My good friend / quasi half brother and talented archi-DJ Tomas Ceron has launched a blog containing some of his mixes and other music goodies. Go check it out at http://tomasceron.blogspot.com/ and make sure you’ve got your patent leather shoes on.
Patent leather shoes = zapatos de charol… calcule.
My good friend Gabe and I made it to Mr. Talking Head David Byrne’s concert at Radio City last night. Mr. Byrne was of course his quircky-goofy-smart-loose kneed self and the concert couldn’t have been better. He sang while walking backwards, spinning on a chair, wearing a tutu, running the talking heads run and completely intermingled himself with the choreographies. We both were probably amongst the youngest ones in the crowd, which means we got schooled on the knee-breaking-elbow-flapping dance moves of the 80’s.
I’ll post some clips later this week.
I made it tonight for the opening night at Alice Tully Hall for an incredible performance: Diaspora Sefardi, From Medieval Spain to Eastern Mediterranean. an exceptional concert of revived medieval songs and ballads in what I imagine can be considered old Castilian.
The show itself was just the excuse to make it to the building of course, and right from the approach, the building is truly fantastic: the huge lobby, with a gigantic glass paned curtain wall on one side and the warm wood behind the bar give it the right contrast between scale and warmth. The super long bar of course works wonderfully in crowded evenings like tonight. Heading towards the auditorium itself, the ceiling height is much lower and the scale becomes much more intimate. You walk below the ‘watch-me-im-uber-rich’ balcony then turn right and down towards the auditorium. Upon walking into the orchestra level there is a shift which is pretty surprising: the height from the floor to the balconies is quite low but it soon opens up. The scale of the space is just perfect and the wood/resin paneling looks incredible. It is quite remarkable how close everything looks to the original images. Truly a fantastic building, and can’t wait to go there in the summer.
A couple more images after the jump.
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My good friend Gabe and I made it last night to Irving Plaza to see Tricky. I had seen him play at the same venue about 5 years ago and the concert was horrible, so I had my doubts about this one. This time around though it was absolutely incredible.
Among the first set, was a cover of ‘The Lovecats’, The Cure’s amazingly good ‘83 song. Every one of Maxinquaye’s (still a favorite) songs was beautifully performed. And his daughter (Masey?) rocked.
Saturday we made it to Liberty State Park in N.J. for the All Points West festival. The only reason for going on Saturday, for me, was to see Radiohead. Chromeo was also up in there in the list, but playing at 2 pm, there was no way I was going to make it.
Radiohead was of course incredible. They played 2+hours and had 2 encores. The visuals were pretty nice: two large screens as well as what seemed to me (from my spot) like strands of fiber optics hanging and creating simple patterns. The screens had 6 different views of the stage and every now and then some interesting patterns.
Some pics after the jump. Some clips coming up in a few days.
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Bunghole Bunghole Bunghole Bunghole. This might be the only rap song I could actually listen to.
Last Friday I made it to the Guggenheim’s final “First Fridays” of the season. I had been waiting to visit the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibit “I want to believe” in order to check it out during the party, although I was dying to see the exhibit.
The parties themselves are pretty fun, although they’ve become so popular they just get insanely packed and therefore the fun ratio vs. the annoying ratio gets shifted towards the annoying side. After 1 hour in there it is just impossible to move…
I’m still writing my take on the show, but, here are the images for now… I’ll complete this later on.
Trent Reznor keeps pushing the envelope regarding music freedom with his latest release: The Slip.
The album is being literally given away for free in four different formats including the artwork, all released under the Creative Commons “attribution noncommercial share-alike” license, so you’re free -and encouraged- to do with it as you please.
This is the post in NIN’s news:
(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years – this one’s on me)
Go download it at NIN or get the mp3 files here (86 megs).
via [wired]
I wonder what Radiohead will do now to top NIN…
Last night was Goldfrapp’s concert in The Beacon Theater. It was the first time I got to see her but it was very good.
