VoTD: Sky Ferreira – One
Posted by zeruch in Uncategorized on August 29, 2010
So I am always happy to see Portuguese-American talent that isn’t doing cheesy Jorge Ferreira nonsense (which the diaspora seems to eat up for reasons that make no damn logic at all). So here is up and coming electro-pop hipster Sky Ferreira (no relation to Jorge I hope).
In copyright, the most pertinent question..
Posted by zeruch in Uncategorized on August 26, 2010
…is not necessarily the following, but this is indeed a very good one to ask:
I can say from my perspective, no. That is, I believe in the idea of copyright and in the enforceement thereof, but not to the rather contorted degree some have chosen to push towards.
And given the explosion of new original creative works (as well as derivatives/mash-ups, etc) both under traditional copyright, the public domain, Creative Commons, FOSS licensing, etc, I am not the only one. Far from it.
Work in Progress: Xiao
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts on August 23, 2010
A quartet of iterations, with the first likely release still a bit off. It’s Xiao (aka Debra Beretta)
Barefootage
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts, linkedin on August 23, 2010
The remaining pieces are up at the Barefoot Coffee Bar, and so far the response has been positive. Thanks to Steven Lorenzen for his coordination (and banter on the merits of various Linux distros) this go around, and to Kate Saturday for always having been a keen supporter and easy person to work with.
Pictured here is some extra shots of the second wall I occupy, the bars in house phonograph (which I am far more impressed with than you might suspect) and some developmental pieces that almost made it onto the walls.
Lessig on Asphyxiating Effects of Copyright on Creatives
Posted by zeruch in Law, Politics, Technology, linkedin on August 22, 2010
I am a firm advocate for IP rights, but I agree with the general sentiment that the continuous extensions and abuses of legislation like the DMCA (and the onerous narrative that is ACTA) need to be reigned in if not tapped out altogether.
Developmental sketch: Danielle
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts on August 18, 2010
The advantage of having worked at an art community site is that you can do things like doodle your former boss (in this case, the head of A&R at DevArt, Danielle Ward) and you don’t get in trouble or funny looks for it.
Done with an unknown brand of Japanese brush pen on Wausau 96 pound off-white bristol. This will definitely evolve over time, as I have a few ideas on the next layers of media that will go on this.
VoTD: Fenech-Soler – Stop & Stare
Posted by zeruch in Uncategorized on August 17, 2010
Found these fellows via my Last.fm account while using Penguin Prison as a starting point. The production is a little brittle in the mid-range, but the overall sound and the almost club-anthem synths work with the hook.
Sketch: Mark Holub of Led Bib
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on August 15, 2010
I was reading a great one page write up in Jazzwise about how the In a Silent Way album by Miles Davis changed drummer Mark Holub’s life (it changed mine as well, hence the interest). The profile image is this campy number of him with a newsboy cap and an unlit pipe that I started working from.
I did not get very far, but it was a brief but fun diversion. Ballpoint pen, Tombo brush pens, some gouache, and a small amount of color touch-up in PS CS3.
BTW, his band Led Bib, is really a great bit of electric jazz-rock noise that deserve your attentive ears.
Outside Lands
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on August 15, 2010
Day One
- Missed watching The Pimps of Joytime (even though I wore pants most suited to such an occasion) and only heard the last moments of Gogol Bordello (but those moments were very full of win mind you).
- Lunch was from Farmer Brown’s Little Skillet: fried chicken, waffle, red velvet cupcake. Not very healthy, but that is not what you at that for.
- A mint mojito iced coffee from Philz. I do not usually do coffee any way beyond plain black, but this was a pleasant departure.
- Dessert came in the form of a bittersweet chocolate number from Three Twins Ice Cream.
