January 26, 2012
The Cavern Club is a rock and roll club in Liverpool, England. Opened in 1957, the club had their first performance by The Beatles in 1961. Alan Sytner opened the club having been inspired by the Jazz district in Paris, where there were a number of clubs in cellars.
Sytner returned to Liverpool and wanted to open a club similar to Le Caveau in Paris. He eventually found a perfect cellar for his club — which had been used as an air raid shelter during the war. The first act to open the club was the Merseysippi Jazz Band.
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January 26, 2012
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat (for bands from Liverpool beside the River Mersey) is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul. The beat movement provided most of the bands responsible for the British invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, and provided the model for many important developments in pop and rock music, including the format of the rock group around lead, rhythm and bass guitars with drums.
The exact origins of the terms Beat music and Merseybeat are uncertain. Beat music seems to have had little to do with the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s, and more to do with driving rhythms, which the bands had adopted from their rock and roll, rhythm and blues and soul music influences. As the initial wave of rock and roll declined in the later 1950s ‘big beat’ music, later shortened to ‘beat,’ became a live dance alternative to the balladeers like Tommy Steele who was dominating the charts.
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January 26, 2012
Waterloo Sunset is a song by British rock band The Kinks. It was released as a single in 1967, and featured on their album ‘Something Else by The Kinks.’ Composed and produced by Kinks frontman Ray Davies, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ is one of the band’s best known and most acclaimed songs. The lyrics describe a solitary narrator watching (or imagining) two lovers passing over a bridge, with the melancholic observer reflecting on the couple, the Thames, and Waterloo Station.
The song was rumored to have been inspired by the romance between two British celebrities of the time, actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie. Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography, ‘It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country.’
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January 25, 2012
The New Beverly Cinema is a historic movie theater located in Los Angeles, California, United States. Housed in a theater which dates to the 1920s, it is one of the oldest revival houses in the region. The building began life as a vaudeville theater, hosting acts such as Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Jackie Gleason.
Later, the theater was converted into a nightclub called Slapsie Maxie’s, named after the boxer and silent film actor Maxie Rosenbloom. In the late 1950’s, the space was converted into a movie theater, with several incarnations. These include: The New Yorker Theater, the Europa (specializing in foreign films), the Eros (a pornographic theater) and finally the Beverly Cinema, a grindhouse (mostly shows exploitation films, so called because they ‘exploit’ often lurid subject matter such as sex, violence, race, etc.) which incorporated live nude dancing.
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January 25, 2012
Fred Tomaselli (b. 1956) is an American artist. He is best known for his highly detailed paintings on wood panels, combining an array of unorthodox materials suspended in a thick layer of clear, epoxy resin. Tomaselli is represented by the White Cube gallery in the UK and the James Cohan Gallery in the USA.
He grew up in Orange, California. He attended and graduated from Orange High School where what he has described as ‘artificial, immersive, theme park reality’ as a normal part of everyday life. The idea of a ‘contaminated’ image – one that is Post-modern in its borrowing from both high and low culture – permeates his work.
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January 24, 2012
GAMAGO is a company that was started in 2001 by Greg Long and Chris Edmundson. The pair began silkscreening t-shirts with artwork from their friends in Long’s San Francisco garage. They wanted to help promote the San Francisco art scene and distract from their day jobs. Shortly after starting, one of Long’s friends, artist Tim Biskup joined them, and printed shirts with Biskup’s Gama-Goon character.
The three of them together took the basement hobby and turned it into a company. In 2006, Tim Biskup ceased his creative involvement with the company. In 2006, GAMAGO shifted their focus from apparel to gifts for the home and kitchen. 2009 saw the release of The Flipper, a guitar shaped spatula. The success of The Flipper.
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January 24, 2012
Tim Biskup (b. 1967) is an American artist generally considered to be a part of the group that has been dubbed ‘lowbrow’ or pop surrealism. His free-spirited style recalls 1950s storybook illustration, with bright colors and whimsical shapes unrestricted by the black outlining typically used in character design.
