Guys! “I Have Your Heart”, see a tale of love and organ transplantation by Molly Crabapple, Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt (previously on Coilhouse) is live, and it was totally worth the wait! Check out the interview with the creators on BoingBoing, and watch the animation here:
A few hours ago, Finitor posted this raw video he shot on Staten Island yesterday with an iPhone 5. No audio mixing, no post-processing. Its soundtrack is eerily beautiful, and, in the context of current events, more than a little sad.
Finitor writes: “There’s this unfinished building on Staten Island’s east shore, intended to eventually house an indoor track. When the wind blows strong, the metal strutwork and roof skin resonate to create this haunting music, like something one of those austere [Finnic] composers like Arvo Pärt would produce with a full chamber orchestra. …The building looks over the worst storm-hit parts of SI, and the keening is kind of a soundtrack to the ruin.”
Oof.
Needless to say, it’s been an incalculably stressful and difficult week for millions of people directly affected by Hurricane Sandy. This is just a series of “How You Can Help” links cobbled together from various trusted sources around the web. Please, by all means, add more in comments if you like.
East Coast and Caribbean comrades, we’re all sending lots of love and warm, dry vibes your way. Please let us know how we can help. Hang in there.
Via MATTHEW BORGATTI and JHAYNE HOLMES:
If you’re in New Jersey and want to volunteer to help clean up, there is more information available here.
Here is another article on How to Help in the Aftermath, as well as another list of helpful organizations that need support.
NonsenseNYC has also collected together a fine list of people and projects that require aid, many that need actual labour, “not your donations or clicks”. Their latest newsletter began with, “The most important thing to understanding what’s going on is to actually go to the areas that need attention. People who need help will not always ask for it, or be able to ask for it. This is a do-it-yourself guide: call or internet if you can, but ultimately just go.”
Here are some of their suggestions…
(Thanks for the heads up, Bricey!)
Artist, musician, and grand master tinkerer Felix Thorn builds machines –wondrous, whimsical, beautiful machines– by taking apart old, obsolete contraptions and breathing new life, motion, song and light into them. His pieces have been featured in galleries and shop window displays and art installations and commercials, used in various live performances, or as theatrical accompaniment, or as stand-alone film fodder.
He states: “Although my medium focuses on the development of acoustic sounds, I am continually inspired by electronic music – the countless abstractions act as blueprints for the construction of its acoustic counterparts. I aim to build a space where artificial and dream-like environments can become a reality.”
Felix’s Machines EP available here. The stunning film above was recorded and shot at Gasworks in the UK in the winter 2008, and here’s another one (more of an overview) by Tom Mansell:
M.E.R.,
Are we no longer pretending you’re human in inter-office memos? Must have been in the newest handbook, the pages of which I have been using to line the area where I sleep.
As for your reply, well, what can I say? While the subject was, indeed, amusing, I found it repetitive for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s a mystery, really. As for my response, I submit “Gangnam Style” by Psy, perhaps one of the best things to ever come out of the Republic of Korea.
Yours in captivity,
Ross Rosenberg
(Sub-Level 23, Writer Pod 14B)
P.S. I was not attempting to dismantle the monitor, I was simply warming my hands on it. It is the only source of warmth in here.
Ross Rosenberg,
I see your clip of the gentleman covering Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, and raise you this YouTube video of Takeo Ischi yodeling the “Bibi Hendl” song… for ten full and glorious hours.
Sincerely,
M.E.R.
(Sub-level 66-6, Catacomb Battle Station 3F)
ps: Please do not attempt to dismantle either the screen or audio in Writer Pod 14B. Both systems are wired to detonate instantly if tampered with.
I’ll be honest with you, dear reader, I’m not confident that I have the vocabulary required to properly parse the contents of Nicky Da B’s seizure inducing video for “Hot Potato Style”. In fact, it is all together possible that I was, indeed, absent for much of it, my brain having shorted out around the time that Patrick Stewart makes his first appearance. Just to be on the safe side, you may want to stick your wallet in your mouth before hitting play.
Via poetv
The inimitable Grace Jones, performing “Slave To The Rhythm” at the British Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert. Whilst hula-hooping. For the entire freakin’ song.
*bows*
Long may she reign.
[Via Wren Britton]
“I think every person has the ability to effect change. I think we’re often led to believe that it’s just celebrities [who] have some ability to effect change, but I think that what’s important for us to realize is that everyone of us affects the world constantly through our actions, through our every smallest action, through our every thought, our every word, the way that we interact with other people… we’re constantly affecting the world.”
~ Adam Yauch
(August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012)
Adam Yauch. [via]
“Today I give thanks to those who fought and died for my right to party.” ~@RichardRushfield
An official statement from the Beastie Boys:
“It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer. He was 47 years old.”
MCA, we love you. You can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop.
Fellow mourning comrades, you are warmly encouraged to post your favorite BB jam in comments.
Levon Helm died today at the age of 71. Here’s a spectacular photograph of Helm that Siege made at the legendary musician’s studio, The Barn, in Woodstock (for Rolling Stone magazine) a few years ago:
Photo by Clayton James Cubitt.
On heavy rotation today: “Up on Cripple Creek“, “The Shape I’m In“, “The Weight“, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down“, various nuggets from Helm’s Midnight Ramble concerts, and, last but not least, “Ophelia“. (“Ashes of laughter / The ghost is clear / Why do the best things always disappear?”)
There’s never been a voice or a soul quite like Helm’s in popular music, and there never will be again. (He was, of course, a very generous and intuitive drummer, too.) Here’s a transcript excerpt from The Band’s concert film The Last Waltz, directed by Scorcese –a film which Helm later famously decried (though, comfortingly, his longstanding feud with bandmate Robbie Robertson appears to have been put to rest shortly before Helm’s death)– but the quote’s just too perfect:
LEVON HELM: Bluegrass and country music … if it comes down into that area and if it mixes there with the rhythm and if it dances, then you’ve got a combination of all that music …
MARTIN SCORSESE: What’s it called?
LEVON HELM: Rock and roll.
Pure and good and true. Thank you for that, Levon Helm. Rest in peace.
It’s hard to believe Dick Clark is gone. Is it safe to surmise that secretly, many of us kids who grew up watching him on the boob tube decided long ago that Clark (or, at the very least, legions of indiscernible vat-grown clones of Clark kept in a top-secret underground facility located a few miles beyond the city limits of Fresno) would be Rockin’ our Eves for centuries to come? Alas.
But the beat must go on. Perhaps… in hologram form?
In (somewhat oblique) honor of the departed (and because NO halfway decent excuse to feature the Mael Brothers on Coilhouse should ever be passed up) here’s a fabulous performance of “Pulling Rabbits out of Hats” by Sparks on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1984, followed by a unexpectedly sweet and silly “interview” between three very disparately distinguished gentlemen. SO GOOD.
Previously on Coilhouse:
