Author Archive
Fistfight at The US Open: There Goes The Neighborhood
September 3rd, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Misplaced Red Sox fan surprisingly appears and starts fight at the US Open.
Tennis can reek with boredom as an observer sport. Little has happened to give it spark since McEnroe retired. But this all changed at the US Open last night, when one heckler’s choice of words launched a bleacher-wide brawl.
Naming the athletes would be moot, because most people could care less about tennis athletes, super-models excepted—especially that there are no Americans in the running and everyone’s name is so hard to pronounce. What we want to know is the name of the smack-talking punk in the video below. Without actually dispensing any punches, he manages to receive a tumult for tossing pops down a row of seats and fending off an embittered woman. If the US Open wants to attract the attention baseball and hockey have, they should start by giving this man a life-time pass to any televised match, and perhaps a talk show to boot.
[NY Post]
Cold Cave In New Verizon Commercial: Can You Hear Me Now?
August 27th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Verizon uses “Life Magazine” in a back-to-school advert.
Verizon wants high-schoolers to socialize on smart phones this school year, so they teamed up with Cold Cave. This is perhaps a misguided decision, since “Life Magazine” is actually a song about the uselessness of communication. Also, the band’s name hardly conjures up word-association images of crystal clear cell reception.
Cold Cave is the latest indie band to sell their music to that Jabberwock of corporate advertising. With this song in the background paradox abides in this ad, but that’s the least of Cold Cave’s worries as long as the money’s wired through.
While a free-spirited boy skates onto campus with his new phone, Caralee McElroy sings, “I’m not going back!” To where, to school? It’s a back-to-school ad, dude—you are most assuredly going back. And if you’re not, that’s stupid because high school’s the shit.
With a Verizon device, you can sext your way to prom king or queen. Just don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work out, because that’s the reality of life. Phones often fail and, just because you have 3G, it doesn’t mean anyone wants to speak with you.
[Prefix]
X Files: Did the CIA Roofie the French?
August 26th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
A new document suggests that the CIA, using LSD, launched Frenchmen into electric ladyland in 1951.
Traveler’s tip: If you find yourself abroad at a bar with a shifty American in tweeds, finish your drink before going to the lavatory. Going on new details that suggest the CIA dosed unsuspecting Frenchmen with LSD in 1951, it could save you from falling prey to the dreaded roofie trap.
In the middle of last century, an outbreak of hallucinations gripped the small town of Pont Saint Esprit, sending many to the local hospital with symptoms typically associated with a young Phil Lesh. These individuals experienced the colloquial “bad trip,” while not even aware they were on hallucinogens.
According to the BBC, the original explanation placed the blame on a psychedelic fungus that infected the local bakery. But recently, in 2009, an American investigative journalist revealed a CIA document labelled: “Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F.Olson Files. SO Span/France Operation file, inclusive Olson. Intel files. Hand carry to Belin—tell him to see to it that these are buried.”:
“F. Olson is Frank Olson, a CIA scientist who, at the time of the Pont St Esprit incident, led research for the agency into the drug LSD.”
If the CIA indeed did dope these innocent villagers, treating them like lab mice, there should be some apologies sent through the mail, and pronto. As one octogenarian reports to the British press, it was tantamount to cerebral torture:
“‘It was terrible. I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms,’ he remembers.
He was put in a straitjacket but he shared a room with three teenagers who had been chained to their beds to keep them under control.
‘Some of my friends tried to get out of the window. They were thrashing wildly… screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and the jumping up and down… the noise was terrible.
‘I’d prefer to die rather than go through that again.’”
Whoa, sounds intense!
This doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident either. The CIA recently came under investigation for an agent who allegedly date-raped a woman in Algeria; similarly, in 2006, Russian agents assassinated a critic of Putin by placing a lethal tab of thallium in his drink. And just this summer, the Department of Homeland Security reportedly ran experiments on Boston commuters via the subway air ducts.
Mind your cups, people, because spies are all over the place, trying to date rape you and your daughter. Just remember this the next time you go out: these agents of death train in the arts of deception, philandering, and creative killing. They will fuck you up, and it won’t be a pleasurable experience.
[BBC]
Kanye West Transcends Music Magazines
August 26th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Will Kanye West and Twitter bury music mags for good?
Once in a while, an uncommon genius changes the world with a single good idea—conventions evolve, society advances. As we already know, Kanye West is the oracle of our age.
The lyrical poetry on his blog and Twitter draws people like the lamentations of Orpheus, attracting well over 800,000 followers. Those 140 character-long windows into the rapper’s life vibrate with personality and subtle dimensions of acute insight into an enigmatic character, destroying the requisite need for a conventional music-mag interview. Without conventional media as a filter, Kanye lays it all out on the table.
