Saturday, November 21, 2009

garry winogrand

garry winogrand (January 1928-March 1984) was a street photographer who captured the essence of the american people in the 20th century. he used a pre-focused, wide angle lens on a 35mm leica camera, while snapping away at people who passed by. his photographs are full of movement, mysterious lighting as well as giving us a very interesting way to look at common american people of the 1960s. winogrand's style is unique because he always manages to find peculiar connections between the figures he spontaneously discovers on the street.

Friday, November 20, 2009

tgif

may your weekend be as ethereal and bright as boards of canada's "dayvan cowboy" music video. this weekend i leap into the 23rd year of my birth. this video includes Xtreme footage of joe kittinger's 19.5 mile skydive from outerspace, as well as some footage of laird hamilton ripping waves.

xoxo,

a past blast

i have recently been scrolling through my itunes, finding some old friends of mine. i've been clicking ben kweller and listening to his sweet songs about his home, loves, and all of life's mysterys. his fourth album, changing horses, shows that kweller has found a sound that he is committed to. kweller, growing up in texas, would deliver samples of the sounds of his native state in his previous three indie-rock albums; however, now he is fully saddled up and is wearing his boots and a ten gallon hat. his quirky lyrics of love, loss and friendship speak to the country themes, but do not expect a country album--his roots are in pop and kweller was majorly influenced by the beatles, so he has not abandoned his original sounds--he has only amplified them with his twangy guitar riffs. kweller's album is not forseeable, it is promising. changing horses is only the beginning of kweller's matured style. expect to see more.

Ben Kweller: Wanting Her Again
Ben Kweller: Sawdust Man

Thursday, November 19, 2009

solid gold

gang of four are THE post-punk band. very few bands (the talking heads are another) have been able to make punk sound so danceable without sacrificing their dignity...great quality video from a tv performance in '81.

this song of is off their second album, solid gold, but if you wanna look into them further i'd check out entertainment! first.

gang of four- "to hell with poverty!"

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

blow out yer speakers

nirvana's live at reading release is blowing my mind and ear drums. highly recommended.

nirvana- "aneurysm"
nirvana- "breed"

Monday, November 16, 2009

why do you go to the movies?

ao scott reflects on the nature of cinema in the most recent issue of ny times magazine:

"But alongside the official pantheon occasionally incarnated in lists offered up by institutions like the American Film Institute and The New York Times, every film lover carries around a more subjective canon, an ever-shifting, impressionistic personal cinematheque. That horror movie that gave you nightmares as a child. The love story you saw on your first date with the love of your life. The dramas that ended or started friendships, soothed you in your lonely moments or made the loneliness more acute. The westerns that taught you something about courage or treachery, the comedies that schooled you in sex, the epics and biopics that overshadowed what you learned in history class."

read more.

the first movie i remember seeing in theaters is robin hood: prince of thieves. i was 5 and really liked robin hood, but the non-disney version scared the shit out of me.

Friday, November 13, 2009

wes anderson acts

i'm happy to see that fantastic mr. fox is getting such good reviews and am really looking forward to checking it out. i was a bit worried after reading how frustrated the london-based crew reported being with anderson's absence during the production process - he spent much of his time across the english channel in france.

to his credit, i can only imagine how painstaking the stop-motion animation process is, but, that said, it might've been nice for anderson to have sent the right message and hung in there with the rest of the crew.

how did anderson direct the movie you might ask then?...click below and the truth will be revealed.

from cinematical.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

the music that thrilled the world...and the killing that stunned it!

a memorable scene from the maysles doc gimme shelter. keith richards is priceless here.

in case you're wondering, the title of the post is the movie's tagline...if you're not familiar with the story, i suggest you bone up. or just watch the movie.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

lego architecture and landmark series

in lieu of the 50th anniversary of frank lloyd wright's death, LEGO has released mini flatpak models of two of his most iconic works; the guggenheim museum and fallingwater ($40 and $100, respectively). FLW died six months before the guggenheim was completed, so he was never able to see the final product (or make any improvements to the building that would make it more conducive to viewing art rather than simply standing as an artistic space...but my is it a wonderful place to wander). the two models mark the launch of LEGO's new "architect series" (just in time for the holidays).

LEGO also started a "landmark series" that features the empire state building, seattle space needle, and the john hancock center ($20/each). both will be expanding in the near future. not only will constructing these bad boys be oodles of fun, but the final product will be a wonderful addition to any vacant counter top.

thank you to katherine rodman for the tip and some surprisingly engaging late night instant messages:

Friday, November 6, 2009

i said be careful his bowtie is really a camera

adoring this giant clip-on tartan plaid bow that can be worn as a brooch, hair barrette, belt, etc. available at etsy.

