Former Talking Heads front-man, and Alt customer, is making bike racks for NYC

I lost both the elm trees in my boulevard this fall.

A lot of people have been encouraging me to call the park system to get on the waiting list for replacement trees.

I’d rather do something like this.

Granted, there isn’t many occasions for multiple bikes, that aren’t my own, to be parked in  front of my house.

Yet…..

Whaha!

Die movekes van David Byrne!

Hierbij wil ik eventjes een soortement ‘ klacht’ indienen tegen die vele bands die allemaal extreem dure lichteffecten verzinnen en energieverslindende podiumartefacten gebruiken.
Want eerlijk gezegd hé, die spasmes van David Byrne, geen enkel lichteffect/satelliet/appartementgebouw kan daar tegenop.

Ja ik weet dat ik nu in mijn eigen vel snij gezien Muse tot de energieverslindende bands hoort.

Leve danspasjes op het podium!

Leve de ‘ Voetsleep’!

Leve het bibberen!

Leve het headbangen!

Leve Talking Heads!

PS; deze blog werd naar aanleiding van de vertoning Stop Making Sense in Trix geschreven.
De films daar zijn overigens een echte aanrader! Ga zeker nog eens op de site kijken!

I think that I’ve reached this point in my life where the littlest things make me comforted. I’m not sure if its the routine of having so much to do or if its just age. I’d like to think its a little of both but with me you can’t be sure. The strangest things in my life have affected some of the best change for me.

Right now I am have in bed with Ethan in Baltimore. The rain outside is hitting the thin glass sheets they call windows in my “skylight” inside of the bathroom and we’re just doing work under the covers. The Talking Head’s, “Stop Making Sense” DVD is playing faintly from my computer and I’m just really happy listening to David Byrne croon out the tune “Heaven”. Its almost magical the amount of joy I’m getting from simply typing this blog post, listening to the rain and David Byrne, with Ethan by my side.

I don’t think I give him enough credit at times. He’s kind of perfect for me in that we’re on “vacation” and him and I both manage to have hours upon hours of work that we want to do everyday. What is life without someone that wants to spend it the way you do? Its great being in bed next to Ethan. He looks sexy as hell right now. I love that his hair is wavy and almost curly. That his chest hair doesn’t gross me out but rather intrigues me. The way he looks through his glasses onto his macbook pro with pert lips and furrowed brow. How he nonchalantly can recall random facts about whatever song comes up when he seems as if he’s not paying any attention at all…and subtly touch my thigh to let me know he’s enjoy my company.

Yes indeed I think all I want to do is be here and as I type this very sentence “This Must Be the Place” comes on. (How cheesy?)

conclusion:

For as much as I consider myself worldly, well traveled, or a person that needs to be elsewhere I am at home in Baltimore. People hate on the city but whenever I’m here I’m my best. I have relative “space” from my family. The best friends in the world. A beautiful house that I will never sell…and an overall sense of goodness. That’s right, New York, Baltimore has you bested.

All I want to do is “grow up”—work hard, be in love, and have a life in Baltimore (slash where ever I take my vacation several times a year)— Perks of not having children I guess?

Carousing Facebook yesterday, I came upon this incredible video of David Byrne (from Talking Heads, people!!!) and I couldn’t help but notice a similarity between his large suit, ever changing costumes, and bizarre commentary and the last year of Lady GaGa’s career.

Now don’t get me wrong, I adore GaGa, she’s actually the first pop star I’ve ever felt drawn to watch. Her antics absolutely crack me up, and her performances and videos often times leave me with chills. Simply put, she’s fantastic.

It’s interesting how the artists we love in turn influence the art we make, and I’d be willing to bet Lady GaGa is a big Talking Heads fan. If you look at this interview of David Byrne interviewing himself, she clearly has taken a thing or two from his pure genius.

By the way, minute 2:02 is hands down my favorite moment in the clip.

Hi gang, this will be my first in what I’m sure will turn into a series of music recommendations. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an avid — even rabid music fan, and like many music fans, I love nothing more than turning people on to new music. It doesn’t necessarily have to be “new” as in current — I’m equally happy to recommend something from the 70s as I am to recommend something current. That said, today’s recommendation is for an album that just came out!

Are you excited?! I am!!

