Wow Cool is a studio and label based in Cupertino, California. Artists include: Marc Arsenault, Brown Cuts Neighbors, Steven Cerio, evidence, Simon Gane, God Hates Computers, nickname: Rebel, and Offset Needle Radius.
Newave! is a 892 page monster collection of 80's minicomix. Art by Marc Arsenault, Sam Henderson, Ion, Wayno and scores of others. Available Right Now!
I wasn’t quite sure what to say about 6Music, other than “they’re really cool, and I’m psyched that they have played my music, so speak up and save this awesome station”. It also seems weird to be a non-license-paying foreigner trying to muck about in another nation’s culture. But, since Rupert Murdoch and the US and UK governments have no such qualms… anyway. Ed from Radiohead said everything I wanted to say over on Dead Air Space. Read on:
I am writing regarding the news today that 6 Music is going to be closed, in the hope that you reconsider this decision. To be honest I, along with a vast number of other musicians, music industry types and real music fans, are completely shocked and baffled by this news. I wonder if those who made this decision are actually aware of the hugely important role that 6 music plays in fostering and promoting new bands, as well as still playing the likes of the band that I am in. It literally is the radio lifeblood for music outside of the mainstream. Not to denigrate Radio’s 1 and 2, but it really is the only station that puts music first, and that’s from a punters point of view and not some bloke in a band. Nowhere else can you hear an archived session track from T Rex juxtaposed next to Midlake’s latest release. As David Bowie, put it … it keeps the spirit of John Peel alive.
Please realise the impact and severity of closing this station down. It will be a huge blow for new bands and their labels. It’s not enough to ‘refocus’ Radio’s 1 and 2 as 6 music does a very specific thing. What you have with 6 Music is a gem of a radio station, it is doing what no other station in the world does or can possibly do. Remember it is also still relatively young, give it time. You also finally have a fantastic and seemingly settled line up of DJ’s. Please get behind it and from what I can gather about its annual budget of £6m, it surely punches way above its weight in terms of cultural relevance and importance.
On February 20, 2010, the BBC posted “Dutch cabinet collapses in dispute over Afghanistan” as the top story on their News homepage. The complicated mechanisms of content-based advertising placement brilliantly selected to display a box for the current Netherlands tourism campaign “Just Be… in Holland“. Ouch.
For some more insight on the background of the Afghan boondoggle, I highly recommend the series by Adam Curtis… also hosted by the Beeb (scroll down a bit if need be).
Sorry, I’m a couple days late on this.
UPDATE: Today’s massive Olympic fuckup involving Sven Kramer cements 2010 as a rough year for the Dutch.
DJ Shadow live in Chile 2006. photo by Leo Prieto. Licensed under Creative Commons
In 2006 DJ Shadow dropped his most recent solo album, The Outsider, and set in motion the process of creating one of the most fully-realized and successful artist sites on the web. The latest incarnation of DJShadow.com was built by Derick Daily and his team at the prestigious marketing firm Euro RSCG and DJ Shadow’s team, managed by Michael Fiebach, all under the careful control of Joshua Davis (DJ Shadow). The three-year project completed it’s final development phase and was relaunched in August 2009. As someone who is developing a label site (that would be WowCool.com, folks), that features a full online shop and artist pages, I look at DJShadow.com as an example of what can be done.
Apart from the site’s innovations as a presence for a musician online, it represents not just DJ Shadow, but also works with, and by, his collaborators from Solesides/Quannum, Cut Chemist and Cali-Tex, DJ Shadow’s personal label for funk and soul re-issues, which includes the School House Funk compilations, and the recent ‘great lost Chicago funk’ album Pieces of Peace. It’s no secret that DJ Shadow is a major record hound, and his site represents that. This is clearly the work of someone who truly loves records and wants to share that with others who appreciate that.
DJShadow.com has a clean and elegant layout. No confusion about what stuff is and where to find it. It just works. And it is deep. The archives and discography are presented in a straightforward, unpretentious style.
The signature single from The Outsider ‘This Time (I’m Gonna Try It My Way)’ can be read as a statement of the need for an artist to control how his image is presented and his work is distributed; whether you are a DIY bedroom producer or in a ‘best of both worlds’ situation like DJ Shadow, who is both a major label artist and a successful indy label owner. At least that’s how I took it when it came out. Along with the Bloc Party’s ‘The Prayer’, ‘This Time’ served as a major inspiration for me when I started to plan the relaunch of Wow Cool.