- The Rebirth Brass Band was quite impressive, including a cover of LeVert’s Casanova that goes well beyond the arrangement limitations of the original. The growth of a kind of regional sub-genre in New Orleans that merges second line jazzy brass with hip-hop and soul inflections is something anyone can enjoy casually, and for more studied ears brings new things with additional listens. Not sure if I like these guys as much as Youngblood Brass, but they are pretty close.
- Big surprise discovery for me was Beats Antique; part burlesque/belly dancing sideshow, part electronica meets middle-eastern expedition (think electric oud, clarient and accordion in the lineup), part percussive dance party, all awesome.
- Dinner was some “Argentinian BBQ” from Primo’s Parilla, and it was mad good. This was followed by more coffee -this time plain black, this time from Sabores del Sur.
- Wolfmother was ok, but oddly reminded me of Billy Squier live a lot, but when they did a cover of Riders on the Storm by The Doors they really came alive.
- Tokyo Police Club surprised me; they are still a tad dull in terms of stage presence but they sound much better live than they do on record.
- Bassnectar; not a lot to see, but you can certainly feel the vibe (mostly from the low end) they bring to an event. I love dirty, skeezy synth bass and monolithic breakbeats, and they provided an ample amount of both.
- Thanks to my buddy Vishal for the ride back into town and for hanging out during part of the Cat Power and The Strokes gigs.
- Outside the venue were scads of very haggard hippy wannabes selling “Ganja Candies” and the like. These people look less likely to “Make Love Not War” and more like “Make Scam, And Run”. Smelly little patchouli punks.
Day Two
- Only stayed a few hours; both K and I were pretty tired from yesterday I suppose, and just didn’t have the gusto for a full second day of OL.
- Al Green was a bit of a disappointment, with the venue just not suited to the kind of soul revue he does best. Singing tunes like Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman wasn’t what we came for either. When he did sing though, it is safe to say that the Reverend still has chops and knows how to take the stage.
- Chromeo was excellent. Pat Gemayel’s use of the talkbox may put him as the only true sonic heir to Roger Troutman (and I am not saying that casually).
- Phoenix sounded quite good, as did Garage a Trois (the latter of which really comes off as some strain of Zappa meets the MC5 meets Ornette Coleman on major psychoactive drugs) which I kind of ex[pected. The surprises were how engaging The Temper Trap were and Janelle Monae wasn't (she also was annoyingly late). Amusingly, the very diva-esque Monae was later spotted in full regalia roving past us on the back of a dusty golf cart. It was an interesting juxtapositioning of random with WTF.
- Tacos from El Huarache Loco, jambalaya from Anchor & Hope, and more Philz coffee. All good, son.
- Sadly, I left the storage card for my camera back home, and have no images from the second day. Ah well...
DevArt 10th Bash
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Observations, Out and About, Pop Culture, Visual Arts on August 10, 2010
The Missus and I left for Los Angeles late Friday evening and arrived at our hotel room sometime just before 3AM. Sleep came quickly, and morning involved a slow start and meandering pace up through lunch.
Speaking of lunch; to the woman who was our waitress…your perfunctory service suited our needs, but whatever weird eyeliner you had made you look like a heroin-addicted raccoon. Stop that.
Arriving at the House of Blues shortly after opening we were greeted secondly by my old boss, Danie, but first by Llamas. Not Lorenzo…just llamas. Two of them.
To be honest, I was much happier to be greeted by Danie, but the llamas were ok too. Got nothing against llamas, but Danie is a lot more likable, and she doesn’t spit arbitrarily.
While there were several panels, the one that I thought was the most significant was the public debut of Muro. A month ago I was at the DA HQ and got a sneak-peek at it with Angelo and Zack and I was floored. That being said, the polish and final additions they put in that months time were notable, and the final product is -and I am not prone to saying things like this often- something that changes the landscape not just a bit.
Seeing Stanley Lau do a quick demo with it also made me want to pull out my Pepper developmental sketches and complete at least one of them, maybe via Muro.