OK, so I’m taking somewhat of a risk with this first recommendation. The band is pretty obscure and may also be somewhat of an acquired taste. That said, I love love love them! The band is Lambchop (not to be confused with Lambchop), an ensemble band that came out of Nashville in the 1990s (here is a link to their MySpace). They’ve been with Merge Records since 1993, and they’ve just released a live album recorded at XX Merge (XX Merge was a blowout for Merge’s twentieth anniversary as a label). This album opens with a mellow piece from the band’s first album, I Hope You’re Sitting Down/Jack’s Tulips, and contains tunes all the way through their most recent studio album, OH (Ohio). Lambchop’s live show is impressive (I saw them at SXSW in 2006), with the ensemble band, and their tunes really come to life — by the end of this disc, I guarantee you’ll be dancing!

Lambchop used to be somewhat associated with the alt country movement, which is best exemplified, IMHO, by bands like Uncle Tupelo (now two separate bands: Son Volt, which has stuck with the alt country thing, and Wilco, which has matured way beyond it), but I think the association had more to do with their being from Nashville than anything else — though with some of their earlier stuff, you can hear it more.

Lambchop’s music, like a lot of music I like, is not easily pigeonholed. Some of it is better classified as soul than country, though it is all extremely soulful — and it’s not country soul in the Dolly Parton/Jenny Lewis sense…it’s just….well, it’s hard to explain. I think of Lambchop as fall music, which is somewhat ironic for a band from Nashville.

Their singer, Kurt Wagner, not to be confused with Kurt Wagner, used to be a working stiff like the rest of us. So the story goes, he worked as a carpenter, installing and sanding down floors, even after the success of the band’s sixth album, Nixon, in 2000. Here is a great piece about Kurt and the band from a few years ago.

I was introduced to this band in 2004 when David Byrne, one of my favorite artists (I’m deliberate here in my use of that word) and the former frontman of Talking Heads, covered Lambchop’s “The Man Who Loved Beer” on his album Grown Backwards. For the Talking Heads fans among us, you will smile and enjoy Lambchop’s returning the favor around the 3:30 mark on the last tune on this live album (click here for video).

I hope you enjoyed this first music recommendation — it surely won’t be the last!

Dal sito francese Digital Music/Don’t Believe The Hype ecco le 10 tappe fondamentali che riassumono la rivoluzione del marketing musicale degli ultimi anni:

1.Myspace

2.CD Baby

3.Arctic Monkeys – Internet buzz

4.OK GO – Youtube

5.Napster

6.Radiohead – In Rainbows

7.Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts

8.Jill Sobule – fanziamento dai fan

9.David Byrne & Brian Eno – Top Spin

10.Amanda Palmer – marketing su Twitter

Por Rodolfo Lima

Aê, rapêize. Para quem gosta de cinema e boa música aqui fica uma dica do que vem por aí.
Saiu o trailer do documentário-musical ‘O homem que engarrafava nuvens’,  que fala sobre a vida e a obra do compositor, advogado, deputado federal e criador das leis de direito autoral, Humberto Teixeira, também conhecido como “O Doutor do Baião” por ser o autor de clássicos populares como Asa Branca.
Vale a pena dar uma conferida, o filme tem um elenco brilhante, entre eles estão: Humberto Teixeira, Bebel Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Cordel do Fogo Encantado, David Byrne, Fagner, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Lenine, Maria Bethânia, Rita Ribeiro, Sivuca, Wagner Tiso, Zeca Pagodinho, entre outros.

E pra você que ficou curioso o que este documentário trará, O Tem Lugar Na Mesa dispõe para você o trailer do filme.
‘Taca o play’!

Abráx!

I often check ARTINFO’s website for new gallery exhibition calls, jobs, and news.  It’s a hip site.  Today, I happened upon this:

Call For Submissions – Reduplication of the Real
An exhibition of photographic Performance Art documentation
Deadline: 1st December 2009

During the last decade a curatorial style has arisen that gives greater significance to the soiled, worn, damaged and defaced props left at the conclusion of a Live Art performance. Often these objects are considered Art in its own right and have been showcased in various stand-alone exhibitions. Yet the other significant permanent Live Art by-product: photographic documentation is often simply understood as a prosaic method of documenting the act for future reference and so its strengths as a stand-alone Art form has yet to be fully tested.
However, the photographic documentation of a performance is often fascinating, poignant and even humorous in its own right. It is a montage of esoterically linked everyday objects juxtaposed with a performer, focused in their entirety on a single, ultimately pointless, action; all frozen in a single frame. The photographs, with their distorted quotidian actions and objects, can come across as a scene anywhere between an uncanny distortion of the everyday and a gross and disturbing dream-like sequence
Reduplication of the Real will showcase a diversity of photographs that document Live Art Actions by both established and emerging artists from both national and international backgrounds. Some images will stand-alone while others will form small sets covering an individual performance. The exhibition will highlight the strengths of performance Art documentation and will lead the way towards further dialogue about the images as standalone works.

