The images of this series have been collected from newspaper cuttings, e-bay, long correspondence with police departments throughout the world or even given by celebrities themselves. The idea to create "anti-celebrity" portraits was probably a reaction to my former career. However, they turned out to be even more beautiful and iconic. There is undeniably this attitude that is very real, in your face, a beauty that is hard to ignore. My art is a sort of soundtrack to my life, loves, experiences and influences. These would be my heroes that are missing from Art History.” Russell Young has risen to become one of the most collected and sought after artists of our time. Celebrities and the most discriminating collectors like Abby Rosen, the Getty's, Elizabeth Taylor, David Hockney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, David Bowie and President Barack Obama have added Russell’s works to their collections. His larger than life screenprint images from history and popular culture are compelling, daunting, and undeniable.
Russell is married to actress and presenter Finola Hughes, they have three young children Dylan, Cash and Sadie, Russell lives and works in New York and California.
Q1. What was the first record you bought and did it change your life?
Jimi Hendrix Purple Haze. My Father had just brought me a record player, this was the first record I played on it, I was 8, it blew my mind.
Q2. Early in your photographic career you shot the sleeve for George Michael's iconic “Faith” album and soon you were shooting musicians like Morrissey, Bjork, Springsteen, Dylan, REM, New Order, The Smiths, Diana Ross, Paul Newman and many other celebrities. What drew you to photographing musicians?
I thought I was going to be a War photographer, but found it almost impossible to get to into any war zone. I had always had a love of music, so it seemed an obvious choice.
Q3. From a successful photography career you began directed a hundred music videos during the heyday of MTV. Can you share a funny story from that part of your career?
I was filming a stunning girl, as she danced provocatively, one of the grips shouted out "good god I must be married to a man".
Q4. What was your inspiration for creating larger than life silkscreen paintings of images from history and pop culture and your move into the art world?
After 15 years as a photographer, I really grew tired of the unprofessionalism in the music industry.
Q5. What's next for Russell Young?
In February 2010, I was admitted to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara and diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, the Swine Flu. I endured an 8-day induced coma with doctors and loved ones skeptical of recovery. After a three-month stay in the hospital, I emerged from his near-death experience with severe memory loss and an incredibly weak body. Little by little, I built back my strength and began examining my life and my surroundings in a whole new way. I left the hospital and I had to learn to breath, write, draw, think, and walk for the second time in my life. During this process of recovery, I have began to explore the nature of trauma and its effect on both the individual and cultural psyche. Embracing and utilising a new more visceral and animalistic process I attacked and dissected the imagery within the canvas, resulting in a body of work that speaks of feral hope in the face of adversity. The series is called "Helter Skelter".
Paul D. Miller also known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author. He borrowed his stage name from the character The Subliminal Kid in the novel Nova Express by William S. Burroughs. He is a Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School Q1.What was the first record that you bought and how did it change your life?
Paul D MIller: I didn't really need to buy records because my Dad had a zillion cool jazz records. So I grew up, very middle class, very established in Washington DC's academic scene. My father was Dean of Howard University, and my mother is a historian of design (she has a recent book out about the history of African American women designers called "Threads of Time."). Needless to say they had a great record collection. Probably the first record from my Dad's collection that really blew my mind was Donald Byrd's "Black Byrd" - he was a student of my father, and had wanted to be a lawyer. He played my father's funeral. That would change anybody's life.
Q2. You work in an interesting world of crossover, between contemporary art, Beat literature, global street culture, dub, remix and Break beat. Do you think that in today's world of instant gratification culture is it hard to reach young people with such a challenging fusion of styles?
