from Dangerous Minds

KRENT ABLE’S NEW BOOK IS DELIRIOUSLY FUN

Krent Able’s Big Book Of Mischief is a devilish mix of rock ‘n’ roll satire conjured up in wonderfully wicked graphics and text. Able’s visuals remind me of S. Clay Wilson, a darkly hilarious blend of diabolical images combined with the kind of precise, scalpel-like dissection of pop culture banalities we expect from R. Crumb.

From Lou Reed and Iggy to Nick Cave and Justin Timberlake, no one is spared Able’s poison pen. It’s a lovely bunch of nastiness and you can buy it here

[ click to continue reading at DangerousMinds.net ]

from Resident Advisor

[ click to read at ResidentAdvisor.net ]

from Beatport

from Daily Infographic

Some Facts about Ramen Noodles

Ya’ll, I don’t care how bad Ramen is for me, it is damn good. And so filling also. You can really get your bang for your buck with all that salty water and noodles floating around in your tummy. I haven’t had Ramen in years, but when I see or it smell, I’m like a drug addict who needs another fix. It’s really a win- win situation when it comes to Ramen; its a filling meal for less than a dollar! The perfect college student’s snack! However, I’m sure all that Ramen cant be good for you.

[ click to read full info graphic ]

music history in gifs

1997.  Radiohead releases OK Computer, and it goes on to become one of the most critically acclaimed records of all time.  They released a couple of great videos, and a guy plays ping pong with an angel.  Also a guy cuts his own limbs off for some reason.

Also, this album has one of the sweetest riffs ever written.

from ESPN

The history and mystery of the high five

A timeless gesture, but someone went up top first. That’s where it gets complicated.

By Jon Mooallem

PART TWO: THE HIGH FIVE OF LIFE

IF THIS PRANK HAS A VICTIM, it’s Glenn Burke, a young outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s whose astonishing physique and 17-inch biceps earned him the nickname King Kong.

For at least a generation before the Sleets story surfaced, the conventional wisdom had been that Burke invented the high five on Oct. 2, 1977, in front of 46,000 screaming fans at Dodger Stadium.

It was the last day of the regular season, and Dodgers leftfielder Dusty Baker had just gone deep off the Astros’ J.R. Richard. It was Baker’s 30th home run, making the Dodgers the first team in history to have four sluggers — Baker, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey and Reggie Smith — with at least 30 homers each. It was a wild, triumphant moment and a good omen as the Dodgers headed to the playoffs. Burke, waiting on deck, thrust his hand enthusiastically over his head to greet his friend at the plate. Baker, not knowing what to do, smacked it. “His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back,” says Baker, now 62 and managing the Reds. “So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do.”

Burke then stepped up and launched his first major league home run. And as he returned to the dugout, Baker high-fived him. From there, the story goes, the high five went ricocheting around the world. (According to Dodgers team historian Mark Langill, the game was not televised, and no footage survives.)

[ click here to read Parts One and Three of the story ]

from The Quietus

“If I Hit You, You’d Feel It”: Leslie Winer, Trip Hop’s Forgotten Pioneer

by Wyndham Wallace

Some say that Leslie Winer aka © invented trip hop in 1990 with her album, Witch. Now she’s back with a retrospective compilation and Wyndham Wallace meets the reclusive former supermodel.

It is, as we’ll no doubt be frequently reminded by its forthcoming deluxe reissue, 21 years since Massive Attack released Blue Lines, giving birth – history insists – to the genre now known as trip hop. Its slackened beats, stoned delivery and dependence upon dub, hip hop, soul and electronic music, were – to most people – revelatory, while its “shift toward a more interior, meditational sound”, as Simon Reynolds described it, helped establish one of the defining musical styles of the first half of the 1990s.

“Really, there was absolutely no coverage around the original release of Witch,” she says. “It went almost completely unnoticed. Just a few people listened to it, as far as I know. My name wasn’t even on the original release” – it was simply credited to © – “and even on the first official release it was one name amongst a long list of people who contributed. It’s only the Virgin France release that put that horrendous Halloween-y cover on it and my name. Praise for my music has always been totally fucking slim to totally fucking… nothing. Nobody is interested.”

