Posts from the “Music” Category

Michael Lavine: The Notorious B.I.G. – Life After Death

Posted on May 20, 2017

Photo: Michael Lavine. The Notorious B.I.G., Life After Death.

Twenty years have passed, but the shock is still fresh — and still incomprehensible. On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in a drive-by shooting. It remains unsolved.

At 12:30 a.m., Wallace left a Vibe magazine Soul Train Music Awards after-party at Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum. The SUV in which he was traveling stopped at a red light just 50 yards from the venue. A dark Chevrolet Impala SS pulled up along the passenger side. The driver rolled down his window, drew his weapon and fired. Four bullets struck Wallace. He was rushed to nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m.

Not long afterward, The Notorious B.I.G. rose again: The double album Life After Death was released March 25. It sold 700,000 hard copies almost immediately, jumping from No. 176 to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the space of a week. The album’s cover art featured the man formerly known as Biggie Smalls in a long black coat and black bowler. He stared us in the face while leaning against a hearse that bore the license plate “B.I.G.” There were no sunglasses to hide his lazy eye. He wore it full and proud, looking over his shoulder as if he already knew. He wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t mad. He was just stating the facts from the other side of the grave.

It seemed like a prophecy.

Read the Full Story at The Undefeated

Categories: 1990s, Art, Brooklyn, Music, Photography, The Undefeated

John Ingham: Spirit of 76

Posted on May 12, 2017

Photo: The Damned opened 1977 at the Hope & Anchor, a pub in Islington with a history of live bands. Comfortably holding about 100 people, there were double that number crammed in. Sweat was running down the walls. 2 January 1977. Photography John Ingham.

A dark cloud swept across England in the mid-1970s, washing away the buoyant optimism of Swinging London. The bright promise turned bleak, as the recession pushed more and more people into unemployment. Couple this with strikes, power cuts, and IRA bombs, and the only fitting response was to burn the whole thing down.

More than music and style, punk was an attitude. It gave no fucks as it seized the moment and made its way out of the art schools and on to the world stage in 1976. Journalist John Ingham, who was writing for Sounds, conducted the first interview with the Sex Pistols and got hooked on the raw energy, soul, and nerve. He began covering the scene, which accelerated rapidly as punk ignited a movement across the U.K.

New bands like the Clash, the Damned, and Subway Sect began to appear – but no one was photographing them until Ingham picked up a camera. His photographs, which include the very first color pictures of punk, have been collected for the very first time in Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness (Anthology Editions). Ingham reflects on what it was like to be in the front row of a wildfire.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Friends and countrymen at the Sex Pistols, Notre Dame de France, 15 Nov 1976. Viv Albertine Siouxsie Sioux smoking cigarette, Steve Severin, Kenny Morris, Sarah Hall, one of the two ladies who came with John to the first interview in April. Photography John Ingham

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Dazed, Music

Anton Perich: Max’s Kansas City

Posted on May 5, 2017

The Cockettes, Photo by Anton Perich

or a decade Max’s Kansas City ruled New York, becoming the premier spot to eat, drink, dance, party, and frolic. Proprietor Mickey Ruskin opened the nightclub and restaurant in 1965, drawing top talents like Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs, and Robert Rauschenberg. But when Andy Warhol and his entourage started hanging out in the back room, Max’s quickly became the place to be. Soon David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed were regulars, along with Warhol’s latest superstars like Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn.

In 1970, Croatian émigré, Anton Perich arrived a Max’s, by way of Paris. An activist in the Lettrism group during the 68 Revolution, Perich was an avant-garde filmmaker. He made friends with some busboys on staff, and they said it was the best job in America. In 1972, he joined the staff, which included busboy Carlos Falchi, manager Eric Emerson, and waitress Debbie Harry, whose presence eluded him.

For the next two years, Perich would fill in when someone called out. As he remembers, the best time to work was late at night, when the famous and the infamous alike could come and let down their hair. No one batted an eye when Perich pulled out his camera for a photo. As you can see from the photos here, they were more than happy to oblige – or sometimes, not even aware. He was soon contributing his candid snaps to Interview before going on to launch NIGHT in 1978, his very own publication.

Perich speaks about those heady years, when it was impossible to tell the nights from the days.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Candy Darling, Photo by Anton Perich

Robert Mapplethorpe, Photo by Anton Perich

Categories: 1970s, Art, Dazed, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Gary Simmons: Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark

Posted on April 12, 2017

Photo: Dubblestandart and Lee “Scratch” Perry at Popfest 2015; Karlsplatz in Vienna, Austria. Photo by Manfred Werner – Tsui. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Black Ark. The name alone evokes memories of yesterday, of the spirit of the 1970s when originality and innovation was at the heart of music and culture. In 1973, reggae and dub producer Lee “Scratch: Perry built the Black Ark behind his family’s home in the Washington Gardens section of Kingston, Jamaica.