PM: Adam Smith once wrote "all money is a belief." We live in a hybrid world, and that's just the way it is. Dub and tape collage understood this intuitively at a very early point in the 20th century, and the rest is just an extension of everyday life. When you get to the point that editing itself is an art form, and the way we fold space and time into samples, then upload that kind of stuff to social networks - you realize that this is the real information economy. I look at economists like Raj Patel, who has a great book like "The Value of Nothing" where he is trying to come to grips with the idea of "free" in a market driven society, and what hip hop and reggae etc would update with the idea of "cultural capital" - twitter feeds and your "followers" are a good example of the attention economy. Believe it. Right now , I'm listening to alot of music from Asia, Africa, Brazil. Not the obvious stuff, but things from underground or art music. I've been doing sound art and digital media installations for the last 15 years. So I guess I never thought of anything as separate. Brian Eno's whole idea of using the studio as an instrument was explored by the Jamaican scene before the British Rock scene, and King Tubby is pretty much the inventor of the whole way we look at audio editing in a modern "bass minimalist" mode. My favorite museum show at the moment is Paola Antonelli's "Talk To Me" at MOMA. It's basically a visual update off almost everything I just mentioned. Dub aesthetics is GPS of the mind. Q3. In 2010 you became one of the first DJ's to put together an iPhone app using the iPhone as a mixing tool. The DJ Mixer app has now been downloaded over 1 million times. What will you do with all the money?? ;-) No but seriously, Do you feel that it is important for artists to look at alternate revenue streams as well as selling their art?
PM: Well, amusingly enough we're up to 6.5million downloads now, and because it's free, the economics weren't what you would expect. I made money, but it wasn't a commercial project. The basic idea was to "democratize" the tools of what it means to be a DJ. As usual, everything I've done has started as an art project. The DJ Spooky iPad/iPhone app is in the same trajectory. Today, I'm editing material for music video, and I enjoy what my friends Eclectic Method are doing with video collage. That's definitely on the next wave of what's up. I plan on shooting my first film early next year, and I want as much as possible to use these kinds of tools to make the film. Hand held, high def. Imagine the film as a mixer app for video, but with a story. Working on it now... So I'm not really sure which direction it would go. He'll, Francis Ford Coppola's next film "Twixt" is all controllable from his iPad so that everyone in the theater can see a different film simultaneously... I like stuff like that.
"The Book of Ice" Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica
Q4. Please tell me a little about 'The Book Of Ice', your multimedia study of Antarctica. How did that project come together?
PM: Yeah, I went to Antarctica to shoot a film about the sound of ice. Not a normal film but a film that would incorporate what I like to think of as info-aesthetics in the same tradition as Edward Tufte, but updated through Nam Jun Paik and Godfrey Reggio's film "Koyaanisqatsi" or something to make Maya Deren's choreography become like ice. In black culture the sociology of "cool" is a reflection of so many things i wouldn't know where to start: Duke Ellington's "A Tone Poem to Harlem?" Iceberg Slim? Ice-T, Ice Cube. Vanilla Ice? Mile Davis's "Birth of the Cool" etc but when you look at the molecular structure of ice, there is a hexagonal logic - ditto for snowflakes, they are patterns, but every one is unique. I wanted to flip that into compositions, and I made a symphony about it thats still touring. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the South Pole. I'm hoping to get back down there for some more projects. I guess you could say that my Book of Ice/Terra Nova project is all about "acoustic portraits."
Q5. A few years ago you created “Rebirth of a Nation” - remix of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation”. “Rebirth of a Nation” is an amazing piece of work that Margo Jefferson of New York Times noted as "the sounds of history and racial complexity that Griffith tried to suppress." If you were able to 'remix' any contemporary movie, what would you choose and why?
