Here in San Francisco, It's Sunday Morning Coming Down

Playing for Change

This is one of the coolest projects I've seen so far.

"Four years ago while walking down the street in Santa Monica, CA the voice of Roger Ridley singing "Stand By me" was heard from a block away. His voice, soul and passion set us on a course around the world to add other musicians to his performance. This song transformed Playing For Change from a small group of individuals to a global movement for peace and understanding. This track features over 35 musicians collaborating from all over the world. They may have never met in person, but in this case, the music does the talking."

Sounds great, and the music they produced was pretty great, too. Too bad they're more concerned with selling stuff than providing useful information about the project. Not sure why this is rubbing me the wrong way - oh yeah, because they had a great site going, with a clear message that explained themselves, their project, and those involved. Now the original site is a friggin' t-shirt store, and if you want any details at all you have to dig. This isn't rocket science, folks: give the people what they want. All seems well again; perhaps a site redesign snafu of some sort?

Visit Playing for Change. Or, if that link gets wonky again, the videos are also available on YouTube.

Nina Simone: Feeling Good

Text-based videos and ads are all the rage right now, but this is by far one of the best I've seen to date. Of course, Nina Simone makes me weak in the knees, so that may explain the warm glow this gives me.

Feeling Good, Nina Simone
by mrfnk

[via Infosthetics]

No on 8: The Musical

Too bad the original No on 8 campaign wasn't this well choreographed...

Musical Interlude: Nick Cave and the Bad MotherF$#%@in Seeds

Saw Nick Cave at the Warfield this past Saturday. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a skinny funny-lookin' rock 'n' roll man in a suit. I remember picking up Kicking Against the Pricks when I was 15 and it nearly split my head open.

This footage is not from this weekend's show, but is pretty recent:



(Footage from the show I was at can be found here, though there's a little much audience for my taste.)

The thing about Nick Cave is his storytelling. And his nasty version of Stagger Lee. And his funny Australian accent. And his devotion to Elvis. And his complete wackiness as evidenced by the commercial for Dig Lazarus Dig! on his site (navigate yerself to the "Miscellany" section).

Happy 51st birthday, Nick!

First Punk Planet, and Now This...

R.I.P. No Depression.

Fun With Flyers

Bartending is hard work; aside from the babysitting and drink-mixing and entertaining, you also have to promote the hell out of your shift. So when my buddy asked for me for a quickie flyer for his upcoming anti-Valentine's Day shift, this is what I came up with:

Lessons from Ike Turner: The negative outweighs the positive

Ike Turner died a couple of days ago. When you think of Ike, I bet you think immediately of Tina. And how he hit her. And all that cocaine he did. But Ike Turner also played an integral role in the history of rock 'n' roll, funk,
r 'n' b, soul and blues. His guitar, his ear, and his writing all shaped American music. "Rocket 88" came from him and his band.

Despite his musical contributions—well recognized by any professional musician around—Ike's reputation hangs static thanks to his abusive behavior. They made a movie about it, and his ex-wife wrote about it. No matter how much he tried to dismiss it or overwrite it, it's the image the general public keeps coming back to. It's just too heavy to forget, and he was so cavalier about it we don't have any inclination to.



Doing drugs and smacking people around aren't the only ways to destroy the positive work we do, though. A rude comment, or a refusal to cooperate, or a simple mistake gone unnoticed are all it might take. People are quicker to judge than to forgive these days and with the immediacy of our current market, it's unlikely that they'll give us a chance to fix things if they feel we've screwed them over. That is, if they even let us know how they feel (most customers don't bother complaining, they just go elsewhere).

I love Ike Turner's music. It was a backbone. Ike and Tina together were a force (of course, she'd be a forced even if backed by Lawrence Welk). I remember my dad playing "Nutbush City Limits" from a cassette I still have that hisses from being played too much, with that guitar stomping out of the speakers. It was unreal. But Ike screwed up bad, and he was so unapologetic about it that, as Rob Walker laments, his screw-up may forever overshadow his pioneering work.

No matter the talent, no one is perfect—in their personal life or in business—but I'd like to think that how we face our imperfections can be almost as powerful as what we do in the first place.

Design Interlude: Anniversary CD

We went to visit The Captain's grandfolks for Thanksgiving this year. Despite taking 27 hours to get there (um, it was supposed to take six—thanks, United), it was a great time. They were celebrating their 60th anniversary this year. Holy crap! So we brought them this:



Despite my original attempts at sweet illustrations of birds in trees, The Captain insisted on something more "abstract" (he doesn't go in for sweet too much). So I went with something a little more '40s. I kept it simple, since the grandfolks don't even really know what CDs are (if I could have put it on vinyl, I would have).