Most of the Bash was spent just catching up with old friends, and making new ones. I had not seen Danie or Richard or Bryan in ages (at the DevArt Summit at the Palladium in 2005), and I finally got to meet Keir and Stykera (who I now know is a fellow fan of Andy Patridge).
We ate “dinner” (read: bar food) with Spot, Penguino and Silvein, and cruised the floor running into ever more interesting folks (which admitedly is kind of expected and part of the reason you go in the first place). Also, nice to meet y’all (Mel, Rin, and anyone I may be missing).
The entire House of Blues was under DA control, and it was laid out with art and tools to make art (as it should be), with print galleries, Muro-stations (including a few using the Wacom Cintiqs) and an arts & crafts room. Of note, the third floor VIP Lounge is an amazing place with really cool crown moulding and stained glass. This was a great venue to have this kind of party in.
It was an incredibly well planned and executed little soiree. Kudos to everyone involved and my own thanks to everyone who attended. I still feel like DA is a real “social network” of people with a core set of interests (instead of just an aggregation of stuff), and I still feel like it has much more to offer than any of the comparable options available.
Looking forward to the eleventeenth bash.
Of note; spent the taxi ride home talking with the cabby (Armenian apparently) who really hated Turks and felt compelled to tell me about it in lurid detail. There was also something about St. Sargis, Kurds, and the beauty of the Russian language. I was not inebriated, however he may have been.
Also of note -and I wish I took a picture of it- was a huge sign on the freeway with a phone number and the words “I NEED DIRT“. Now realize this was in an agricultural area. There is lots of dirt there. I am wondering if the fellow with the sign just expects some random dude to call him and exclaim “NOW do I have some plenty heapin’ good dirt for ya!” or maybe “Sir, I do believe I may be -as a classy purveyor of fine soil products- be able to provision you with the dirt you seek.” but the sign was very LOL. Seriously, how do you arrive at the point in your life where you need to announce that, with your phone number attached, on a large sign at the shoulder of a major traffic artery.
Random Bits for 2010-08-09
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About on August 10, 2010
Dinner and a local jazz trio at the CODA supperclub (they took my request for some Headhunters), a bird caught during the morning commute, and one of my more recent works printed door-size.
@Barefoot Coffee Bar this Month
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Visual Arts, linkedin on August 5, 2010
While I have been suffering some logistical snafus all around, I managed to get part of a display up at Barefoot this evening.
I’ll be showing all of August, and I may rotate some pieces out midstream (I will definitely be adding some more in later next week), with most of the work being more recent items, as well as some developmental sketches.
Marks against Public Transportation #7834756
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Out and About on August 2, 2010
I am normally a big advocate of trains/public transport, but…new (old) rule: do NOT make eye contact with weirdo smelly felon transients on the lightrail (this means you, colleague who broke aforementioned rule when I was standing next to you in a VTA Lightrail car); the last thing I want on my morning commute is some guy that smells like Satan peed on him rambling to us about his prior convictions, dodging bail, ranting about Police all being on meth, and bragging about a squeeze toy he’s been carrying around named “Pierre”.
VoTD: Rita Redshoes
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 31, 2010
A Portuguese artist that sings primarily in English, Rita Redshoes (aka Rita Pereira) has a fun, earthy alt-pop sound.
The video has some quirky choreography that reminds me of stuff Toni Basil may have done in the 80s.
Album review: Vernon Reid – Mistaken Identity
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds on July 30, 2010
I wrote this initially a long time ago for my original music blog, but figured I’d report it here and clean up a few formatting errors (and add a picture).
Vernon Reid
Mistaken Identity
1996 Sony550/Epic
Produced by Prince Paul, Teo Macero & Vernon Reid
Personnel:
Vernon Reid – guitars (both real and imagined), whispering
Masque:
Don Byron – clarinet, bass clarinet
DJ Logic – turntables
Leon Gruenbaum – samchillian tip tip tip cheeepeee, theremin, melodica
Curtis Watts – drums
Hank Schroy – bass, fretless bass
Additional personnel:
Lawrence Fishburne, Sekou Sundiata – spoken word
Graham Haynes – cornet
The Crazy Baldheads – percussion
Beans, Chubb Rock – raps
When I first picked up and listened to Mistaken Identity, I had been anxious for years. The album was Vernon’s debut with his name only on the marquis, and it had been delayed over 2 years. Rumors were few, because no one had any idea what on earth he had planned. By the time it made it to shelves, no one knew what to do with it.
