31 October 2009
29 October 2009
Coltrane & Hartman - Autumn Serenade
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, a 1963 studio album featuring John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.
Each song was done in only one take, except for "You Are Too Beautiful", which required two takes because Elvin Jones dropped one of his drumsticks during the first take.
27 October 2009
26 October 2009
Dead Man's Bones... "My Body's a Zombie for You!"
When Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields met in Toronto in 2005 they wanted to hate each other. The two were dating sisters (Rachel McAdams and her sister, Kayleen, respectively) and resented the forced time they were expected to spend with one another, until a conversation stumbled upon their mutual obsession with the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. Zach was so preoccupied with ghosts as a kid that he was put into therapy, and Ryan's parents moved out of his childhood home because they believed it was haunted. Neither of them had really outgrown their fascination with ghosts, monsters, graveyards, zombies or anything deathly. Once they realized their shared affinity for the eerie, they started trying to write a theatrical monster ghost love story for the stage. They decided that this story should have music so they began learning how to play various instruments.
By the time they had written their first few songs they realized how difficult it would be and how much money it would cost to create the show. They decided to continue with the music and put the play aside. Some of their sounds reflected the music they listened to--a little bit of doo-wop and artists such as The Shangri-Las, The Shags, The Cure, Company Flow, Sam Cooke, The Misfits, James Brown, Bobby Vinton, Joy Division, The Andrew Sisters and Daniel Johnston, to name a few.
Zach and Ryan were also individually inspired by two musical programs of the past. Ghetto Reality is a 60’s musical masterpiece conceptualized by Nancy Dupree (an inner-city school music teacher in Zach’s hometown of Rochester, New York). She made a name for herself and her students when she stepped away from a traditional curriculum to let her students make their own music about things that were relevant to them and their world. In Canada, where Ryan was raised, Hans Fenger brought together 60 untrained children in 1976 and created The Langley Schools Music Project, Innocence and Despair, that featured flawed young voices singing the tunes of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and songs by many other famous artists. It was decided early on that their newly formed band, Dead Man’s Bones, wanted to work kids into what was shaping up to be their first album, Monster Music. There was something about the earnest recordings of those kids that hit a nerve with Zach and Ryan that seemed to resonate with their own musical evolution.
They gave themselves rules for the recording process (akin to Dogma 95) to make sure that their mistakes were captured and integrated into the music making process. Examples of rules ranged from trying not to do more than three takes no matter how bad the outcome, not using any steel string or electric guitars, no click tracks, playing all the instruments themselves even if they had never touched them before, etc. Of course, rules fracture here and there but the intent was to keep focus on not trying to appear more sophisticated than they were or trying to hide where they might be amateur and instead finding a way to feature their faults by framing them with their strengths.
Also incorporated into the project was foley such as tin foil for rain, creaking doors, paper ripping for thunder, foot steps, screaming, crying, waves, werewolf howling, boat noises, crickets, etc.
24 October 2009
23 October 2009
Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows...
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows...
Two-year-old Freddie has recently progressed from ketchup to oils...
To the untrained eye, they appear to be simple daubs that could have been created by a two year old. Which is precisely what they are.
But that didn't stop the supposed experts falling over themselves to acclaim them.
The toddler in question is Freddie Linsky, who has fooled the art world into buying and asking to exhibit his paintings.
Freddie's efforts, which include works using tomato ketchup composed while sitting on his high chair, were posted by his mother Estelle Lovatt on collector Charles Saatchi's online gallery.
The toddler with some of his creations: Freddie is said to favour the 'spot and blotch' technique.
She claimed her son was an art critic and and a familiar face at major exhibitions, and added ludicrously overblown captions to his offerings.
One creation of random red and green splodges called Sunrise was captioned: "A bold use of colour. Inspired by the 'plein air' habit of painting by Monet, drawing on the natural world that surrounds us all."
And his black scrawlings in a work entitled The Best Loved Elephant are captioned:
"The striking use of oriental calligraphy has the kanji-like characters stampeding from the page, showing the new ascent of the East. It is one of Linsky's most experimental works."
Two-year-old Freddie has recently progressed from ketchup to oils on canvas.
Freddie is said to favour the "spot and blotch" technique pioneered by the American abstract expressionism movement in the 1950s.
The young artist is said on Saatchi Online to have "dedicated his whole life to art".
His mother wrote: "Freddie W R Linsky paints over and over, making us curious to know what is going on.
"It seems that one stroke is being repeated - the same stroke or one very close to it, hence the possibility of the infinite opening up of the structure of time."
According to mother Estelle, Freddie has been able to hold a paintbrush since he was eight months old.
Freddie's mother, a lecturer at Hampstead School of Art and a freelance art critic, said she never dreamt anyone would be duped by her over-the-top descriptions.
But a Manchester artist and collector paid £20 for one of Freddie's works and a gallery in Berlin wanted him to showcase his talents.
She said: "Freddie has been coming with me to galleries since he was three months old. and from eight months he was dipping his fingers into paint and able to hold a brush loosely.
"He sits on his high chair with a piece of paper and gets very excited at the mess he gets to make.
Freddie gets very excited about the mess he is allowed to make when painting.