PM: President Woodrow Wilson was raised by KKK sympathizers yet tried to start the League of Nations. Teddy Roosevelt, who presided over the massive creation of public parks throughout the US, is carried by a black slave and a conquered Indian Chief in front of the American National Museum. Bush... Well, don't even get me started about Bush. All I can say is that the echoes of the past are samples from the vast palette I think of as my archive. As much as any one issue facing humanity over the next 15 years, I think that finding quality information in the middle of this info over load will be one of the ways people make sense out if the distinction between truth and fiction, fact and form, function and faction. Let's call it a "politics of perception" for the attention deficit disorder generation. "Birth of a Nation" was the first film to really tap the emotional logic behind how people perceive "the other." Wi the rise of "black face" and the minstrel show, we saw a century rise of the entertainment-military-industrial complex. These are industries that, like "soma" in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" or George Schyuler's "Black Empire" or his novel "Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free A.D. 1933-1940" you can see an "anti-dialectic" at work. I look at modern pop and collage music (basically everything made in a computer) as the inheritor of the same science-faction update: and yes, that's science-faction instead of fiction. Pick a "point of view" and wrap yourself in it. Ask any Republican, and they can tell you the same thing. The problem with our post-Obama election wasn't that he was an African American, but that he actually believed that the power structure could accommodate a certain kind of realism. Instead, we saw the Birth of a Nation as a catalyst for the right wing, just as if there was no intervening time. That's why I wanted to do the film. If I could remix a more current film, I'd probably say Avatar or Transformers would the one, with Captain America left as a runner up. At lesser points of an already low expectation of cinema, they still try to be honest... www.djspooky.com/antarctica
....and you can download the iPad/iPhone app here (Over 6.5 million app downloads with Music Soft Arts) - He samples the string quartet that plays the compositions using his software - it's free and open.
Joe McGinty is a composer, keyboardist and arranger who is most widely known for his five years as the keyboardist for The Psychedelic Furs. McGinty has also worked with Ryan Adams, The Ramones, Nada Surf, Kevin Ayers, Martha Wainwright, Die Monster Die, Devendra Banhart, Ronnie Spector, Jesse Malin, Amy Rigby, Space Hog and others. He has composed music for independent films and TV shows, including HBO's G String Divas.
McGinty is also the founder and music director of the popular Loser's Lounge tribute series, where local talent pays homage to the pop icons of the past. Loser's Lounge made its debut in 1993 with a Burt Bacharach tribute at Fez, and has played to consistently sold-out rooms ever since. Now based at Joe's Pub, the Loser's Lounge has also performed at the Allen Room at Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, Westbeth Theater Center, The Knitting Factory, Makor and the Jewish Museum.
McGinty and the Loser's Lounge Band have also played with Moby for Comedy Central's "Night Of Too Many Stars" benefit for autism education.
Loser's Lounge Documentary Trailer Pt. 1
Q1. What was the first record that you bought and how did it change your life?
I believe the first LP that I bought with my own money was "Cosmo's Factory" by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It was big deal making the jump from 45s to LPs, but "Cosmo's Factory" was a safe bet--there were so many hits on that record, so I was already familiar with a lot of the songs. The cover was fascinating to me, with a motorcycle, a bicycle and random instruments strewn about what was either a recording studio or the most awesome playroom in the world. It made me think, even as a kid, that being a musician was really "cool"!
Q2. What took you into a career in music?
I really had no other choice--it was always what I wanted to do. My first gigging opportunity was playing covers in an Atlantic City show band, "Franco and Mary Jane". I ended up on the road with them for 2 years. From there it was more cover bands, then a big break of sorts was getting a gig with Robert Hazard in Philadelphia. He wrote "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and was huge in the Philadelphia area. From that I got a gig with the Psychedelic Furs in NYC, and the rest is history. Kind of a strange career path, but somehow it worked out!
Loser's Lounge - Bohemian Rhapsody
Q3. How did Loser's Lounge start?
