Art Meets Rock

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RICHARD KERN, Nirvana, Courtney Love
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left: WILLIAM ENGLISH, Vivienne Westwood in Sex, 1975, courtesy of Maggs Brothers, London right: URS LÜTHI, Un'isola dell'aria, 1975, particolare, 28 fotografie, cm60x50 cad, Collezione Fabio e Virginia Gori
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IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD, A Rock'N'Roll Suicide, 1998, Live performance, Photo: David Cowlard courtesy Kate MacGarry, London

Museo Pecci di Prato in Florence, Italy presents an exhibition entiled LIVE! Art Meets Rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years. Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE!offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films. Artists include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, William English, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle and more. The exhibition will be accompanied by Live!, a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini. LIVE! Art Meets Rock view at the Museo Pecci di Prato until September 16.  

[IN THEATERS] The Man Who Fell To Earth

David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). Courtesy BFI.
David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). Courtesy BFI.

“Are you Lithuanian?” After a space craft seemingly crashes to Earth, David Bowie walks off to sell a ring for twenty bucks in a dusty Southwestern town, then almost immediately hires high-priced, thick-spectacled patent attorney (Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry) to register ten world-changing patents. Orange-haired, pale-faced, minimally expressioned Bowie (the pop legend obviously well-cast as an alien in his first starring role) desperately yearns to return himself and water to his parched planet — but will the authorities let him? — with coed-shtupping professor Rip Torn providing technical help, and chambermaid Candy Clark providing distractions via overdoses of very terrestrial booze, church, sex, and television (“Get out of my mind, all of you!”). Roeg’s science fiction cult classic/cautionary moral tale is an assault of fragmented, non-linear narrative style, typically striking visuals, echt 70s soundtrack by John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas (along with period “needle drops”), with a pathbreaking no-comment depiction of a gay couple and multiple eye-brow-raising sexual romps — including one punctuated by gunshots. All too often seen in washed-out copies, this new 35mm print of the uncut director’s version allows Roeg’s dazzling visuals (Pauline Kael called him “the most visually seductive of directors”) to be seen as they were meant to be. [site]

JOHN MAUS: A Prophet for the New Generation

At the forefront of the brand-spanking-new “synth-pop deconstructionist” genre of lo-fi contemporary music is John Maus — a manic, inexplicable enigma unto himself. Maus hails from Austin — Minnesota, not Texas — and that’s just one thing that’s “different” about his sensibility and entire way of being. Exploring themes of the familiar and the strange, the real and the surreal, all drenched in a disarming expression of pure emotion, Maus takes pop music to an entirely new level. There’s no straightforward way to describe the experience of a live John Maus show other than to say that it will, without a doubt, go far beyond all possible expectations. Maus toys with notions of performance, singing over his own pre-recorded backing tracks. He sweats, spits, cries, shrieks and gasps for air. He paces back and forth, emotes with his hands and face, runs in place, jumps, pulls at his own hair. It’s not uncommon to leave one of Maus’ shows baffled, puzzled, enlightened, relieved, inspired or even unsure of what you have just witnessed. It is easy, too, to scoff or raise eyebrows when the roadies clear all visible indications of any sort of musical instrument off the stage and Maus lopes out humbly like an overgrown, misplaced frat boy, awkwardly slumping his shoulders to conceal some of his stature, dressed in a pinstriped button-down, straight-leg jeans and blindingly white running sneakers (it’s no wonder he pulls off the college look, as he taught philosophy at the University of Hawaii and is currently working towards a PhD in Political Science). Yet with a few twists and turns of various nobs on a synthesizer contraption he keeps on the floor (and kneels sporadically throughout his set to operate), Maus transports audience members into his world — a world of raw, unadulterated emotion yearning to break free from the physical entrapment of a body — expressed through jarring, fantastical manipulated synth beats and frantic, resonant vocals (we’re talking screams, howls and wails). In interviews, Maus has been known to spew philosophical aphorisms, eschew comparisons and avoid talking about Ariel Pink — with whom he attended CalArts and collaborated with musically for many years (and who was spotted in the audience at the Echoplex — word has it he lives with Geneva Jacuzzi, one of the opening acts for Maus and another member of the eclectic deconstructionist set).