He works with playful and vibrant psychedelic imagery in the pop-design genre that emerged in the late 20th century through such diverse media as silkscreening, textile production, and rotocast vinyl. He is also a significant contributor to the ‘GAMA-GO’ clothing line. However, Tim has stated on his website that he has ceased involvement with the company. Tim works closely with ex wife Seonna Hong, with whom he has a daughter named Tigerlily.
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January 21, 2012
Soulwax, headed by David and Stephen Dewaele, are an alternative rock/electronic band from Ghent, Belgium. They were first noticed after the release of their album ‘Much Against Everyone’s Advice.’ But after that the Dewaeles started focusing on their other projects such as The Flying Dewaele Brothers and 2manydjs, but also hosting a show on Belgian television, ‘Alter8.’ Other than the Dewaele brothers, Soulwax also includes bassist Stefaan Van Leuven and drummer Steve Slingeneyer. The 2004 album ‘Any Minute Now’ spawned three singles in ‘E Talking,’ ‘NY Excuse,’ and the title track. ‘E Talking’s’ music video was controversial and restricted to post-watershed broadcast on music television channels (typically late at night). Set in London’s Fabric nightclub, everyone in the video is depicted as being on a different drug, from A-Z (including popular drug nicknames).
The duo has also produced a number of official and unofficial remixes, including ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’ and ‘Get Innocuous!’ by LCD Soundsystem, ‘Robot Rock’ by Daft Punk and ‘DARE’ by Gorillaz. David and Stephen are friends of artists Tiga, LCD Soundsystem and Whomadewho. The only official compilation ‘As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2,’ was released in 2002 and is composed of 45 tracks the Dewaele brothers were able to clear the rights from. They originally requested rights for 187 tracks and got clearances for 114 of them. 62 were refused and 11 remained untraceable.
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January 15, 2012
Major Lazer is a collaborative musical project from DJ/Producers Diplo and Switch. Made up of DJs Diplo and Switch, the two were introduced after working with M.I.A..
The duo’s first album ‘Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do’ was released in 2009, on Downtown Records. It was recorded in Jamaica at Tuff Gong Studios. Vocalists such as Santigold, Vybz Kartel, Ward 21, Busy Signal, Nina Sky, Amanda Blank, Mr. Vegas, Turbulence, Mapei, T.O.K, Prince Zimboo, Leftside and others contribute guest vocals to the album, as well as additional production from Afrojack and Crookers.
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January 15, 2012
Ester Hernandez (b. 1944) is a Chicana visual artist known for her pastels, paintings and prints primarily depicting Chicanas/Latinas. Her artwork captures time, and makes sense of the complex world we live in. She aspires to create a visual dialogue for women’s role in this new multi-cultural millennium. Her work reflects the political, social, ecological, and spiritual themes born from community pride, a commitment to political action, and an abiding sense of humor.
As a solo artist and member of Las Mujeres Muralistas, an influential San Francisco Mission district Latina women mural group in the early seventies, her career has marked her as a pioneer in the Chicana/Chicano civil rights art movement.
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January 15, 2012
Tenacious D is an American rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1994. Composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Jack Black and lead guitarist and vocalist Kyle Gass, the band has released two albums – ‘Tenacious D’ (2001) and ‘The Pick of Destiny’ (2006). The band’s studio releases and live performances feature a full band lineup, including such musicians as guitarist John Konesky, bassist John Spiker and Bad Religion drummer Brooks Wackerman.
The band originally performed as an acoustic duo, which gained popularity in 1999 when they starred in their eponymous television series and began to support large rock acts. Tenacious D’s music showcases Black’s theatrical vocal delivery and Gass’s acoustic guitar playing abilities. Critics have described their fusion of vulgar absurdist comedy with rock music as ‘mock rock.’ Their songs discuss the duo’s purported musical and sexual prowess, as well as their friendship and cannabis usage in a style that music critics have compared with the storyteller-style lyrics of rock opera.
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January 15, 2012
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. The event starts on the Monday before Labor Day, and ends on the holiday itself. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.
Burning Man is organized by Black Rock City, LLC. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man. In 2011, attendance was capped at 50,000 participants. In 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the Org had begun the process of transitioning management of the festival over to a new non-profit called the ‘Burningman Project.’
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