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WHY?‘s newest album Alopecia (Anticon 2008) doesn’t hit shelves till March 11th, but the Bay Area indie-hop group has come up with something to keep us entertained until then. Directed by Blond Chili and WHY? is an eight part series of YouTube short films chronicling the journey of two WHY? fans as they travel to Oakland in search of WHY? founder and former schoolmate Yoni Wolf.
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Foxy Shazam has been making headlines for their stellar high energy shows. In the video for “A Dangerous Man,” the first single off the recently released Introducing Foxy Shazam record, the boys channel that chotic spunk and show some of what makes Foxy Shazam an awesome band.
When I was a stripper at the Cheetah III, we had a calendar on the wall that listed all the upcoming conventions so we’d know which nights the club needed extra dancers. Our favorite convention was “The Chicken Pluckers,” a huge gathering of those in the poultry game (and ironically, I detest chicken), whose members, if one were to judge by their behavior, were not audited on their expense accounts.
Premiering in March is the punk art and music exhibit Wheelchair Epidemic at the Gallery Lombardi in Austin, Texas. The exhibit’s namesake is a throwback to the punk of yore, in honor of Texan hardcore punk pioneers The Dicks. Featured are works by Win Wallace (drawings), Tim Kerr (mixed media), Brian Curley (drawings and paintings), Susan Antone (photography), Bill Daniels (photography), Ian Schults, and artwork by The Dicks members Gary Floyd and Buxf Parrot.
Indie psych rockers Hopewell will be touring for most of March in support of the release of their fourth album, Beautiful Targets, last summer on Tee Pee records. Mercury Rev references aside, though sonic ties are undeniable, Hopewell maintains a poppier, and, in general, more enjoyable attitude throughout their latest album, evidenced by the numerous positive reviews in the months following its release.
“It is a nervous time, and artists respond to that.”
Unmonumental was published in conjunction with the inaugural exhibition of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, that fancypants, $50 million, are-you-smart-enough, stacked-tower-of-whiteshoeboxes in NYC. “While we now have a beautiful new building, we are also keenly aware of not becoming too proper, polite, or institutional. On the contrary, we must continue to fearlessly confront challenging art.”
Now in its third incarnation, the re-releasing of $100 and a T-shirt is timely. Clocking in at just under an hour, the documentary acts as a “Zines For Dummies,” discussing the methods and ethics behind a handful of Northwest US zines. It gives a first-hand look into the people that give these tiny booklets life. The zine creators pay for each page out of their own pockets, print endless copies at Kinko’s, drink tons of coffee and smoke cigarettes, and celebrate their unique voices. The film’s soundtrack includes Defiance, Ohio and the late Lance Hann and J Church, suiting the rebellious nature of the content.
New York-based street artist Swoon – known for her life-sized paper cut-outs and wheatpasting – reemerges fresh off the boat at LA’s New Image Art this Saturday, February 16th, for her first West coast solo show. After spending time sailing down the Hudson and Mississippi rivers in a self-made flotilla with other boat punks, the multi-oriented grafitti artist has put together Drown Your Boats, inspired in part by British author Angela Carter’s posthumous short story collection, Burning Your Boats.
Valet, the recent recording moniker of Honey Owens, is seemingly caught between two ideals: playing ambient music and playing rock ‘n’ roll. On her 2007 debut, Blood Is Clean, she bounced back and forth between sedate, nebulous exercises and fl eshed-out pop songs, though she never clung to either.
Less than a year later on her second album, Naked Acid, Owens has a similar M.O. The record’s eight tracks teeter between atmospheric psych-rock songs built on loose foundations and mellow, ambient tracks that maintain a user-friendly sense of melody.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago recently closed Sympathy for the Devil, an exhibition on art and rock ‘n’ roll. The exhibition starts in 1967, the year when Andy Warhol began collaborating with The Velvet Underground, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience released Are You Experienced. Along with the time frame, curator Dominic Molon placed parameters on what was to be included in the show, with an emphasis on the “art works themselves” instead of the aesthetics of record covers, club flyers, posters, and T-shirts we more comfortably relate to rock music.