Posts from the “Music” Category

Celebrating the Latinx Women of LA’s Punk Scene

Posted on January 9, 2018

Ronnie in Anaheim (January 2016). Photography © Angela Boatwright

When the first wave of punk hit Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, it was a predominantly male scene – but women quickly brought their voice to bear. While many musical trends have come and gone over the past 40 years, punk continues to speak to a new generation of teens.

Punk’s DIY ethos empowers people to be the change they want to see in the world, giving them an outlet for their rage at injustice, hypocrisy, and fraudulence. The artists do not need formal training – just guts to get up on the stage and expose themselves.

While making the documentary Los Punks: We Are All We Have over a four-year period, photographer and filmmaker Angela Boatwright connected with a group of young women in East LA’s backyard punk scene, a DIY movement led by the city’s Latinx youth, and created an incredible collection of never-before-seen photographs – presented here for the first time.

Boatwright’s work inspired us to delve deeper into the culture’s history. Here, we spotlight five women in the LA punk scene who share their thoughts on the women who inspired them to join the cause.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Moshpit during South Central Riot Squad in a tow truck parking lot in Watts, Los Angeles (September 2016). Photography © Angela Boatwright

Janet practicing with her band Paradocks in Watts, Los Angeles (October 2015). Photography © Angela Boatwright

Categories: 1970s, Dazed, Music, Women

Michael Lavine: Nirvana

Posted on December 26, 2017

New York City, January 11, 1992. © Michael Lavine

During the summer of 1990, an unknown band flew from Seattle to New York to gig in the underground punk scene. While they were in town they dropped by photographer Michael Lavine’s Bleecker Street studio for a session arranged by Sub Pop Records owner Bruce Pavitt. Going by the name Nirvana, the group featured singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Chad Channing. They had been playing together for a few years but hadn’t yet broken through. As Lavine’s photos from that fateful day reveal, they were just a couple of kids living life on their terms.

Lavine would shoot the band a total of four times, including for cover of their seminal Nevermind album, which they released the following year. The album blew up, selling over 30 million copies worldwide and bringing grunge to a mainstream audience. But for Nirvana, success had a tumultuous effect, and as their star rose, the band began to plummet into the abyss. By the time Lavine photographed the final studio sessions on a weekend in 1992, the group was reaching breaking point.

Lavine’s photographs tell the story of a rise and fall, of paradise and perdition. To celebrate what would have been Cobain’s 50th year on earth, Ono Arte Contemporanea in Bologna, Italy presents Kurt Cobain 50: The Grunge Photographs of Michael Lavine, a selection of iconic and never-before-seen images from his archive, which runs from now through to January 31, 2018. Lavine shares his memories of this historic chapter of music history.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Nevermind session, Los Angeles, May 23, 1991. © Michael Lavine

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

Alexander Thompson: Inside the Latinx Rockabilly Revolution

Posted on December 14, 2017

Photo: Constancio in leather, Las Vegas, 2005. © Alexander Thompson.

Chicos in plaid Western shirts spotted on way to car show, Las Vegas, 2005. © Alexander Thompson.

In the 1950s, Rockabilly music burst on the scene in the form of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley. Coming out of the American South, it fused country music with rhythm & blues, bluegrass, and boogie woogie into a sound all its own.

But it wasn’t just a sound: it was a style and attitude as well, defined by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Marlon Brando in The Wild One. It was leather jackets and jeans, pompadours and tattoos, pin-up girls and burlesque, hot rods and drag races. It was an act of defiance against an oppressive society.

In the decades since, Rockabilly has taken different forms, enjoying a resurgence in the 1970s with the Teddy Boys and Girls in London and an American revival with the Stray Cats during the 1980s. Since then, it’s maintained its place among subcultures, paying homage to the roots of teenage rebellion in music, fashion, and cars – most notably among the Latinx community on the West Coast.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: Paulina dancing with beau, Las Vegas, 2006. © Alexander Thompson.