It is always quite a treat seeing an absolutely incredible singer and Alison Goldfrapp is definitely one of them. She was getting over a cold (and complained a few times about how bad she sounded). The way she effortlessly goes to those glass shattering highs is quite astounding.
She also happened to look incredibly sexy wearing her skimpy little gown.
Go after the jump to see some lousy clips.
Finally, the animatic for our Radiohead video is done!
Go register and vote for our entry in the Aniboom here
Gabe and I have been working on an animatic to enter the contest being held by Radiohead, for user created videos for one of their songs.
We’ll be posting the clip into the site for people to go check it out and vote. Here is one of the stills.
Here is the recently released video for Portishead’s “Machine Gun”, from their latest album Third. The album has to be, in my view, one of the best albums of this year. It is absolutely fantastic. Go buy it *once its out*
Thanks Gabe for the pointer on the video
The NY Times today posted a making of video for the new Bjork ‘Wanderlust’ music video. Apparently, the whole thing took nine months to make with these guys sleeping on the set and not being paid for much of it. They start the interview off with a confession to using illicit drugs as part of their creative exploration. After watching the video, I’m not sure if they were so much explaining their process as apologizing.
One would think that in that amount of time you’d be bowled-over by this video, but instead all I kept thinking was, really, nine months? They reuse shots so often, it made me wonder how much of their footage hit the cutting room floor. To be fair, I’m not judging the final piece which is supposed to be viewed in 3D with stereoscopic glasses (oh yeah, I’ll just go to Rite-aid and pick up a pair of those…); but I would hope that they would be concious of the fact that most people are not going to see this video in 3D and that with Bjork giving them “as much time as they needed” they could create two equal pieces, one 2D and one 3D.
They use puppets, clay characters, hand drawn elements, choreographed live action green screen footage and (what the hell is that at the end?) CG. That’s all fine and good, but I don’t want to be able to tell which ones you’re using and when. Just because you have fine ingredients and you’ve mixed them in a pot doesn’t mean you’re done creating your gourmet meal. And I’d argue the ingredients here are less than fine. And I’m not opposed to a Low-Fi stylized look either, but unfortunately the video comes off as more highschool-project/ amateur hour and a bad comedy club. Perhaps like a comedy club injects you with large alcoholic drinks before the show, they should provide us all with a little psilocybin to dull and heighten the correct senses.
Have I judged enough? Now it’s your turn…let’s hear what you think.
For some reason I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head… I know I’m probably one of the few living beings who remembers this ever existed anyways.
The song is Pancho Villa, by Magazine 60, an 80’s French band. Party on Garth.
Looking for a music video of Argentinean super star Charly Garcia, I found this gem from a while ago.
He then asks one of the journalists to bring him a coke…
Upon the question: Where did you leave your Superman cape?
In your bedroom… He replies.
Oh snap!
Steve Forrest/Insight-Visual for The New York Times
The NY Times has a pretty interesting article on Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” -on the actual making on the album and the effects of the pay-what-you-want scheme after freeing themselves EMI .
Read it here.
I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head in the last few days – don’t ask me why. Check out those kicks and radio(?)watches. This is Righeira in 1983. If only the future were that cool.
Mara and I made it on Saturday to the Arcade Fire concert over at Randall’s Island. It was one of those concerts I had really no idea of what to expect ( had never been in Randall’s Island, and have only heard a few songs of some of the groups). It turned out to be a pretty large show: LCD System, Arcade Fire, Blonde Redhead, Les Savy Fav and White Light, in an even larger venue. It was pretty cool actually.
On the way there, we decided to walk across the Tri-Borough Bridge and over to the island (from Lex and 125th st). The walk itself isn’t bad, but there’s no way on earth I’d dare to walk along that pathway any other time than a concert day. The views are pretty cool and I always like getting close to the structure, but I’d be pretty worried walking in there at night. Caracas avenue style (Colombians will understand it…)
There are some pics of the bridge and the show after the jump below.
