“There is more to reggae than ‘ooom-chicky…”
Adrian Sherwood: The man who built Jamaica in the Midlands
The founder of On-U Sound tells Nick Coleman that there is more to reggae than ‘ooom-chicky…’
Not much reggae music came out of the Home Counties during the early 1970s, but an awful lot went in.
More than you might think. Quite a lot of it made the journey from London in the record bags of Adrian Sherwood, would-be reggae rebel, junior DJ, and pale-faced teenage entrepreneur of the skank, a boy so transfixed by Jamaican rhythm and its culture that, by the age of 15, he’d already committed himself to the life while skulking around the clubs of Luton, Dunstable and High Wycombe, getting off on the “better and better, madder and madder” threads of reggae’s Seventies narrative.
“It was the sheer diversity of it,” he reflects ardently in 2011, settled in his management office in Bloomsbury, one of the several places that serve as a nerve centre for his 30-year-old On-U Sound operation. “People say reggae is just ooom-chicky, ooom-chicky, but by the mid-Seventies there was a fantastic range: the mellow stuff, stuff for grown-ups, stuff in the American vocal group tradition, beautiful solo singers, the DJs, the mad stuff, early dub. And then there was the Rastafarian movement. It was like entering a whole other world: the weed, the Special Brews, the sound systems, the parties, the lifestyle, and this image of a place that was far away and better than where we lived.”
Reggae music was then a segregated art form, regarded as second class, its sales figures far outweighing its national chart impact. “Records would sell 100,000 copies and still not make the charts,” rasps Sherwood, “because of where they were sold – outlets like Baba’s in Dalston Market and Bailey’s in the Bullring in Birmingham. You could go to Baba’s on a Friday with a load of records and he’d say, ‘We’ll take 700 copies of that.’ The next week, he’d need more.”
At 53, he’s gearing up for the year-long 30th birthday celebrations of his label, an institution that was as groundbreaking in its time as it was passionate. But at 19 he was just one small stitch in the cultural gash which scabbed over to form punk’s affinity with roots reggae.
Stop-motion Bullitt
Artsicle
Artsicle, a Netflix-Like Art Rental Service, Launches in New York
Over the past weekend, we were having a conversation we’re sure thousands of other people were also having either right at that very moment or close to it: the second coming of the internet bubble. With more and more headlines including words like startup, v.c. funding, and IPO, it’s a serious case of deja vu. However, the fun part of a budding boom is learning about companies eager to try something new, crazy as their idea might sound. Enter Artsicle, who we found by way of ArtInfo. The elevator pitch of their service is essentially “Netflix for art.” You pay them $50 per month, they lend you a piece of art by an up-and-coming artist. If you don’t like how it looks on your wall or you want to try something new, you simply return the piece and get something else. If you decide you can’t live without it, you simply purchase it outright. They’re still a startup, so they’re only operating in New York (where they’ll deliver for free)….
Zombie Puppy
Euthanized Oklahoma puppy, Wall-E, rises from dead, now looking to be adopted by loving family
A puppy euthanized by veterinarians has risen from the dead.
The black-and-white pooch was one of five young dogs put to sleep Saturday at a shelter in Sulphur, Okla., News 9 in Oklahoma City reported. Each dog was checked and confirmed to be dead, then the 3-month-old and his four siblings were placed in a trash bin.
On Sunday morning, an animal control officer looked into the bin and discovered that the one pup somehow survived.
“He was just as healthy as could be,” Scott Prall told News 9.
The puppies were selected to be euthanized because of illness, as well as overcrowding due to limited shelter space in the state, said Amanda Kloski, a veterinarian in Oklahoma who has been caring for the puppy since his resurrection.
Famous Objects From Classic Movies
Influence In Pink
John Hughes and the art his movies inspired
By Jen Chaney
Yesterday was a day of great significance for anyone who ever admired Andie Walsh, reviled Steff and wanted to hang out at Traxx.
Feb. 28, 2011 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of “Pretty in Pink,” the teen classic written by John Hughes about a thrift-store-chic girl (Molly Ringwald), a pastel-preppy guy (Andrew McCarthy) and the pompadoured geek (Jon Cryer) who wants to drive them apart.
In honor of that anniversary, as well as the genius of John Hughes in general, I recently visited to Gallery 1988, a Santa Monica, Calif., art gallery currently hosting the exhibit “The Road to Shermer: A Tribute to John Hughes.” The exhibit features paintings, posters, drawings and mixed media creations inspired by Hughes’s films, from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to “The Breakfast Club” to “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” And yes, “Pretty in Pink” is well-represented, too.