Had this type of album been released in 1969-1970, it would have been placed on the same footing as Bitches Brew or A Tribute To Jack Johnson, by Miles Davis. This album is a colossal explosion of power, a calamity of finesse, and an atomization of primal force suited up in the finest arrangements.
It was also an album released to no promotion, by an artist who had been laying very low for a few years, and in the beginning of the era that we have now in terms of the music industry: if we do not know how to categorize it, we will ignore it.
And no one would have known what the hell this thing is. I love this album, have listened to it from every perspective, and still have my doubts as to what it really is.
Just looking at the line-up, you have a mix of some of NYCs finest underground avant-garde jazz and funk players, some serious heavy hitters in the production chairs, and a cross section of stylists brought together into one mans kaleidoscopic musical tour de force. No style or method was taboo, and nothing was played safe. This album is one of the 10 greatest albums in my collection of thousands, and is one of the top 5 of the 1990s as far as I am concerned.
Vernon came off the then dissolution of his band Living Colour, and took fragments of what he had done within LC (as well as his various session work and his stints in bands like Defunkt and Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society) and produced a form of Attention Deficit inspired sound collage and frenetic collisions of spiralling aural chaos. This is an album for someone that wants to sample all the sections of the music store in one go, but in a way that everything works.
This album works, both in that many tracks work on their own, but that in their wildly divergent characters, they actually produce a rather interesting collective result. It is King Crimson and James Brown and Bad Brains and DJ Shadow and Nirvana and Eric Dolphy and Zappa and Blaxploitation films and Stanley Kubrick musically interpreted paranoia and the kitchen sink and some of the adjacent plumbing as well as the main line back to the city resovoir. There is some underground hip hop, campy spoken word interludes, biting situational skits (including one as a bonus track), strange noises, serrated riffing, angular solos and the only time that clarinet and industrial have been melded in a way that works. This is the ultimate indie album.
The album was never followed up with a successor. Vernon’s sophomore album, while very impressive in its own right, was a much more straight ahead, linear affair. The closest you get to a natural heir to this is his debut under the Yohimbe Bros. moniker (with DJ Logic oddly enough), Front End Lifter.
Iran Navy Makes Rather Shallow Claims
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Politics, Technology on July 25, 2010
The Navy Times pubbed something on a recent statement by the former chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards,
We have set aside 100 military vessels for each (U.S.) warship to attack at the time of necessity,
Set aside? You mean they are just sitting idle now and have nothing to do? The statement borders on absurd if for no other reason that it is worded in a way that presumes some kind of parity. If I sent 100 rowboats and fishing trawlers against a single U.S OHP class frigate, I’m still quite certain who is going to prevail in such an altercation.
While I won’t sell short the actual fact that Iran has a respectably trained naval contingent and is actually focused on defense (it is less a true navy and more of the Persian equivalent to the Coast Guard in terms of ability and role), it has historically been small, and has no real striking capacity outside the Strait of Hormuz. They do have some Russian built submarines and destroyers, but no capital ships and limited overall profile in terms of striking ability.
For Gen. Morteza Saffari to make such a claim (assuming it isn’t really bad translation) is somewhere between histrionic and asinine.
