October 15, 2013
Mothra is a kaiju, a type of fictional monster who first appeared in the serialized novel ‘The Luminous Fairies and Mothra.’ Since her film début in the 1961 film ‘Mothra,’ she has appeared in several Toho tokusatsu films. Mothra is a giant lepidopteran with characteristics both of butterflies and of moths.
She closely resembles an Inachis io, or a European Peacock Butterfly, but it is said that the Atlas moth is its inspiration. The name ‘Mothra’ is the suffixation of ‘-ra’ (a common last syllable in kaiju names (e.g. ‘Goji-ra’ [Godzilla]) to ‘moth’; since the Japanese language does not have dental fricatives, it is approximated ‘Mosura’ in Japanese.
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October 11, 2013
5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin’ or the 5Pointz Aerosol Art Center, Inc. is an outdoor art exhibit space in Long Island City, New York, considered to be the world’s premiere ‘graffiti Mecca,’ where aerosol artists from around the globe paint colorful pieces on the walls of a 200,000-square-foot factory building.
The complex was first established as the ‘Phun Phactory’ in 1993 by Pat DiLillo under a program called ‘Graffiti Terminators’ to discourage graffiti vandalism by encouraging artists to display their work in a formal showcase. In 2002, Jonathan Cohen, a graffiti artist operating under the name ‘Meres’ began curating the work. If he is not familiar with an artist, Cohen will ask for a sample of their work; if it is a mural, he will ask for a layout as well.
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October 10, 2013
‘Phantom of the Paradise‘ is a 1974 American musical film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The story is a loosely adapted mixture of ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ and ‘Faust.’
It was panned by critics and failed at the box office, but has since acquired a cult following. Its music was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
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October 8, 2013
Northern soul is a music and dance movement that emerged, initially in Northern England in the late 1960s, from the British mod scene (a youth subculture). Northern soul is devoted to American soul music based on the heavy beat and fast tempo of the mid-1960s Tamla Motown sound.
The movement, however, generally eschews Motown or Motown-influenced music that has met with significant mainstream success. The recordings most prized by enthusiasts of the genre are usually by lesser-known artists, and were initially released only in limited numbers, often by small regional United States labels such as Ric-Tic and Golden Records (Detroit), Mirwood (Los Angeles) and Shout and Okeh (New York/Chicago).
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October 4, 2013
George Grosz [grohs] (1893 – 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1933.
According to art critic Robert Hughes: ‘In Grosz’s Germany, everything and everybody is for sale. All human transactions, except for the class solidarity of the workers, are poisoned. The world is owned by four breeds of pig: the capitalist, the officer, the priest and the hooker, whose other form is the sociable wife. He was one of the hanging judges of art.’
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September 26, 2013
‘The Adventures of Pete & Pete‘ was an American children’s television series produced by Wellsville Pictures and broadcast by Nickelodeon than ran from 1993 to 1996. The show featured humorous and surreal elements in its narrative, and many recurring themes centered on two brothers both named Pete Wrigley, and their various interactions with family, friends, and enemies.
The show was created by Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi and began as minute-long shorts in 1989 that aired in between regular programs. Owing to the popularity of the shorts, five half-hour specials were made, followed by a regular half-hour series.
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September 24, 2013
‘Thought for Food‘ is The Books’ first album. It contains all the characteristic elements of their sound: rich and varied sampling from a variety of mundane and instrumental sources combined into songs. In 2000, The Books started work on what would become their début album.
Guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong moved locations constantly during this time, recording in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and finally in the basement of a hostel in North Carolina where Zammuto worked for a while after hiking the Appalachian Trail. The album was released in 2002 and was praised by critics for its distinctive sound: extensive sampling from obscure sources coupled with acoustic instrumentation.
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September 24, 2013
‘Music for a French Elevator and Other Short Format Oddities by The Books‘ is a 2006 release by NY electronic duo The Books. It is a compendium on mini CD of four pieces created for the ‘1%’ art and sound installation in the Ministry of Culture in Paris, France in 2004.
The pieces were created to be played in the elevator of the Ministry, giving the release its title. Following the initial four tracks (those designed for the elevator) are ‘several ‘classic’ spoken word tracks’ taken from The Books’ sample libraries.
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September 24, 2013
The Books were an American duo consisting of guitarist and vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong. Their releases typically incorporated samples of obscure sounds and speech. They released three critically acclaimed albums on the German label Tomlab, and released their fourth studio album, ‘The Way Out,’ on Temporary Residence Limited in 2010.
Zammuto and de Jong met in New York City in 1999 as they shared the same apartment building. De Jong invited Zammuto to dinner at his apartment, where he played him some of his collection of audio and video samples, including a Shooby Taylor scat record. Zammuto said of their meeting that ‘we both kind of knew at that moment that we listened (to music) in interesting ways and had similar approaches to music.’ Soon after, they began playing what they considered to be pop music, in comparison to their own works, under the name ‘The Books.’
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September 21, 2013
Erwin Wurm (b. 1954) is an Austrian artist; since the late 1980s, he has developed an ongoing series of ‘One Minute Sculptures,’ in which he poses himself or his models in unexpected relationships with everyday objects close at hand, prompting the viewer to question the very definition of sculpture. He seeks to use the ‘shortest path’ in creating a sculpture — a clear and fast, sometimes humorous, form of expression. As the sculptures are fleeting and meant to be spontaneous and temporary, the images are only captured in photos or on film.
Most Recently, Erwin Wurm has worked on a series of sculpture titled ‘Fat Car,’ which depict ‘puffy, obese, life-size sculptures that bulge like overfilled sacks.’ The first of this series was developed with Opel designers but they were unsuccessful in achieving the kind of shape that Wurm had in mind. In order to create the quality of fat, the artist uses polyurethane foam and styrofoam covered with lacquer.
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September 20, 2013
‘See You Next Wednesday‘ is a recurring gag in most of the films directed by John Landis, usually referring to a fictional film that is rarely seen and never in its entirety. Each instance seems to be a completely different film. Landis got the title from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’; it is the last line spoken by Frank Poole’s father during Poole’s videophone conversation.
In Landis’ first film, ‘Schlock’ (1973), SYNW is mentioned twice and shown as a poster. Brief casting and plot descriptions are given each time it is mentioned, making it clear that this is in fact two different films both titled ‘See You Next Wednesday.’ In the sketch comedy film ‘The Kentucky Fried Movie’ (1977), the film is a melodrama presented in ‘Feel-Around,’ a technique where an usher stands behind each movie patron and does things to them as they occur in the film, enhancing the movie-going experience, at least until the scene where the woman puts a knife to the man’s throat.
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September 18, 2013
The I-V-vi-IV progression (the pop-punk chord progression) is a common chord progression popular across several genres of music. It involves the I, V, vi, and IV chords; for example, in the key of C major, this would be: C-G-Am-F. The V is often replaced by iii (‘Price Tag’), III (‘If We Ever Meet Again’ chorus), ii (‘Halo’), I (‘Doesn’t Mean Anything’), bVII (‘Firework’ first verse), II (‘Try Too Hard’ by P!nk), IV (‘I Gotta Feeling’).
It can also be used in the form vi-IV-I-V, which was dubbed the ‘sensitive female chord progression’ by Boston Globe Columnist Marc Hirsh. In C major this would be Am-F-C-G (Am-F-C-G/B voicing is very common in modern pop music). Hirsh first noticed the chord progression in the song ‘One of Us’ by Joan Osborne. He claimed it was used by many members of the Lilith Fair in the late 1990s.
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