Jane Fonda in Malibu taken from Dennis Hopper’s new book Photographs 1961-1967 Published by Taschen and limited to 1,500 copies each signed by the artist.
The morning of our Music Fest Northwest show with Girl Talk I rolled everyone out of bed and made us go directly to stumptown coffee in Portland. I want you to be familiar with who they are. There is a real emerging coffee vanguard in the US that (in my humble opinion) EASILY rivals anything that Europe has to offer, and stumptown are at the crest of that wave.
As soon as we’d received our espresso drinks (all relatively short milk servings not a hair above 120 degrees), everyone had forgiven me for kicking them out of the hotel room 9 hours before load-in. I picked up a couple of pounds to go (an Ethiopia Wondo and a Kenya Gaturiri Reserve), which I had to impatiently wait to brew for like four more tour dates (backstage always had a french press but no grinder).
But now i’m just getting to this Kenya Gauriri Reserve and it is honestly blowing my mind. The packaged notes suggested to look out for: “Black currant, blackberry cobbler, baked pear, and blackstrap molasses…phenomenally balanced, syrupy yet clean and sweet cup.” I brewed it with a chemex w roughly 200 degree water and the extraction I got was everything suggested. It begins with an acutely gentle spice and then you get an unmistakably creamy sort of caramel sensation, and then it finishes with a hint of pear that is fully crisp. The cup as it cooled literally had three different phases of taste, all of which should have been somewhat contradictory and interfering, but that somehow were balanced and discrete from one another. I’ve had stumptown plenty of times and loved it (it’s my first choice when in New York), but after copping this selection I feel strongly that they need a presence in Los Angeles. Who do I have to call?
While I entirely missed Lisa Jack’s photography exhibition last August at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles, I am grateful that the images are still up on the gallery’s website. Her recent exhibition titled “Barack Obama: The Freshman” presents a series of enchanting images of a young Barack in his twenties, poised and animated during a casual photoshoot at a small apartment in Los Angeles.
“Now a psychology professor and therapist, in 1980 Lisa jack was an aspiring photographer at Occidental College in Los Angeles and was in desperate need of a model. It was recommended that she take photographs of a young freshman, who later transferred to Columbia University in New York, by the name of Barry. He posed willingly, his legendary future as the first multiracial African-American President of the United States unbeknownst to all. After a brief afternoon photography session, these images remained hidden from the public for twenty-eight years, until Jack decided to search for them as a result of a dare. This exhibition made it possible for these images to be printed and displayed for the first time.”
After a recent trip to Amoeba Records and remembering the joy of flipping through 12s and album artwork, it became apparent that after all this time I have never stumbled upon anything that explained how vinyl was made. I remembered there was a process where a master is created and used to stamp other vinyl, but the process in creating that master, how grooves are made and vinyl is cut wasn’t anything I ever understood.
There is a pretty cool article in the latest De La Soul issue of Frank 151 that has an interesting interview with Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records. He describes the cutting the first three groove record on the “Me, Myself and I” US 12″. I didn’t really understand what he meant the first time round, but this cool YouTube video gave me a cool overview of the vinyl making process and what the hell Silverman was speaking about when it comes to continuous grooves.
More on Tom Silverman, De La Soul’s experimentation with phonograph records, and part 2 of the vinyl making process after the jump.
I’m always down for animal oriented outer wear. Jams and I were just chatting the other day about horn implants and other changes it would take to become a minotaur. He said he’d get the horns if I’d get a split snake tongue , I told him no go but look out for some BR excess in the future.
“Well, you’ve all been waiting for ‘em, asking for ‘em, emailing about ‘em… so here they are : WOLF SUITS! And not just any wolf suits, beautiful high end wolf suits brought to you in collaboration with our friends over at Opening Ceremony. The slideshow above represents a small taste of the full WTWTA x Opening Ceremony line which will be available via OC WEB on Monday. Guaranteed to sell like crazy. ” – WTWTA
Many times when viewing collaboration projects you miss out on the individuals that make up that project. Sam & Dave, Rogers & Hammerstein, Sumi Ink Club, and Frank n Dank are good great examples. After seeing the amazing video above I dug a little deeper and found a well developed nest for artists Blu, David Ellis and musician Roberto Lange. I’ll include a skimming of information here but I recommend you do some work yourdamnself.
Vozrozhdeniye Island. Also known as Rebirth, Renaissance, or Anthrax Island.
Want to be reborn? Then I definitely recommend making a little trip to this Kazakh/Uzbek owned little paradise. Maybe “island” isn’t the proper term anymore, since the body of water it was surrounded by, the Aral sea, dried up in 2002.
“In 1936, Vozrozhdeniye Island was transferred to the authority of the Soviet MOD for use by the Red Army’s Scientific Medical Institute. The first expedition of 100 people, headed by Professor Ivan Velikanov, arrived on the island that summer. The researchers were provided with special ships and two airplanes and reportedly conducted experiments involving the spread of tularemia and related microorganisms. In the fall of 1937, however, the expedition was evacuated from the island because of security problems, including the arrest of Velikanov and other specialists.
In 1952, the Soviet government decided to resume BW testing on islands in the Aral Sea. A biological weapons test site, officially referred to as “Aralsk-7,” was built in 1954 on Vozrozhdeniye and Komsomolskiy Islands. The MOD’s Field Scientific Research Laboratory (PNIL) was stationed on Vozrozhdeniye Island to conduct the experiments. Military unit 25484, comprising several hundred people, was also based on the island and reported to a larger unit based in Aralsk. The PNIL developed methods of biological defense and decontamination for Soviet troops. Samples of military hardware, equipment, and protective clothing reportedly passed field tests at the island before being mass-produced. During the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, military protective gear developed for Afghan conditions was tested at the PNIL.”
(from GlobalSecurity.org)
This place, and places like this, are sick, in every true meaning of the word.