OK, enough about me.
Holding down the day-to-day at DJShadow.com is Michael Fiebach. He handles the site management; marketing, project, and distribution management and sales for independent DJ Shadow releases; merchandise management for the entire DJ Shadow product line for tour and online sales and E-Commerce management for the online store. I met Michael at the last two SF MusicTech summits. He is direct, honest and knowledgeable about the music business. We spoke in depth about the site and the DJ Shadow Handmade label for this article on December 22, 2009 and followed up by email during January, 2010. This is the first of two in-depth follow up articles with people I met at the SF MusicTech Summit.
I’m guessing the average person would have a hard time getting exactly why it’s an unique deal, the arrangement with Universal, to license back the albums for digital sale and how that works.
Yeah, I think that you put it exactly right. The common music fan has no idea…doesn’t get it… ‘oh, you’re selling downloads… well, there have been downloads for 10 years on the Internet…’ who cares? You know?
The unique thing about it, really, is that we’re the only artist site that I’ve seen, that is legitimately licensing music back from the label and selling it directly to the fan through downloads. We are licensing the music as an E-Store, just as iTunes and other major E-tailers do. I haven’t seen any independently operated artist sites that combine the downloads with physical merchandise for the entire store. We do t-shirt and download bundles and buy a CD and get the download for free; and, there are sites that do that, but not independent artist stores, and combining the merchandise with the digital downloads was something that was really hard, actually, to get done and it’s not something you see that often. We do all the fulfillment out of here ourselves. We ship all it from out of here, worldwide.
Do you know the percentage that you’re moving of digital vs. physical sales?
As far as digital compared to physical, digital is a nice piece of the pie, and it is growing…For most people, CDs are kind of tough these days…as I’m sure you know, in general, but we still do… People still want DJ Shadow limited exclusive merchandise and CDs and we just came up with some creative ways to make it available… and there, we still have plenty of interest in CDs. Overall, vinyl is still moving very well from a direct to fan perspective, and the interest in Digital is large and continually growing. When we bundle digital and physical together… that is when the real interest is sparked. From a mass distribution perspective, CDs are still the bread and butter.
U.S. President Obama signed a bill into law today that allows American taxpayers to deduct contributions made to relief in Haiti before March 1, 2010 on their 2009 tax return. So, you really have no excuse not to help out now. Wow Cool endorses Oxfam America as our charity of choice. Oxfam is already in Haiti delivering supplies to those who need it. Oxfam is also holding some interesting benefit auctions. In the US there is one where you can win hanging out with Scarlett Johansson. Or if you are in the UK you can bid on a chance to hang out with Andy Gill and hear the new Gang of Four Record, win a DJ Shadow Endtroducing era Technics 1200 turntable or have a personal song written for you by Damon Albarn. Get helpin’!
This is the video I was looking for a few days ago. A lesson for me in not relying on YouTube. Gumby puts the kibosh on the blockheads latest evil scheme, a pesticide protection racket, that has the worms up in arms and gasmasks, even. Available on the DVD of Gumby: the Movie. There must be something about the process of doing stop-motion animation that breeds a deeper social consciousness. (See earlier post about Oliver Postgate). Sorry if you have to endure any commercials to get to the cartoon.
Yes, Captain Beefheart himself is 69 today. It’s no secret that he’s popular in the house of Wow Cool. Just released from Proper Records is the long-awaited biography by long-time Magic Band member and arranger John (Drumbo) French, Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic. It appears that the book is currently only available in the UK and Europe, and, as of this writing, it is not yet in stock from Amazon, but is available through other sellers from Amazon.co.uk. For readers of the excellent, and up-until-now definitive Beefheart Bio by Mike Barnes, it’s been a long wait for this book, as French heavily teased that he was working on his own book back then and revealed relatively little of that mystical hermetic life as a member of the Magic Band. Proper also released French’s latest album Drumbo: City of Refuge last year, and it is solidly in the Magic Band tradition and well worth getting.
This is the one book about sound you must read this year. I’ve been waiting for something like this for years and for this book since July. Steve Goodman, better known to the world as Kode9 of Hyperdub Records, delves into how sound has been used by government and industry to manipulate and control people.
