#Euromaidan

s_k35_51000969 s_k32_RTX17TM8 s_k12_RTX17QW3 s_k28_66675922 s_k22_RTX17VIC s_k26_55819624 s_k06_29405907 s_k17_RTX17QW1 s_k08_43207393 s_k09_64351533 s_k07_RTX17VHV s_k23_64977567

photographs via Atlantic Monthly

 

Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych on the situation in Ukraine

These days I receive from you lots of inquiries requesting to describe the current situation in Kyiv and overall in Ukraine, express my opinion on what is happening, and formulate my vision of at least the nearest future. Since I am simply physically unable to respond separately to each of your publications with an extended analytical essay, I have decided to prepare this brief statement which each of you can use in accordance with your needs. The most important things I must tell you are as follows.

During the less than four years of its rule, Mr. Yanukovych’s regime has brought the country and the society to the utter limit of tensions. Even worse, it has boxed itself into a no-exit situation where it must hold on to power forever—by any means necessary. Otherwise it would have to face criminal justice in its full severity. The scale of what has been stolen and usurped exceeds all imaginination of what human avarice is capable.

The only answer this regime has been proposing in the face of peaceful protests, now in their third month, is violence, violence that escalates and is “hybrid” in its nature: special forces’ attacks at the Maidan are combined with individual harassment and persecution of opposition activists and ordinary participants in protest actions (surveillance, beatings, torching of cars and houses, storming of residences, searches, arrests, rubber-stamp court proceedings). The keyword here is intimidation. And since it is ineffective, and people are protesting on an increasingly massive scale, the powers-that-be make these repressive actions even harsher.

The “legal base” for them was created on January 16, when the Members of Parliament fully dependent on the President, in a crude violation of all rules of procedure and voting, indeed of the Constitution itself, in the course of just a couple of minutes (!) with a simple show of hands (!) [Ukrainian Parliament uses an electronic vote] voted in a whole series of legal changes which effectively introduce dictatorial rule and a state of emergency in the country without formally declaring them. For instance, by writing and disseminating this, I am subject to several new criminal code articles for “defamation,” “inflaming tensions,” etc.

Briefly put, if these “laws” are recognized, one should conclude: in Ukraine, everything that is not expressly permitted by the powers-that-be is forbidden. And the only thing permitted by those in power is to yield to them.

Not agreeing to these “laws,” on January 19 the Ukrainian society rose up, yet again, to defend its future.

Today in television newsreels coming from Kyiv you can see protesters in various kinds of helmets and masks on their faces, sometimes with wooden sticks in their hands. Do not believe that these are “extremists,” “provocateurs,” or “right-wing radicals.” My friends and I also now go out protesting dressed this way. In this sense my wife, my daughter, our friends, and I are also “extremists.” We have no other option: we have to protect our life and health, as well as the life and health of those near and dear to us. Special forces units shoot at us, their snipers kill our friends. The number of protesters killed just on one block in the city’s government quarter is, according to different reports, either 5 or 7. Additionally, dozens of people in Kyiv are missing.

We cannot halt the protests, for this would mean that we agree to live in a country that has been turned into a lifelong prison. The younger generation of Ukrainians, which grew up and matured in the post-Soviet years, organically rejects all forms of dictatorship. If dictatorship wins, Europe must take into account the prospect of a North Korea at its eastern border and, according to various estimates, between 5 and 10 million refugees. I do not want to frighten you.

We now have a revolution of the young. Those in power wage their war first and foremost against them. When darkness falls on Kyiv, unidentified groups of “people in civilian clothes” roam the city, hunting for the young people, especially those who wear the symbols of the Maidan or the European Union. They kidnap them, take them out into forests, where they are stripped and tortured in fiercely cold weather. For some strange reason the victims of such actions are overwhelmingly young artists—actors, painters, poets. One feels that some strange “death squadrons” have been released in the country with an assignment to wipe out all that is best in it.

One more characteristic detail: in Kyiv hospitals the police force entrap the wounded protesters; they are kidnapped and (I repeat, we are talking about wounded persons) taken out for interrogation at undisclosed locations. It has become dangerous to turn to a hospital even for random passersby who were grazed by a shard of a police plastic grenade. The medics only gesture helplessly and release the patients to the so-called “law enforcement.”

To conclude: in Ukraine full-scale crimes against humanity are now being committed, and it is the present government that is responsible for them. If there are any extremists present in this situation, it is the country’s highest leadership that deserves to be labeled as such.

