"ALLAH TREASURES HIS GAY AND TRANSGENDERED CHILDREN, HIS PRECIOUS HOMOSEXUAL CHILDREN. JESUS ADORES HIS GAY CHILDREN AND RESERVES A SACRED PLACE FOR THEM IN THE FOLDS OF HIS CLOTHES. IT IS A SIN TO HURT A GAY OR TRANSGENDERED PERSON. YOU HURT ALLAH WHEN YOU HURT ONE OF THESE MEN OR WOMEN, BOYS OR GIRLS. "

Sunset Rubdown - Black Swan

"ALLAH TREASURES HIS GAY AND TRANSGENDERED CHILDREN, HIS PRECIOUS HOMOSEXUAL CHILDREN. JESUS ADORES HIS GAY CHILDREN AND RESERVES A SACRED PLACE FOR THEM IN THE FOLDS OF HIS CLOTHES. IT IS A SIN TO HURT A GAY OR TRANSGENDERED PERSON. YOU HURT ALLAH WHEN YOU HURT ONE OF THESE MEN OR WOMEN, BOYS OR GIRLS. "

A brief, noisy moment that still reverberates

Richard Hell & James Chance (Photo: Julia Gorton)
Review of 'No Wave' byThurston Moore & Byron Coley
By BEN SISARIO
Published: June 12, 2008
@ 'NY Times'

Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived.

Centered on a handful of late-1970s downtown groups like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and James Chance’s Contortions, it was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style and nihilistic in attitude. It began around 1976, and within four years most of the original bands had broken up.

But every weird rock scene — and every era of New York bohemia — eventually gets its coffee-table book moment. This month Abrams Image is publishing “No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980,” a visual history by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley.

On Friday the book will be celebrated with an exhibition opening at KS Art, at 73 Leonard Street in TriBeCa, and, across the street at the Knitting Factory, the reunion of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, whose blunt, aggressive songs had instrumentation so minimal that on its records the percussionist was sometimes credited as playing simply “drum.” Lydia Lunch, the former lead singer, is flying from Barcelona to play the show.

In the last year two other books have been published on no wave and overlapping periods of downtowniana: Marc Masters’s “No Wave” (Black Dog) and “New York Noise” (Soul Jazz), a collection of photographs by Paula Court.

“It was a little, blippy scene,” said Mr. Moore, the Sonic Youth guitarist and historian of underground rock. “It came out of the gate finished.”

With crisp black-and-white photographs and interviews with musicians and visual artists, the book is a loving reminiscence of a largely unheard period, as well as a look at a seedy, pre-gentrified Lower East Side. Most groups in the no wave scene — which also included Mars, the Theoretical Girls and the Gynecologists — left behind few recordings, and the compilation album that defined the genre, “No New York,” produced by Brian Eno in 1978, has never been legitimately issued on CD in the United States.

Despite its brief, blippy existence, no wave has had a broad and continued influence on noisy New York bands, from Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore in the 1980s to current groups like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Liars. But the original no wavers saw themselves not as part of any rock continuum but a deliberate reaction against such an idea.

“A guitar player like Lydia Lunch was somebody who clearly was not coming out of any kind of tradition,” said Mr. Coley, a veteran rock critic. “She didn’t have a Chuck Berry riff in her.”

The rebelliousness came out in many ways, from song composition — nasty, brutish and short — to the movement’s name, a cynical retort to “new wave,” then emerging as a more palatable variation on punk. The looks were nerdy and androgynous (or, in Ms. Lunch’s case, menacingly oversexed).

The sound reflected the squalor and decay of downtown New York in the late ’70s.

“New York at that moment was bankrupt, poor, dirty, violent, drug-infested, sex-obsessed — delightful,” Ms. Lunch said by phone. “In spite of that we were all laughing, because you laugh or you die. I’ve always been funny. My dark comedy just happens to scare most people.”

Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley’s book emphasizes the major role that women had in the scene. Besides Ms. Lunch, they included Pat Place of the Contortions, Ikue Mori of DNA and Nancy Arlen of Mars, as well as impresario-scenesters like Anya Phillips. Many photographs were taken by women, among them Julia Gorton and Stephanie Chernikowski.

Ms. Gorton, who was a student at the Parsons School of Design in the late ’70s and now teaches there, said that everyone in the no wave circle knew one another. “There were a lot of late nights, a lot of pitchers, a lot of Polaroids,” she said.

The book’s genesis was two years ago when Mr. Moore heard that Abrams, which published “CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years From the Home of Underground Rock” in 2005, was considering a book on no wave, with a broad and multidisciplinary approach.

Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley, who said they had been considering a no wave book for years, rushed to the Abrams office to pitch their idea, which would instead have a narrow focus, excluding everything that did not meet their strict definition of no wave.

A restrictive approach to one of the most obscure periods of rock music would seem to limit a book’s audience. But Tamar Brazis, who edited both books, said there was enough interest in the period to justify the “No Wave” book, and that the depth of Mr. Moore and Mr. Coley’s knowledge bowled her over. The CBGB book, she said, has sold nearly 40,000 copies, an impressive figure for an art book, and she added that Abrams has similar expectations for “No Wave.”

Mr. Moore said that only a narrow definition would fit the genre, which was so contrary in its sound and attitude that too much outside context would dilute its impact.

“We liked the absurdity of how small it was,” he said. “We kept our parameters really tight. We needed a cut-off point, and we cut it off as soon as anybody played any semblance of rock ’n’ roll. Any kind of traditional aspect of rock, it’s over.”