After the Furs broke up, in the early nineties, my friends and I were rediscovering Burt Bacharach, Henry Mancini, Jimmy Webb and the like, courtesy of the 99 cent bin at the Princeton Record Exchange. We would sit around and think about how fun it would be to do a night at a club playing these songs. The idea was to celebrate the songs you could never openly admit to liking in public. Around the same time, I was doing a weekly piano and vocal gig with Nick Danger at the Pink Pony on Ludlow Street (which had just opened). Nick and I played a lot of "guilty pleasures" from the 70s, and singers from the local music scene would sit in. The Fez nightclub had just opened, and with it's gold lame curtain, it seemed like the perfect venue for the "Loser's Lounge". Fez eventually gave us a Monday night, and the first show was packed, which was a complete surprise. You have to remember, at the time, it was still the height of the grunge era, and downtown "noise-rock" was in vogue--Burt Bacharach (and "easy listening") hadn't had his "hipster" resurgence yet. Since that very first show, it's played pretty consistently to sold out rooms.
The Loser's Lounge members pictured are (left to right): Tricia Scotti, Sean Altman, Julian Maile, Connie Petruk, Joe McGinty, Eddie Zweiback, Jeremy Chatzky, David Terhune.
Q4. Can you tell me a little about your chamber pop project McGinty & White?
Ward White and I were at the point where we were taking a break from our own projects, and we each had some songs that didn't fit into our usual repertoire. We both had some free time, and wanted to make a record that reflected our chamber-pop influences (Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, etc.). We decided to work within the confines of my studio, so there are no drums--but lots of percussion and vintage keyboards.
Loser's Lounge - You Should Be Dancin'
Q5. You've performed with a wide range of famous solo artists and bands-any funny stories you can share?
Well, I've been lucky enough to work with some of my heros, which is always a thrill. I recently backed up Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Dionne Warwick, and Gladys Knight for a performance of "That's What Friends Are For" at AMFAR--that was a trip (2 of my keyboard heroes). Dionne was under the impression there would be a backing track. She was surprised to find a live band on stage. Needless to say, she gave us some serious attitude, which was intimidating to say the least. But in the end, she was happy with us. And to hear Stevie Wonder playing the harmonica less than a foot away from me was pretty incredible.
As a co-founder of LaForce + Stevens , James LaForce directs a range of communications programs across the agency’s diverse client roster. With a nimble approach, he blends his business savvy with an insatiable interest in the trends and personalities of the ever-changing media landscape. LaForce was raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and studied English Literature and writing at Columbia University. For five years, he was mentored by the legendary fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, who is often credited with putting American fashion on the global map. As his career in communications developed, with a number of multi-year stints at top P.R. firms, he managed programs for a range of prominent brands, from consumer packaged goods to fashion and luxury products. LaForce and his partner of twenty years, writer Stephen Henderson, live in Manhattan and spend weekends on Long Island. But, he is happiest at his office sending out emails and “calling around to bug people.”
Q1. What was the first record you bought and what effect did it have on you?
The Beatles' first album. It made me feel like a grown-up and I think it made me feel gay.
Q2. How did you get into the business?
I lucked into a job with Eleanor Lambert the legendary fashion publicist. Q3. What's your favorite moment 'fashion moment' so far in your career?
In our business: you are only as good as your last big project. So I would have to say it is helping Target launch the new Missoni for Target collaboration which will be in stores September 13- October 22.
Q4. Give us a really off the wall anecdote/story. Something that not many people will know about-could be about anything related to your work.
I launched a cosmetic surgical procedure to use a cosmetic filler to create an enhanced cupid's bow. It is the bow-shaped ridges above our lips. We called it the "Paris Lip."
Our spokesperson was Lauren Bacall, she stood at the podium at the Ritz Hotel in Paris (where else would you launch the Paris Lip?). She recited her famous line from Key Largo, "You know how to whistle don't you? You just put your lips together and blow." We got a lot of press. But I don't think the procedure ever really caught on. Q5. How is the rapid information exchange via the Internet changing the world of fashion publicity?
On the one hand, everything has changed. And in another way, it is all the same. The New York Times, WWD and Vogue are still the essential voices in the fashion conversation. However, with hundreds of sites, blogs, YouTube channels, the conversation has become much broader, more international, and more democratic.