The exhibition aims to showcase a broad and diverse selection of images and as such, will work on an open submission basis. The curator will review all submitted work and choose a selection of work based upon their strength as standalone images. In order to keep the exhibitions presentation clear and cohesive the curator will request an electronic copy of all selected images which will be printed in sizes to compliment the galleries layout and mounted in a uniform manner.

Images will be valued at a price that will be discussed with selected artists and sold at 30% commission. All unsold work can be brought by the person who submitted it at the price of its creation.

<snip>

Seriously?  I was reading this and asked myself, “where do I begin?”  Not only is Live Art a massive waste of anyone’s time (please learn from the DaDa movement), but to profit on and exhibit the leftovers from such performances as art itself?  Have we gone to such a pseudo-refined degree that what we produce from a pre-planned arts demonstrative performance is in itself some sort of communication?  What exactly is this particular form of trash telling an audience that the trash after my last Stop Making Sense party did not?  Yes, “something happened,” I get it, but who cares?

There is a sense of archaeology about such a processual art display.  I keep using the word “art,” by the by, but I hesitate greatly to use it.  I once created a 35 minute powerpoint mini-movie on the archaeology of trash receptacles around my college campus for a contemporary archaeology course – so I do know a few things about trash and leftovers and how people generally feel about it.  People care little for it.  There is no good art-style “shock” about “what remains”.  Few people really care at all.  As the exhibition description says above, these are wastes of time.  Folks that travel the Live Art scene may pick up something from the leftovers and sometimes can swap stories, but what we have here is something more pedantic and certainly post-modernly selfish.  We have forcibly created storytelling among a very small imagined community for the purpose, I believe, in maintaining the ties and ideology – namely the life – of that small group.  People who have been to the performances can see references to what they saw, what they didn’t see but what other’s must have seen, and things no one should see.  We don’t have art for art’s sake, not art for artist’s sake, but art for ‘this guy’’s sake.  What have we become?

I read a number of published theses from the grad students of the Art Institute of Chicago.  A number of them claimed that painting was dead and film was the murderer.  I’d say, rather, that painting is sleeping, and waiting for the confusion of the contemporary western art state to kill itself so that we may move on to making beautiful, mass-meaningful things again, and not waste our high-interest lease on time.

Here’s my 2nd show, which was also Part 2 of my look at the life and work of Brian Eno

The show is called “From the Other Side of the Mirror” and will be broadcast every Monday at 3pm. You can find KOOP radio at 91.7 Fm in the Austin area, or stream it online at www.koop.org

The idea behind the show is pretty simple. Each week the show will focus on a song, producer, label, musician(s), venue, etc. that has a major influence on music, their fingerprints are everywhere, but are forgotten or under most people’s radar. I will help listeners connect the musical dots. Like a documentary for your ears if you will. I will tell their story and showcase the various music they have created or been involved with.

Subject was again the inimitable Brian Eno. Playlist is below;

1. Sloppy – Devo
2. i-Zimbra – Talking Heads
3. Cross-Eyed & Painless” – Talking Heads
4. America is Waiting – David Byrne & Brian Eno
5. The Puppet Motel – Laurie Anderson
6. Miss Sarajevo – Passengers
7. Life is Long – David Byrne & Brian Eno

About a year ago, long before “going to the gym” was even a seed of a thought in my mind, I walked into Montgomery Cyclery and took an instant shine to a bike called the Electra Townie 7D.

I took it out for a spin around the store’s car park and streets and found it a most comfortable ride indeed.

Many of the bikes in Electra’s range – including the Townie - are made using what is known as “flat foot technology”, where the frame sits you in a more comfortable upright position and the pedal location is ahead of (rather than below) you. It’s a little akin to a recumbent bike, if that makes sense?

I temporarily got quite enthusiastic about owning a bike again, this Townie becoming a little bit of a “Holy Grail” for a while. I was only put off by the outlay; it carried a price tag of almost $450 which was way outside my financial comfort zone at the time.

