Pacific Standard

I Am The Changer

2009-11-06T17:55:00.000-08:00

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Live version of a song Chad sent me by Cotton Jones, from the album Paranoid Cocoon (pictured below) on Seattle's own Suicide Squeeze Records.

The album version of "I Am The Changer" reminds me a little bit of the Biscuit Davis song I posted awhile back. Biscuit Davis. Cotton Jones. Wildcat. Wild...Cat.

Everyone enjoy your weekend.

Guy On Film

2009-11-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

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Several 8mm, Super 8, and 16mm short films by photographer Guy Bourdin (1928–1991) were exhibited last month in a show organized by Bourdin's son Samuel at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche in Paris. See a few more at Garance Doré.

[Note: mildly NSFW.]

SteidlDangin has a new book of Guy Bourdin's photography on the way called In Between – more on that later, maybe.

Freedom Rhythm & Sound

2009-11-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

.Select spreads from Freedom Rhythm & Sound: Revolutionary Jazz Original Cover Art 1965-83, a new book by Gilles Peterson & Stuart Baker, available at Turntable Lab (click for more images and info).

A little audio while you browse – Chad, Coolhands and I found a bunch of these 45s in a basement in Poughkeepsie several years ago:

Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen Kai mp3 (Tribe Records)

Image of the Day

2009-11-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

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LA [Man at Drive In Diner], 1964, from Five Decades, an exhibition of photographs by Bruce Davidson on view today through December 19th at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York. The show is running simultaneously with another Bruce Davidson exhibition, at Howard Greenberg.

Outside/Inside, a three-volume book containing over 800 of Davidson's photographs from the past fifty years, is forthcoming from Steidl.

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

2009-11-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

We Built This To Leave

2009-11-05T10:31:00.000-08:00

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Today is first Thursday, and I'll leave it to/the/experts to provide surveys of what's going up in galleries around Seattle tonight – other than to say that I'm really looking forward to seeing the new show at Vermillion.

Ryan Mollenkamp The Flood – reminds me of the Skagit Valley

Last November I posted about Ryan Mollenkamp's show there, and he returns this November in a group show with Sharon Arnold and Trevor Johnson. I don't know if the three artists were responding to each other's work, but the way it all goes together is really amazing.

Trevor Johnson Cloud Carving

Something about Vermillion feels temporary to me – maybe because it seems like the gallery is always experimenting, changing its shows up a lot, not necessarily with a consistent point of view, as far as I can tell. But it is consistently good, or at the very least worth visiting. It helps that they have beer and a really delicious small menu in the back room, but I always leave Vermillion feeling inspired.

Sharon Arnold BPM (detail)

The opening party is tomorrow night – more info at Vermillion's website, and more photos at their Flickr pool.

It Never Ends

2009-11-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

A client of mine recently told me about a music blog called Latin Vinyl Junkie. The cover images alone are great and the guy who runs it includes sound clips from every album.

There are so many records in the world.

Image of the Day

2009-11-05T06:11:00.000-08:00

. Couple by Jukebox in Social Club, 1966 – a photograph by Bruce Davidson, from his East 100th Street series. In 1967 and '68, Davidson extensively photographed the residents and environs of one particular block of Spanish Harlem which had a reputation for being one of the worst in the city, but was actively being improved by the block's residents. The photographs were exhibited in 1970 at the Museum of Modern Art in a groundbreaking show; curator John Szarkowski wrote that Davidson had "shown us true and specific people, photographed in these private moments of suspended action in which the complexity and ambiguity of individual lives triumph over abstraction." Davidson gave prints of his photographs to hundreds of residents of the block, and many of them attended the opening at MoMA.

The exact prints from that exhibition are on view today through January 2nd, 2010, at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. [Many of the photographs were also shown in 2003 at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.]

A simultaneous exhibition of Bruce Davidson's photography opens tomorrow at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Hardly Hardly Art

2009-11-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art is giving away a label sampler featuring The Moondoggies, Talbot Tagora, Pica Beats, and much much more. Also in Sub Pop news: the recently reincarnated 7" Singles Club ended its somewhat limited run last month with a Dutchess & the Duke record. All in all this Singles Club was not as exciting as the original Singles Club but there were a few good singles. Some of the aforementioned singles are featured on the Hardly Art comp. Click here to download it for zero dollars.

Plein Air

2009-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

More friend stuff – Brian Molloy, who I worked with for a few years at V Magazine, styled model Nicola Haffmans in this story for the November issue of the French fashion magazine Numéro, shot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard by photographer Greg Kadel. Beautiful styling, beautiful color, beautiful Brooklyn Navy Yard.

More here.

Kate Spadin'

2009-11-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

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Remember Bella Foster? Well it seems Kate Spade is also a big fan of hers, as they've asked Bella to collaborate with them on several projects, including a calendar and some really beautiful handbags.
We think that's really cool, despite the fact that they use the word "whimsical" on their website. Check it all out at katespade.info and see more of Bella's recent work at Here, There, And Them.

