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Just returned from 23 REASONS TO SPARE NEW YORK: MUSIC VIDEOS FROM THE ART ROCK SCENE at Galapagos, an entertaining* mix by Nick Hallett of the commercial and the non-commercial, the brain-pounding (Black Dice/Danny Perez) and the charming (Regina Spektor/Adria Petty), with an eye for stop motion, '70s blue-screen montage, and exquisitely awful found footage (thinking of Quentin Tarantino in Kent Lambert's "The Biggest Night in Music," a splendid example of how success is not good for certain people). A quick look around the Net found several of the vids online (see below). Based on audience reaction "Relax with Kenny G"--the jazz lite saxophonist, not the WFMU dj--stole the first show, certainly getting the most laughs. Pictures of the long-tressed schlockhound are almost inherently funny. Also great were Antony and the Johnsons (haunting vocals accompanied by Glen Fogel's obsessive cropped lensing of a diva luxuriating/writhing in agony on a bed); "Heavy Metal Baghdad" (Iraqi rockers complaining about the lack of electricity), the punishing psychedelia of Roentgen's/Devin Flynn's "Cat Loop" (intense analog flanging meets Felix the Cat fractals), and Mixel Pixel's/Noah Lyon's "Telltale Drum Machine" (high speed video graffiti).
From around the Net:
Foetus: "Blessed Evening," dir. Karen O, 2005, 4 minutes (Director of Photography Spike Jonze). Foetus looks like Kim Fowley, at least in this video-severed-head mode.
Out Hud: "It's For You," dir. The Wilderness (cute/creepy stop motion)
My Robot Friend with Bingo Gazingo: "Kenny G.," dir. My Robot Friend (what does WFMU Station Manager Ken mean about "releasing Bingo Gazingo from his contract"? Did he misbehave on the air?)
Jason Forrest: "Steppin' Off," dir. Jon Watts/Waverly Films (the one with the LARPing theme--you gotta love that wizard)
*I can't properly review the show because one of the 23 reasons was mine but believe I can say the mix was entertaining.
Everyone in the world linked to this Mario Bros. fan art page, and well they should, it's a mother lode of punchy, brow-furrowing drawings. The content ranges from almost-professional renderings of Mario and Luigi as musclebound superheroes to endearingly inept Jim Shaw thrift store show-like portraits. In my fantasies, someone prints out all the images really large on Sintra board or Duratrans, and holds a kind of Iron Chef competition between the artists on those pages and some overindulged bad boy of the art world like, say, Sean Landers. Especially fun would be the judging, which would consist of those same five people who regularly appear on Iron Chef--the elderly critic, the pretty actress, etc.--sitting and making pronouncements to a humbled Landers like: "This is very bold, but I felt your irony wasn't quite strong enough--you are not truly weird in your art."