And now turning to your two questions which are traditionally the most difficult for me to answer: I don’t know what will happen next, just as I don’t know what you could now do for us. However, you can disseminate, to the extent your contacts and possibilities allow, this appeal. Also, empathize with us. Think about us. We shall overcome all the same, no matter how hard they rage. The Ukrainian people, without exaggeration, now defend the European values of a free and just society with their own blood. I very much hope that you will appreciate this.

BLUE JAY

Illustrations of animal and wildlife

Reader, look at the plate in which are represented three individuals of this beautiful species — rogues though they be, and thieves, as l would call them, were it fit for me to pass judgment on their actions, See how each is enjoying the fruits of his knavery, sucking the egg which he has pilfered from the nest of some innocent Dove or harmless Partridge! Who could imagine that a form so graceful, arrayed by nature in a garb so resplendent, buy mexican vicodin should harbour so much mischief;—that selfishness, duplicity, and malice should form the moral accompaniments of so much physical perfection! Yet so it is, and how like beings of a much higher order, are these gay deceivers! Aye, l could write you a whole chapter on this subject, were not my task of a different nature.

John James Audubon

John James Audubon, Birds of America, Plate 102 – engraved by R. Havell

 

For Your Pleasure 2013

FYP_2013_Cover

FYO_2013_Back_a

This year was ruled by bands & musicians I hold very dear dropping career defining albums out of nowhere. Albums that were reconnections, reminders & remembrances of their fundamental radness — each, though, indelibly colored by an autumnal mood, recognition of age, time & wear.

I thought the best rekkid honors were done & done as early as February with Bad Religion’s exhilarating True North — songs firing like model rocket engines, a compressed crackling burn and then, a minute or so later, lay smoldering. A career capper, a middle age manifesto, and the last classic of mid-80’s SoCal melodic hardcore.

Months later I’m in Toronto at a record shop where I finally scored the long coveted debut EP by Men Without Hats. Can that snigger, bignuts — this bands gifts are substantial & buried, like Wall of Voodoo’s, under the debris of their sky-blotting single hit. You fucking bet you can dance if you want to…

Anyway — this leads me to wonder what they’ve been up to recently. The answer? A stunner of a record, Love in the Age of War, recorded in late 2012 (news about MWOH travels slowly) on their original analog gear. It was originally titled Folk of The 80’s Part IV, thus deliberately planting it in line with the band’s killer run of raw synth records before the more painterly & ambitious Pop Goes the World. Alternately thrilling & poignant, this ruled the headphones for months.

Then Bowie drops The Next Day, the last word on last words as far as Olympian rockers go. Superfan Rick Moody nailed it in a long exegesis for the Rumpus — it’s a particularly tuned masterpiece, functioning as a hall of mirrors & memory palace of Bowies guises, obsessions, and, above all, vocals. For the heaviness of its agenda, it’s a remarkably unlabored listen — a great batch of songs, carefully & secretly handcrafted then released with Bowie’s characteristic savvy. The record cover tells you every single thing you need to know about it, a conceptually brilliant shorthand to a tremendously rich & deep listen.

Weaving amongst these heavies was the year’s big discovery — the Aussie all-lady foursome Beaches. Their second album, She Beats, was a swirly, gauzy, fuzzy, fuzzy, swirly, gauzy pleasure. Melodic swells dove in and out of  the din like dolphins, underpinned by a steady motorik beat (Harmonia’s Michael Rother guests) The grin-goosing “Chase Those Blues Away” was the tune of the year.

Welcome electronic transmissions resumed from the Boards of Canada & Barbara Morgenstern – bleeps and bloops both heavy and light.

Psych alchemist Kelley Stoltz has long completed his apprenticeship — this years Double Exposure, a fusillade of handmade pop-psych bliss, is a killer follow-up to 2010’s equally ace To Dreamers. The spellbinding cover, featuring Stoltz’s mom back in the 70’s drawing a bow in what looks like hockey pads on a shag rug backed by a large op art painting & a hi-fi, was the year’s best.

Spelunking in the shops yielded treasures galore this year — Babe Buell’s Covers Girl EP where the fetching groupie (and Arwen Undómiel’s mom) is produced by Rick Derringer, backed by the Cars, and covers Love & Iggy; James Freud’s forgotten mod/synth mashup, bought on the strength of the cover alone; vinyl versions of high-school mix-tape staples interred for decades on cassettes like Flipper’s “Ha Ha Ha,” Vagina Dentata’s legendary Darby Crash penned “Golden Boys”, Frightwig’s careening “Wanque Off Song”, and Hawaiian Pups’ resolutely odd & yet irresistible “Baby Judy.”