This tendency for certain governments to engage in really bizarre PR theatrics would be laughable if it didn’t hint at a dangerous level of insularity and paranoia. The most comedic example of such behavior would probably be Baghdad Bob (actually known as the former Iraqi Information Minister محمد سعيد الصحاف, and prone to some truly bizarre statements, although Kim Jong-Il is not too far behind) but the flipside is that this still throws an uncomfortable light on those distinctions between what has been called procedural v. instrumental rationality…how we deal with political actors based on being able to discern what their actual decision space is, versus projecting our own convenient assumptions about them (or buying into without qualification what they are trying to project to us).
Salt
Posted by zeruch in Uncategorized on July 24, 2010
I’m a sucker for a good espionage-ish type action film. Salt fulfilled what I needed from it. Jolie was great and I liked the supporting players like Liev Schriber and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
QoTD: Gideon Rachman on certain wonkish persons
Specialists in nuclear deterrence occupy a world that requires the coldly rational contemplation of completely insane courses of action.
FT 2010-07-20 Britain’s Nuclear Choice can be cheap and scary
…me.Works in Progress
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Visual Arts on July 19, 2010
So, I have my slot for next month at Barefoot, and want a lot of new stuff to be there; trying to finish as many random things that have been floating for week and months (and in a few cases years) in the next two weeks.
Inception
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Film, Out and About, Pop Culture on July 18, 2010
10 observations about Inception
1. It isn’t as original and groundbreaking and cerebral as Bladerunner, as jarringly flashy as The Matrix, or as epic as almost any Kurosawa film, but it borrows all the right elements from all of those and gives us what is possibly the most intriguing film of the decade.
2. The casting of this film is the best outsized cast since Soderberg made the Ocean’s franchise work magic. DiCaprio may be the leading man, but it’s the net chemistry of this ensemble that makes the film work so well. Some are obvious; Ken Watanabe commands attention in any scene he is in, and Tom Hardy is a complete scene stealer, and even smaller roles -Pete Postelwaite stands out- are properly defined and portrayed. But Ellen Page is a great foil as a female who is talented and intelligent but not set into the Angelina Jolie uber-babe or the totally helpless naif, and Cillian Murphy as the neutral hue of eveyone’s interest were unexpected yet exactly appropriate. Even Tom Berenger, whose presence was a total surprise, was suited to his part.
3. Moving from #2, Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are bound for great things. Those guys are serious contenders for being new iterations of of Pitt, DiCaprio or Ledger.
4. The literal tone of the film; I rarely see films with subdued color palettes look right. The Book of Eli and Children of Men were rare examples used correctly in a dry, bleak way. Inception does the opposite and makes every scene seem both crystalline in its clarity yet very lush. This is a truly beautiful film without just being insane eye candy.
5. It isn’t complex for it’s own sake and it doesn’t insult the viewers intelligence. That is an amazing feat by itself.
6. It is the first film that makes me want to go back to the theater and see it again right away. That is rare. Part of that has to do with the possibility that I could reinterpret different parts of the film differently even though I’ve seen it already.
7. The film was way too overhyped. That is not to say this isn’t an epic, amazing film, but that what it was portrayed to be was a standard no one could meet (or arguably should meet). A film cannot be so many things to so many people without suffering depth or breadth. Instead we get a compacting of what is generally accepted working for major blockbusters and wrapped in layers of interesting stuff. Some of it is quite inventive and the film should stand by its own defined territory.
8. Michael Caine, even if he only speaks a handful of lines, is a pimp. The man can do no wrong.
9. I like that the use of CGI was kept to a minimum, and when it was used, it was seamless. It felt so natural in the way it helped the viewer suspend disbelief that my normal habit of pondering all the ‘faults’ I was actually fully immersed in the alternate realities director Christopher Nolan constructs and reshapes almost arbitrarily.
10. Inception does not need a sequel, but it deserves follow ups in more films that try to do something other than bombard the senses with expensive retinal amphetamines or dull the senses with rehashing old franchises or making insipid rom-coms or anything with Dane Cook (who frankly should never be allowed in front of a camera or microphone ever again).
Work in Progress: Jesidangerously
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Visual Arts on July 16, 2010
Just something I got around to beginning to rework from a previous attempt (at least a year ago).