Plus, when we first moved to Newport, I nabbed a couple of cheapo bikes for me and the wife only to have them ‘waste away’ in the corner of our garage through a distinct lack of use. In retrospect we both decided that was essentially because they weren’t really sized correctly for us. I’d bought them very much on the spur of the moment and it turned out that the wife’s was too big for her and mine was too small for me. Neither of us felt comfortable in going out on them. I eventually tarted them up a little and sold them for a profit on Craigslist.

Since then, and certainly since joining the gym, the idea of cycling has again nagged at me, even moreso after I read a couple of books about urban biking habits. David Byrne’s “Bicycle Diaries” (about cycling round the major cities of the world) ramped up my interest, whilst Jeff Mapes’ “Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities” made me remember how I used to cycle everywhere all the time when I was a skinny little teenager. It also made me yearn for being part of a similar ‘revolution’ in the Greater Cincinnati region.

Byrne’s book suggested that wannabe cyclists should buy as good a bike as they could for the least amount of money, recommending that no-one getting back in the saddle needed a state-of-the-art titanium framed affair costing a fortune. A simple three-geared comfortable bike was all that was necessary to pootle around the neighbourhood.

I took his advice to heart and started scouring the local pages of Craigslist on a daily basis. A few bikes that fitted the bill (priced anywhere from $25 to $170) popped up from time to time but they were either too distant to travel to or had already sold by the time I’d phoned or e-mailed the sellers.

Then, on Thursday, it happened. Someone in Hamilton offered up an Electra Townie 7D for sale at $300. It seemed a little too expensive but there was no way I wasn’t going to go and take a look at it. We made arrangements yesterday, where I discovered it was less than two months old, had been bought locally, was in near pristine condition and yes, the seller would come down to $250.

I decided ‘gift horse’ and ‘mouth’ and came away with it, despite it being Friday 13th.

I took it out for a spin this morning and…. well, let’s just say it will take a LOT of getting used to! I cycled about a mile and came back with extremely achy upper thighs and wheezy breathing rhythms. The latter is probably the result of my cold not completely disappearing yet (the bike ride potentially proving a mistake I know) but the former surprised me in terms of the amount of time I spend on the recumbent bike at the gym. Obviously there’s a new set of muscles at play here?

So, the revolution I spoke of earlier may be several months off – maybe years? – but I am hoping the purchase of my Townie 7D will encourage me to do a little more exercise outside the walls of the Urban Active. Time will tell.

Anyway, here she is in all her resplendent glory… I have nicknamed her “Syd“

In time she’ll get some fenders/mudguards and a bike rack of some description. In keeping with her name however, she might also need “a basket, a bell that rings and things to make her look good“, a reference which will be totally lost on anyone not familiar with the late 60’s output of Pink Floyd.

If you can, get your hands on this compilation. Aside from being freaking brilliant, it’s made to raise awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Artists involved are…
The wonderful David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.
The Dirty Projectors.
Bon Iver.
Sufjan Stevens.
Grizzly Bear.
Feist.
The Decemberists.
The New Pornographers.
Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie.
Cat Power.
Arcade Fire.
Iron and Wine.
The National.
Jose Gonzalez.
And Stuart Murdoch, from Belle and Sebastian.

Prepare to be amazed. It makes me feel like I’m in a ‘Hansel and Gretel’ type wood (except without the psycho cannibalistic witch), surrounded by woodland creatures and doing cross stitch. It also makes me think of beards for some reason.

True Stories [1986]

1. The movie was designed for the 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Not widescreen. Very unusual for a 1986 theatrical release. Perhaps Byrne designed it that way so that it wouldn’t lose much when shown on video?
2. “Linda! Larry! There’s no concept of weekends anymore!” He bows and the lights dim except for the spotlights on the table. The other actors are motionless.
3. He pours the colored sand onto the floor in a circle around himself.

Ninguém deu por ele. Passeou-se pela exposição de Juliette Binoche na sexta-feira como se não fosse um dos nomes mais referenciais para músicos e compositores de hoje; como se não quisesse ser um renascentista do século XXI. Na verdade, é tudo isto, mas, ainda assim (repetimos), ninguém deu por ele. David Byrne chega ao Centro de Congressos do Estoril de bicicleta, na companhia de Cindy Sherman, sua namorada e companheira de júri no Estoril Film Festival. Passeia-se, despreocupado, entre projecções e conversas com cineastas. E diz-nos que faz isto apenas porque foi convidado e queria sair de Nova Iorque: “Não estou de férias mas é quase.”