As with the D.I.Y. spirit of the times, the Black Ark made due with what was available—providing the genius is in the mind and not in the equipment. Perry understood the nature of recorded music existed in harmony between man and machine. In order to create “the living African heartbeat,” he once buried microphones at the base of a palm tree, then thumped on the grounds to create a mystical bass drum effect.

It was not the rudimentary set up or the dated equipment that gave the Black Ark its sound, but the wisdom of Perry to incorporate life into the creation of his art. He would later songs with subtle effects that spoke to his truth, the sounds of broken glass, crying babies, falling rain, and cow noises simulated by Watty Burnett.

“I see the studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves – you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you sending into it and live,” Perry told Roy Ascott for the book Art, Technology, Consciousness: Mind @ Large (Intellect, 2000).

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. Installation view, Prospect 3, New Orleans, 2014.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Music

Motown: The Sound of Young America

Posted on April 10, 2017

Photo; Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diana Ross in London’s Manchester Square, outside the headquarters of EMI Records, in October 1964. Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust

Motown: The sound of young America, coming straight out of Motor City/Detroit was the perfect blend of soul and pop. It was the home of legends from Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Diana Ross. And it was all the brainchild of Berry Gordy, Jr., a local songwriter who quickly realized that producing records and owning the publishing was the best way to make bank.

After launching Tamla and Motown labels, Gordy purchased the property that would become the legendary Hitsville U.S.A., in 1959. The multi-purpose building served as a recording studio, administrative offices, tape library, control room, and living quarters for Gordy in those early formative years. He put several family members in key roles, and made Smoke Robinson VP. Then, on April 14, 1960, Berry Gordy, Jr. incorporated the Motown Record Corporation, and that same year the company had its first number 1 R&B hit, the Miracles, “Shop Around.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Seen at a Detroit nightclub in 1964 are, from L to R, Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, Motown songwriter/producer Ivy Jo Hunter, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, with musicians Dan Turner on sax and James Jamerson on bass. Private Collection.

Photo: With The Supremes, Berry Gordy hails members of the Motown house band, at left, and his Holland/Dozier/Holland hitmakers, in December 1965. LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-L901A- 65-26- 16-VVV, no. 10]

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Steve Parke: Picturing Prince

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

When Prince died on April 21, 2016, the world would never be the same. More than an artist, Prince was the living embodiment of the American Dream. One part innovator, one part iconoclast, Prince took pleasure in subverting expectations and trouncing them with a mastery that belied a singular genius and an incomparable soul.

In 1988, Steve Parke joined the team at Paisley Park after he seized hold of an opportunity and ran with it – for 13 years! Parke collaborated with Prince, helping to create the look of the man whose style and sound was ever-evolving. As art director, Parke was responsible for designing everything from album covers and set design to music videos and merchandise.

In a world where nothing was impossible, Parke found himself in the unexpected position of in-house photographer. In late 1997, as digital photography came to the fore, Parke taught himself everything he needed to know in order to meet the high standards for which Prince was known.

Over the next four years, they produced a stunning body of work, most of it never seen until now, with the publication of Picturing Prince (published by Octopus). Accompanying the images is a series of 50 remarkable vignettes written by Parke that pull back the curtain to reveal Prince: the man, the artist, the legend. Parke gives Dazed Digital a look at life inside the fabled halls of Paisley Park.\

Read the Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Music, Photography

Digging in the Crates for the Best “Art Record Covers” Ever Made

Posted on March 14, 2017

art: Takashi Murakami / music: Kanye West / record: Graduation / year: 2007 / label: Roc-A-Fella Records / format: Album 2×12 ̋, CD / artwork: Digital compositing

Once upon a time, just a couple of decades ago, new albums used to be released on vinyl, which was carefully stored inside 12 x 12 inch record sleeves. In the days before video killed the radio star, all you’d have available was what you held in your hands. You’d pop the record on the turntable, drop the needle and then sit back, gazing upon the album cover searching for some sort of understanding.

There was something profound about the simplicity of it all, the single image becoming an icon all its own. Sight and sound complemented each other, like yin and yang, striking the perfect balance of substance and style. Then, everything began to change. The record gave way to the CD and the image scaled down tremendously. But that was nothing compared to the current lay of the land, where the album cover appears as a thumbnail image in the upper half of our smart phone.