Turban head, Las Vegas, 2010. © Alexander Thompson.

Categories: Art, Huck, Music, Photography

Depeche Mode: Monument

Posted on December 5, 2017

Photo: Depeche Mode: Monument. Courtesy of Akashic Book

In 1980, a four young men hailing from the British town of Basildon decided to start a band. They named it ‘Composition of Sound’, a very formal way of describing one of the defining factors of their 37-year career, and quickly adopted, ‘Depeche Mode’ (translation: ‘Fashion News’) after spotting it on the cover of a French magazine.

Their music, like their name, was cutting edge. Coming into their own just as synthesiser music was making waves, Depeche Mode received offers from major labels but decided to sign with Mute Records, a London-based independent that was emerging as the sound of the times. Daniel Miller, the label’s founder, started Mute in 1978 to release his own one-man electro-punk project The Normal, and the label subsequently signed a roster of artists that approached synth music with a DIY punk attitude.

By the mid-80s, Depeche Mode had become an international phenomenon, and one of the places their music made the most impact was with the youth living inside the Eastern bloc. Although their records had been banned by official channels, some Western radio and TV still reached fans, and Depeche Mode became musical heroes for a new generation.

As a teenager growing up in East Germany, Dennis Burmeister was slowly becoming the band’s number one fan, after having a lightbulb moment listening to “Pipeline” on the radio around 1983 or 84, then seeing a video for “A Question of Time” in 86. He began amassing a collection that would grow to more than 10,000 pieces – the most extensive archive of Depeche Mode memorabilia in the world.

Burmeister got started by swapping tapes with friends before he was finally able to buy hard copies after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Over the years, his role began to grow as he recognised the importance of being not only a collector but a historian. By the early 00s, he had become a consummate insider, working as webmaster of the Toast Hawaii label, founded by Depeche Mode member Andy Fletcher.

In 2008, Burmerister met Sacha Lewis, a fellow Depeche Mode historian who was working on a documentary film. They quickly hit it off and saw the perfect opportunity to pool their talents and resources into creating a book, Depeche Mode: Monument. Featuring more than one thousand objects from Burmeister’s archive, Monument is a detailed chronology of the band who – after 100 million album sales – still show no sign of stopping. Burmeister and Lewis told us what it takes to build a monument to the band.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Depeche Mode: Monument. Courtesy of Akashic Book

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Dazed, Music

Brian “B+” Cross: Ghostnotes – Music of the Unplayed

Posted on November 2, 2017

Jay Electronica, Pyramids of Giza, Cairo, Egypt. August 2011 / Nas, Los Angeles, California, US. November 2010. Photography Brian “B+” Cross

From left to right, Beni B, Chief Xcel, and Lyrics Born at Records, downtown Sacramento, California, US. May 1995. This is the cover of “Endtroducing” by DJ Shadow. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana, US. August 1998 / Grand Wizard Theodore, Manhattan, New York, US. February 1996. Theodore is the first person to ever scratch a record. His hands started a revolution in music. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

Life moves in circles, though we may not notice until the revolution is complete. In 1996, DJ Shadow released Endtroducing…, his debut studio album on Mo’ Wax Recordings, with curious photo on the cover. It showed two guys inside a record store: one in profile, the other’s face blurred – neither were DJ Shadow.

It was a scene from everyday life, the very thing you’d recognize as a fellow hip hop head. It stood out for it unpretentiousness, it’s lack of glamour and glitz. Just as hip hop was going pop, Endtroducing… was taking it back to the earliest days of the art form when the DJ was king and crate digging was everything.

Five years later, an editor at C Photography in Spain reached out to Brian “B+” Cross, the photographer who created this seminal image. They wanted to feature it in their annual. Cross agreed – then sent along more images turning their request into a 15-page spread. When it was published, David Hamrick put a Post-It note on the page. Then, in 2015, when he was the director of the University of Texas Press, he reached out to Cross to see if he had more work, thinking it could make an excellent book.