Meredith E. Rutledge isn the Assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and has been working for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 1996.
Q1. What was the first record you owned and how did it change your life?
I always listened to the big pile of records that belonged to my older cousins, but the first record I actually bought myself was a 45 of “To Sir with Love,” with “The Boat that I Row” on the flipside, by Lulu. My mom and I went to see the film To Sir with Love at Severance Mall when I was about seven. I was already a confirmed Anglophile and was just knocked out by the whole film, but especially Lulu’s performance. There was a record store at the mall, and I insisted that we march right over there after the movie and pick up that 45 of the theme song. I played it over and over for the rest of …well, for the rest of my life, really. I still have that 45 and I still play it, usually more than once in a row. It’s hard to say how that single changed my life. A better way to put it might be that buying that single reinforced the path I was already on – admiring and emulating strong female vocalists and loving the culture of “Swinging London.” I also remember picking out immediately the wonderful bassline of the song. Even before I even knew what a bass guitar was, I always had a “thing” for distinctive basslines – think the introduction of the Temptations’ “My Girl” – and I could feel and hear that the bass part of “To Sir with Love” was exceptional. It would have meant nothing to me then, and little did I know that John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin, was the power behind that bass. Does that make me a rock geek? The answer is yes, I fear. But anyway, I ended up marrying a bass player, so I guess that single really did change my life!
Lulu - To Sir With Love
Q2. When did you join the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame team?
I started working for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. I started out as a Visitor Services Representative, passing out brochures and greeting visitors, and I joined the curatorial department in 1999. The first exhibit that I worked on was John Lennon: His Life and Work. Since then I’ve been the lead curator on exhibits with subjects as diverse as Lead Belly, the connection between popular music and baseball, and our most recent featured exhibit: Women Who Rock. Q3. The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame briefly opened an annex in Mercer Street, New York. Is it likely that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame will return to New York in the future?
Our Annex in New York City was a successful, temporary venture that allowed us to communicate the Museum’s mission to a key market. We are considering additional opportunities to reinforce the Museum’s work to preserve and celebrate the power of rock and roll.
Q4. Much is made of the connection between music and fashion. These days every fashion designer and brand is trying to grab some street credibility by aligning themselves with music. Do you think the whole music/fashion thing has just become a cheap marketing gimmick and who are the authentic rock and roll designers?
Music and fashion have always gone hand in hand. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Metropolitan Museum of Art co-curated and exhibit on just that topic, called “Rock Style” in 1999. I think the authentic rock and roll designers are those people that understand that rock and roll is about rebellion and individuality, not donning a “uniform.” I think Anna Sui has a rock and roll heart, as did the late Alexander McQueen.
Q5. Can you tell me about the 'Women Who Rock' exhibit?
Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power is pretty much dream fulfillment for me. The project has been near and dear to my heart since I joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It took awhile, and it’s been well worth the wait. More than 120 artists are represented, from Ma Rainey and Billie Holiday to Rihanna and Lady GaGa. We start the exhibit with what we are calling “The Foremothers” – Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mother Maybelle Carter. We then move through the music’s history, making stops at the birth of rock and roll with artists like Ruth Brown and Wanda Jackson; the “Girl Groups” era with artists like Lesley Gore and the Ronettes; the Sixties and Early Seventies – artists like Janis Joplin and Joni Mitchell; Rockers and Disco Divas, like the Runaways and Donna Summer; Punk and Post Punk, the B-52s, Chrissie Hynde and others; Madonna and the Pop Explosion, which includes Cyndi Lauper and Janet Jackson, among others, and the Nineties and the New Millenium, with artists like Queen Latifah, Lady GaGa and Janelle Monae. It’s a fabulous exhibit and I’m so proud that we’ve finally been able to make it happen.