Until his mother’s death in 2007, Kanye West existed everywhere in print. His puggish face and venetian shades graced numerous magazine covers, because the man, the “genius,” simply loves to talk. But that all changed when his quotes began to run away from him, with popular media turning his outward persona into that of a jabbering, self-referential fool.
Kanye turned instead to his blog, which blends caps-locked diatribes with unexplained expositions of sweaters and nude models. For example, can we forget the expressive rant he uttered in 2008, regarding the Bonnaroo debacle?
It verges on the brink of drunk. Artists never outpour with so much candor to journalists they’ve known for an hour. Eschewing print interviews lets the musician reach fans without intermediaries that paraphrase and paint the subject in damaging light.
More than the blog, Twitter has streamed Kanye’s consciousness and let us in on the delicacies of what makes him tic as a stylish dude. He’s quick to inform what he’s purchased—from suits to persian rugs—and what passions keep him awake past dark: “Yall make all the hard work worth it…. We been up to 5 am every night working on everything Pusha, Rakwon, Mos, Swizz, Skateboard etc.”
As he redefines publicity over his Twitter account, journalists are left wondering if there’s any use in trying to snag the foppish rapper for an interview, because, are there even any private gems left to pilfer from Kanye’s brain?
One writer has already gone and stepped beyond this question, writing for Slate an all-access interview based solely on twitter updates. Music journalist Jonah Weiner explains:
“No, I don’t get to ask any questions, but I do get a constantly updating record of West’s thoughts, whereabouts, cravings, jokes, meals, flirtations, bon mots, and on and on. In the face of a mountainous info dump like West’s, isn’t the basic work of profiling—building from the raw material of everything someone says and does toward a more focused sense of who they are—as relevant as ever?”
We think so. In the clever concept story, Weiner provides a fictitious narrative of an encounter with Kanye that elucidates a world that was drawn up by none other than the subject himself. And, because all the facts are verifiable online, the cooked story oddly isn’t false testimony.
If more musicians let their own medium be the message, then perhaps the music magazine industry will receive its deathblow not from advertising dollars, but from enterprising artists using the internet to put it out to pasture.
Military: Lisa Nowak May Be Violent, But at Least She’s Not a Queer
August 20th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
According to the Navy, Renegade astronauts are better than homosexual GIs.
After a daylong hearing on Thursday, a Navy panel has finally suggested that Lisa Nowak should have her flying wings clipped. Her discharge comes in response to the time she famously drove from Texas to Florida in a pair of diapers and maced another astronaut over a love interest in 2007. However, if Nowak’s crush were a woman and not a man, this space cadet would be long gone by now.
Under “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” servicemen who come out of the closet cannot continue to play a role in the military.
But what happens when heterosexual affairs go wrong? Apparently, with Nowak as an example, it’s a whole other ballgame.
Everyone remembers Nowak’s antics, when she drove overnight from Houston to Orlando and confronted her romantic rival, Colleen Shipman. Wanting reprisal for cutting in on her crush, former space shuttle pilot Bill Oefelein, Novak took off with a full disguise, diapers to expedite the trip, and a serial killer’s tool kit: latex gloves, a BB pistol and ammunition, a 2-pound drilling hammer, rubber tubing, plastic garbage bags, and so on.
Thankfully, the woman on mission only went so far as to use a non-lethal weapon, pepper spay, before she was apprehended. Still, this was a violent encounter brought on by a case of bad romance.
In November, Nowak pleaded guilty to third-degree felony burglary and misdemeanor battery. After a year of probation, she currently still receives checks from the government for working at a flight training camp in Corpus Christi, Texas.
It’s been three years since Nowak’s “incident.” Apparently, the military has a tough time admitting that psychopathic romantic obsession is grounds for dismissal. Certainly it takes more strident precautions against the possibility of sharing a tent with a dude who, just maybe, has a boyfriend.
Republican Cockfighting: Steele, Palin and Coulter Get Thrown Into The Ring
August 19th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Three Republican heavyweights are pitted by the GOP against itself. After the dust settles, what stands to be won?
Presently, a bout of infighting could tear the Party of No to shreds, as three heads of the conservative movement come under scrutiny by their own party for different allegiances. These lions are RNC Chairman Michael Steele, pop-celebrity Sarah Palin and attack dog Ann Coulter. Each of them are in trouble for palling around with the wrong type of crowd, and shit’s about to go down.
As widely documented, Chairman Steele already teeters on diminishing support from his party. Between blowing $2k at a bondage club at the RNC’s expense and unabashedly opposing the war in Afghanistan, his career stands at the crossroads.
The only group that wants him representing the RNC seems to be the Frederick Douglass Foundation, which strives to put African-Americans into Washington under the Republican banner. Steele’s now facing calls from this group to chew out Sarah Palin, who defended the disgraced radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger over Twitter.
You know Dr. Laura, the radio host who casually machine-gunned the N-word at a black caller over the radio.