Byrne não se queixa dos seus dias mais recentes. Esteve em digressão com as canções de “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today”, disco gravado com Brian Eno, editado no ano passado, e admite que há poucos momentos que lhe entreguem tamanho prazer: “Não foi uma coisa cansativa mas durou um ano inteiro. 12 meses entre concertos? É muito, tenho mais que fazer.” Vai daí, lança-se na elaboração do projecto “Playing The Building”, “uma encomenda de Estocolmo para reabilitar uma antiga fábrica” que esteve para ser algo completamente diferente. Desenhou um edifício transformado em microondas gigante “mas a ideia foi considerada demasiado perigosa”. Quis adulterar o sentido e a finalidade dos sistemas de segurança modernos “que identificam indivíduos pelo ADN e pela leitura dos olhos”, mas a empresa que os concebe considerou que seria má publicidade. “Resolvi então transformar um prédio num instrumento musical gigante, para que as pessoas percebam que o som e a música existem e podem ser formados em qualquer parte. Estamos todos demasiado presos a conceitos que nos limitam. Raios. Mudemos a face das coisas.”

Nos entretantos, vai cultivando os prazeres das viagens sobre duas rodas. Escolheu o novo modelo para as estruturas de parqueamento de bicicletas em Nova Iorque, publicou “Bicycle Diaries” (as crónicas ciclísticas que chegam a Portugal em 2010) e descobriu as maravilhas do eixo Estoril-Cascais. Diz-nos que estacionou a bicicleta ali perto, que por momentos não consegue pensar em mais nada: “Contraí este sentimento crónico de dependência. É um exercício que me apaixona, que faz de mim menos sério, as pessoas pensam que sou um génio criativo mas não é bem assim…”

A verdadeira desilusão de David Byrne encontramo-la nas leis do mercado, nos princípios capitalistas da indústria do entretenimento. Ninguém diria – vemo-lo vestido de quase-Verão, olhar meio perdido, sem perceber “por que razão tantas bandas falam no meu nome como influência”. Mas este desleixo é aparente: “Preocupa-me o que se passa, o facto de quem tem poder não se importar com as pessoas que realmente interessam, as que ouvem música e por ela são apaixonadas. Além de que tratar mal os clientes é um modelo de mercado errado.”

Solução: “Não tenho remédios para os outros. O meu é fazer o que me apetece, quando quero.” Ser júri de cinema e fazê-lo “como se fosse um cinéfilo numa sala de bairro”. Colaborar com gente tão distinta como os Dirty Projectors (o resultado está na compilação “Dark Was the Night”) apenas porque ” os adoro e não percebo de onde vem aquela música”. E construir uma ópera com Norman Cook, vulgo Fatboy Slim, sobre Imelda Marcos – “porque sim”. Tudo o resto parece ser acessório. Genuinamente: “‘Stop Making Sense’ [o filme- concerto realizado por Jonathan Demme] faz 25 anos? A sério?”

este texto foi originalmente publicado na edição de 9 de Novembro do jornal ‘i’

So last Friday was another “First Friday” here in Oakland, and friends and I did an abbreviated gallery crawl this month, hitting two of the three galleries in the Golden Gate district of Oakland.  Didn’t know there was a Golden Gate district in Oakland?!? It was recent news to me too, but this tiny Oakland outcropping, stretching just north and east of Emeryville and just south of Berkeley, has apparently gone by this name since the late 1800’s.  The area was originally developed as the town of Klinknerville in 1885, changed it’s name to Golden Gate in 1888 (smart move), and was annexed to Oakland in 1897 [Wikipedia].

After drinks at Kitty’s, we made our way to blankspace gallery located at 66th Street and San Pablo. The contemporary art space consists of one main gallery room with a smaller gallery shop off to the right when you first enter, filled with small-scale affordable local artists’ wares. The space was first redeveloped from an old Bait & Tackle shop (I love that the old sign still exists) and was originally launched as Lucky Tackle gallery by Jason Byers back in 2002.  He now co-directs the space with Kerri Johnson.

The exhibit this month (opening reception was in late October) is titled This Is Not My Beautiful Life, an interesting twist on the Talking Heads’ song “Once in a Lifetime” written by David Byrne…

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Two artists (Michael Hall and Daniel Healey) shared the gallery, each with entirely different styles and techniques, but both focused on themes of “history, domesticity, and narrative.”