Maus’ live act is like a beautiful car wreck — it’s nearly impossible not to wince as he simulates a nervous breakdown onstage; melting, crumpling and exploding into different shapes and perspiring through his neatly-ironed shirt to a soundtrack of murky, grating, echoing “retro-futurist” pop — yet this emotional metamorphosis is uncannily mesmerizing. It is an intensely visceral, interactive experience — almost more of a performance art show or a method acting piece than a concert — and, as became clear at the July 15th show at The Echoplex in Los Angeles, his cult of diehard followers (of the beer-spraying, lyric-chanting, moshing variety) just can’t get enough. His latest album, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, was released on June 27th after a nearly four-year hiatus from recording. 

Text and photography by Annabel Graham

[MUSIC VIDEO] Hunx and His Punx 'Lovers Lane'

Official Hunx video for "Lovers Lane," off of the Too Young To Be In Love LP! Watch as a wandering Hunx is taken in by doppelgangers and sent to the road, to prom, and to the elusive Lovers Lane. Directed by Hannah Lew of Grass Widow.

Official Hunx video for "Lovers Lane," release a couple days ago, off of their first album Too Young To Be In Love LP released last march. "Too Young To Be In Love is the first fully-realized Hunx and His Punx album, and the group’s first for the Hardly Art record label.  It was recorded in New York City by Ivan Julian—one of the founding members of inimitable NYC punk legends Richard Hell and the Voidoids.  This record was made in the same studio that one of Hunx's idols, Ronnie Spector, once recorded in. While it is preceded by the Gay Singles LP (True Panther Sounds/Matador Records, 2009), a collection of hard-to-find and out-of-print 7” singles, Too Young To Be In Love is the first proper studio record from Hunx and His Punx.

[BOOKS] PATTI SMITH & TOM WAITS

Dancing Barefoot: The Patti Smith Story by author Dave Thompson – Dancing Barefoot is a measured, accurate, and enthusiastic account of Smith’s career. Guided by interviews with those who have known her—including Ivan Kral, Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, John Cale, and Jim Carroll—it relies most of all on Patti’s own words. This is Patti’s story, told as she might have seen it, had she been on the outside looking in. You can purchase the book here. 

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Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters, edited by Paul Maher, Jr. – Tom Waits on Tom Waits is a selection of over fifty interviews from the more than five hundred available. Here Waits delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs. Available on Chicago Review Press

[BOOKS] David Bowie – Starman

Photo by Ray Stevenson, David Bowie at Home 1969

Paul Trynka illuminates Bowie's seemingly contradictory life and his many reinventions as an artist, offering over 300 new interviews with everyone from classmates to managers to lovers. He reveals Bowie's broad influence on the entertainment world, from movie star to modern-day icon, trend-setter to musical innovator. You can purchase the book here. 

World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation

Manchester band WU LYF, short for World Unite! Lucifer Youth Foundation, are mysterious as hell–they don't do interviews and don't divulge much to the press. They just premiered a new song at BBC’s Maida Vale studios called “Brooklyn Girls” as well as performed a track favorite off their debut album Go Tell Fire To The Mountain, called “L Y F”. WU LYF’s debut album is out September 6.

 

[FIRST LOOK] Twin Sister 'Bad Street'

Twin Sister release their first music video for the track Bad Street off their upcoming album In Heaven due out late September. "Shot at lead singer Andrea Estella's family's house in Long Island and populated by her bandmates, friends, and family, the video is a genuine peek into one of the many worlds that have shaped Twin Sister's wide ranging styles." Directed by Dan Devine.