Nick Cave played the year’s best show. A few songs into his set at the Keswick Theatre, Cave, exasperated by the staid & respectful audience, demanded a stage rush. As a result I finally got a sustained barrage of legendary close-up Cave — thin, ungainly, tall & lanky, mustachioed, posture lurching & off kilter, reminding me of no-one as much as a demonic Fawlty Tower’s era John Cleese… a gobsmackingly riveting performance.

A few ace re-issues appeared, each a welcome surprise. Dark Entries’ collection of the early recordings by Algebra Suicide is a public service, helping to secure the legacy of the formidably talented Detroit Ukrainian poet & singer Lydia Tomkiw. And then a delightfully random Clothilde collection! Clothilde was weird salvo in the barrage of 60’s French girl pop, or ye ye. The moodiness of Francoise Hardy, the bubbly delivery of France Gall, set to ramshackle fuzz & harpsichord  constructions reminiscent of Joe Meek. Light In The Attic kicked off the Public Image Limited reissue series with a lovingly reproduced 7” of their debut single, complete with foldout faux tabloid. I’ve loved this song for over 25 years – it hasn’t lost a drop of it’s power, originality, venom, or pop and it sounds, as it always has, utterly vital.

I listened to a lot of Reggae on Sunday afternoons. Weird — music just finds you when you are ready for it, I guess.

Then out of the blue ether, the Chills drop Somewhere Beautiful, a rough & crystalline live recording of a small New Years party they played a while back. Prolific, yet sporadically recorded back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, New Zealand’s the Chills were led by the preposterously gifted, big hearted, but troubled Martin Phillipps. Their first singles, and two LPs (especially Submarine Bells) were peerless muscular, shimmering beauties. After a brush with popularity that found them recording with R.E.M. and Van Dyke Parks, Phillipps’ crushing heroin habit subsumed the band. Living hardscrabble, he managed only one more proper LP, a demos release and a home recorded 4 song EP since then — all excellent. Then this miracle. The band has more heft & swing than before, and even with a few lovely embellishment the sound is more garage-y than gossamer. Phillipps’ voice, though, is a revelation. While still melodically supple, a rawness tears through the songs, the edge of his sharp New Zealand accent present as never before. Each song is recast, invested with new energy, and inflected by real pain & directness. It’s a fucking stunner, and hands down the years best record.

DOWNLOAD THE COMP HERE. ENJOY!

cover image: Boucher, François, Allegory of Music (detail) National Gallery, DC

 

thomas wilmer dewing

Thomas_Wilmer_Dewing_-_The_Spinet_-_ca._1902

Thomas-Wilmer-Dewing-xx-The-Fortune-Teller-xx-Private-Collection

Thomas Wilmer Dewing - The Recitation 1891

Thomas-Wilmer-Dewing-xx-Summer-xx-Private-Collection

The_Gossip

tumblr_m2ow91mj4w1r3fkjno1_1280

I recently took a pal to the Isabella Garder Museum in Boston. It is simply one of the most beautiful, sublime environments to take in art — it’s an indelible reminder of how central decor & architecture are to the experience of a particular artwork. That experience is especially powerful and acute in the famous “Yellow” and “Blue” rooms, where furniture, small doodles, ephemera, exquisite wallpapers, surround and mingle with masterworks by Rossetti, Sargent, Whistler and Degas.

My collegue was particulary taken with a smallish, glittering portrait of a woman (above) by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Further research hauled up a lovely cache of paintings — most stranger & more fetching than the one in the Gardner. Turns out Dewing was a tonal painter heavily influenced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s work, especially his famous Nocturnes (which I also dig. I wrote about them a few years back, here. There’s also one in the Yellow Room) There’s a gauzy texture to his paintings I absolutely adore & sets them well apart from the usual parade of society portraiture and pastoral vingettes. Enjoy.

435

 

Guitarist Wanted

‘The Perfect Guitarist’
for Avant Rock Group
Original, creative, adaptable
melodic, fast, slow, elegant, witty
scary, stable, tricky
QUALITY MUSICIANS ONLY
‘Roxy’ 223 0296

Ad placed by Bryan Ferry in Melody Maker soliciting a guitarist to join him, Andy Mackay, and Brian Eno in the fledgling Roxy Music.

All About

allabout_rockets

allabout_beasts

Printed in 1957, the designs of these covers are a blessed aesthetic convergence. The thick textured cloth and debossed inky black type tie them firmly to the tradition of classic childrens books. The bold spare composition and modern typesetting give them a wizz-bang new frontier coolness.

And the economy and power of those illustrations! A simple rocket and squid, as keys to the imagination, have the power of a thousand glossy covers. The effect is hypnotic. Holding these for a while you’re tempted not so much to thumb through them as to dive into the covers themselves. Just perfect.

