The News Review:
- … of music and design: A cottage industry of CD and poster…
- Bolder and wiser | Music | projo.com | The Providence Journal
- A guitarist finds the music in the wood
- Haus of horror
- It’s as if they never went away
- Sean’Hagan on classical music | Music | The bserver
- Situationist Comedy Dillinger Four
… of music and design: A cottage industry of CD and poster…
Free with registration – Buffalo News – AccessMyLibrary.com – Apr 15, 2007
“It’s just the simple desire to make things cool. ” Each of the three design firms — of CDs posters and letter fonts — say they work from Buffalo for different reasons which include: hometown musician clients such as DiFranco and the Goo Goo Dolls; affordable rents; and a good network of suppliers. Their creations are sought after as people in the music business look harder for new ways to make money from concerts T-shirts and posters — as.
Bolder and wiser | Music | projo.com | The Providence Journal
Providence Journal – Apr 15, 2007
I don’t know — whatever; if it (irks somebody) that’s life. But I don’t think they’re that extreme; I think they’re feelings anyone can go through from time to time no matter your um denomination. ” Jones spends a lot of time working outside her marquee milieu whether it’s playing and recording country music with The Little Willies playing punk rock with El Madmo or making guest appearances on records as far-ranging as Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company and former Faith No More frontman Mike Patton’s Peeping Tom project. Would she do a punk-rock song? Playing and singing in many contexts is a learning experience Jones says — “I learn that everyone has a different way of doing things I guess” — but enjoyment is the real key. “It’s fun to have different outlets. And it’s the same with singing with other people — it’s just nice to do something different. ” Juggling different projects while maintaining a platinum-selling day job with a signature sound has its pitfalls Jones says.
A guitarist finds the music in the wood
San Diego Union Tribune – Apr 15, 2007
Taylor was the frontman for one of San Diego's most raucous skate-punk bands Furious IV. His group put out albums went on tour hung out with other rock stars. His company is currently renovating the Hotel La Jolla but that still leaves enough time to go play music… Since the demise of Furious IV Taylor's been working on a solo project. He also plays guitar and tours with Mondo Generator a band led by a fellow desert rocker Nick liveri of Queens of the Stone Age. So together with his woodworker friend Michael Hunt he created Taylor Design and Build. At first the two friends built displays shelves and cabinets for high-end grocery and department stores. “Everything's gotta sit on something” Taylor pointed out. Eventually their clients requested extra pieces like custom tables that could fit into small hard-to-fit spaces.
Haus of horror
Malaysia Star – Apr 15, 2007
Now I grew up listening to music in the mid-1980s when the goth label was being bandied about with bands as diverse as Siouxsie & The Banshees The Cult and The Mission not to mention numerous other less talented folk who spent more time on the look (lots of mascara and white powder with long black hair and black clothes too). However when I went looking for the source as I am oft wont to do I stumbled upon Bauhaus. Bauhaus was one of those bands that formed in 1978 when the first waves of the punk “revolution” had long since crashed. The music that they made was an update on the minimalist but visceral sound of Velvet Underground. and curiously no song defined the group as much as its first single.
It’s as if they never went away
San Francisco Chronicle – Apr 15, 2007
‘ ” So interesting that the Stooges’ stage antics often overshadowed the music. “Yeah the first thing they would notice was that I was bleeding” Pop says. “If we were lucky they’d get past that and see how good the music was. I’m crazy enough to have thought that everybody was going to jump in and sing along. I thought that people wanted to hear what we did and they’ll get it. I didn’t think we would sell a million records but I thought ‘Fifty thousand is good. ‘ I just thought more people would get into it than did… It gave a lot of people a lot of courage a shield. But we’re back together again really because we have to serve the material. ” That material would include the proto-punk anthems “I Wanna Be Your Dog” “No Fun” “1969″ “Gimme Danger” and “TV Eye” smeared across just three albums and covered by numerous artists. “There are a thousand versions of ’1969′ and they’re all horrible” Pop sniffs. “It’s only two chords and no one can make that work except the Stooges. I’ve played with a lot of people but no one could do it exactly like the Stooges could. There was a synergy that couldn’t be duplicated.