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Out of Noise
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 14, 2010
I have had this on rotation intermittently since it was first released, and it occupies a really nice pivot in the relentless explorations of Sakamoto. It bears earmarks of his cinematic scores in spots, the minimalism of his collaborations with Alva Noto, and even some of the more subdued moments he has recorded with David Sylvian, but it sits well as its own statement.
The opening nine minute Hibari is an almost Steve Reichian bit of taking a seemingly simple motif and repeating it with never ending subtle variations until it takes on a melancholic kind of pulse. A lot of the electronic drones and washes have a certain grit that prevents any new-age flatness. If anything, the lushness is hidden behind a thin veil of the aforementioned austerity. Closing track Composition 0919 is also very Reich-like, but is arguably the only aggressive, staccato cut, and it closes the album.
Depending on how your ears arrive at it, this album could be music for nocturnes, or a soundtrack for elegaic winter mornings. In the Red really made me think of the latter; like it’s something I should have playing while drinking black coffee while looking out a window into a gray morning near the shore of some rainy beach.
Tama is the closest that the album comes to something sounding more sinister and menacing than sad or plaintive. It is held together by a lot of found sounds and minor key swells, and it would be very suitable for a David Lynch film.
For all its austerity, I find myself never getting irritated or bored with Out of Noise; the tone of his piano performances, and the fluidity of his phrasing is some of the best in his long career. The arrangements he chooses are emotive and rich, even when at the most ambient and seemingly ready to dissipate moments. Some of the emotional capital is tucked in loosely under pithy, occasionally scattered snippets of sounds and pads. It is graceful music, sometimes -I find shortsightedly- called “cinematic” (a term seemingly used by most others for tunes that people think belong in an art film but aren’t symphonic/classical enough for their tastes otherwise) when really its probably better to say that under the right environment, it becomes narrative music, making you tell a story to yourself…out of the noise.
Jojo Mayer v2
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Sounds, Visual Arts on July 9, 2010
This one may end up colored/painted/thrashed or I may leave it this way; I started drawing one head shot and then scads of hand/stick/drum/cymbals to overlay but so far this is the only configuration that has worked.
This is Jojo Mayer, who is probably the greatest technically accomplished drummer since Buddy Rich,and whose musical span is pretty wide: Screaming Headless Torsos, Nerve, Me’Shell Ndegeocello and others, covering an approach that is both hypertechnical, yet accessible and not overtly flashy.
Here is a sample of Nerve: [link]
And here with Depart: [link]
Ways to Self-Amuse (at the expense of others)
Posted by zeruch in Observations, Out and About on July 9, 2010
Most of you know I have a bit of a wicked streak in me, whether its for humorous or more sinister ends. This was a little of both.
I am tired, just finished the first part of my commute by bike across the Vasona trail and on lightrail. I am standing next to three seated youths (I’m guess maybe just shy of legal drinking age) blathering very loudly about ways to fornicate repeatedly by “dime a dozen chicks” at Chico State. They ramble about:
1. how to mix remnants of various colognes into one mega-aphrodesiac scent that anything with a vagina is powerless against.
2. how British accents help you “get laid”
Of course they are saying this all loudly in a mostly full car of people, and at one point they decide to try this little technique on a woman who comes into the tram on the next stop. They get about 45 seconds into their pitch when she asks “Are you really from Eng-land?” and this is when I cannot compel myself to stay quiet.
I know two things about most Americans and The Queens English; they ape the English accent really badly (mixing usually some bad movie villain stammer with a little arbitrary cockney for pointlessness), and that they otherwise can’t tell between any British accent from any other British accent from a slap upside their dome most days. The presumption seems to be that even though in the US has many regional variants , that no other place would.
While I am not great at it, I -after years of knowing quite a few folks from the island across the Atlantic, and an occasional business trip- can ape a decent generic London-ese (minus the aforementioned Guy Ritchie film cockney…well, maybe a little, because using the word “sum-fing” is just fun). At the very least I can maintain the same inflections consistently long enough to convincingly befuddle.