Description from Amazon
Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambience of fear or dread—to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include the “psychoacoustic correction” aimed at Panama strongman Manuel Noriega by the U.S. Army and at the Branch Davidians in Waco by the FBI, sonic booms (or “sound bombs”) over the Gaza Strip, and high-frequency rat repellants used against teenagers in malls. At the same time, artists and musicians generate intense frequencies in the search for new aesthetic experiences and new ways of mobilizing bodies in rhythm. In Sonic Warfare, Steve Goodman explores these uses of acoustic force and how they affect populations.
Most theoretical discussions of sound and music cultures in relationship to power, Goodman argues, have a missing dimension: the politics of frequency. Goodman supplies this by drawing a speculative diagram of sonic forces, investigating the deployment of sound systems in the modulation of affect. Traversing philosophy, science, fiction, aesthetics, and popular culture, he maps a (dis)continuum of vibrational force, encompassing police and military research into acoustic means of crowd control, the corporate deployment of sonic branding, and the intense sonic encounters of sound art and music culture.
Goodman concludes with speculations on the not yet heard—the concept of unsound, which relates to both the peripheries of auditory perception and the unactualized nexus of rhythms and frequencies within audible bandwidths.
American TV and movies have pretty much always sucked at getting punk right. This and an episode of Quincy tend be remembered as classic quotable examples of this from a certain era. As a side note, my brother had the nickname “After School Special” in high school. He wasn’t particularly punk. Now you can watch the whole thing on Vimeo. Share and enjoy.
Brand new on the Interwebs, in just the last few days, are the three following, vaguely Wow Cool connected sites that are worth your while to check out. Relevancy and mileage may vary based on your personal preferences and life experience.
Yes, It is true, the renowned Swamp Thing artist, Mister SR Bissette, has launched his first sustained comic effort since putting Tyrant on hold in 1995. It’s a webcomic with a Parson and some monsters. What else? We’ll find out as it develops.
Lady Starlight, AKA Brown Cuts Neighbors co-founder Colleen Martin, known to many as a collaborator of Lady Gaga and to a few less as the author of the best rock blog ever – Lady Starlight’s Rock n Roll High School – has launched her own shop. Style + Capitalism (and very glam).
3. Brevator, CALMS, Burnt Hills, nickname: Rebel members launch new band White Seizure
Mike Keegan, Nick Carpenter and Robb Cole went and started another band. It’s pretty rockin’. Go listen.
I have been an avid fan of Javier Mariscal’s art since first encountering his Garriris comics in Raw Magazine at the age of 12. When I got to visit Barcelona for the first time, apart from the buildings of Guadi and the museums of Picasso, Dalí and Miró, I was most excited to see what works there were by Mariscal (and then I discovered the wealth of other amazing work by young Catalan artists in the streets and universities). I have the most wonderful plush dog of Mariscal’s (with both eyes on one side of the head, of course) as a memento of that trip. If I had managed to attend the Olympic games in 1992, I would surely have a room filled with his designs. Instead, there is now this dream book of his art, Mariscal Drawing Life, published by Phaidon to coincide with Mariscal’s installation of the same name at the UK’s Design Museum, which ran from July to November 2009. You will want to be sure to visit the exhibit blog, which features many wonderful images and videos from the event.
It’s just become a blanket in the baby section at Target. Or, for the truly hardcore, TGI Friday’s has the Pink Punk Cosmo on it’s cocktail menu.
Slightly more mystifying is this t-shirt that is part of Shaun White’s (Olympic gold medalist snowboarder, sponsored by Target since 2002) fashion line. It sparked a small argument when I wondered why a Mat Brinkman T-Shirt was on sale at Target; which was quickly countered by ‘who the hell is that?, it’s Shaun White’. To which I replied ‘who the hell is that’. So there you go. It might be slightly more interesting if Shaun White did art like this than if it was Mat Brinkman, some other Fort Thunder related person, or someone unknown doing that style.
And now the punchline
While trying to find a usable photo of the Pink Punk Cosmo for this post I discovered that TGI Friday’s have been using the song Hayseed Rock by Tight Bro’s From Way Back When off their 2001 Kill Rock Stars LP Runnin’ Thru My Bones as their website theme-song since at least May, 2009. It’s still up there. Apparently the song also featured in a TGIF TV commercial that I’ve been unable to find a copy of on the interwebs. I’ve put the word out on the tweetsphere and friendspace and expect to provide some background on this amazing collision in the future.