If you missed it, c’est la vie. Times change, invariably. But if you miss it, and you want that good thing back, Taschen has just released Art Record Covers, a 448-page compendium of the finest collaborations between musicians and artists. Edited by Francesco Spampinato and Julius Wiedemann, the book is perfectly sized at 12 x 12 inches, capturing and recreating the visual impact each image once possessed.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

art: Andy Warhol / music: The Velvet Underground and Nico / record: The Velvet Underground and Nico / year: 1967 / label: Verve Records / format: Album 12 ̋ / artwork: Screen print / special: Vinyl released with three variations of front cover with banana sticker to peel off

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Music

Ricky Flores: The South Bronx c. 1980

Posted on March 9, 2017

The South Bronx became infamous during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, when newscaster Howard Cosell noticed a nearby abandoned school engulfed in flames and not a fire truck in sight, uttering his legendary phrase, “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”

The Bronx had been burning throughout the 70s, in a massive series of fires set by arsonists working on behalf of landlords who knew they could collect more money from insurance fraud than they could from rent. From 1970 to 1980, more than 97 per cent of seven census tracts in the South Bronx had been lost to fire and abandonment, turning the once majestic neighborhood into blocks of rubble resembling a war zone. Yet, through it all, the people of the Bronx persevered.

The era was ruled by the do-it-yourself ethos, because under a governmental policy of “benign neglect” (systemic racism that denied basic services to Black and Latinx neighborhoods), it was understood if you didn’t do it, no one would. Hip hop was born out of the fires, the poverty, and the despair, as a new generation of youth invented a brand new art form using nothing but pure ingenuity.

South Bronx native Ricky Flores began taking photographs as a high school senior in high school in 1980, shooting pictures of his friends and his neighborhood. His photographs capture the South Bronx as it was, a place filled with beauty amidst the rubble. He began studying with Mel Rosenthal, one of the most renowned photographers of the South Bronx, and realized he had a responsibility to document his community as an insider.

While outsiders, working for the mainstream media or Hollywood, would come in and create an image of the Bronx as the worst borough in New York City, Flores photographed the community as he knew them to be: a warm, creative, dynamic, resilient, and strong. Flores gives Dazed an inside look at growing up in the South Bronx.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Dazed, Music, Photography

“Criminal Minded” Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

Posted on March 3, 2017

Ever since Remy Ma released “ShETHER” last week, Hip-Hop fans everywhere have gotten a taste for beef. One rap’s oldest forms, the battle raps is a fight to the finish where only the strongest survive. It’s long been a staple for the MC, who started taking out all comers to earn street cred and notoriety. Before anyone was laying down tracks on wax, MCs earned their stripes on stage in front of a live audience.

Then the game changed and artists started getting record deals. Their rhymes were preserved and distributed to the public at large. Battling took Hip Hop to new heights as the answer record, as it was called then, kept fans hype. By the mid-80s, it was a regular trend, with answer records flying back and forth. It was always personal, putting the dozens to a beat, turning the dozens into a musical art.

It wasn’t political—until Boogie Down Productions (BDP) arrived on the scene, changing the rap game forever with the March 3, 1987, release of Criminal Minded, their debut album. Comprised of KRS-One, Scott La Rock, and Ced-Gee, BDP came out with both barrel blazing, firing off rounds at Queens natives MC Shan and the Juice Crew with “South Bronx” and “The Bridge is Over.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, Bronx, Crave, Music

Eisen Bernard Bernardo: Album+Art

Posted on February 19, 2017

Artist Eisen Bernard Bernardo is the mastermind “Album+Art,” a brilliant series of visual mash-ups that pair classic pop music albums with classical paintings to breathtaking effect. This is fourth installment of the “+Art” project, which started in 2009 with “Mag+Art,” a series pairing magazine covers with paintings that went viral in 2014. The following year, a follower challenged Bernardo to use album covers instead of magazines, and the result has thrilled people around the world.

The pairings reveal the eye of an expert with a vast vocabulary of both pop music iconography and art historical references. “I’m fond of homage, similarities and references in movies, music, and other art forms. I felt that album covers (like other contemporary artforms) were inspired directly (and/or indirectly) by classical paintings. I wanted to compare and contrast modern and classical aesthetics,” Bernardo explains.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Music

Dr. Octagon Returns!

Posted on February 15, 2017

In 1996, Hip Hop had reached new heights, achieving crossover success with music coming out of the East and the West. With labels like Bad Boy and Death Row leading the way, the Golden Age of Hip Hop was about to enter the Age of Bling. In many ways, ’96 was a turning point: the culture, now 23 years old was had begun a schism between the mainstream and the underground, with the more innovative cats keeping close to the roots of the movement, creating something entirely new.

That extra fresh style and sound was the hallmark of Dr. Octagon, a group so innovative it left many confused for it went beyond Hip Hop’s outer limits. Dr. Octagon came together in 1996 through an unusual combination of fate and serendipity.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1990s, Crave, Music