Healey’s pieces were rather large but meticulously constructed out of tiny collage bits, most originating from vintage magazines and other historical materials (though he was quite secretive about his process!) Some of the tiny elements could easily be recognized as home wares from some type of catalog, perhaps an old Sears & Roebuck… shelving, handtrucks, etc. Yet many were harder to identify, and some even had a tissue paper translucency to them that was quite beautiful when layered.

I love this image above, because these patrons look perplexed… one literally scratching his head, trying to figure out how and out of what were these constructed, what they now represent, and most importantly, what does it mean?!

My friends debated the perspective from which to view these images. Some saw them as maps of a sort, as though viewed from the sky above…. landmasses jutting out into an abyss of some greater homogeneous body. I preferred to view them from my feet-planted-on-the-ground perspective, and to me they looked like fantastical creatures, blob-like with arms and heads and claws protruding. Here is another…

Michael Hall’s pieces also begin with vintage photographs, though his work is more interested in the historical narratives found within. His canvasses were more traditional paintings than Healey’s, but the incorporation of elements such as date stamping, square formatting, and borders, gave clues to the photographic origination of the images.

I am sorry that I don’t have more photos of his work here… my representation is not particularly balanced as each artist occupied half the gallery space. Please note it is no indication of preference… I found the subtle palettes and quite moments of Hall’s imagery lovely, and a perfect contrast to the vibrant chaos of Healey’s.  The show is up until November 15th… you can go see for yourself.

Tomorrow we go to our second stop of the night… Compound Gallery & Studios.

Allow me to say that I only vaguely knew who David Byrne was until he appeared on The Colbert Report last 22 March to play a song from Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (you can listen to the entire album for free), the second album he made in collaboration with Brian Eno. It’s an album with a blend of electronic and Gospel music, which Brian Eno describes as “music in which singing becomes the central event, but whose sonic landscapes are atypical of such vocal-centered tracks.”

After an interview with Stephen Colbert, David Byrne performed “Life is Long,” a song that’s become one of my favorites. I could play it on loop for a day and never get tired of it.

Here’s another video of David Byrne performing “One Fine Day.”

David Byrne and the Talking Heads starting me thinking about stuff a long time ago. They’re basically the reason I got into Urban Planning, with songs like Don’t Worry About the Government and The Big Country. He’s been keeping an online journal for a long time now but it’s pretty rare that he writes directly about music, or performing, or a new album or whatever.

Usually he writes about changes he sees happening, trends in the world, and The Future.

His latest entry talks a lot about J. C. R. Licklider. Licklider did a lot of work with psychoacoustics and computers during the 50s and 60s and he essentially predicted the development of the internet and a lot of other computer-enabled technologies in use around the world.

In his blog post Byrne talks about how a lot of the technology that was either made possible or inspired by Licklider’s work has led to mass digitization of nearly everything and the dissolution of privacy. He kind of blames the guy for contributing to the loss of books, magazines, newspapers, television, music and personal interactions as we once knew them. But also not. Byrne concedes that Licklider didn’t directly contribute to any of it really, and he says that it’s not really all bad.

Of course Byrne himself makes a number of predictions throughout the piece. Here’s a sample:

• I see that in my lifetime I will witness the end of books, or most of them.
• it’s hard to imagine a collection of someone’s text messages, tweets and e-mails [as a book]
• Many [institutions] that deal with physical objects — newsstands, record stores, bookstores — will all go away, along with their support structures: trucks, warehouses and all the people that worked in those places.
• Television [...] is bound to migrate online and become something very different.
• the access to information and convenience will be unprecedented
• cloud computing will eliminate any real sense of privacy
• The end of privacy in parts of the world is near. It will be traumatic for some, and a comfort for others — for to relinquish one’s privacy is to become a part of the hive and the herd, and there is a certain reassurance there.

None of these are new ideas of course, they’re all pretty commonly held feelings about where we’re headed. But these are the same kinds of predictions we tend to make at our Future Meetings. Any of the above bullets would look right at home hand-written on a slip of paper and stuffed into a bright yellow envelope.

There was something else Byrne said that I liked a lot:

Now, it’s been pointed out that [Licklider] didn’t actually invent any of this stuff — he merely “planted the seed.” But often it seems that putting out the idea that something might be possible encourages others to actually make it possible. In a way, to imagine is to create.