All About

allabout_rockets

allabout_beasts

Printed in 1957, the designs of these covers are a blessed aesthetic convergence. The thick textured cloth and debossed inky black type tie them firmly to the tradition of classic childrens books. The bold spare composition and modern typesetting give them a wizz-bang new frontier coolness.

And the economy and power of those illustrations! A simple rocket and squid, as keys to the imagination, have the power of a thousand glossy covers. The effect is hypnotic. Holding these for a while you’re tempted not so much to thumb through them as to dive into the covers themselves. Just perfect.

Flight Risk

Flight_Risk_Martin_Schoeller

Riveting cover photograph by Martin Schoeller for the New York Times Magazine. He also shot the best photo ever of Jeff Koons, below. It’s the best photo because it trumps the billions of words this cat has kicked up in his wake and lays http://www.mindanews.com/buy-effexor/ bare the artifice, calculation, perfection, mischievousness, & joy that makes Koons at all worthwhile. Also, the ski cover looks like a vérité Phil Noto, below, below. Phil Noto? Folks… Phil Noto.

Martin_Schoeller_Jeff_Koons

 

Phil_Noto_Jet_Seven

 

 

Under the covers

ValleyOfTheDolls

Problems_Updike

ImageDuplicator_Lichtenstein

So, recently, at one time or another I was reading these three books. As I piled then up to be re-shelved they struck me as having some strange communion with one another. Each spare, simple and striking, sharing some essential tone that I adore — perfect pop design in three modes, fashionable, nerdy, and electric. Each in there own right a great read, too. Updike and Lichtenstein need no additional cheerleading, but let me make a impassioned plea for Valley of the Dolls. What a empurpled pleasure. Read it, luxuriate in its plush vulgarity, then treat yourself to the Wiki rabbit hole you get to go down matching each character and melodramatic scenario with the real people and incidents that inspired then. Then the movie. Then the Roger Ebert / Russ Meyer luridly psychedelic quasi sequel Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Then buy that film’s equally boss groovy soundtrack. You’re welcome.

Some Swedish Type

Swedish_Record_Typography_2

Swedish_Record_Typography_3

Swedish_Record_Typography_1

So, recently I was over in Sweden visiting IKEA HQ (more on that, later-ish…) IKEA is located in Älmhult, a small picture postcard of a town. Quaint cobblestone square anchored by statue of Carl Linnaeus (you remember Linnaean taxonomy, yes? — three kingdoms, divided into classes, orders, families, genera, and species, eighth grade or so, feathered hair, Toughskins jeans, 3/4 black sleeved Cars T-shirt…sorry, pardon my corduroy reverie…)

Anyway, I’m wandering around and happen upon a gas station / burger & ice cream hut / thrift store (!) where, between fan belts, spark plugs, a row of swedish potboilers, needlepoint, and axel grease, I spot these 10″ records in a crate.

What a score! Each one of these Swedish type compositions is gorgeous — and each anchored by a contrastingly dense, filagreed record label. Häftigt!

High striker hierarchy

High_Striker

Saw this high striker (that’s the amusement industry term, thanks internet) in the game room of the Old Sled Works antique mall in Duncannon, PA.

So — can we take a minute to appreciate the unhinged hierarchy asserted here?

Ok, I get SISSY. Requiste aggro potshot at the weakling. Jock table stakes if you will… after that, though, we go completely bat shit. What the hell is up with GIRL CRAZY? Is that weakness? Distraction? Is it that you are so girl-besotted you can’t focus properly on wielding a giant wooden mallet?

SPACE PILOT, which arguably should be at the top, is below the NEWSBOY & BULLY cluster? They can’t mean SPACE PILOT in it’s Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, Han Solo sense. Or astronauts, surely. Perhaps it’s the geeky, sci-fi dreamer, the spaceship doodler? Maybe. But it says SPACE PILOT, which I remind you is below NEWSBOY & BULLY. Which is nonsense.

Look, I’m happy that NEWSBOY beats BULLY. But certainly we’re overrating the NEWSBOY. Maybe the NEWSBOY loomed larger in the macho imagination back then? But wasn’t he always more scrappy than strong? And honestlyI have a hard time believing that, all things being equal, the neighborhood BULLY couldn’t take out the local NEWSBOY.

On top of which, if you’re just a bit stronger that SPACE PILOT, you achieve the rank of BULLY? What the fuck? Is that motivating?

Then we arrive at the topsy turvy top. Let’s establish this, at the very least — by definition HERCULES and SUPERMAN top TARZAN.

