We couldn’t make it to CMJ in NY this year, but our compadres at Sonicbids sent us some footage of Still Flyin’s Wed. CMJ performance. It’s 30-seconds of the show followed by a 30-second interview with the band talking about their time in NYC and sharing a few words for their fans back home in San Francisco.
“Formed in 2004, by Sean Rawls of Athens, GA, the band has grown into a behemoth and an SF institution. Known for raucous, sweaty live shows, the band has always been about inclusion, whether they are dragging audience members onstage to rage alongside them as they jam on vibraphones, trombones, tambourines and joints.There’s no pretense, there’s no statement, there’s just fun.”
Danced your face off too hard the first night of Treasure Island? Check out Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room on Sunday instead. Mushing together Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the audience participation of TheRocky Horror Picture Show, this Sunday’s screening of Twilight should be comic gold.
Brown bag some booze, scoop the free popcorn, get rowdy and let it all come out as your three hosts (this week it’s Sherilyn Connelly, Rhiannon Charisse and Alexia Staniotes) and fellow audience members heckle their way into the Mondays. Who needs the Flaming Lips when you can watch Robert Pattinson sparkle?! -Kelsey Bryant
American Artifact (the birth of the iconic rock poster), Cat Ladies (we all know one or two of these), Dust and Illusions (for those of us who never made the trek, a tale of Burning Man)
Josh Azzarella has made a name for himself visually rewriting history by removing key elements and traces of life from iconic images from Tienanmen Square to Abu Ghraib to the World Trade Center. Azzarella now turns himself from politics to pop culture with Untitled #100 (Fantasia), which removes the late King of Pop from “Thriller.”
Azzarella has been working on the piece for over two years, painstakingly removing all traces of life and music from each frame, save for the lonely ticket attendant and an eerie-ambient soundscape. Leaving behind a ghostly trail of memories, it simultaneously affirms the importance and impact of this masterful music video and destabilizes the relationship between what we see and what we remember. While this sounds and is quite unsettling, it also re-purposes the pop culture landscape to remind us of how we project ourselves onto the subject matter. Stripped of M. Jackson and his zombie back-up dancers, the stunning, surreal landscape takes center stage. In that way, Untitled #100 (Fantasia) creates a visual space for our own fantasies.
Dubbed as the “greatest music festival you’ve never seen,” Soul Power offers up electric footage of the legendary titular, three-day music festival held in Zaire. James Brown, Celia Cruz, Fania All-Stars, B. B. King, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners and Bill Withers flew to the capital city of Kinshasa (then under the rule of dictator Mobutu) for the 1974 landmark event which was coupled with the Ali-Foreman Rumble in the Jungle. The result is a celebratory return to Africa that allows modern day audiences to see these soul juggernauts in their prime.
In addition to killer concert footage of Zaire ‘74, Soul Power offers up home video moments like the jam session at cruising altitude with Johnny Pacheco, Celia Cruz and B.B. King-and the bombastic rants of Ali and Don King. If it’s anything like when the Red Vic screened Stop Making Sense, it will surely be transformed into a raucous dance party.-Jenna Glass
“After a screening of the 1971 Japanese counter culture film “Throw Away Your Books, Let’s Go Into The Streets” by director Shuji Terayama, I realized I wanted to make a video for Hopewell inspired by what I had just seen. I had a need to make a non-pop video and teaming up with Hopewell was the perfect match.” — Art Boonparn
Owen has released the video for “Good Friends, Bad Habits”, the first single from his upcoming album New Leaves. If you dig the video check out our article and download “Good Friends, Bad Habits” by clicking HERE. -TC