Carlin On Auto-Tune
Zesty Curried Coconut Ramen
Josephine Meckseper at FLAG
The FLAG Art Foundation Presents New Exhibitions: ‘Josephine Meckseper’ and ‘Gerhard Richter, Sinbad’
The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to present two new exhibitions: an exhibition of new works by Josephine Meckseper on FLAG’s 9th floor space, and Sinbad, an exhibition of 98 paintings by Gerhard Richter, on the 10th floor. The exhibitions will run from February 23, 2011 through May 26, 2011.
Josephine Meckseper
Josephine Meckseper employs window displays, vitrines, installations, photographs, films and magazines to draw a direct correlation to the way consumer culture defines subjectivity and sublimates the key instruments of individual political agency.
Meckseper presents new works focusing on retail environments and modernist concepts. Industrial reflective slatwalls, a staple of bargain store design, mirror the car dealerships of 11th Avenue. Chromed wheels, car headlights and logos flash across the videos, sculptures and cellophane-wrapped paintings, like detritus after a crash. The traditional allure of the automobile is undercut with its demise, giving the entire exhibition a destabilizing undercurrent of fear. Meckseper utilizes the staples of American Gothic (fluorescents, broken mirrors, black birds) accompanied by the incessant booming of the acid-house soundtracks of her films to further the feeling of imminent danger that penetrates the space.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with contributions by John Cassidy, James Frey, Stephen Roach and an interview with Francesco Bonami.
Duncansville Man Does Stunts
Getting air onscreen: Duncansville man does stunts for “I Am Number Four”
February 19, 2011 – By Cory Dobrowolsky
Eric Malone has reached the pinnacle of the Jet Ski world, having won eight world championships.
Now he’s going Hollywood.
Malone, a Duncansville native, performed personal watercraft stunts for the new movie “I Am Number Four”.
Malone has competed professionally for 15 years and has now started Eric Malone Enterprises, which manufactures personal watercraft. In addition to performing the stunts, Malone’s company built the watercraft used in the film.
“I was able to provide the entire package, talent and the Jet Skis,” he said. “It made it simpler for them.”
The stunts in “I Am Number Four” were not Malone’s first venture into the movie industry. He also did the personal watercraft stunts for “Into the Blue” a 2005 film starring Paul Walker and Jessica Alba.
For the new movie, Malone and the other stunt riders filmed for two weeks last July on Islamorada in the Florida Keys.
“We were in paradise for two weeks, getting paid to ride Jet Skis in 80-degree water,” said Mark Gomez, another of the stunt riders for the film. “It was a dream come true.”
iPad NUMBER FOUR
iPads Helped Direct I Am Number Four
From the sounds of director DJ Caruso’s remarks on the iPad, the tablet did everything on the set of upcoming sci-fi flick I Am Number Four but order coffee and belittle the extras.
He gushes:
“Well I think people who are making movies now, I can’t imagine they’re not doing it [using the iPad] because, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got every previz thing on there, I have every storyboard on there, I have every script and every script note,” he said. “I make my shot list on there and from that shot list I just send it… it’s become an amazing tool and I never would have thought it would have kicked in that fast. In fact, I talked to Steven, because I was sending him something from my iPad and he sent something back from his iPad and I thought, ‘Oh you got one!’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah.’ and I told him all these things I was using and he was like, ‘Which apps do you have?’ so here you are sending back which apps you have to Steven Spielberg. everyone’s starting to use it because it really is an amazing tool.”
Dave Duerson Gone
Bears’ Duerson shot himself; brain to be studied
By Dan Pompei and Duaa Eldeib
Former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, a source with knowledge of the situation told the Tribune.
His death has been ruled a suicide, but the Miami-Dade police department has yet to make the information public.
“He had informed (his family) at some point that he wanted his brain to be studied so people could learn more about the effect of brain trauma and so kids could play the game more safely in the future,” Chris Nowinski said.
The Bears selected Duerson out of Notre Dame in the third round of the 1983 draft. He became a starter in 1985 and played in the first of four consecutive Pro Bowls that season. In 1987, he was named the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year. He also was one of the Bears’ NFLPA representatives and was a leader through the 1987 strike.
DIVE f/x Powers #4 Lumens
DIVE Produces 105 for I Am Number Four
February 19, 2011 | Levent OZLER
DIVE produced 105 visual effects shots in the highly anticipated DreamWorks release “I Am Number Four.” DIVE worked with Visual Effects Supervisor Greg McMurray to enhance the main character’s otherworldly powers showcased in the film. One of DIVE’s challenges was in creating a technique to demonstrate the power of “Lumen” and how it transfers to the tools the main character touches.
DIVE established Lumen’s blue glow by combining an enhanced and lengthened motion blur with the original gleam from an LED crystal embedded in a sword. The team then manually tracked both the tip and bottom of this crystal in each shot due to the speed of the blades and the lighting in the shots.