If you're interested in what was popular in 1947, the playlist is as follows:

1. All of Me—Frankie Lane
2. Anniversary Song—Al Johnson
3. Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)—Tex Williams*
4. Linda—Ray Noble and His Orchestra
5. Ballerina—Vaughn Monroe
6. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens—Louis Jordon and His Tympani Five
   
7. I've Got a Crush On You—Frank Sinatra
8. Near You—Francis Craig and His Orchestra
9. Heartaches—Ted Weems Orchestra
10. Chi-Baba Chi-Baba—Perry Como
11. Across the Way From Alamo—The Mills Brothers

*I used to play this song constantly when I was DJing the honky tonk; it's a great western swing number, made famous again as the opening tune to the film Thank You For Smoking.

Photography Is Cool Again

After discovering the latest evidence that anyone can and should do everything, I'm tempted to rail about the rise of the cultural creatives. For now, though, I'll hold my tongue and simply show you this:



It's the White Stripes' latest promotional item, and it's a doozy. Hot, ain't she? Meg has one, too, but it's the Diana model. These cameras are fun as hell, take phenomenally wicked shots, and are pretty much what's made toy cameras a cult phenomenon right now.

Funny how it took technology to convince the general public that artistic creation was an accessible, worthwhile pursuit and now everyone's creating with obsolete technology.

Hilly Krystal Was a Millionaire

Can't say I was surprised to learn that Hilly Krystal, the late owner of CBGB, was worth $3.7 million when he died. Of course, he told his ex-wife and son that he was broke, and he didn't pay rent on the club for years before his death. Kind of sad, really:

"At 82, [Hilly's ex-wife] Karen Kristal still has bright eyes and the vocal projection of a trained actress, but she slipped in her apartment over the Labor Day weekend and broke her elbow. She appears to be slipping in other ways, too: She asks questions over and over and exhibits other signs of a mind affected by age. [Hilly's Son] Dana says that his mother's brain scans show marks that are indicative of mini-strokes and that she has water on the brain. He also says that his sister Lisa, who was a fixture at Hilly's side, pressured Karen to sign away her rights to the club when she didn't have the presence of mind to understand the consequences of her actions."

[via The Village Voice]

Hilly Kristal Dies

Rolling Stone features rock 'n' roll memories of the inimitable Hilly Kristal, founder of CBGBs, including words from Patti Smith:

"...it was a shithole. The sound was crappy, there was always things breaking down and glasses breaking and people vomiting and the rats scurrying around in the back, but it was our shithole and that was the greatest thing. I’ve played a lot of places and it was the only place I’ve ever played that felt like our place...CBGBs wasn’t just about Hilly or the people who played there or New York City, it represented freedom for young people...Hilly offered us unconditional freedom."

Old Navy and Others Co-Opt the Indie Voice

Admit it: what did you really think when you watched that Nike commercial so many years ago featuring the Beatles' Revolution? Was there a pang in your heart at the idea that one of the most fiercely independent and revolutionary bands of the modern era had sold out?

While the concept of integrating rock music—a universally "outsider" area of our culture—into mainstream commercials was completely new at the time, none of us bat an eye anymore when the likes of The Who start shilling for Hummer. We can thank the megaconglomerates, of course, who own the TV stations and the recording companies and who often even have a stake in the products themselves. Bands' entire careers are now made by their big debut on the latest iPod commercial. So why do I find myself wretching violently at the latest wave of corporate co-opting of the indie voice?

I'm referring, of course, to the bold-faced misrepresentations found in commercials and ads from Virgin Mobile, Old Navy and others. These ads inevitably feature a narrative voice of some sort exhorting the joys of the indie scene. They seem to whisper in your ear it's okay, you can buy our products because we get you. We've got cred because we know what "indie" means. And, as usual, the irony of a corporate chain store touting indie street culture falls on deaf ears.

• See how Old Navy pretends they're capable of producing a "cult classic."
  
• Virgin Mobile sympathizes with neighbors faced "newcomers who want to change Bed-Stuy into some sort of yuppie strip mall."

The most maddening thing about these ads is not that companies are taking this approach, but that they are so brazen about pretending they are something other than what they are. It's simply dishonest.