Sean’Hagan on classical music | Music | The bserver
The bserver – Apr 15, 2007
Should any of you dumb and deaf pop fans be reading this let me explain that Maxwell Davies is Master of the Queen’s Music a title that obviously confers on its beholder the right to be as smug snobbish patronising and out to lunch as any of the more dimwitted Windsors. His particular bete noir is the government’s musical-education policy which he says regards the teaching of classical music in schools as elitist favouring lesser more easily understood forms like pop and rap. Little wonder he seems to suggest that classical music is neglected given that the Strat-toting asis-ligging cloth-ears at Number 10 is immune to the ‘intimations of eternity’ and ‘cosmic harmony’ that it alone can convey. While not wanting to defend the cultural credibility of a Prime Minister who has publicly aired his enthusiasm for the songs of Simply Red I have to say the words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ spring to mind. Maxwell Davies’s understanding of popular music seems based on a gigantic conspiracy theory of the kind even David Icke might find implausible while his attitude to the legion of lesser mortals who take pleasure in the humble pop song veers between the patronising and the deranged. Consider the following extract from that same speech: ‘To return for a moment to extremely loud music with a gut-churning thudding bass beat – in Nineteen Eighty-Four rwell envisaged the future of mankind as the perpetual stamping of a jackboot on the face of humanity. In this regard our consumer culture has achieved something more subtle and more penetrating than Lenin’s Agitprop or Goebbels’ Reichspropagandaministerium or anything envisaged in a Huxleyan or rwellian nightmare future… I will leave it to him to enlighten them in his inimitable and oddly lumpen way: ‘The exploited victims do not feel themselves the exploited subjects of designs upon their minds and pockets and while having mind heart and intellect stamped upon and numbed and their pockets emptied they enjoy and welcome the experience which becomes a drug an all-powerful soporific insulating the victims from all reality and particularly from political reality. ‘I blame the parents myself. Those hippies who preferred Hawkwind to Haydn those punks who opted for Strummer over Stravinsky. Maxwell Davies though blames the invisible forces of ‘mind erasure’. Which is where his argument starts to unravel in an oddly unsettling way. ‘To witness “music” being used as an instrument of mind control or mind erasure in this manner’ he continues ‘is as repulsive in its way as was witnessing Mozart and Schubert played by the concentration camp band as Hitler’s victims were marched to their fate. ‘Phew! That’s quite a leap of the imagination: from an all-nighter in a field to a Nazi round-up.
Situationist Comedy Dillinger Four
Aversion – Apr 15, 2007
Sure there?s probably not much room to mess around lyrically when you set out to right the wrongs of the modern world but geez does it has to be so tough to listen to? Propagandhi?s noise is as muscle-bound as its weight-pumping members The Dead Kennedys are nothing but second-rate slop without the ideology to back them up and Crass wouldn?t even laugh if they were seized by a gang of clowns and tickled with feathers. Fighting the good fight isn?t supposed to be fun apparently. That?s a commandment that after eight years The Dillinger Four has yet to heed. It?s a pretty fortunate oversight however as the fun-loving pop hooks give Situationist Comedy like all the band?s previous records a sugar coating that helps the socio-political commentary go down with Mary Poppins-like ease… With hooks aplenty D4 revs up a sound that were it not for its scathing leftist leanings could give popsters such as Green Day a run for their money in the mainstream. Situationist Comedy isn?t quite as compelling as the Four?s last effort 2000?s Versus God (Hopeless) but that?s a minor complaint ? we?re still talking about D4 here a band that?s consistently put itself at the top of the punk-rock heap on each of its releases. Pop punk may be screeching to a sputtering halt at the hands of mall punks and post-emo whinesters but Situationist Comedy proves the form?s still got enough life to kick the crap out of Carson Daly if it wants to as the band sports the one-in-a-million sound where pop and underground aggression are in perfect equilibrium. From a blustery rocker full of sing-along melodies ("Fuzzy Pink Hand-Cuffs") to a spacious number where the band rests out its legs before hopping back up to pogo ("Folk Song") Dillinger Four is the real deal: Punks who love guitar hooks almost as much as a garage-band racket. Accentuating the grimy punk edge that slices through Situationist Comedy?s more pop moments is the biting commentary the act?s pop punk delivers. For just about any other band on the block Situationist Comedy would be a defining moment a masterpiece of punk politics and pop.