“We created a tool to give us the streaks and enhanced motion blur coming off of the crystal during the fast fighting,” said DIVE Sequence Lead Jeremy Fernsler. “We then controlled the length and fade of the streak. This tool also made it easier to tweak the motion curve from the track and allowed us to make the streaks follow the flow of the sword strikes during the battle. A final color correct and glow pass tied the enhancements together.”
“I Am Number Four” also highlights DIVE’s work in Paint. While camera projections were used to aid the larger plate restoration areas, some trickier techniques were employed when Number Four dives from a cliff over a waterfall. In this scene, the actor’s wires were both behind thin strands of hair and in front of a pool of rippling water making for a tricky paint fix.
I AM NUMBER FOUR Stunt Featurette
Lynda Benglis Oozing
Artful Commentary, Oozing From the Walls
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
The New Museum has become a busy place this year, and it is not yet even March. In January it opened a popular tribute to the market-hardy paintings of George Condo. Now it is offering a startlingly excellent resurrection of the prescient Post-Minimalist renegade Lynda Benglis and her gaudy, multidexterous and often gender-bending segues among Process, Performance and Body Art.
Ms. Benglis is something of a mythic character, as many female artists of the 1960s and early ’70s are by now. Working in pigmented latex, beeswax or polyurethane foam and even glitter, she made daring, often ephemeral or fragile works that have plenty of historical weight but little market presence.
Permanence seems to have been the last thing on her mind, at least in the early years. Many pieces were temporary installations that did not survive; others had the kind of willful fragility that makes collectors nervous. One of her most famous works is nothing but a brilliantly orchestrated magazine ad: a performance-slash-photograph that ran in the November 1974 issue of Artforum for which she posed, taut and well-oiled, wearing only a pair of rhinestone-studded cat-eye sunglasses and wielding a dildo.
Roasted Pork and Brussel Sprouts
Secret Weapon Number Six
The Secret Weapon of ‘I Am Number Four’
By Michelle Kung
- Getty
Alex Pettyfer and Diana Agron may ostensibly be the leads of “I Am Number Four,” but it’s Aussie actress Teresa Palmer that has early viewers buzzing with her small, but critical role as a fearless, Ducati-riding alien known as Number Six.
Based on the YA novel by Pittacus Lore — better known as the pseudonym of authors James Frey and Jobie Hughes — “Number Four” is the first film project from Frey’s Full Fathom Five venture and centers about the adventures of Number Four (Pettyfer), one of nine aliens — with latent superpowers, naturally — sent to earth to escape the wrath of the evil Mogadorian race.
Even though the film features two female characters, Palmer says she was attracted to Number Six because she was “dark and edgy and mysterious, and she’s as intimidating as she is mysterious.” Palmer, who currently lives in LA but frequently returns home to her native Adelaide, Australia, was less enamored of her strict training schedule for the film.
ICH BIN NUMMER VIER
Rowley Fall 2011
Cynthia Rowley Keeps it Classy With Longer Skirts and Lush Fabrics
Sunday, February 13, 2011, by Fawnia Soo Hoo
In between planning art collaborations, making Band-Aids and Pampers fun and launching a line of bridesmaid dresses, we wonder how Cynthia Rowley finds the time to work on her own signature collections, but she pulls it off every single time. Especially on Friday when she showed her Fall 2011 collection in the Fashion Week tents.
The eclectic mix of bold names in the audience was definitely representative of Cynthia Rowley’s many pursuits. We spotted steadfast supporter and The Good Wifestar Alan Cumming, a dishy Nigel Barker, actress Julia Stiles, newly-engagedLauren Bush and James Frey (yes, that James Frey).
STEED LORD’s 123 If You Want Me
From The Days Of Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys
The Business Behind Young Adult Novels
Many of us were SHOCKED this week to learn that Vampire Diaries author L. J. Smith has been fired from writing forthcoming books in her popular series. How can an author possibly be fired from writing her own books? Well, it turns out that Alloy Entertainment, a book packager, actually owns the rights to the Vampire Diaries as well as a few other of the hottest franchises in Young Adult literature like Gossip Girl, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Pretty Little Liars.
So what do Alloy and other book packagers do? In a nutshell: they develop ideas, hire writers, and sell the finished products to publishers. A 2009 article in The New Yorker, “The Gossip Mill,” outlined the process at Alloy, whose target audience is young women and girls. They have weekly meetings where ideas are pitched, often reworking successful adult stories for younger audiences (examples cited in the article: a reverse of the movie Taken where a teenage girl has to rescue her kidnapped parents and a suggestion for “Shaun of the Dead for tweens.”). If they decide to go forward with a pitch, an editor will flesh out the idea before asking a writer to create a sample chapter. If they like the writer’s work, s/he will be put on contract to write the first act of the book, although plotting is a collaboration between the writer and editors at Alloy. The first act and a mockup of a potential book cover are then pitched to publishers. The process is described as being similar to the way a TV show is developed and written.
