music
this week on the avant guardian \/\/ tighten up
Archie Bell and the Drells’ 1968 hit “Tighten Up” is one of a long line of American popular songs built around a dance. There are few lyrics beyond Bell’s cajoling the band and the dancers (you!). He does claim at the beginning of the song that “we dance just about as good as we... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ banzai!!!!! | brooklyn
These days, Brooklyn is the destination where art comes to be born and to die. After all, this is still New York City, the global center for commercial art distribution. But beyond that, Brooklyn is home to the overwhelming majority of studios, ateliers, and actual artists in New York City. Soho and Chelsea obviously... »
brands “r” us
Let’s be brutally honest, I hate a lot of things, and it’s typically due to some ominous specter of an unnamed evil capitalist swine who smokes 100 dollar bill cigars and kills puppies with toxic lipstick. He also polluted my drinking water, my groundwater, and my local beach. And that’s why I’m infertile. And... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ alexander mcqueen, meatpacking district
February 11, 2010: Beneath the flurries of the worst blizzard to hit the northeastern United States in over a decade, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week kicks off in New York City. The crowds flock to the tents of Bryant Park to witness some of the most prominent designers in the world unveil their Fall-Winter... »
pink is the new funk
Pink. I just looked at the music shelf in my library. Dictionary of Modern Ballet (1959)? It does have pink lettering on the dust jacket. Really a nice looking book. Ballet, associatively, gives those who don’t study it a sense of pink. I do not study it. Tutus and dance slippers. Skinny women in... »
the set up
What you got? You think this is a hustle? I’m pretty sure you don’t know me or the Don Kix I rode in on. That shit talkin’ is straight bullshit. Fresh Kid Icing around the block. Oi. Please. (QUICK ASIDE: The Pharcyde’s “Ya Mama”. Possibly the best diss track of all time.) Personally, I prefer constant... »
sinatra \/\/ my way
Back in the primeval days of lumbering desktop PCs and peer-to-peer file sharing, I trolled my shallow pools for free music. These were the good old college days, when I’d put Cee-Lo’s “Closet Freak” up to full volume before combining forces with the fellas on my dorm floor to find a filthy party on... »
a monkey soundscape
I was walking up a mountain populated with a bunch of monkeys when I realized nature does not ask for permission. It was 2005 in the Iwatayama Monkey Park on the outskirts of Kyoto Japan. I was halfway up the mountain keeping pace around thirty feet behind a benign French couple who were on... »
external lack of cohesion is internal lack of cohesion
What follows is a transcription of notes taken while listening to the New World Symphony, Miami Beach. Lincoln Theatre. Friday January 15, 7:00 p.m. Concert ticket 0$. Arrival 3 beers deep. Disheveled. Hard boiled. Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) Nonet for Wind Quintet and Strings Cheer in music can sometimes sound like a different kind of cheer. ... »
andre breton is a douchebag\/\/visualizing beauty
Honestly, have you read Nadja by Andre Breton? Cause I have and the book is everything that’s wrong with being French. It’s one long convoluted name dropping turdboiler. OHHH, FANTASTIC you’re friends with Max Ernst and Picasso!? Fuck off. The premise is offensive to anyone but Breton’s magna-douche sized ego. Its all about a torrid... »
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