The inevitable does not need a plan; it simply arrives. Cross had been working on Ghostnotes, a collection of photographs made throughout his career, for nearly two decades. The book was conceived as a mixtape, a visual corollary to the sounds of the African diaspora that flow through hip hop, uniting generations of people from all walks of life in the rhythms of the drums, the heartbeat of the art form.

Weaving together threads the combine documentary and portrait photography, Cross guides us through a musical landscape, crafting a composition as brilliantly conceived as a work by Miles Davis. Conceptualized with “A” and “B” sides, Ghostnotes takes us on a journey around the world, brilliantly synthesizing hip hop, Jamaican dub, Brazilian samba, Ethiopian jazz, Cuban timba, and Colombian cumbia. The book features portraits of everyone from The Notorious B.I.G., Eazy-E, and Kendrick Lamar to George Clinton, Brian Wilson, and the Watts Prophets, among so many more. Cross speaks with us about his journey bringing Ghostnotes to life.

Read the Full Story at Miss Rosen

The Notorious B.I.G., Beverly Hills, California, US. April 1995. Biggie was murdered outside this building three weeks later, and there is still no plaque or monument to commemorate his death. Photography Brian “B+” Cross

Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, US. February 14th, 2006. J Dilla’s funeral. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

Categories: 1990s, Africa, Art, Books, Bronx, Dazed, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Jane Friedman: How to Find Artists That Can Change the World

Posted on October 3, 2017

Photo: Mark Sink, Grace Jones, ca 1988

Artwork: Arturo Vega, “Supermarket Sign(Steak Sale)”, 1973. Acrylic on canvas 48 x 72 x 1 1/2 inches

Located in the heart of New York’s East Village, Howl! Happening was established in memory of artist Arturo Vega, who designed the iconic Ramones logo. Vega, a Mexican national, fled his native land in 1968 when the government rounded up 148 of the country’s most notable artists and intellectuals, putting their lives at risk. Vega fled to New York where he had prominent connections, like Jane Friedman – the woman made rock’n’roll journalism a legitimate business.

New York native Jane Friedman grew up on Broadway, as her father handled public relations for legendary shows along the Great White Way. Friedman followed in her father’s footsteps, and along the way, she realised her talents would be best served by supporting the greatest artists of the time. She went on to craft a new lane in the media, representing artists like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, as well as doing PR for the famed musical Hair. She was also Patti Smith’s manager throughout her career.

Friedman has been a behind-the-scenes fixture in downtown New York, working with artists and musicians to ensure their success and legacy. When Vega, one of her dearest friends died in 2013, Friedman set up Howl! Arts, a non-profit organisation that preserves the culture of the East Village and the Lower East Side in a rapidly gentrifying city that has effectively erased so much of the New York’s fabled past.

Taking its name from Allen Ginsberg’s famed 1955 poem, Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is the cornerstone of the organisation. A gallery, performance space, and archive located around the corner from where CBGBs once stood, Howl! Happening has been home to a series of phenomenal shows including exhibitions by Patricia Field, Lydia Lunch, Taboo!, PUNK Magazine’s 40th Anniversary, and The East Village Eye – as well as on-going events and performances that showcase the very best of the community, which continues to thrive despite the exponential explosion in the cost of living.

This month, Howl! presents Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery Street and the late 80s New York, a group exhibition that looks back at the famed East Village gallery and performance space that served as a vital intersection of music, fashion, art, and nightlife during one of the most vital and devastating period of New York history. Featuring works by nearly 100 artists including David LaChapelle, Nan Goldin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dondi White, Stephen Sprouse, and George Condo, to name just a few, the exhibition is on view through October 7, 2017.

