Paper Cuts

My friend Mona Smith is a real inspiration. About six months ago, she decided that something wasn't quite sitting right with her in her life, so he decided to make some real changes. These changes revolved around understanding and appreciating her creativity, something that I believe everybody wrestles with at some point in their life. Well, Mona decided to do something about it and the first manifestation is an awesome little zine called "Paper Cuts" that she painstakingly made in a small edition of 75.

This is one of Mona's drawings and is an example of one of the pages in the zine.
I just got one in the mail and it got me all amped up to make things. Here's a little statement about it that came in an email from her, "you're only given one life to live so you better be proactive and you better stand up and fight for anything you might believe in... because you either stand or you fall. time is a-wastin, so don't just do nothing..."

Uh Huh.

The zine is probably gone by now, but you can check out her blog HERE for tons of inspiring little posts. Rumor has it that a second zine is on the way too.

Ian Whitcomb

His biography, "Irving Berlin & Ragtime America", recounts the songwriter's early years. He was Mae West's last producer.


At Bryanston, a public school in Dorset, England, Whitcomb started a skiffle group and then a rock & roll band. In the early 1960s, whilst studying history at Trinity College, Dublin, he became a founder member of Dublin’s first R&B band, “Bluesville”. Their second record release, "This Sporting Life”, charted in America in 1965. Whitcomb's next recording, "You Turn Me On”, hit #8 in the Billboard chart in July 1965. During that year's summer vacation he went to America to appear on such TV shows as “Shindig”, “Hollywood A Go Go” and “American Bandstand”. He played the Hollywood Bowl with the Beach Boys and then toured with the Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs.


“N-Nervous!”, Whitcomb's next release, was recorded in Hollywood and made the top 50. He returned to Dublin for his history finals and received a B.A degree. In 1966 he turned back to early popular song: his version of a 1916 comedy number, “Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday On Saturday Night?”, was a West Coast hit, reviving the ukulele before the emergence of Tiny Tim. After making four albums for Capitol and producing Mae West on an album called “Great Balls Of Fire” for MGM, he returned to England where he wrote “After The Ball”. He later wrote “Tin Pan Alley”, and a novel, “Lotusland: a story of Southern California” (Wildwood House).


Returning to Hollywood, Whitcomb starred in and wrote “L.A. — My Home Town” (BBC TV), and “Tin Pan Alley” (PBS) as well as providing the music for a documentary film, “Bugs Bunny: Superstar” (UA), which was narrated by Orson Welles. For Playrite Music he cut 18 piano rolls, included in an album, “Pianomelt”. His other albums reflected his research into ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, Vaudeville and Music Hall. These, beginning with “Under The Ragtime Moon” (1972), were released on several labels including Warner Bros., United Artists and Decca. During this time he also wrote and produced singles for Warner Bros' country division, most notably “Hands”, a massage parlor story, and “A Friend Of A Friend of Mine”.


In the 1980s, Whitcomb published “Rock Odyssey”, a memoir of the 1960s and described by the New York Times as the best personal account of this period. He also published a Ragtime America (Limelight Editions, 1988), followed by a memoir of life as a British expatriate living in Los Angeles, "Resident Alien" (Century, 1990). He also produced a British documentary on black music, “Legends Of Rhythm & Blues”. At the same time he hosted a radio show for what turned out to be 15 years, taking it from KROQ to KCRW and finally to KPPC. His songs can he heard in “Cold Sassy Tree”, “Encino Man”, “Bloody Movie”, “Stanley’s Gig”, “The Cat’s Meow”,“Last Call”, "Grass","Sleep Easy, Hutch Rimes", "After The Storm","Lonesome Jim", “Fido”.

Since the early 1990s Whitcomb has been publishing songbooks for the Mel Bay company, notably three based on the ukulele.

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Signs of the Times

Thanks to Glen Friedman. For more information click HERE

Paris, wonderful Paris...

That movie 2 Days in Paris is pretty damn good! Go Julie Delpy.

It seems like Aaron has posted a lot of Mike Mills coverage on here recently. And it seems only right, as Mike, in many ways, is kind of a major part of why we (Aaron, Ed and myself) are all doing what we are doing these days.
And as such, it is with great excitement that I post about Mike today in honor of his new website, http://mikemillsweb.com/
It is pretty comprehensive, spanning his landmark work in design, video, film, and art... it even includes the video he made for Les Rhythms Digitales, which is maybe the most beautifully soul crushing thing I have ever seen.

I don't know what is going on here...

I just take the pictures.


These were at a truck stop in French Canada on the road from Montreal to Quebec.
Fine Figurines for your Diorama displays? Diorama displays of what?

Seeing that Lungfish video made me long for FUGAZI

How can we live without them?

Lungfish, late '90s.

This video is of Lungfish playing Philadelphia sometime in the late ‘90s. I’m not sure if the memo has been issued officially, but they broke up at some point within the last year or two… and after years of retracted declarations, the singer, Dan Higgs, has also finally once and for all sold all of his famous old tattoo machines and completely quit tattooing (he is kind of, like, ‘every tattooer’s favorite tattooer’—not literally, but pretty much, well, basically literally. He is also, at this point in time, pretty much the most epic looking white man in the history of white men) to focus on his painting. He is releasing a lot of great solo music and I’m sure the other guys from the band will be releasing great music, post-Lungfish, as well.
…But as demonstrated in this video, they were so fucking good.