[ click to read full article at The Quietus ]

from The New York Daily News

Movie Review: ‘The Man With the Iron Fists’

Marital arts fan RZA finds his inner Tarantino in B-movie that gets A for effort

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

If only every filmmaker were as creatively inspired by his influences as Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA, who makes a memorable directorial debut with his kung-fu homage, “The Man With the Iron Fists.”

Countless filmmakers have tried to emulate B-movie style, with most getting caught in post-modern self-awareness that undermines the whole project.

RZA, a lifelong fan of martial arts movies, was smart enough to apprentice himself to Quentin Tarantino, who’s presenting this venture. It’s clear he absorbed his lessons well: the results both pay tribute to and improve upon the grindhouse originals RZA watched as a kid in Staten Island.

[ click to continue reading at NYDailyNews.com ]
 

from The New York Times

Revisiting a Famous Meal, Soup to Nuts

Ross King’s ‘Leonardo and “The Last Supper” ’

Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library 

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

By the age of 42 (in an era in which life expectancy was 40), Leonardo da Vinci had yet to create anything commensurate with his lofty ambitions. At that point, Ross King writes in his new book, “Leonardo and ‘The Last Supper,’ ” he “had produced only a few scattered paintings, a bizarre-looking music instrument, some ephemeral decorations for masques and festivals and many hundreds of pages of notes and drawings for studies he had not yet published, or for inventions he had not yet built.” Too many of his projects — like creating a gigantic bronze horse on commission for Lodovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan — had gone unfinished; other projects having to do with architecture, military engineering and urban planning had not found patrons.

“Leonardo may have dreamed of constructing tanks and guns, of placing a dome on Milan’s half-built cathedral, or of completing the world’s largest bronze statue,” Mr. King writes. “But he was going to do none of these things. Instead, he was going to paint a wall.”

[ click to read full piece at NYTimes.com ]

from SPIN

Necessary Evil: The Dark Greatness of Black Sabbath

by David Marchese

Tonight, on Halloween, hordes of us will do what humans have done for eons and herald the coming of the dark, cold months with a celebration. Though it’s been untold generations since our fall festivals were softened into a vestigial superstition, Halloween’s roots lie deeper than playing make believe. They grow from our inborn compulsion to gain some measure of understanding, of control, about the things we spend the rest of the year trying to deny. Life is tenuous. Pain is constant. The world is frightening. These are ineluctable truths. And so is this: Black Sabbath matters.

Black Sabbath was the first rock band to get over on trying to scare the shit out of you. Others (Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer) were making sinister, heavy music before singer Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward got together in Birmingham, England in 1969. None of those other bands were as committed or singular in their bleak vision. From the start, Sabbath emitted no light. That was for others to do. The band’s self-titled first album was released in 1970. In sickly and unnatural colors its cover shows a witch-like figure in front of a desolate country house. The eponymous first song opens to whispering rain, a tolling bell, and a slow, creeping guitar riff. Then Ozzy enters. He sings as if he has no soul to lose. He could be the dead-eyed henchman in some Vincent Price movie. He could not wail virtuoso-style like Robert Plant or Ronnie James Dio. Instead, Ozzy sounded plainly human. Or as if he remembered what it was to be one.

[ click to continue reading at SPIN ]

from The LA Times

TV giant Don Francisco celebrates 50 years of ‘Sabado Gigante’

An entertainment institution in the Spanish-speaking world, Don Francisco aims to stay on top of the game with his long-running variety show ‘Sabado Gigante.’

By Yvonne Villarreal, Los Angeles Times 

MIAMI — Don Francisco is running late to his own party — peculiar, considering he arrived six hours before it started.

One of Latin America’s top entertainment personalities is holed up in his dressing room at Univision‘s studios as frenzied fans just outside line a red carpet where celebrities are slowly making their way into the big show. As he quietly watches the procession on his dressing room monitor, his longtime assistant begins the intricate ritual of preparing his pre-show meal that includes branzini fish with rocoto chile paste and a tossed salad.