He has progressed from ketchup to acrylics on paper or canvas. I wondered whether the art world would be encouraging or dismissive if I showed his work online.
"I thought people would figure it out. But a collector paid £20 for The Best Loved Elephant. He said he liked the flow and energy of the picture.
"A gallery in Berlin emailed, saying they were having an exhibition and thought Freddie's work was of a high standard and would like him to participate.
"I wrote on his behalf thanking them and asked them to let us know how their plans progress. They still don't know he's only two."
20 October 2009
19 October 2009
Seu Jorge is a badass.
Seu Jorge (born June 8, 1970; Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsew ˈʒɔʁʒi]) is a Brazilian musician, singer/songwriter and actor. Born Jorge Mário da Silva, he was raised in a favela in the city of Belford Roxo in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro state. He is considered by his fans a renewer of Brazilian pop samba. Seu Jorge cites samba school, and American soul singer Stevie Wonder as major musical influences. He is also a fan of footballer Romário.
16 October 2009
15 October 2009
Lots of Little Art with Big Ideals
Lots of Little Art
Oct9ober 16 - December 2, 2009
National juried exhibition featuring work in all media with a size restriction of 6"x6"
Oct9ober 16 - December 2, 2009
National juried exhibition featuring work in all media with a size restriction of 6"x6"
Gallery walk through at 6pm on October 16th with Dominick Manco, George Morrison and Audrey Riley.
Hallway Gallery features:
Mini-Quilts Exhibit in Honor of AIDS Task Force's 25th Anniversary
Exhibit Sponsors:
AEP/Indiana Michigan Power, Designer/Craftsman Guild, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Members of Artlink, Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne, Indiana Arts Commission.
Opening reception: Oct9ober 16, 6-9pm at
14 October 2009
In The Year of Our Ford...
Walton Ford (born 1960) is an American artist who paints large scale watercolors in the style of Audubon's naturalist illustrations. Each painting is a meticulous study in flora and fauna, while being filled with symbols, clues and jokes referencing a multitude of texts from colonial literature and folktales to travel guides. Ford's paintings are complex narratives that critique the history of colonialism, industrialism, politics, natural science, and man's effect on the environment.
Walton Ford appropriates the crisp, descriptive style of 19th-century naturalists and artists—John James Audubon, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin—but he puts their conventions to work in an investigation of natural history itself.
Repurposing a field-guide aesthetic, Ford composes dense allegories that make sometimes pointed, sometimes sidelong allusions to everything from conservationism and consumption to war, politics and imperialism.
While staying uncannily faithful to the natural history mode, Ford paints on a much larger scale, producing outsize watercolors with epic compositions. He renders his scenes with operatic drama, capturing moments when the natural order changes, such as the last member of a species struggling just before extinction.”[1]
13 October 2009
11 October 2009
10 October 2009
Book 1, 2001
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.
08 October 2009
The Flaming Lips, 'Embryonic'
First Listen: The Flaming Lips, 'Embryonic'
Hear The Band's New Album In Its Entirety
Guernica
Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career."
When pressed to explain them in Guernica, Picasso said, "...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are."[3]
07 October 2009
Gold (pronounced /ˈɡoʊld/)
Gold (pronounced /ˈɡoʊld/) is a chemical element with the symbol Au (Latin: aurum) and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is dense, soft, shiny and the most malleable and ductile pure metal known. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. It is one of the coinage metals and formed the basis for the gold standard used before the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971.
At the end of 2006, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 tonnes.[1] This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of just 20.2 meters. Modern industrial uses include dentistry and electronics, where gold has traditionally found use because of its good resistance to oxidative corrosion and excellent quality as a conductor of electricity.
Chemically, gold is a transition metal and can form trivalent and univalent cations upon solvation. Compared with other metals, pure gold is more chemically unreactive, but it is attacked by aqua regia (a mixture of acids), forming chloroauric acid, and by alkaline solutions of cyanide but not by single acids such as hydrochloric, nitric or sulfuric acids. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys, but does not react with it. Since gold is insoluble in nitric acid which will dissolve silver and base metals, this is exploited as the basis of the gold refining technique known as "inquartation and parting". Nitric acid has long been used to confirm the presence of gold in items, and this is the origin of the colloquial term "acid test", referring to a gold standard test for genuine value.
06 October 2009
05 October 2009
Crosseyed And Painless
Lost my shape-Trying to act casual!
Can't stop-I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape-I feel like an accident They're back!
Can't stop-I might end up in the hospital
I'm changing my shape-I feel like an accident They're back!
-To explain their experience
Isn't it weird/Looks too obscure to me
Wasting away/And that was their policy
I'm ready to leave-I push the fact in front of me
Facts lost-Facts are never what they seem to be
Nothing there!-No information left of any kind
Lifting my head-Looking for danger signs
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
There was a line/There was a formula
Sharp as a knife/Facts cut a hole in us
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/looking around inside
The island of doubt-It's like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight-Got the message from the oxygen
Making a list-Find the cost of opportunity
Doing it right-Facts are useless in emergencies
The feeling returns/Whenever we close out eyes
Lifting my head/Looking around inside.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
02 October 2009
01 October 2009
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