Tensions are running high, and a showdown seems imminent between conservative white hegemonists and minority members of the GOP (a group which seems to be growing inexplicably). Could a public spat between Steele and Palin finally offer a true Republican perspective on freedom of speech and racial sensitivity? One can only hope.
That depends on how far Palin goes in defending Dr. Laura’s choice of language. If the Perez Hilton of conservative social media continues to “let the adolescent out of the bag” through Twitter by insisting that the radio host’s reassignment stands in the face of the First Amendment, black Republicans will only grow more vociferous about Steele debunking her missteps.
As for Palin, if she wants to stay in the fight she should retreat from her stance, in reverse, with her foot on the gas. She’ll won’t stand a chance in a presidential bid in 2012 without the minority vote.
And while the conservatives will eat themselves up over a skewed race/rights war, pseudo-intellectual political author Ann Coulter finds herself in her own right-wing catch 22 over another conservative hot button: homosexuality.
Because Coulter agreed to attend right-wing gay advocacy conference Homocon 2010, whose event slogan reads “our gays are more macho than their straights,” the author has been dropped from appearing at WorldNetDaily’s upcoming conservative conference.
But maybe the GOP should pay a price for all this in-fighting. Specifically, perhaps they should just forget about hegemony and social values, and instead concentrate on restoring credibility with the one message that’s worked for them in decades past: fiscal responsibility.
Stereolab: ‘Not Music’ is New LP
August 19th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Stereolab will release new music, “Not Music,” this autumn.
Stereolab has lain dead in the water since late 2009, but the electro-pop group still has a new album on the way. Which should not come out of left field to fans, because the group has released an LP almost annually since the beginning of the 90s.
On October 16, Drag City will release “Not Music,” the new Stereolab album contains songs generated during the creative period of their 2008 “Chemical Chords.” But with the group members off on their own, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see a support tour for this. Perhaps after Laetitia Sadie finishes with her solo work, due September 21, a glimmer of light will emerge and more will be known about if or when Stereolab will end its hiatus.
Sisters: “Highway Scratch” MP3
August 13th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Take a listen to a song by Brooklyn’s next pseudo-familial band.
Music forecast: The garage-pop duo Sisters is expected to make serious landfall in Brooklyn this summer. To get ahead of the game, it’s useful to know that the band sounds like an adolescent form of Boyracer, but with more ideas and a xylophone at its disposal.
Below you can listen to and download the single off their upcoming album, “Ghost Fits,” which is due out September 28th on Narnack Records.
Catch them in the Big Apple soon:
08.27 Brooklyn, NY @ Cake Shop
09.11 Brooklyn, NY @ Bushwick Starr
09.17 Brooklyn, NY @ Shea Stadium
09.24 Brooklyn, NY @ Dead Herring (Record Release Show)
Women: ‘Public Strain’ Is Better Than A Concept
August 13th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Women returns with its sophomore album, “Public Strain,” which exposes the band as a master of urban illustration.
Chalk off another tally for Calgary, right up there with oil sands, the 1988 Winter Olympics and Women’s 2008 debut record. This September the listed guitar band returns with “Public Strain,” another glaming work that expands on the expansive, garage-jam songwriting of the first and hews the northern city into a remote scene of isolation.
This second album takes its name from a lyric in the opening track, “Can’t You See,” where bowed strings grate in and out of tune, becoming partially audible and widely dramatic—think of “La Jetee.” Elsewhere on “Public Strain,” the group reopens into its familiar range of territory, cycling dissonant notes into heavy melodies, arresting the listener with pieces that seek more to be overcome than passively enjoyed.
Taking time out of his own schedule, Patrick Flegel spoke over the phone about the conception of “Public Strain.” The barest element of all, the sound, is something that emanates like a fuzz from their amps and speakers. That’s largely because of how it was recorded, which is in the same place and manner as before: the basement of their friend Chad Vangaalen. “We used the same equipment as last time on a lot of the songs, a boom box and 35mm recorder.”
Flegel also indicated that this album was largely constructed in a period of eight months after “Women” was released. This large breadth of time pales in comparison to the age of the final song, “Eyesore,” which is the perfect sum of all parts. The jangly strings and creaky vocals sound somewhat like a moldy beach rock record from the 60s, played in a low, skipping tempo.
“That was one of the first songs we wrote,” said Flegel, “about three or four years ago, and it changed over time. We’ve played that one live at practically every show.”
Certainly, the resulting outcome of “Public Strain” will draw the quartet out of the sobering midwest of Canada, far away from the numbness of the cold and whatever dullness held the members there. Flegel spent the better time of recent in a hospital for children and the mentally unstable:” I was working the graveyard shift for a while, and I think that that job heavily influenced this album. My friends would always be at work or asleep when I’d be at home, so it left me brooding all week by myself.”
