REVOLUTIONS came to the People’s Republic of Los Angeles on Saturday night, with the opening of an exhibition of album cover-inspired art from Shepard Fairey.
The decidedly anti-elitist celebration, held at Robert Berman’s C2 Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, was free – as were the Singha beers, which were being liberally distributed to the packed assembly.
The party spilled out into the parking lot, where a sound system and stage had been set up. Dan The Automator and Fairey took turns spinning tunes from their laptops, but the show was stolen by Metalachi, a mariachi band that plays heavy metal classics.
On paper mariachi metal sounds so wrong, but live it was so fucking right. Who knew that songs culled from the catalogs of AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Dio and Judas Priest would sound so damn good topped with a sombrero, Mexican style.
“You pour in a fourth chemical, and it bubbles really violently, and then…”
– David J
While so many music icons seem to fade away without dignity or creative energy to speak of, David J has plenty of both, and he doesn’t look to fade away any time soon. David is best known as the bassist for the influential British bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. But with Bauhaus coming to a well-publicized end (their final album, Going Away White, came out this month), David is setting off in a new direction.
One of the best things about casual gaming is that it gives you an easy and light-hearted way to take ten minutes out of your stressful life and concentrate on something else. Hardcore gaming can be fun, but sometimes a break from level grinding is refreshing. On that note, here are some of the best casual iPhone games I’ve found in the last month:
It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and The Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin’ Groovies at The Roxy. Across the pond, The Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a “fucking rotter” while live on British TV. Meanwhile, in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot off Third Street in LA’s Fairfax District, an 11-year-old Marc Canter caught his fellow classmate, Saul Hudson (a.k.a. a just about teenage Slash of Guns N’ Roses), suspiciously eyeballing Canter’s mini-bike parked outside. In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. “I was one of the thieves, I know, ” Slash laughs. ”It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how [Marc and I] met and weve been friends ever since.”
“Back then there was this golden age of journalism.”
-Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss has a talent for honing in on the very essence of who a person is. It’s an attribute that has served him well as an interviewer for publications such as The New York Times and Rolling Stone, as a writer penning biographical books with the likes of Mötley Crüe (The Dirt) and Jenna Jameson (How To Make Love Like A Porn Star), and in his other life, as Style, the seduction guru and author of the pick-up bible, The Game.
Hello folks, and welcome back to another round of Things You Like That I Might Like Too. For those of you that haven’t played before, let me remind you that there are no winners and no prizes. This week’s challenge: Emerald City Comic Con!
There are a lot of comic book conventions in the United States, and if you didn’t already know, let me be the first to tell you – most of them suck. I understand the appeal of San Diego Comic Con, but if you’re willing to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $6,000 just to wait in line for two hours so that you can get inside to wait for three more hours just to see that thing that you like that you’re wearing the t-shirt of . . . you’re doing it wrong.
Pokémon, America’s all time best-selling computer game series, is still going strong 15-years on. The two newest editions, Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, are renewing the call to trainers everywhere. Released in the US simultaneously on Sunday March 6, Black and White’s combined sales totaled over one million copies on the first day, besting the 780,000 units sold on the day of release for 2007’s Diamond and Pearl by a considerable margin.