Image of the Day

2009-11-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

Bow Wow Wow, 1981. Photograph by Andy Earl, from
Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art through January 31, 2010.

You're In Love, and You're In Danger

2009-11-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

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Mississippi Mermaid, part of a François Truffaut film festival starting today at the French Institute in New York.

See also:
Truffaut at Criterion
Truffaut on Netflix

Image of the Day

2009-11-03T06:32:00.000-08:00

[ Don't forget to vote – ballots must be postmarked today ]
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American Experience

2009-11-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

CCC Firefighters in Washington State, 1937

I missed posting about this in advance, but I think it's worth putting up anyway. I'm working late and I have a TV in my office, and right now PBS is showing an American Experience documentary on the Civilian Conservation Corps, the cornerstone of FDR's New Deal that put millions of men to work during the Great Depression. Commentator Jonathan Alter:

Someone approached the economist John Maynard Keynes and asked him, 'Have we ever seen anything like this before?' And he said: 'Yes, we have. It was called the Dark Ages. It lasted 400 years.

So – we don't have it as bad as they did, and there are some signs that things are looking up, but I was saying to someone the other day that it seems like every other person I meet lately is out of work. I firmly believe that we need a jobs program in this country today and I think if Obama initiated it, it would change a lot of the haters' minds. It feels good to work and earn money, and when that's taken away, it can break a person, and break a country. In my mind, it's the most important thing to fix as we try to dig out from this financial crisis.

My grandfather Don Woodfin was a Firefighter in the CCC (old timers call it the CC's) in the mountains of Idaho. I'll write about that some time soon.

Preview the CCC documentary at PBS.org – it's worth looking out for a re-run or tracking down the DVD.

Fleet Foxes

2009-11-02T14:05:00.001-08:00

. From a New York Times article yesterday on the making of Wes Anderson's stop-motion film The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Click here to read and here for a slideshow.

Photo Greg Williams/NYT

Image of the Day

2009-11-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

Doe Avedon at the Gare du Nord, Paris, August 1947.

Photography by Richard Avedon, from the book Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, which accompanied the recent Avedon exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York. Emily gave it to me for my birthday and it made me really happy – it's a big, beautifully designed book featuring essays by ICP curator Carol Squiers, Vince Aletti, and photography historian Philippe Garner, and 245 of Avedon's most iconic fashion photographs.

I posted about the ICP exhibition here and here, and Emily and I had a chance to see it last time we were in New York, right before it closed. Actually, we scheduled our trip with that in mind – we were really looking forward to seeing it, and I'm glad to say that the show did not disappoint in the least.

Looking at photography online and in books is great, no doubt, but seeing printed work in person can be a very moving experience. Visiting ICP is almost always first on my list of things to do with free time in New York.

The current show is Dress Codes, ICP's third triennial of contemporary photography and video, running through January 17, 2010. Visit icp.org for more info.

Music of the Future, Music of the Past

2009-10-31T13:42:00.000-07:00

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[via DJ Stef]

Image of the Day

2009-10-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

Me and my brother, I'm guessing 1982?
From a disc of family photos my dad gave me for my birthday.

Cuuuuuuute

2009-10-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

Your Weekly Mr. Littlejeans

2009-10-30T13:50:00.002-07:00

"Mine's Bigger"

2009-10-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

The five-ton ball of rubber bands groaned and swayed as the crane lifted it from the driveway. A small frog hopped out from underneath.
“Let’s cross our fingers and hope we don’t see if it bounces,” said Edward Meyer, who bought the ball for an undisclosed sum for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Then he called to Joel Waul, the ball’s creator [pictured above]. “Pretty exciting, right?” Mr. Meyer said.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Waul, 28, the soft-spoken son of a surgical administrator and Jamaican musician. “Cool.”

Read the rest of it at nytimes.com.
See also: Steinski on his books and the nature of collecting.

Photo Alan Diaz/AP via NYT

Hell, Yes

2009-10-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

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"Director Ti West cares less about plot and gore than establishing a rigorously naturalistic mood, which he details with the precision and care of the early films of Roman Polanski." –Jason Zinoman, Vanity Fair

Audio slide show with director Ti West at nytimes.com.
Featurette here.

Image of the Day

2009-10-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

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Tom Marioni Free Beer – an installation made from the detritus of his beer party salon as it was exhibited/hosted at SFMOMA in 1979, under the title The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art.

Watch a 2-minute video about it at SFMOMA.org.
More Tom Marioni here.

The Songs That We Sing

2009-10-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

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Since I'm finishing up design work on a record her parents made in the '60s, I thought I'd post something about the upcoming Charlotte Gainsbourg album, produced by Beck. You can download the title song "IRM" for free by visiting her website and entering your email address. It's short and sweet with a Liquid Liquid kind of feel to it that I really like, and quite different from the stuff on her previous record (also very good), produced by Air, Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy), and Nigel Godrich. Here Gainsbourg talks a little about the making of IRM:

Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM will be out in the US this coming January and there's another single on the way between now and then, a duet with Beck called "Heaven Can Wait."

[via Wonting]