The plan for the shoot makes Portland’s annual naked bike events sound fairly run of the mill. “I’m having one of my giant space bubbles covered in fake fox fur,” [Wayne] Coyne said. “Its going to look like some giant fur egg, and the people on bicycles are gonna sort of be born and erupt out of this fur, vaginalistic thing.”
Coyne in a “giant space bubble.”
...The video is being made for the final song, called “Watching the Planets,” on the Flaming Lips’ upcoming album appropriately titled Embryonic. The song is “an epic…march, almost. It goes on this hypnotic groove,” Coyne said. The video’s concept is still emerging: “Maybe I’ll even get naked for the video, too. I don’t even know how it ends — maybe it ends with them all getting clothed and making me get naked and shoving me back into the giant fur egg. I just came up with that right now.”
The shoot is from 10am to 10pm on Wednesday, September 23rd. Participation is on a drop-in basis. The sign-in table will be the basketball courts near the top of Mount Tabor.
Last night at the Winningstad Theatre marked the world premiere of Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People's Last Meadow. Some parts were rich with energy and subtext, others were downright atrocious. The best was about three-quarters of the way through when the three main players disrobe and break out into dance moves only seen in the most homosexual and best techno clubs, with a little ballet mixed it. 
Last Meadow is set to an original score created by first-time composer Neal Medlyn and lighting by longtime collaborator Lenore Doxsee. Mining movement and text from James Dean’s East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant, Last Meadow creates a non-narrative collage of sensorial confusion, aka an America where the jig is up and the dream has died. Last Meadow is about the space of waiting, when things don’t move forward, don’t happen as they should, and mixed messages are the only ones we get.I won't be able to give you my thoughts on it until tomorrow morning, cause I am going to what will probably be one of the highlights of the festival, the Explode into Colors performance with Janet Pants & Chris Hackett later tonight after Last Meadow.
YACHT - Summer Song from Jona Bechtolt on Vimeo.
Neil Steinberg’s Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life is awful.
So this is a teeny bit late, but Musicfest NW and PDX Pop Now! have finally announced their line-ups for this year. The one for MFNW is a partial line up but, so far, things are looking very good. You can check it out here. PDX Pop Now!'s line up is available here. While MFNW is priced pretty well if you get a wrist band, PDX Pop will be FREE. So, if you're short on cash, that's one I highly recomend not missing. Also, be sure to pick up a copy of the 2009 PDX Pop Now! compilation. There are some particular good tracks by the Mint Chicks and Ah Holly Fam'ly.
Hey, remember back in 2004 when Dangermouse put out the Grey Album and everybody freaked out? I sure do. Since then, there have been many similar scandles, the latest of which would be DJ Terry Urban's new mash-up, Southerngold. Stereogum reported this week that Urban has taken Santigold's self-titled album and remixed it with some of his favorite Southern hip-hop. I was excited so I gave it a listen. Not quite as amazing as I thought it would be, but still a very good time. If you want it however, the only avenues available for obtaining it at this time are the one of questionable legality (i.e. some good ol' fashioned internet piracy).
Portland School of Rock Pixies show w/ Frank Black from mark lewman on Vimeo.
Many thanks Pampelmoose!
We start our story in the mid 80’s. Ronald Reagan was still in office. People weren’t yet convinced that McDonalds was all that bad for you - after all, would a clown sell you something that could be detrimental to your health? Surely not. Video had been killing the radio star for a minute before rap got in on the act. Walk with us as we take a brief stroll down memory lane….
Jennifer Aniston's honey-colored highlights and unadorned 'do on the red carpet only look effort less - in reality, the laid-back-looking locks cost an estimated $50,000 to achieve.
Is there a direct correlation between aging, going solo and wearing a cowboy hat? Are the three mutually exclusive? Perhaps not, but Michael Gira's set last night at the Doug Fir would show evidence strongly in favor this.
The night started with Larkin Grimm, a strong bisexual female singer/songwriter. Go ahead, google “strong bisexual female singer/songwriter,” then scroll down a few, you might find her. She wears her sexuality on her sleeve, or she would, but sleeves are probably a function of patriarchal fascism, so she doesn't have any. Her best song, for instance, was about a distant galaxy where everyone has their own spirit orgasm.
“The female orgasm is outlawed in Georgia, where I'm from,” she began, and went on to preach the gospel of some ethereal orgasm wormhole. Very enlightening. Another highlight of her set was a lyric about sleeping with other women, where she describes a lover's legs “open like scissors.” Scissors? Really? I mean, its just too damn easy.
Perhaps I was all singer/songwritered out by the time Gira got on stage. Perhaps I just don't hold him to the same level of genius as a lot of Swans fans do. All I can say, and I say it because this is blogging and I can blog any opinion I have whether is valid or not, is that I was terribly bored by his set from the start.
What it comes down to, for me, is that while Gira has an amazing voice and great stage presence, his songs are one-dimensional when stripped this bare. Even when, in groups like Angels of Light, his instrumentation is minimal, the other musicians, in very subtle ways, flesh his simple chord structures into dynamic, moving songs.
Whether he's a legend or not, I gotta calls it like I sees it: When you're bored, you're bored.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
In a series of bad dreams, Brad Pitt combines with Forrest Gump, E.T., Oliver from The Brady Bunch, the baby from Eraserhead, Tom Waits album covers, Dr. Zhivago, Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld, on and on, like robot locusts eating the inside of the movie theater in three hours."
Link: n+1 magazine