For an album centered on being a recluse amidst a crowd, it’s a relief to those who want to get away from the present situation. Listening to “Public Strain” is an escape into the plot of an old flick, or a Camus novel, and thankfully it’s propelling Flegel and company into the fold of the touring circuit. As Flegel indicated, “I think that’s part of the reason why we were signed, because all we wanted to do at the time was get out of Calgary to play our music and travel.”
“Public Strain” hits American shelves on September 28th through Jagjaguar Records.
Blonde Redhead Unveils ‘Penny Sparkle’ at Private New York Performance [VIDEO]
August 12th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Three-years after their last album, “23″, the venerated dream pop trio returned to Manhattan with ten new songs from the forthcoming “Penny Sparkle.”
At a private event on Tuesday evening, Blonde Redhead performed its new album “Penny Sparkle” and showed themselves off to a private crowd in New York City as a group at the top of its game. This set comprised six of the ten songs, including the soulful single “Here Sometimes”, and stormed through with a brevity and force that left the audience cheering for an encore that never came.
Due out in the States on September 14th, “Penny Sparkle” arrives three years after “23.” The big gap has left fans wondering if Kazu Makino and the Pace twins have been suffer from creative atrophy.
The new material makes that point a moot concern. It doesn’t stray far from their running dream-pop formula, but adds more subtle electronic textures, edging closer towards Bjork.
Those on hand to check out this private gig were regular faces around the NYC music and blog scene, including hipster grifter Kari Farrell, Cold Cave’s Wesley Eisold, and Yos Munro from Steel Phantoms. Blonde Redhead gave them what they come for:
Blonde Redhead will tour throughout the fall in the United States in support of “Penny Sparkle.” Tour dates available here.
Photo by Xavier Aaronson
Daft Punk’s Tron Score Leaked on YouTube
July 30th, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Earlier this week, we reported that a Seattle radio station had leaked soundbites from the Tron soundtrack.
Then a bombshell landed on YouTube, when nine songs from the forthcoming soundtrack appeared in their entirety, making Daft Punk the newest arrivals at the “my album leaked on YouTube” party.
We’ve listened with open ears, and it’s pretty safe to call these the real deal.
Three’s A Trend: Our Government Has A Porn Addiction
July 23rd, 2010 by Gray Hurlburt
Nefarious actions at the Minerals Management Service and the Pentagon reveal a disturbing correlation between chronic masturbators and government employees
From its founding, life inside the beltway has always been a bit scuzzier than normal. Between illicit brothels and drug rings, vice sits like a moldy cornerstone in the foundation of our nation’s capital. And judging by a few scandals this year, the seedy perversion of government employees has trickled problematically into the workplace. In a story broken by The Boston Globe today, it reached a climax with the discovery that Pentagon workers and contractors have been downloading and paying for child pornography, using taxpayer time and equipment, to service themselves with the vilest of digital smut.
While we’re just as guilty as the next guy for watching video nasties at the office, Death + Taxes’ field of work doesn’t entail keeping the world in order and people alive. We also don’t condone the trafficking of abusive material. But, when you’re paid by taxpayer nickels and dimes to keep the USA in tact, it’s worth getting upset when the government asks first how it can pleasure itself; not how it can serve its country.
Before this slew of child porn smeared the Pentagon this morning, two other prurient misadventures have tarnished Washington DC this year, verifying a government-wide addiction to pornography.
First was by The Securities and Exchange Commission in April. Their job is to monitor the financial markets, making sure that people like Bernie Madoff never get away with playing the financial industry illegally. An investigation found 31 serious offenders during the last two and a half years, most of whom where senior SEC officers. One of these officers, whose salary exceeded $100,000 dollars a year, spent over eight hours per day browsing porn sites. Talk about a job with benefits!
Then the BP drilling operation blew up, and eyes turned toward the government to find out how this could have ever happened. As we know, major oversights were made with regard to the destroyed rig, and a subsequent investigation into Minerals Management Service discovered that employees took bribes from oil lobbyists, carried on sexual relations with them, and even smoked meth at work. Here the sex was real, not virtual, but still taken for granted as a salacious trade of environmental responsibility for orgasms.
Now comes the clincher, because we all know that it takes the number three to mark a trend. Investigative reports show that “a few dozen” Pentagon employees have used government computers to pay for and download child pornography. Many of them had special security clearances, which presents a danger to our military secrets through the threat of bribery. According to The Globe:
“The investigations have included employees of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which deal with some of the most sensitive work in intelligence and defense — among other organizations within the Defense Department.”
Is this the price we have to pay for the War on Terror? a rampant spree of pedophilia?
This year has shown that, along with prostitutes and sleeping pills, Washington loves the digital erotic. But, in the aftermath, isn’t it remarkable to find the eye of big brother trained back on itself? If not that, then what we’ve captured going on in the District is foully harrowing.
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