Last night at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. Silver Jew David Berman, who served as a collaborator on one of the late Jeremy Blake’s video projects, Sodium Fox, bid Blake farewell and played some bare-bones versions of songs that will appear on his upcoming record, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea to a crowd of about 100 in a columned, blue, and utterly decent auditorium where, I have to believe, Newt Gingrich has rented and held “air debates” with now deceased American statesmen and not coincidentally won them all…
Archive for February, 2008
LONDON - FERGADELICA
Bad T-shirts and the con artists who make them are winning. They’re everywhere and they hurt our eyes with their rubbish designs. But there’s one illustrator daring to stem the tide of terrible tees. Fergus Purcell AKA Fergadelic styles himself as the Graphic Equaliser (after 80s TV show The Equalizer), patrolling the streets like a freelance vigilante, putting scumbag designers in their place. He’s best known for his work with Perks & Mini, Silas and his own line, Tonite. As well as T-shirts, his handiwork adorns comics, record sleeves, bags, giant foam hands and a whole other bunch of crap. Fergadelic’s style is saturated with the pop culture he consumed as a kid, head buried in Robert Crumb comics and underground metal zines. He remains a teenage skater-kid in his heart and in his art, as we found out when he showed us his workspace, DIY tattoos and new designs.
NEW YORK - COATHANGERS AT ASTERIX
Hey tonight, Livefastdie and the Coathangers are playing a special bissextile show at Asterisk, one of those loft spaces out in Bushwick. You already know about LFD, but have you listened to the Coathangers? They’re the girl band from Atlanta that does organ-y punk stuff which touches on major female issues like ice skating, telling other girls off, and people who won’t stop messing with your shit. Anyways you should check them out tonight, or if that won’t work then Sunday at Death By Audio. Also, here’s a new video they did. That’s all.
LONDON - CRIME SCENE CLEANERS
When it’s your job to hoover up AIDS and scrub faces off the floor, you could be forgiven for being pretty grumpy about it all. But David Ronan and Rob Philips prove that all you need is a good work ethic. Together they make up Crime Scene Cleaning, specialists in mopping up drug dens, contaminated police cells, and trauma scenes. The guys took some time out of their grisly schedule to share some stories with us.
LONDON - ART-ZINE-CAKE FAYRE
Doing their bit to counter the cold, impersonal isolation of the modern metropolis, our friends at Jaguar Shoes are hosting a village fête on Sunday afternoon. Visitors can browse through zines and handicrafts made by local artists, nosh on the mountains of cupcakes on sale, listen to music and, if the last one was anything to go by, get very merry. The fayre starts at noon.
LONDON - SEBASTIAN TELLIER WANTS TO MAKE YOU MOAN
You know Sebastian Tellier. French guy? Beard? Shades? Loads of hair? Yep, that’s the one. While he remains best remembered for "La Ritournelle," there are more strings to the hirsute Parisian’s bow than you may realise. Not least of all an appetite for fucking that makes Ron Jeremy look like a convent school kid with penis hatred. This prominent preoccupation of young Sebastian’s formed the central influence and subject for his third LP entitled erm… Sexuality. We caught up with Tellier in a Bloomsbury hotel where he was sipping vodka and orange with his shirt splayed alarmingly.
Listen: Sebastian Tellier - "Sexual Sportswear" (Remix)
AUSTRALIA - adidas Originals Festival. Game Over.
Well, after exactly 12 weeks, our adidas Originals Festival game has come to an end, and we can rest knowing that the overwhelming majority of players would like Justice and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to play at their event. Over 5,000 people created festivals and designed (some brilliant, some horrendous) posters which they could promote to their people for the chance to win the major prize. In the end however, it was the designer of the STOW Festival and this intense poster who came out with the greatest attendance and who’ll be going to the Berlin Festival in July with VIP treatment courtesy of our VICE Germany office and a whole new adidas wardrobe.
Go to www.originalsfestival.com.au to check out the winning festival, best designed poster and worst designed poster. In fact, you can check out all 5,196 posters created during the game.
STOCKHOLM - JOKKMOKK SHOPPING
I just went to the Arctic Circle to check out the annual Jokkmokk Winter Market. It’s a 400-year-old trade fair for the reindeer-herding indigenous Sami people, whose territory stretches across
the tops of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. The market boasts a huge assortment of pelts and meats and drunks and homemade knives, the same as it has for centuries, but I only had one item on my wishlist: a coat made of pure white polar bear fur…
LONDON - VICE LIVE HIGHLIGHTS
Here’s a little reminder of the good times had by everyone who went to VICE LIVE earlier this month. If you want to experience the joy - nay, EUPHORIA - of our free parties then sign up to our weekly newsletter.
MELBOURNE – CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT
And just like that we’re back to talking about bands and DJs and fashion. If you happen to live in Melbourne and be looking for something to do this Friday 29th, there’s a fashiony, musicy hoedown being held at a great big temporary warehouse space in Collingwood by the good people at ThreeThousand.
MELBOURNE – A PLAY ABOUT BOXING
When our friend Angus Sampson told us about his new play Shadow Boxing, we realised just how infrequently we go to the theatre. Life’s pretty unfairly weighted towards gigs and galleries at this stage and even though we’re pretty sure there’s a bunch of great performances that we’re missing out on, we’ve caught enough cringe-worthy, zzzz inducing ones to have put us off, until right now.
Without giving too much away, this is a powerful one-man (Angus) monologue set in an incredible boxing ring in Richmond and if you see it you’ll be a much better, far more cultured person for it. Go to shadowboxing.com.au for full details and to buy tickets.
LOS ANGELES - FAMILY ANNIVERSARY
The Family bookstore, alongside places like Oogabooga and the Smell and that old theater Sammy Harkham bought, is one of LA’s few-but-growing sanctuaries of non-awfulness. Tomorrow night they’re putting on an art show to celebrate their first full year in business (though we could swear the store was open months earlier). The show features new visual work by a bunch of awesome folks like Will Oldham, Vanessa Davis, Mike Mills, Cheryl Dunn, and too many more to deal with. Go to their website for the full list and a small sampling of the pieces going up. Thing starts at 8.
FUCKED UP - MIXTAPE DEMO
Fucked Up just put together a little mp3 preview of the new mixtape they’re working on for their blog, which we’re making even more previewable below, on our blog. The full tape is twice as long and will only be available on cassette sometime around the release of the new album, probably in late summer. Listen below or you can download the whole file here.
Listen: Fucked Up - "Mixtape Vol. III" (Demo)