"All sorts of people whom I should not have to think about are now stars." -- Toni Morrison “I feel better for having been on stage, having been told I never could. I’m starting to think, maybe what I did then is working. Oh, I didn’t waste my time. My youth wasn’t misspent!” --Poly Styrene, 1957-2011
I'll let Kevin Cann tell you a little bit about himself:
"I was born in Hackney, London in 1959 and we moved to Hemel Hempstead when I was two. I moved to Watford when I was 16, where I went to art school and where I first met Brian Eno. Brian visited Watford Art School in late 75 to do some trial recordings – though we were expecting him to give a lecture - and our class spent the day with him and Peter Schmidt recording vocal experiments. These recordings turned out to be try-out ideas for Music For Airports, which became one of my favourite albums (so I recorded with Brian before David did!). I ran my own design studio for many years before I finally went solo, concentrating on marketing, book design and also technical (manual) writing for a few years with Sean Mayes. We also wrote a biography about Kate Bush during this time. I also helped set up All Saints Records in the early 90s and have generally worked in LP and CD design and on associated research projects for over 20 years. I now live by the sea and it’s fab." David getting ready for a show in the summer of 72. credit: Byron Newman
Q1. What was the first record you bought and what effect did it have on you?
KC: I think it was actually a trade with a school friend for the Beatles ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ EP. It was sometime in 1970 because ‘let It Be’ was in the charts at the time. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see the original Magical Mystery Tour TV broadcast though. But the EP was a real eye-opener, particularly ‘I Am The Walrus’ of course. The piano fade on the title track always gets to me, and ‘Your Mother Should Know’ is great. In fact the whole EP is still brilliant, so many different ideas mixed together. I liked the booklet and graphics too. Promo Card - Decca Records promotional postcard, 1966. Any Day Now memorabilia.
Q2. Where did the idea for your book 'Any Day Now' originate from?
KC: I have always been fascinated with dates and timelines. I particularly like the juxtaposition of events in history; and luckily that works quite successfully in music biography too. Where possible it’s nice to remind people of the cultural landscape surrounding the time you are writing about, and in this case the records, books, films and musical events that were happening at similar times, that somehow impacted on David’s own work.
Sadly you can only take that style so far, but a chronology is not only a great way to accurately take someone through a detailed biography (and David’s doesn’t come much more detailed) it also allows a certain degree of creative flexibility. You can, I believe, handle a wider range of material in a sometimes unpredictable, but still coherent order. My timeline interests also stem from a broader appreciation of history. I just love the juxtaposition of historical events of all kinds. Straying a bit here I know, but the comparison of say, 1880’s Victorian Britain with 1880’s America has fascinated me for years. Gallery shot - Any Day Now Proud Gallery London Exhibition, December 2010.
KC: I love the idea of Oscar Wilde, for example, used to the finer life of literary Dublin, Oxford and London, visiting America for a whole year in 1882. He travelled across a country that was still – away from the main cities - in its earliest forms (he hated the muddy streets), and along the way met a real broad cross-section of Americans who were forging a new country. Wilde missed the gunfight at the OK Corral and Billy The Kidd’s death by a couple of months, and Jesse James was shot and killed a couple of months after he arrived. These things rarely, if ever, get mentioned when Wilde’s visit is researched, as they aren’t a direct part of his history. But they are still significant concurrent, cultural events. It’s only when you examine timelines like this that an often strange blurring of historical information becomes more apparent. Talking of Oscar Wilde, I’m sure that David was very well aware of Wilde’s famous arrival in America in 1882, the stir that his clothes caused and his widely reported remark; “I have nothing to declare but my genius”. When David rolled up at Washington‘s Dulles Airport in 1971, wearing his bright blue Universal Witness coat, I’ve no doubt he knew he was making a similar statement.
Over the years I worked on Any Day Now whenever I had a chance. It was one of those fascinating projects you can enjoyably research for years if you let it. I realised that the main bulk of it was in place about three or four years ago and pretty much concentrated on getting it to page from then on. Publication was delayed for nearly a year because we simply had too much information to edit down, and that was pretty tough going. The book could easily have been three times the size. As I said, David’s life and career is very detailed. It’s just one of the many reasons he is such an interesting person to write about.
