by Ryan Stewart
“If you met yourself in person, would you see only faults?”
-Duncan Jones
If the new film Moon puts you in mind of David Bowie’s lyrical, space-is-a-lonely-place ballad, “Space Oddity,” that’s probably not a total coincidence – it was directed by his 38 year-old son, Duncan Jones, who formerly went under the much less conservative name, Zowie Bowie. After years of directing commercials and trying to move on from what he describes as a youth marked by isolation and periods of self-discovery, Jones has emerged with a new identity as a respected indie filmmaker.
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by Blogbot
Bobby Alt, Adam Alt and Frank Zummo of Street Drum Corps can bang the shit out of anything and make it sound good – really fucking good. As if to prove this point, during the opening night of their month-long weekly residency at The Roxy this past Tuesday, they stuck a pair of beat up household pans in an audience member’s hands and proceeded to make them sing with their sticks.
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by Nicole Powers
“The raging snark.”
– Moby
Moby could be described as a reluctant celebrity. He first found his way into the collective consciousness with the 1992 rave anthem “Go.” In the faceless world of techno culture success remained within his comfort zone. For the remainder of the decade he released his increasingly hybrid electronic-based music with little fanfare outside of the dance world. His 1999 album Play, barely made a ripple in the ocean of record sales when it first came out.
However, after a series of high profile film, TV and ad licenses, Play was propelled into the mainstream and Moby into the media maelstrom with it. Track 5 from the album, “South Side,” a little duet with Gwen Stefani, subsequently gained momentum, becoming an MTV staple for many months. It reached number 14 in the Billboard Hot 100 and number 3 on the Modern Rock singles chart in 2001. Play went on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide.
As film director David Lynch succinctly puts it, “Success is just as dangerous as failure, maybe more.” In the years since “South Side” graced the charts, Moby has not exactly been chasing similar commercial success — far from it — however many automatically assume he has. After all, money and fame are the goals of every artist right?
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by Brett Warner
Love him or hate him, Kanye West is America’s favorite asshole. His endlessly hyped new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy hits stores next week, though little of that hype concerns the music itself. Whether apologizing to George W. Bush, rambling on Twitter, canceling appearances, or claiming that Coldplay are bigger than The Beatles, Kanye seems dead set on further alienating his “haters” and keeping his fans in perpetually defensive mode. In spite of – or perhaps, because of – his talents, Kanye is a uniquely positioned pop culture scapegoat. Too self involved and misinformed to realize how he sounds to the rest of us, Mr. West has a knack for stealing the spotlight from other obnoxious, egotistical celebrity artists – of which there are plenty.
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by Jay Hathaway
“I had been in a sexually hibernated state of mind…”
– Kevin Barnes
Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes has been experimenting with pop music for almost 20 years, all the way back to recording home demos in high school. He started of Montreal in 1997 in Athens, GA, and fell in with the Elephant 6 collective, which included bands like Elf Power, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Apples in Stereo. Since then, of Montreal has put out nine records, including Barnes’ biggest critical success, 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
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by Damon Martin
In a real world context, Benjamin Franklin may have very well been right, but those rules don’t apply when talking about the comic book universe. Like a bad soap opera where the lead character is bound to find out that his wife – whom has just made a full recovery from a terminal illness – is also his long lost sister, comic books are notorious for never letting any character stay dead for too long.
That leads us to the February 2011 Marvel Previews in which they tease us with the “Death of Spider-Man.” Sure, the sticky guy has flatlined a time or two in his day, but this will be the first major run where the character is billed as meeting his ultimate demise. While Marvel is apparently being very hush-hush about the events surrounding the eventual “death” of Spider-Man, the big goal of course is to raise sales for the Spider-Man titles before they rub him out.
Comic book deaths however are a cautionary tale because the concept is rarely very final in the land of the superhero. The genre has exploited this device for years, and many fans tire of the ubiquitous “dead hero/miraculous resurrection” storylines. With Peter Parker apparently the next hero on the chopping block, let’s look at some famous comic book deaths and how the heroes came back to life:
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by Andrea Larrabee
“I’d kill some zombies.”
– Craig Mabbitt
It’s 4 o’ clock in the afternoon, and I’m in the dancers’ dressing room at Crazy Girls, a strip club on the corner of La Brea and Sunset in Hollywood, waiting to meet Craig Mabbitt and Max Green from the post-hardcore band Escape The Fate. Their third album has just been released the previous day, and the boys are scheduled to perform a special mini-set for a select group of guests invited to a record release party hosted by their new label, Interscope, at the intimate venue later on in the evening.
Cracked mirrors and a ’70s style red formica laminate counter run around three walls, the fourth being taken up mostly by a bank of sticker-adorned lockers. The carpet has seen better days, the lighting is harsh, and the room is otherwise sparsely furnished with a few cheap chairs and an exceptionally wobbly table. Ink jet printed signs are taped up in several places to remind the girls who usually occupy this space that the $25 house fee must be paid before they start their shift. In short, in the cold light of day, the circumstances are seedy rather than sexy – though that would change later on in the evening as the club came alive to the epic, hormone-charged sounds of Escape The Fate’s grind-friendly release.
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