Giant Bow - Hair Barrette and Brooch - Tartan - Plaid

Thursday, November 5, 2009

making loveless

as a fan of shoegaze i'm not quite sure how my bloody valentine's loveless, the movement's consummate album, managed to stay off my radar for so long. with an album that's already received so much critical acclaim it's hard to say anything original about it, so if you're looking for a review i'll direct you here...i did, however, wanna comment on how much more awesome the album became in my eyes after reading about the album's production on wikipedia (sure i'll raise some eyebrows here but wikipedia usually has great info on the "making of" classic albums).

in short, the album was the result of a man possessed of his vision. during the two years it took to produce loveless, kevin shields, the band's principal creative force, saw the band through 19 recording studios and ultimately found himself in charge of every aspect of the process - from laying down bass tracks to mic'ing amps. while estimates vary, the album cost somewhere in the ballpark of £250,000 to produce - a figure so astronomically large, that it begs the question: "was it worth it?" from a financial perspective it was certainly not - while critically respected upon release, i can't imagine those costs were recouped, which leads you then to question the value of art, the importance of unrestrained creative license, and other such lofty questions...i have a sneaking suspicion that shields might have been "difficult to work with," but the whole story and the very idea that someone would go to such lengths to accomplish his creative vision is legendary - of course it's easy to spend boatloads of other people's money, but according to shields' account, he and the band sank a sizeable chunk of their own into the project.

i liked reading robert smith's (of the cure) two cents: "it's the sound of someone [Shields] who is so driven that they're demented. And the fact that they spent so much time and money on it is so excellent."

and, of course, a few album cuts:
my bloody valentine- "blown a wish"
my bloody valentine- "what you want"

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

elvis meets nixon

this image, my fellow americans, is the most commonly requested image in the national archives. after an antiwar activist convinced elvis that he was to blame for ingraining drug culture into the antiwar rock-and-roll scene, elvis wrote president nixon a six-page letter requesting a meeting and to be appointed a "federal agent at large" narcotic officer. nixon, in a hopeless attempt to win the support of young americans, obliges, and the two meet at the white house in december of 1970 (four years later, nixon would resign and seven years later, elvis would die of a drug overdose). the meeting was kept a secret until the washington post broke the story in 1972. what a fascinating time to be an american.

to see the letter and more photographs from the meeting kindly refer here.

thank you for the tip, sam bauch.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

a sociolinguistic analysis with google

(via Slate...thnks for the tip TGD)

Awkward SuggestionS: Let's have fun with the Google search box.

By Michael Agger

The Google search box has become the new oracle at Delphi, the thing we consult before all major undertakings. How do I know this?

Through Google Suggest, of course. For the complete take on Suggest, read my colleague Josh Levin in Slate. For those who don't know how Suggest works, he sums it up nicely:

Google doesn't reveal its search algorithms, but the company's engineers confirm that what we're looking at in [Google Suggest] is, essentially, a list of the most popular queries that start with a given prefix. (It's unclear what time period the suggestions are culled during, but a spokesman says they're generated from "recent [search] activity.") A suggestion-enabled search is like an instant popularity contest. Just type in a couple of letters, and you've got access to oodles of data on what your fellow Web surfers are hunting for.

To wit: Google Suggest is a helpful feature. It's a little sliver of the collective mind. It's also a lot of fun to mess with.

The Internet has lots of great examples of misfires served by Google. Here's a favorite: "i am extremely terrified of chinese people." But I was most impressed with this anonymous bit of genius dug up by Digg, which uses Google for some armchair sociolinguistic analysis. The graphic compares "less intelligent" queries with "more intelligent" queries, such as "how 2" with "how might one:"

vs.

and

vs:

Grammar also seems to make a difference:

vs.

Perhaps "less intelligent" vs. "more intelligent" isn't the kindest or most accurate way to classify these queries. Some of the "more intelligent" queries are clearly high-schoolers desperately trying to get their homework done. And some of the "less intelligent" queries are no doubt very smart people distracting themselves with Google in an idle moment. But let's not allow nuance to get in the way of contest. Send me your best example of a "less intelligent" vs. a "more intelligent" query at michaelagger1@gmail.com. The winner will receive my undying gratitude and whatever Slate item in their size that I can find lying around the office. (No umbrellas left, sorry.) I'll announce the winner next week.

friends of ML on halloween

retro dude?, mountain man, lindsay bluth-fünke, alex from a clockwork orange, tobias fünke

a. Blinken and another man in tights...................white men can't jump

hilary..........bjork, penguin

wayne and garth.........gaga

zombie, genie in aladdin, zombie..... inmates

phone+waldo............nun+bunny

mexican bullfighter and his amor........minnie mouse and miley cyrus

jester........dog, bunny

arctic family (polar bear, penguins, and eskimos).......................mickey and minnie mouse

punk rocker, chicken, cop, hunter, retro dude......penguin

tuesday

http://refineryleadership.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/prints_big.jpg

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh nevermind, you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded."