Friedman speaks with us about what it takes to cultivate a community of artists that can change the world, while staying true to your roots, and shares images from the ongoing show.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Straight to Hell flyer

Photo: Mark Sink, Keith Haring, ca 1988

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography, Women

Richard Boch: The Mudd Club

Posted on September 15, 2017

Photo: Mudd Club Fashion Show, 1980. Photography Nick Taylor.

Photo: Jackie Curtis and Bowie. Photography Bobby Grossman.

The Mudd Club: the name alone embodies the mystical, mythical essence of Old York – a city where you could reinvent yourself from the ground up. All it took was ingenuity, desire, and nerve to do-it-yourself, take it to the streets and show out on the world stage.

In the fall of 1978, the Mudd Club opened its doors at 77 White Street, long before anyone referred to the triangle below Canal as “Tribeca.” Back then it was an outpost on the frontier of downtown. As manufacturing shops packed up and left town, huge industrial buildings stood bare, attracting artists who transformed these commercial spaces into studios and homes. When they needed a break, they hit the Mudd, a tiny spot that became the ultimate nightclub, bringing together people from all walks of life.

Here the No Wave rubbed shoulders with Hip Hop, while graffiti writers and post punk musicians filled the joint. Everyone from Halston, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and David Bowie to Nan Goldin, Lydia Lunch, and Dee Dee Ramone could be found in the mix. This is the place where Fab 5 Freddy taught Debbie Harry to rap and no one thought twice about a white woman dropping rhymes on the mic.

From 1979 to 1983, the Mudd Club was the place to be, the ultimate scene for insiders and outsiders alike, a place where art, music, fashion, and culture completely reinvented itself with luminaries like trans model Teri Toye, drag legend Joey Arias, and performance artist Klaus Nomi sharpening the cutting edge. On any given night, something wild and wonderful was going down, whether it was a theme party like “Rock ‘n’ Roll Funeral Ball,” a reading by William S. Burroughs, or a live performance by Nico.

For two years, at the Mudd Club’s height, Richard Boch manned the door, deciding who would make it past the legendary ropes and enter the delirious den of iniquity that embodied the downtown scene at its height. As a doorman, Boch played a critical role in casting the characters you would see inside, a glorious mélange of celebrities, local legends, and underground superstars. He has just released his memoir The Mudd Club (Feral House) and speaks with us about how to throw the hottest party in New York.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Ivy crash out at Mudd Club on the second floor, 1979. Photography Alan Kleinberg

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Dazed, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Dissecting the Political Impact of Acid House

Posted on August 10, 2017

Norman Jay MBW. Photographer unknown.

Back in 1979, in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse, DJ Frankie Knuckles helped incubate the nascent genre of house music. Taking its name from The Warehouse, house music spread through the US underground and around the globe, and in London, it transformed into something entirely new. The acid house movement combined the hippie spirit found on the island of Ibiza with the sensation of taking a trip, be an ecstasy pill, a hit of acid, or a plane ticket to a faraway land.

By 1987, acid house had taken UK by storm with an irrepressible, revolutionary energy that evoked the utopian vibes of the Summer of Love. Peace, love, respect, and unity were the order of the day, albeit within the confines of illegal parties that were cropping up across the country, drawing thousands of revelers from all walks of life who wanted nothing more than to dance through the dawn. But the acid house scene was more than a cosmic display of hedonism. It was a movement that subverted the racial and class boundaries of Margaret Thatcher’s seemingly endless premiership. Although its political impact is often overlooked, acid house united a deeply segregated society, and what’s more, it empowered those who have been written out of history to rise and come to the fore.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of acid house, Sky Arts are broadcasting The Agony & The Ecstasy, a three-party documentary series that tells the story of the rave revolution through 40 seminal figures on the scene including superstar DJs Norman Jay MBE, Goldie MBE, Paul Oakenfold, and Dave Pearce, as well as producers, promoters, club owners, former police officers, and the unsung heroes of the scene.