Straight Outta Compton

Saturday morning and a 7:15 AM drive down the 110 freeway headed towards a secret location in the ghetto neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

This freeway is a lonely place at this time of day. Time to think. Time to reflect.

Arrive at a non-descript industrial complex and enter to the thundering sound of big whirling mechanical machines.

Men in grey uniforms consider the product carefully. Using a fine magnifying glass, we search together for even the slightest of imperfections. What secret documents are we looking at so early in the morning???

ANP Quarterly Number 8 of course!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lords of the Logistic

Special thanks to Josh Elrod.

Decisions. Decisions.

I think I'm Emo.

heartbreakinglybeautiful

I’ve been thinking about ways to write about Harm van den Dorpel’s website for a while now… and I think it really just boils down to the fact that you need to experience it for yourself. Really really gorgeous work.
But please note, it takes a little while to load, so please give it a sec.
http://harmlog.nl/
There is a lot to see on the site, and make sure you check out
'falling army' and the one above, 'faling horse' (for some reason I can't link to it... but make sure you look at it).

Bigger and Brighter Things

Isn't this an awesome Bob Richardson photo?

Friday Night RE-RUN

If any of you happen to be in the Los Angeles area this Friday night, try to stop by this exhibition I organized. It's in Chinatown, it's called RE-RUN and it's an installation based around these awesome vintage running shoes Nike is re-releasing. I know what your saying..."An exhibition about running shoes? Yuck!" but it's much more than that. It's a total concept thing based on alternative do-it-yourself architecture from the 1970s, coupled with psychedelic graphics, video, and works by artists. Also, we're bringing out FREE SIMON from NYC to DJ the thing. If you've never heard him it's worth it just for that. And...because you are all such loyal readers of our blog I'm gonna play favorites and post a few of the artworks that are going to be in the show. You won't see these anywhere else...

ANDREW JEFFREY WRIGHT


TRACY NAKAYAMA


KIME BUZZELLI

If you wanna go, you should RSVP to: rerunla@nike.com, because it might fill up fast.

RE-RUN
Friday, August 10, 2007
8PM - Midnight
Ford Brady Studio
720 North Figueroa
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Movies, Bruises, Dogs, Manifestos and Fireworks

Yesterday afternoon I was suffering from some serious monitor burn as the result all the laborious writing I've been doing for the new ANP issue, so I walked around the corner to have lunch with this man...Mike Mills.

I know some of you are probably saying, "Mike Mills again? Too many posts about Mike Mills!" but seriously I only have a few really good friends, so I don't hang out with that many people, especially people who are doing as many cool things as he is. Everytime we get together I get inspired and I just wanted to share some of that excitement with you...dear readers! So there, it's here whether or not anybody cares or not.

Before we ate, we hung out in the studio for a bit and looked at stuff. That's what we do when we're hanging together. We look at stuff. This sticker is stuck to a notebook that sits right next to Mike's computer.

Here are some of the recent graphics and artwork he has been making. Those brown and orange blobby things are supposed to be bruises. He's drawn quite a few bruises lately.

He's also working on a whole series of drawings of fireworks. These are my favorite. There are so many different ones, but this one might be may favorite. He says he draws these to combat his depression. I hope it's working for you.

Aside from all that art stuff, Mike is currently working on a new movie. This folder was also sitting on his desk next to the computer.

Here's a poached photo of a page from his new script. Don't tell anyone you saw this. It's secret. Don't copy it either or we'll hunt down your IP address and come burn your house down.

When I asked about this collage of images, Mike said, "That's my film!" Another clue.

Mike also absolutely LOVES dogs. he's a real animal person. He once told me that he "speaks dog." As we left his room, this was hanging on his door. Learn it, love it, live it.

…but did you know we had all these other blogs?

Our parent company, RVCA, has a pretty great post-honeyee blog set up,
RVCA BLOGS
RVCA BLOGS
RVCA BLOGS
RVCA BLOGS
RVCA BLOGS
RVCA BLOGS
Some are updated daily, some weekly. There's a pretty incredible range of blogness
happening. It really underscores the diversity of the rvca family... its quite a range...
(...and yes, among the 29 personal blogs are blogs by Ed, Aaron and myself...)

The penultimate armageddon hipster iconographic moment

I mean, this has to be it, right?



A diagram of a diamond/the nuber"666"/scrip text that reads as semi wrong-ironic and it's all on a tractor trailer truck.

(full discloser: I have a tattoo of a diagram of a diamond, so I can't really say much about that... and I saw this truck while I was "on tour" with "my band"... oh my...)

Slight sort-of-not-a-secret: in the 80’s texas punk heyday, Mark Flood was in a pretty major band called Culturcide (under the name Perry Webb). Today he is an artist, and employs the younger artist, Will Boone (who plays in the contemporary Houston punk band LAWS) as one of his assistants. He also gave Will a ton of incredible 80s punk memorabilia, including hand written letters from The Fall’s Mark E. Smith (!!),



and lyric sheets sent from Smith as well…



Aparently Mark had complained that he couldn’t find Fall lyrics written out, and was thus rewarded with these.





some of them were even hand written... !!!!!!!!!!!!



Old issues of Re-Search Magazine… beyond like-whaoh.



Mark Flood and Will Boone at Raye in Houston, Texas, June 2007.