Q3. Did you hear the online version of the unrealized Bowie album 'Toy' and if so, what did you think about the re-worked versions of old material?
KC: I haven’t heard the album as David intended it. I’ve just heard random tracks. It was a shame that it wasn’t released officially as I think it needs packaging and notes from David. I’m not sure I’ve heard all of it but the tracks I have heard are very good. But for me, it’s the same with David’s work as it is with that of any other artist; I rarely, if ever prefer a re-recorded song from the same performer. But to take Toy as a whole, as it was originally intended, I think it had merit, particularly as it was recorded with Tony Visconti. The first two songs the pair worked on in 1967 were ‘Let Me Sleep Beside You’ and ‘Karma Man’. Two fantastic songs with excellent production, which both men at the time evidently believed were just crude, throwaway “pop rubbish”!
It would be great if he did release Toy properly, and even better if he did all the artwork and sleeve notes himself (he’s a dab hand with Photoshop and page make-up software). I would probably be able to appreciate it better that way and then perhaps the songs would take on a new life.
Q4. Do you think that distribution via the online media means that print is a dying format for media?
KC; It’s a challenge of course, but it will be hard to replace the joy of reading a real book. It’s a form of communication that has been around almost as long as man has been able to write. I believe the oldest known book is about 2,500 years old and the pages are made of gold. Now that’s what I call a quality limited edition publication! Even with the most amazing advances in technology, I have no doubt that real books will be published for many decades to come. But there is undoubtedly an interesting future for ebooks, and one of the great things is that it also gives many more people the opportunity to get their work out there.
Q5. Give us a really off the wall Bowie anecdote/story.
KC: Apparently, when David was about 9 years old, he cut out a coupon from a newspaper that was offering a free booklet about joining the army, and he sent it to the Ministry of Defense. Not that he was interested in joining the services, but evidently he went through a fad of sending off coupons at random, which of course isn’t particularly unusual for kids to do. After receiving his army booklet, to his and his parent’s surprise, a few weeks later he was sent an invitation to have a medical and join the Territorial Army. His father recounted the anecdote during a speech at a Dr Barnardo’s conference, where he mentioned his young son’s humorous experience, and then proffered the idea of using coupons as a good way to promote the charity.
The Any Day Now Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Bowie-Any-Day-Now/122008031195556?ref=ts
The Any Day Now web site about the regular and limited edition book: http://www.anydaynowbook.com/
An Any Day Now video:
Magical Mystery Tour -Intro to the Magical Mystery Tour film.
Alexandre Plokhov was the man behind the goth-chic menswear label Cloak. Following Cloak, Plokhov served as head of menswear at Versace. Now the New York-based designer is making a comeback for Fall 2011, with a revamped, eponymous collection which will be available at Barneys, Atelier, and Hong Kong’s Joyce.
Q1. What was the first record you bought and how did it change your life?
“Ride The Lightning” by Metallica. Actually, it was not an album – it was a tape reel pirated by a black market recording studio. You have to keep in mind that Western records were extremely hard to come by in the former USSR. My parents bought me a Soviet made reel-to-reel tape deck as high school graduation present. It was supposed to help me study languages. So the first thing I did I went to Moscow and got this tape. James Hetfield screaming aboutcreeping death was much more interesting than mastering the complexities of The Gerund… It sounded escapist, fast, dangerous and heroic… Q2. You've returned with a new Alexandre Plokhov collection. Is this an evolution from Cloak or a totally new approach?
My new line is definitely an evolution of my previous work. It is a spiritual progeny of Cloak augmented by my consequent experiences.
Q3. I keep hearing that stylists are the new designers...what do you think about that statement?