So anyway, as soon as she is giving a look of scrutiny I swoop in with an ever so deadpan delivery and go
Ya know, while the effert is admirable, I don’t think you’d fool anyone. You seem a bit naff actuelly
This of course, brings the entire car to a flat silence. I smirk, one of the guys tries to stay cool and goes “You really from England?” and I maintain the farce for another full two minutes, talking about how the inflection of British English is nowhere near the over-emphatic theatrics they were, etc. etc.
It was an Oscar performance I tell you. Anthony Hopkins does not have a damn thing on me. I got off at the next stop and proceeded to laugh uncontrollably for a few seconds before one of the other folks who got off at the same stop realized I what I pulled and congratulated me on my social engineering.
Ah…easy entertainment at the expense of dum-dums.
A Stone on the Corner
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Out and About, Pop Culture, Sounds on July 8, 2010
Halfway down the first leg of my commute on the Vasona trail last week, I burst my back tire and had to hoof it to the Lightrail station. But before I got there, I sidetracked on a whim to On The Corner Records, where they had stacks of vinyl and cd’s from a purging at college radio station KSCU (Santa Clara University).
As I filleted through the selections, I noticed the person the proprietor was having a conversation with sounded very familiar. So familiar I felt compelled to wedge into the exchange and “ask a stupid question”…was he who I thought he sounded like?
It was, in fact, exactly who I thought it was…Greg Stone.
Yes, Greg Stone, of Stone Trek, was hanging out at On The Corner. Stone Trek was the radio show I listened to uninterrupted the longest; from about the age of 12 to my early 20s, I gorged once a week on a buffet of prog and jazz-fusion, which included my first exposure to bands like Giraffe, Marillion, King Crimson, Gamelon and Allan Holdsworth. Greg seemed to know everyone in those scenes and could get them to visit and/or play unreleased or bootleg material regularly. Somewhere I still have a live version of Giraffe’s This Warm Night on a TDK cassette that I consider a personal favorite, recorded off his radio show, as well as bootleg GTR, and other esoterica.
We ended up talking for the better part of an hour about his salad days at KOME, the more recent run at KFOX (abruptly brought to a close for reasons that make no sense, since he was #1 in his time slot for rock stations in the area) and about random bands like Pete Bardens, Genesis, and Kevin Gilbert.
It was one of those really strange moments when someone you listened to religiously on the radio -no face to the voice for all those years- all of a sudden materializes in a rather startling way. In a cool way actually, but nonetheless totally randomly.
New illustration: Mekanixa – Miss Boux v5
Posted by zeruch in Aesthetics, Pop Culture, Visual Arts on July 6, 2010
Steampunkish robotic fun.
I still do not think I am done with this, but I want to work on the other variant I have on the desk (as well as a few other working pieces, including one for a friend’s home)
This is a radically reworked bit of biomechanical madness, with the reference model being Andrea Boux.
I would not have even gone down this route initially, as I planned to do a more traditional portraiture, but when I noticed the electrical socket on the wall of the ref image, my head kind of wandered in this direction.
pencil, acrylic ink, gouache, granulation medium & some digital post processing.
Travelogue: San Andreas & Sawyer Camp Trails
Posted by zeruch in Out and About on July 6, 2010
The holiday weekend was extended into Tuesday, and the Missus and I hoofed it up the San Andreas and Sawyer Camp Trails the past few days, as well as some streetside dining at a local Shawerma & Falafel joint.
During the Sawyer walk we encountered several deer (and as you can see above, got quite close to one pair), one rather large garter snake (if you look real hard in one of the images, you can spot it) numerous blue birds with black mohawk -like tufts (don’t know the species) and a few scuttling lizards. We passed by the dam, but didn’t go far enough to see the big Jepson Laurel.