In order to referee between those two I guess you could turn to DC comics, which is the only realm where HERCULES and SUPERMAN co-exist. There I suspect you’d find it nearly a dead heat strength-wise. HERCULES has the edge of godhead, and I guess is more universally powerful, lacking both the need for our Sun’s light and a vulnerability to Kryptonite. I guess this order stands, then.

But you’ve got to have a seriously warped sense of awesome to rank TARZAN above both. I’m certain the authors of this ranking did not mean to privilege his Royal roots as a Lord of Graystoke, his facility with languages, or his chivalry.

It’s the bear chested gorilla wrestling we’re talking about here. The Me-Tarzan-You-Jane over the shoulder while choking a python shit. No Krypton sci-fi nerdiness, or effeminate toga and garland with this guy…

Sigh. To scan this list is to hear Civilization crumble while a stunted macho-ness runs amok. Let’s at least, then, establish the correct order, top to bottom:

SPACE PILOT
SUPERMAN
HURCULES
SISSY
NEWSBOY
GIRL CRAZY
TARZAN
BULLY

Is this thing on?

can_you_hear_me_now

Transmissions sputter back to life… onto a fifth year of broadcasting. The signal has faded over the past year, gales of advertising mostly, then our radio tower plain and blew up (by which of course I mean a virulent SQL database corruption keelhauled my rickety, jury rigged WordPress build.) So, then, is this thing on? Are we going?

ViewOfDelft

Comrades!

I painted this figure study over a few days this summer. I walked by it one night, a month or so ago, and as I lingered for a minute and thought — that’s right — View of Delft.

Yes, as in Vermeer’s view of Delft, entitled View of Delft.

1660-61_View_of_Delft

A blasphemous chuckle, right, but gumdaggit if this sketch and title aren’t now bonded like noggin epoxy — the phrase passing over my little ditty of a painting like a sky-blotting arial banner, featherweight but indelible.

So, as I said the blogs been down for a while, swept under crosscurrents and swells of obligations, dissolutions and advertising and I’m casting about for an inaugural post and all I can think of is View of Delft.

Here’s why. Cause this blog is, if it is anything, even in this particularly unhinged association, about searching for our own little private views of Delft — little lagoons, obsessively surveyed, rendered, cleared out out by hand.

Lagoons. Because in the clotted coastline of the blogosphere, it’s what this is, really. A tiny lagoon, home to beatniks, old salts, venerable preps, society matrons, homespun cuties, movie stars and scientists… Gilligan’s wake. It’s a beachhead from which we can re-embark on our quest to find and stake out other unlikely harbors. A stretch of landscape we can fix in our minds and take a draught or a puff and contemplate, then set off satisfied.

And when others arrive, like you dear reader, perhaps you’ll survey it appreciatively, like a scoutmaster, and think “I would’ve given you a commendable. That was one of the best pitched camp sites I’ve ever seen, honestly.”

tumblr_m4r0xoeakk1qa6obyo1_12801

Or something. Are we going? Is this thing on? Is this really broadcasting if there is no one there to receive? We’ll see. More soon.

Some credits: All the weird snippets about broken and sputtering radio transmissions are taken from Shellac’s epic angular shanty “The End of Radio,” which will serve as this latest sally’s theme song. The Herculean rebuild of this leaky beached blog was coded by the gifted and rad Marcello De Feo. Check his kung-fu. It is ace. The charming illustration of Moonrise Kingdom is by Adrian Tomine.

Claude Chabrol: 1930-2010

A selection of some fab posters for films by pioneering French director Claude Charbol, who died this week. (Some decent obits here, and here.) A giant of French cinema, Charbol was a founding member of the French New Wave, close pals with (and somewhat of a patron to) Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer. Along with Rohmer he published a seminal critical work on Alfred Hitchcock, a significant influence.

Charbol was often described in shorthand as the French Hitchcock, which is pretty dead on, adjusting a bit for time periods and sensibilities. While not strictly a formulaic filmmaker, diabolical plots, melodrama, all manner of decadence, wry humor and a general wickedness abound.

For your consideration, a passel of recommendations from his extensive oeuvre: A Double Tour, 1961 – a convoluted noir, Who’s Got the Black Box?, 1967 – shaggy, but entertaining espionage yarn,  The Unfaithful Wife, 1969 and Innocents with Dirty Hands, 1975 two chilly, melodramatic physiological thrillers, Cop Au Vin, 1985, the first of two top drawer police procedurals featuring inspector Jean Lavardin, Masques, 1987 an intriguing character-driven mystery, The Swindle 1997, a neat little caper, Merci Pour Le Chocolat, 2000 about a wealthy family’s nest of secrets, and Comedy of Power, a corporate boardroom drama. Available here, or at your fine local video store.