Norman Jay MBE, one of the original godfathers of warehouse parties, first got his start at the tender age of eight, when he DJed a tenth birthday party. The Notting Hill, London native was born to Grenadian parents and came of age during the 1970s when collaborating with his brother with a reggae sound system they called Great Tribulation. A visit to New York City changed everything and they renamed the system Good Times, with a nod to Nile Rodgers’ disco band Chic. Good Times led the way as acid house came up, helping to spread the culture through the creation of London pirate radio station Kiss FM in 1985.

Norman Jay MBE spoke to Dazed about the political implications of acid house, and how the music forever changed the British landscape.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Dazed, Music

How the Blackout of 1977 Helped Hip Hop Blow Up

Posted on July 13, 2017

At dawn, the Manhattan skyline shows no lights due to a power blackout, New York, New York, July 14, 1977. The photo was taken from Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images)

On the evening of July 13, 1977, DJ Disco Wiz and his partner Casanova Fly (later Grandmaster Caz) were in the park on Valentine and 183rd Street in the Bronx with their sound system set up for a battle with a local cat they had regularly been blowing off. But DJ Eddie wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they relented and gave him a chance to make a name for himself.

The city had been going through a ten-day heat wave with temperatures above 100. Wiz was concerned if their small portable fans would keep the amps cool, as they didn’t have internal cooling systems. Although it was hot and humid, people were having a good time. Around 9:30 p.m., Caz got on the turntables. Then the record slowly spun to a stop.

It wasn’t unusual for them to lose power in them middle of a park battle; they hooked their sound system up to the lamppost and had drained the electricity before. But this night, something was different as they watched the street lights go out in rapid succession. Then they realized all the lights in the buildings had gone dark. Suddenly, they heard a huge BANG. A bodega owner had just slammed the gate to his store shut.

As gates on the block began slamming down right and left, it dawned on everyone: Blackout! The crowd started yelling, “Hit the stores! Hit the stores!” Then they advanced on Wiz and Caz, thinking they could jack their sound system. But the DJs stayed strapped. Guns drawn, they pointed directly at the crowd, as Caz ordered, “Go that way, motherfuckers!”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, Bronx, Crave, Music

Charlie Ahearn Ft. Grand Wizzard Theodore: Scratch Ecstasy

Posted on June 1, 2017

Hip Hop came of age inside the cinderblock walls of the Ecstasy Garage Disco in the Boogie Down Bronx. By 1980, it was the place to be as the flyest DJs and MCs honed their skills among their peers. In tribute, filmmaker Charlie Ahearn has teamed up with Grand Wizzard Theodore, inventor of the scratch, to recreate their weekly slide show as the centerpiece of Ahearn’s exhibition Scratch Ecstasy, currently on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery. Miss Rosen, who worked with Ahearn on his 2007 book, Wild Style: The Sampler, speaks with Ahearn and Theodore about the interplay between sight and sound in the development of Hip-Hop culture during its formative years.

Read the Full Story at Aperture Online

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, Funky Four in their Bronx neighborhood from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Aperture, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Jeanette Lee: Private Image

Posted on May 24, 2017

In January 1978, the Sex Pistols finally imploded on stage, with Johnny Rotten calling out the words that would speak to the world for decades: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

Then he dropped the mic and walked away. Later that same year, Rotten reinvented himself, resuming use of his government name (John Lydon) and creating a new band, Public Image Limited (PiL), with childhood friend Jah Wobble on bass, former Clash guitarist Keith Levene, and drummer Jim Walker.

Lydon, knowing the nature of the game, approached Jeanette Lee to become the non-musical member of the group—to play the media, as it were. Lee, who went on to become the co-director of independent music label Rough Trade Records, took over the publicity, promotion, and general administration for the band. She also purchased a Polaroid SX-70 camera and took a series of behind-the-scenes pictures that have just been published in Private Image, a limited edition from IDEA.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online-

Categories: 1980s, Art, Crave, Music, Photography