— Baz Luhrmann

Sunday, November 1, 2009

for british eyes only

two british bands that have both recently released debut albums...The xx cite various, unrelated influences, but really owe a lot of what they to do to robert smith and the cure...just look at them. this song is the first cut off of their new album and is dark, atmospheric, and cure-like...wish it went on a bit longer. i gave disintegration a good listen on the plane last weekend and i couldn't help being reminded of it. that said it is given a modern treatment with the drum machine, and the rest of the album is very much an original work...just not so sure i like it. i can't deny though that i was excited for it after hearing this one.

The xx- "Intro"

the big pink have nothing in common with the band album of the same name. instead, they mine the british shoegaze and britpop tradition for their inspiration. the melody in this song here strikes me as very oasis-like and would've been right at home on definitely maybe.

the big pink- "tonight"

Friday, October 30, 2009

tgif

happy halloweenie, kids!
xoxo,
ML

please send us pics of your halloween costumes! email madamelamb [at] gmail.com

photo by matt o'sullivan

thanks, kidrobot!

boston opens a yummy breakfast kidrobot surprise!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

cruising

valerie posts a lot of second rate material, but every once in a while something god-like like this comes along and so it pays to keep tabs.

this is the B-side of their most recent pressing (valerie is a blog turned record label/collective) if you're into vinyl.

stephen falken- "cruising"

if you're ever in WA state...

you've gotta get a pint of mac & jack's african amber. i was in seattle last weekend and this is hands down the best beer i've tried in a while.

it was tough to find a good picture of it, but this should do it justice...notice the unfiltered cloudiness and deep amber, almost nectar-like color that appears to glow from within. it makes me sad to know i may never taste this delicious brew again.

tighten up

here's some trojan records material off of volumes 2 and 3 of their tighten up series. i've posted about trojan records on this blog before, but to bring everyone up to speed, trojan is a reggae label that was founded in the UK in the late 60's. with the large influx of jamaican immigrants at the time, reggae music grew to dominate the scene in england, albeit briefly, and trojan records rode the wave...by the time reggae had seen its popularity wane in the early seventies, trojan was on the outs, but it has since seen a series of resurgences. today it stands as a major reissuer of classic reggae records - mostly in compilation form.

that said, trojan is a mine of obscure reggae gems. these tunes are off of a couple compilations they released in the late 60's - a greatest hits collection, if you will, of singles they had released to date. i highly recommend browsing their catalog and dropping a few bucks.

the hippy boys- "doctor no go"
rudy mills- "john jones"
lloyd & claudette- "queen of the world"

i always think it's really cool to think that this is what kids were hanging out and dancing to in dancehalls and bars/hangouts during that time period...i know that a lot of the punk bands that would spring up several years later were reared on this stuff.

here are a couple of my favorites from some of their other releases:

ike bennet and the crystallites- "bombshell"
the soul rhythms- "soul call"

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

merkin muffley classic

no one set down an instrumental groove like booker t. and the mg's, and despite their considerable back catalog, "green onions" will forever remain their most enduring achievement - and a mainstay of the highest order in merkin muffley's all time greatest hits. in this particular version here, donald "duck" dunn takes the bass for a decidedly more brisk walk than in the studio release and the band follows suit...i imagine they could spend hours trading solos on this one.

and for your itunes library:
booker t and the mg's- "green onions"

jaunt

"Quick Exercise"

thank you to mikey v.b.

storming the palace!

Artist, Xavier Veilhan, is using the gardens of Versailles to exhibit his contemporary sculptures. Versailles is an exceptional choice for the installations because it is already abounding with lyrical sculptures that compliment the modernity of Veilhan's installations.
Veilhan's monumental sculptures focus on the geometric value of his forms and textures, the quality of repetition (which is an obvious quality seen throughout the Palace), as well as creating an exotic view in an exceptionally traditional location.
His installation titled, "Le carrosse" (The large carriage), for example, contrasts harmoniously to the classical style of the fountain sculpture, "Apollo in his chariot."
Veilhan, a French artist, created works which are relevant to the Palace of Versailles, and presents them with a modern eye as well as introducing entirely new ideas that are so foreign, yet so fitting.

photos from theselby

a talking head's helmet camera

in 2007, david byrne biked to town hall for an event he organized called "how new yorkers ride bikes". the event kicked off with footage (below) from byrne's journey on two-wheels through the streets of new york to event and on stage. has anyone read "bicycle diaries" yet? i just ordered a copy...

Helmet Cam from Todo Mundo on Vimeo.