It’s not a new practice; packaging books for teens goes back to the days of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and even those 80s staples, the Sweet Valley High books (fun fact: Gossip Girl author Cecily von Ziegesar wrote some of the SVH books). More recently, James Frey and his so-called “fiction factory,” Full Fathom Five, have made headlines as the creators of the YA book I Am Number Four. The movie based on the book was produced by Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, and will be in theaters next week.
SMALL WORLD BOOKS in Venice
Bookstore of the week: Small World Books in Venice
Mary Goodfader moved her bookstore to the Venice Boardwalk in 1976 after seven years in Marina del Rey. When she and her husband Robert found the space that now holds Small World Books and the Sidewalk Cafe, the building was empty, she says, covered with graffiti like “stop bombing in Cambodia.” They bought the building and divided responsibilities: She ran the bookstore and Robert ran the cafe along the boardwalk, which faces the sea. The restaurant is “pretty much the reason the bookstore can exist,” Goodfader says. “As long as people want to buy hamburgers, I’ll keep it going.”
Venice Beach is home to some famous characters, apart from those available on the postcards for sale. Those who’ve stopped in at the store include actors John Cleese and Paul Giamatti, filmmaker Tony Bill, musician Andy Summers and artists Ed Ruscha and Robert Graham. Writer James Frey was “a great friend of the store,” says Mary Goodfader. “We liked him a lot.” He did two signings there; these days, the store rarely hosts book signings.
SOY EL NUMERO CUATRO
Agron and Palmer At The IMN4 Premiere
Dianna Agron, Alex Pettyfer Light Up ‘I Am Number Four’ Red Carpet
Posted 2/10/11 11:56 am ET by Amy Wilkinson in Fashion & Style
Aliens landed in L.A. last night. But don’t worry—they were the peace-loving kind. The stars of “I Am Number Four,” including Alex Pettyfer, Dianna Agron and Teresa Palmer, walked the red carpet at the Westwood Village Theater for the premiere of their extra-terrestrial thriller. The stars’ fashions were undeniably out of this world—most in a good way, but some…not so much.
“I got a jlowbob once on a motorcycle.”
The Imaginary Author Photo
James Frey & the Imaginary Author Photo
How do you photograph an imaginary author?
Novelist James Frey and Jobie Hughes co-wrote I Am Number Four under the pseudonym of “Pittacus Lore.” The author photo for the imaginary author of the YA book is pictured above (via Howard Huang)–click to enlarge. What do you think of Frey’s first offering from his fiction factory?
Here’s more from the official site: “I am Pittacus Lore. I am from the Planet Lorien, three hundred million miles away. I am one of ten Elders who lived on our planet. I am ten thousand years old.
Mapplethorpe To Getty and LACMA
Los Angeles to become home to Robert Mapplethorpe work and archive [Updated]
As of this summer, Los Angeles will become the leading destination for anyone interested in artist Robert Mapplethorpe, thanks to a joint acquisition just finalized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust.
The acquisition includes more than 2,000 works by the artist, “including a print of virtually every photograph he editioned in silver gelatin,” according to the museums. Silver gelatin is the process by which he made his most widely known work, black and white photographs.
It also includes the Mapplethorpe archive, featuring one-of-a-kind silver gelatin prints, thousands of Polaroid studies for his work, personal correspondence to intimates such as Patti Smith, and documentation of the 1990 obscenity trial in Cincinnati that made Mapplethorpe a central figure in that decade’s culture wars.
Richland, Washington School Board Bans James Frey’s Book (The Reich Would Be Proud)
Richland School Board to hear appeal on book
BY JACQUES VON LUNEN, HERALD STAFF WRITER Published: 02/02/11
RICHLAND — A good novel can teach a lot about life. But how much profanity or other objectionable content should be in novels used in school?
That’s the question the Richland School Board will be asked to consider tonight when a West Richland parent asks to have Snow Falling on Cedars by Washington writer David Guterson removed from the list of books that could be used in an Advanced Placement English language and composition class at Hanford High School.
The committee seemed to be in agreement on its first book from the long list Tuesday. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey got little support from those who seemed to be the least willing to ban a book from school.
Free Frank Tanori Gonzalez
Ariz. man accused of putting porn in TV broadcast
TUCSON, Ariz. — An Arizona man has been arrested on charges that he used a computer to interrupt a local telecast of the 2009 Super Bowl with a 37-second pornography clip.
The FBI and Marana police took Frank Tanori Gonzalez into custody Friday on suspicion of fraud and computer tampering.
Authorities say someone cut into the Comcast cable broadcast of the game between the Arizona Cardinals and Pittsburgh Steelers that went to viewers in the Tucson area.
Idle Doodles by Famous Authors
Jorge Luis Borges’ self-portrait, drawn after he had gone blind.
[ click to see all the Famous Author Doodles at FlavorWire.com ]