I think the job of a stylist is making us look at the clothes in a new way – be it through an editorial or a runway show. Putting disparate elements together to create a new look is a daunting task, especially in the format of the show. There are so many components to consider– color story, fabric interplay, continuity of construction elements, heritage of the house, casting, pagination – to name but a few… All of this is only relevant if we are talking about working for a big house. The stylist is there to help designer tell a story, making that story engaging (designing clothes) is still the responsibility of the designer.
Q4. Fashion and business are not easy bedfellows, particularly if, like you, the designer is very creative and ahead of the curve. Do you think the climate is tougher now that belts are being tightened, economically and metaphorically speaking?
Thank you for the compliment! It is hard for me to say anything intelligent on this subject since I have an uncanny ability to start new businesses in the middle of recession (both Cloak and AP). So much for my business acumen! It has always been tough – the cycle is just so much faster now.
Q5. Any funny stories you can share from your time working with Donatella Versace?
DV gave me a job during rather difficult period of my life. I learnt how to make clothes in Italy on a level previously unattainable for me. So, I will be forever grateful for her support! http://alexandre-plokhov.com/
Miguel fell in love with photography at an early age. His parents sent him to the States for his senior year in High school, after which he took a course called "The Young the Snapshot" at NYU. Miguel then returned to his native Spain and began homing his skills by assisting local photographers. He came to London in 2003 to work as a studio assistant which led to him assisting Mert & Marcus. He has been on his own since September 2005. Miguel currently contributes to Acne Paper, Numero, Numero Homme, Harpers Bazaar US, Vogue Homme Japan, Vanity Fair US and V Magazine. Clients include Prada, Pollini, Viviene Westwood, Neiman Marcus, L’oreal, Uniqlo, Thierry Mugler, Karen Millen, Aveda and Wonderbra. Plus many celebrities including Liv Tyler, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sienna Miller and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Q1. What was the first record you bought and what effect did it have on you?
My first record was Madonna's "Like a Virgin". I think it says it all, I was 9 years old…
Hair: Peter Gray/Make Up: Dele Olo/Styling: Marie Chaix.
Q2. When did you start taking photographs and who or what influenced you to do that?
My parents bought me a camera for my First Communion when I was 8, that was the start, I still have some of those pictures I took…..
Q3. What's your favorite picture in photographic medium?
Have a few favourite ones, but I remember Mapplethorpe's "Thomas and Amos" as it meant a lot when I saw it printed in one of my first visits to an exhibition at the beginning of the 90's
Q4. Do you think that rapid information exchange via the Internet means that photography is a more instant art form?
Internet has made everything more instant, not only photography, so definitely yes.
Q5. Give me a really crazy anecdote/story. Something that not many people will know about-could be about anything related to your work.
One of them was going to Havana, Cuba, last November for a shoot. The whole team were stranded in London, apart from the model and myself as we were coming from somewhere else. We went out and had the night of our lifes. When the team showed up, we had to do all the pictures in one day, which meant working for 26 hours….we did it, we can do anything!
Some current projects Miguel is working on include: Vanity Fair US, Vogue Germany and a Style Calendar in collaboration with Studio Baer. Reveriego is also working on a project on Cuba, going there for 6 weeks to work on it.
Soledad O’Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN/U.S. Since joining the network in 2003, O’Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and has produced award-winning, record-breaking and critically acclaimed documentaries on the most important stories facing the world today. She also covers political news as part of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television.”
Edward Norton-He invited me to Fight Club...but I only wanted his doodle.
Taraji P Henson, Danny Simmons and a message from President Barack Obama.
Rush is proud of its success to date and is also looking towards a future in which our programs grow to encompass more children and artists, and we can continue to enhance access to arts institutions and arts experiences for minority and economically disadvantaged populations. Our three program areas – education programs, exhibits and special projects – work together to open up the arts to populations facing hurdles to the joy and benefits of these experiences.
In Russell Simmons Garden.................................Now That Is A Buddha.