Which is why we encourage positive predictions, especially if they are of a personal nature. So Licklider puts an idea out there and over the course of 50 years it breeds and grows and develops into a reality that David Byrne is inspired to comment on. What will be the far reaching effects of this blog post by David Byrne? What will be the far reaching effects of Interested in The Future? I guess we’ll find out.

Victoria Vox needs our help!

Victoria Vox is an accomplished uke player/singer/songwriter.

Perhaps you have been lucky enough to be at one of Victoria’s gigs at a ukulele festival or a small pub like The Village in Leith.

The Leith gig was one of my top 3 gigs ever (and the first 2 are joint David Byrne gigs).

Check out her website: http://www.victoriavox.com/

Victoria is currently trying to raise funds for her next CD and is asking for help from the masses.

If you want to nurture a ukulele talent, have a bit of spare cash which needs a cause or just want to be immortalised in CD history, consider supporting Ms Vox in her latest endeavours.

Check out http://www.victoriavox.com/newalbum/ for the list of benefits you will reap in return for your donation *.

If any of you opt for the house concert and need any guests that particular day/evening, please feel free to let us know!!

*in addition to providing support to a worthy recipient

Sam Billen, doing his Sam Bean impersonation

Our sixth anniversary was last weekend, and we spent last Friday night in Topeka to celebrate.  While there, we went to Sam Billen’s release/listening party at a bohemian furniture store Friday night and hung out with his brother, Dan, and family on Saturday (stopping at a sweet Mexican joint and a thrift store).

Sam released a couple solo albums while the band he formed with his brother, The Billions, was alive and kicking.  Now that the band is finished (playing its final concert earlier this year), he’s continued doing solo work with this new release on The Record Machine.

Anyway, enjoy the show.

1. Sam Billen – The Garden (Headphones and Cellphones 2009)
2. David Byrne & Brian Eno – Strange Overtones (Everything That Happens will Happen Today 2008)
3. TV on the Radio – Golden Age (Dear Science 2008)
4. Autolux – Sugarless (Future Perfect 2004)

Radio Free Raytown – Episode #18 (11/6/09)

Recommended by a friend to read David Byrne’s journal – a recommendation I’d unhesitatingly pass on.

Recently he was mulling over the more or less inevitable loss of privacy that comes as a corollary of global connectivity. In the process he mentions one J. C. R. Licklider who I’d never heard of.

As Byrne observes, other than sounding like a character in a Coen bros movie, Licklider envisioned in a 1960 paper called Man-Computer Symbiosis, “A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines…[which provided] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions.”

In other words, he saw it all coming.

A circa un mese e mezzo dalla pubblicazione ecco qualche nota su uno degli album tributi prodotti, pubblicati e diffusi gratuitamente da Stereogum (il blog di culto per i patiti della musica indie). Si tratta di Enjoyed: A Tribute To Björk’s Post, ovvero 46 minuti in cui si ripercorre la sequenza originale del secondo album di Björk, Post, (gran) disco del 1995. Ogni traccia è affidata a un artista differente e l’apertura, Army Of Me, tocca al nome forte tra le band coinvolte, i Liars: sporcato e rallentato (anche se non al livello delle cover più radicali sentite negli ultimi tempi, ossia quelle di Kode9 and The Spaceape, vedi Sign O’ The Times e Ghost Town) il brano, scelto all’epoca dall’artista islandese come primo singolo, così arrangiato sembra una colonna sonora ideale per scene apocalittiche di film ambientati in un prossimo futuro. Ma già il brano successivo cambia completamente atmosfera: la versione di Hyperballad firmata Dirty Projectors (l’indie band più chiacchierata dell’anno) è David Byrne oriented; qualche passo oltre l’indie-pop si ritrova subito la pace, insomma. Saltando qualche brano però arriviamo al vero pezzo forte: gli Xiu Xiu tirano fuori una versione di Isobel in chiave contemporanea che rende onore al concetto di cover, con al centro un violoncello rieditato e una voce spaesata che gli gira intorno. Ultima menzione per Headphones rifatta da Atlas Sound: tanto fosca quanto ammaliante.
Gli altri artisti coinvolti, sfruttando la bellezza dei brani originari, che non è poca, danno comunque il loro contributo. Ma per saperne di più (e scaricare il disco) cliccate qui.

Para mim, David Byrne é um dos maiores gênios da música mundial!

Esta versão que ele fez de Cole Porter, é definitivamente MARAVILHOSA.

Enjoy!

Bjos e Abraços

(Saudades…)