Foreword by Lydia Lunch & excerpt
HERE

PHOTOGRAPHS

Icons

Photo by Roberta Bayley
Dee Dee Ramone & Richard Hell

Lil' Bow Wow

Parents, STOP THIS! Stop this now! Your kid is not a dog, get him off the leash. I don’t want to hear that you are too busy to watch your child in public. Your priorities are kid first, remembering milk second. Most of the time it’s the kids on leashes that are ignored by their parents the most. But I guess its okay that little Timmy is throwing Oreos at an employee as long as he is doing it while tied to his monkey backpack leash. JUST STOP IT.
@ 'People of Walmart'
Too true!!!

For Fox Sake Amerikkka!

David Hockney: iPriest of Art (Evening Standard 30th April 2009)

Mixed media: David Hockney in his London studio with his iPhone,
which has its own mini easel

By Geordie Greig

"Who would ever have thought that the telephone would bring back drawing," says David Hockney, who has been using an iPhone to make some of his new pictures. He has swapped paint for pixels to extend the scope of his ever-changing art.
He has only had an iPhone for four months but is an evangelical convert. Already he has painted flowers, drawn landscapes, played the keyboards on a virtual piano and, of course, spoken incessantly on the phone. His has a screechingly loud police-siren ringtone to compensate for his deafness.
Hockney also loves to use his phone to send by email his latest theories on the history of drawing, using images of Picasso to Rembrandt. "Sometimes I lie in bed and send illustrated art lectures to friends and also my own iPhone paintings. No camera is involved. I like to draw flowers by hand on the iPhone and send them out to friends so they get fresh flowers. And my flowers last! They never die!" His tip on phone-art: "You must stroke the screen very softly," he confides.
His love affair with the iPhone is single-minded. "BlackBerries are for secretaries and clerical workers while the iPhone is used by artistic people," he declares as he touches the tiny screen to show a new picture of irises, made, he declares triumphantly, without using paint, film, ink or pencil. "This is all new territory for art," he says, as he rests his iPhone on its own wooden mini easel on a table in his London studio.
Aged 71, Hockney is momentarily tongued-tied when it comes to describing his new work. "It's absurd to call it digital art. That is like calling a traditional drawing pencil art. What I can tell you is that when I am drawing on a phone or computer, I just know I am making 'drawings in a printing machine.'"
That is the title of an exhibition of his new work which opens today at the Annely Juda gallery in Mayfair. It is of pictures mostly made using a computer, camera and also painting on printouts from them. The show includes landscapes of Yorkshire and portraits of his family and friends. The pictures - a hybrid of old-fashioned draughtsmanship and hi-tech wizardry - are all for sale in limited editions of up to 30 copies.
"I used to think a computer was too slow for a draughtsman. You finished a line and the computer reacted 15 seconds later but things have changed and now you can draw very freely and fast with colour." But while Hockney loves his art wizardry he despairs at the political scene in Britain. "I am annoyed they want to interfere with my life. I am perfectly willing to pay the tax. I do mind them telling me I can't smoke. Parliament is the worst it has ever been. They debate nothing serious."
He tries to remain unfazed by what he sees as political and cultural vandalism. "It is appalling that they have spent 30 years discussing plans for education. Any party that has been discussing education for so long is bound to be swindling two generations."
He remains optimistic by making images of "things I consider beautiful. I like things that are pretty. I always have. It is good for your health. I happen to like the way that an iPhone has a sense of the absurd about it and is therefore close to life."

Rainy Night on Bridlington Promenade 2009

Autumn Leaves 2008

The View From Here (Excerpts), 2001 (Hazel Dooney/Girlz With Gunz # 81)

In 2001, when she was just 22, Hazel Dooney was invited to join nine, very well established, middle-aged Australian male artists including John Olsen, Tim Storrier, David Larwill and Robert Jacks on a privately funded artists expedition to central Australia. This unusual journey was the subject of an ABC documentary, The View From Here, excerpted here, directed by Liz Jones and produced by Jenny Day and Liz Jones, and a best-selling coffee table book, William Creek And Beyond. The resulting artworks toured museums and regional galleries all around Australia.
The resulting series of paintings, prints and photography can be viewed at Hazel Dooney's web site here.

Can anyone translate this for me?

Karroubi details new evidence of detainee abuse in Iran's prisons.
@ 'NY Times'

RIP Keith Floyd

Keith Floyd, a flamboyant chef who shared his passion for good food and fine wine with a generation of British television viewers, has died, his ghostwriter said Tuesday. He was 65. James Steen said Floyd died Monday of a heart attack in Bridport, southwest England. He had been suffering from bowel cancer. Born in 1943, Floyd developed an interest in cooking while serving in the British army, trying out his culinary creations in the officers' mess. He later worked in kitchens in Britain and France before opening his own restaurants in Bristol, southwest England, where he was discovered by a television producer. Starting in the 1980s, series like "Floyd on Fish" and "Floyd on France" made him a household name in Britain and were shown around the world. He became famous for his bow tie, ever-present glass of wine and unscripted banter with his cameraman that sometimes tipped over into bickering. Steen said one of Floyd's breakthroughs was to attract men to the world of cooking. "At that time it was thought that if you were a man you couldn't cook," Steen said. "But he said 'I'm a man, I love rugby, I love women, I can cook.'" Floyd paved the way for a generation of TV chefs that includes Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. Oliver said Floyd had been "an inspiration to me and to so many others."

Bonus: Audio
The Stranglers - Peaches (1976 Demo)

Girlz With Gunz # 80

Via 'Mogadonia' with thanx!

Before & After

Portraits of boxers before and after a fight.
Here

Spank!!! # 11 (Special 'Down Under' version)