I know it’s no A Christmas Story, and I’m a little late noticing that this documentary by Adam Curtis is available on Archive.org. But this has been my Christmas Eve viewing. I’ve been assaulted this year with endless idiocy that blindly repeats NeoCon lies by people who should know better. I’m well sick of it. Here’s part one of the antidote. I have one simple disclaimer for the haters: To compare two things at length is not the same as saying they are the same thing. Use your own brain. Don’t get used.
This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. From the introduction to Part 1:
“Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.”
Unadvertised special feature: two-inch thick Styrofoam block (pictured below)
As you may have heard, the complete catalog of the Beatles recordings have recently become available in a brilliantly remastered digital version. You can acquire these in a complete set for between $99.99 and $169.99 (yes, really, take a look on Amazon)
There is a special version, available exclusively at Restoration Hardware (a fixture at your more upscale shopping complexes, that specializes in nobs and novelties, and other mostly useless shit), called All Together Now: The Ultimate Beatles® Collection, that contains all the remastered CDs, plus a lovely hardcover book that reproduces all the album art and booklets at full album size, and the lovely piece of Styrofoam mentioned above. The box it comes in features a spine, as such, that reproduces what the ends of the original LPs would look like at roughly the proper size if stacked together. And this appears to be the source of the massive design FAIL, as the width of the LP spines dictates the thickness of the package. Since the actual individual CD packaging is flimsy cardboard folders, and not clunky jewel cases, and, even at 200 odd pages, the hardcover book only takes up so much space, there is quite a bit of space left over. Thus, a big, fat, un-recyclable slab of Styrofoam. Ghastly. List price $399. Actual R.H. price $299. You just spent as much as $200 extra dollars for a bigger version of the booklets you would have gotten, plus a big crappy box containing cheap card CD packaging and a fucking useless slab of Styrofoam. Privilege has its downfalls. Enjoy.
Yes, Brandon Graham’s 56 page smut comic from 2003 Perverts of the Unknown is that most rarest and sought after of things. Impossible to find in a reasonable condition for less than One Thousand US Dollars! As the sole reviewer on Amazon attests (in box, below), it is not the most immediately arousing of works for the typical audience for such books, so we can only assume that the reason for this scarcity lies on the tome’s artistic merits.
I bought this book because I enjoy seeing pretty, erotic drawings of nude women, particularly nude women together with other women. The cover of this book shows an attractive naked girl lying down in front of an older man and a dominant-looking older woman. So far, so good. But the inside of this book is overly raunchy and far less erotic. There’s precious little lesbianism, and instead there’s lots of XXX-rated male-to-female stuff that I found far too hard-core and generally uninteresting.
Clearly a man of taste who knows what he wants.
I stumbled upon this curiosity while cruising through Amazon attempting to fill some holes in my collection of the fine works of Brandon Graham. Who knew that his early comics could command fees in league with the earliest and rarest of books by the likes of Cole, Ditko and Eisner?
You really should be picking up Brandon Graham’s King City (every couple months from Image Comics), and, Multiple Warheads (pretty infrequently from Oni Press) and be sure to look at his blog RoyalBoiler every week where he shares his own art, and some stunning cartoon oddities from the near to distant past.
UPDATE: Further digging revealed that three copies of the book have sold for a meager $260.69 on eBay. I could not find any other copies available for purchase online.
Bonus: it’ll help get the Yes Men to Copenhagen!! That’s right, the Yes Men are broke yet again. Launching a nationwide theatrical campaign can cause a whole lot of ruckus, from NYC to San Francisco to Chicago, from Salt Lake City to Seattle to Washington, DC – but it’s also pretty expensive. If you buy a copy (or 2 or 3 or 5) today, you’ll help make sure that The Yes Men keep going, both in Copenhagen and back at home, with the brand-new “Yes Tank” (stay tuned!).
P.S. The film is still playing in a bunch of great independent cinemas around the country – please help spread the word if it’s playing near you.
THIS OFFER ONLY APPLIES TO U.S. SHIPPING ADDRESSES.
THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks. From New Orleans to India to New York City, armed with little more than cheap thrift-store suits, the Yes Men squeeze raucous comedy out of all the ways that corporate greed is destroying the planet. Brüno meets Michael Moore in this gut-busting wake-up call that proves a little imagination can go a long way towards vanquishing the Cult of Greed. Who knew fixing the world could be so much fun?
ADVANCED PRAISE:
“It shines with raw wit and originality.” – Newsweek
“Comedic vigilante justice… Media-savvy pie-to-the-face.” – USA Today
“Hilarious, therapeutic, inspiring. The Yes Men are geniuses.” – Naomi Klein, author ofThe Shock Doctrine and No Logo
“There is more than one way for a film to tweak the powers that be … The Yes Men Fix the World goes at it with a raised eyebrow and a droll sense of humor.” – Stephen Holden, New York Times
“Funnier and more useful than Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno.” – The Observer
“We remain convinced that this is the year’s top documentary film.” – New Scientist
“One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and two of the ballsiest guys I’ve ever met. Thank God for the Yes Men.”
- Morgan Spurlock, director of Supersize Me
Events in Berlin today (It’s still Monday, November 9, 2009 in California, folks) proved that irony is dead, dead, dead, fucking dead. Either that or someone way the hell too clever came up with the concept of having former Polish president Lech Walesa topple over a line of Styrofoam slabs made up like sections of the Berlin Wall domino style. It’s a seriously jaw dropping moment for anyone just old enough to have been very aware of the cold war and its rhetoric while it was still going on. A serious WTF? that only reinforces any lingering belief in dark councils of powerful men who control the fates of us mere mortals from whatever secluded summit. Poor Lech held the longest sustained near topple himself of any world leader since Gerald Ford’s days in the Oval Office when he pushed that column, but he fulfilled his role like a champ, held aloft, no doubt, by laughter. (video and more here.) So, either there are really clever people getting funky concepts in past really stupid ones, or everyone is in on the joke (not likely), or we are all fucking idiots (see example above).
Our good friend and consistent lifeline to the old Wow Cool home of Troy, New York, Mr. Andrew Lynn has just started The Bike Blog on TimesUnion.com. He’s managed to bust out three posts already in the first 24 hours, so we expect continued greatness. His statement of purpose follows.
The key constant among us, is that we all simply love riding bikes. Its a great way to get from A to B, but its also so much more than that. Riding a bike provides a fantastically unique vantage point from which to see the world, and those stories and experiences will be distilled down here. Hopefully, this glance into the world of the cyclist will put a smile on your face, and encourage you to air up the tires and go for a spin.
Also new to the blogosphere is Kate Moxham, one of the most talented photographers I know. Her Cut + Drift explores territory that may be of interest to followers of Ballardian, BLDGBLOG, City of Sound and Bearings. She’s getting the good post-situationist psychogeographical juice going.
The YES MEN and GLOBAL EXCHANGE present a Special Screening of The Yes Men Fix the World on its California debut weekend with Yes Man, Andy Bichlbaum & Global Exchange’s Chevron Program Director, Antonia Juhasz November 1, 2009 5pm The Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, SF (purchase advance tickets at http://www.Roxie.com)
Question and Answer Discussion following the film with Andy Bichlbaum and Antonia Juhasz
Protest Chevron with The Yes Men! 6:45pm
After the Q & A, Andy Bichlbaum will lead the entire theater of moviegoers on a march to the Chevron station at Market and Castro for a colorful, fun, ruckus, creative, protest of the kind only the Yes Men can offer!
Even if you can’t join us for the film, show up afterwards to take on Chevron Yes Men/Global Exchange style! We hope to see you there!!
Print
. There must be something about the process of doing stop-motion animation that breeds a deeper social consciousness. (See earlier 
. It appears that the book is currently only available in the UK and Europe, and, as of this writing, it is not yet in stock from Amazon, but is available through other sellers 
last year, and it is solidly in the Magic Band tradition and well worth getting.
, published by Phaidon to coincide with Mariscal’s installation of the same name at the UK’s 
on DVD from Amazon.
) 
is that most rarest and sought after of things. Impossible to find in a reasonable condition for less than One Thousand US Dollars! As the sole reviewer on Amazon attests (in box, below), it is not the most immediately arousing of works for the typical audience for such books, so we can only assume that the reason for this scarcity lies on the tome’s artistic merits.