PHOTOS: 50 years of Sábado Gigante: From Pelé to Bill Gates

“After the break,” announces one of the hosts from the red carpet, “Don Francisco!” The adoring throngs scream in delight as the ringmaster of the longest-running variety show in TV history squeezes a lemon over his salad and chuckles. After a half-century in show business, he knows they can wait a little longer.

At 71, Francisco is an institution in the Spanish-speaking world as the unmistakable and singular host of “Sábado Gigante,” which means “Giant Saturday.” The sturdy Chilean-born showman is the enduring attraction in a weekly three-hour cavalcade famous for its bikini-clad models, slapstick sketches and madcap contests, and which has become a welcome weekend siren call to the Latino diaspora.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

from SLATE

[ click to view at Slate.com ]

from The Telegraph

Emanuel Steward, legendary trainer of Thomas Hearns, Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko, dies aged 68

Emanuel Steward, whose alumni as a trainer included the boxing legends Thomas Hearns, Lennox Lewis and Wladimir Klitschko has died at the age of 68.

By Gareth A Davies

Steward’s name has been long associated with the Kronk gym in Detroit, where his fighters trained in sweltering heat and as hard as if they were in fights. Steward, who would dance on his feet showing fighters moves, to this day, showed a perspicacity inside and outside the ropes.

He had won 94 of 97 fights as an amateur and was the US bantamweight champion in 1963. In the seventies, he started the Kronk sweat house.

Steward’s first world champion, in 1980, was Hilmer Kenty, the first world champion the motor city had celebrated since the great Joe Louis – and that success was followed quickly in the same year by the then ferocious welterweight Hearns.

Steward was instrumental in helping the welterweight super-fight between Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard come together in 1981. “It was simple. We met in an airport, it was done in an hour,” he told me last year. Hearns also went on to have one of the most exciting fights in history, against Marvin Hagler.

Steward would go on to become trainer, mentor and in is latter years, a guru to a total of 43 world champions. Steward talked a lot, he talked to everyone – journalists, boxers, fighters, managers – and he talked sense. He had enjoyed an analyst’s ringside role on television for over two decades in the United States.

[ click to continue reading at The Telegraph ]

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[ PledgeMusic.com ]

from SPIN

The Numero Group has become the world’s greatest reissue label by tirelessly chasing dead-ends, following every detour, and ringing doorbells at their own risk. DAVID PEISNER trails the label’s founders through Louisiana as they sniff mold, rifle through trash, and maybe expose a few lost geniuses.

This is what it’s come to. When a man isn’t listed in the phone book, when he doesn’t respond to emails or letters, when nobody seems to know how to find him, sometimes you just have to roll up to his last known address and holler at him. Literally.

“Mr. Gibson! Mr. Gibson!”

It’s 11 o’clock on a Thursday morning and Ken Shipley is standing on the sidewalk outside a tidy, one-story brick house in the Carrollton section of New Orleans. Hands cupped around the sides of his mouth, he’s trying to summon Joe Gibson from what may or may not be his home. Shipley surely would’ve preferred knocking on the door or ringing the bell, but the small home is separated from the street by not one, but two, locking wrought-iron gates.

“Mr. Gibson! Anyone home?”

In the early 1970s, Gibson wrote and produced two 45s by a group called the Soul Emotions, which featured his three young daughters. Not many copies of either record were pressed, not many of those were sold, and by the time Gibson’s eldest daughter was a junior in high school, the Soul Emotions had quit performing. The records quickly went out of print and just about disappeared from the Earth entirely.

But one made it into the hands of Rob Sevier, a partner of Shipley’s at the Chicago-based reissue label, the Numero Group. Sevier thought one song — a charming pop-soul nugget called “It’s Time for Love” — would fit perfectly on a compilation called The ABCs of Kid Soul, which documented the post-Jackson 5 explosion of such groups. So he tried to find Gibson. That was more than five years ago. The ABCs came out in 2007, but now Numero has decided to do a second album, The 123s of Kid Soul. Which is what has brought them here to the doorstep of this mini-Fort Knox in Carrollton.

[ click to continue reading at SPIN.com ]