Cold Cave at Space 15Twenty

Yesterday, FBC! had the good fortune to be invited to Cold Cave's free concert at Space 15Twenty (thanks, Jeff and Mimi!), a band I knew nothing about because 1) I'm old, 2) I'm old and 3) I'm old. Musically I've been caught in a time warp between 1965 (birth of the Velvet Underground) and the early 1990s (birth of that crapshit thing "grunge" and the moment when electronica invaded the airwaves in Europe. I like synths, but I like sexy bad boy rockers with electric guitars even more).

So I went there last night out of curiosity, and I had tons of fun, though I'm not sure it was the kind of fun the band would like their audience to experience. The music is heavily influenced by OMD, the lyrics, I can't tell because it was impossible to make out any words (sound engineer, Pro Tools guy, you need to improve). Nothing innovative musically, but it was fun because these guys take themselves way too seriously, so there's some inadvertent situation comedy  for an old fart like me to enjoy.

The singer had a really bad haircut AND greasy hair and obviously believes himself to be the reincarnation of Ian Curtis. He seemed pretty high (hint, young people: being high doesn't make you look more intense, just high), and so was the most amusing member of the band, the demented keyboard player bobbing his head in sync to the music.  That dude was a mad mix between Bez of Happy Monday fame and the Tears For Fears guys, and as an added bonus was crouching on his keyboards like Schroeder in the Peanuts comics. He was robotically dancing and he and the lead singer were doing a little homoerotic number by hugging each other on stage,it looked so cute to this fag hag. The only musician who wasn't high and who was cute physically was the drummer, who drummed in a totally straightforward way. Hey, it's not like everybody can be Michael Jerome Moore!

Looking at them, I could see a really funny future little novella, with keyboard dude wanting to take the band into a heavy dance direction while singer dude sticking to his Joy Divisions fantasies, and the band imploding mid-way through a grueling North American tour. Groupies in tears, Williamsburgers on Prozac, etc.  Yes, I've read too many rock'n'roll stories.

The audience was really adorable, with a special mention to the kid bobbing his head totally out of sync, with his eyes closed, right next to the girl with the Aladdin Sane tattoo. Coolest kid was the gay one in the white trench coat, closely followed by the Berliner S&M kid with a Erich von Stroheim haircut. What I really like about the hipsters in SoCal is that their population isn't overwhelmingly white, unlike the Brooklyn types, so there is a genuine mix of working-class Latinos, Asian kids and some pasty faces that seem to work out really well.


All in all a really fun event, though I don't think I'm going to spend money on Cold Cave's recordings any time soon. But I'd be happy to follow the career of Keyboard Dude, if he has one. Anybody out there can tell me his name?

Your Social Life, Wishing Stevie Wonder A Happy Birthday!

Howdy, readers!

Blogger was down for about 48 hours, hence the lateness of our weekly installment detailing the fabulous social life you will enjoy this weekend.
There are about 3 things yours truly really recommend this weekend, starting with the annual garden party and fundraiser for Los Angeles avant-garde publisher Les Figues Press. $15 at the door, a hat fashion show(yay!) and artist Stephanie Taylor is MC-ing. All the info you need here.

In the strictly visual department,  both David Kordansky and Las Cienegas Project have an opening this Saturday. Heather Cook caught my attention last year during a group show at Kordansky, so I'm looking forward to her solo exhibition there. As for LCP, I really like their programming and their space, so don't miss the show!

I've missed the opening of 91 92 93 at the MAK on Wednesday, and exhibition featuring Andrea Fraser, Simon Leung and Lincoln Tobier. I'd love to link to something specific on the website of the MAK but the show is strangely absent of their current/upcoming exhibition tab. Please someone at the MAK fix this, and I guess if you guys want to see the show, you'd better call the MAK for specifics.

Also, today is Stevie Wonder's birthday, so you superstitious people forget this is Friday the 13th and rock your stereo with some wonderful music from the Master Blaster!

Your Social Life Is Baaaaaack And So Is PRINCE

Howdy, readers! Whatever is left of you after I abandoned you to meet other deadlines and then go on a vacation in NYC and Philadelphia. Also, I crossed the Delaware where Washington did. Not being American, my feeling was "oh, that is indeed a large river. Who made that mediocre painting, by the way? You know the one".

I came back from this trip really liking the Arts Museum in Philadelphia, though I'd like their photography policy to be a bit less confusing. I went for the Duchamp and really adored their Modern collection (Brancusi, Mondrian, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, etc.)
In NYC I was  very dubious about the Picasso show and the "Malevitch will help us sell lottsa secondary market pieces, whoozah!" exhibition at different outposts of the Gagosian empire.
Picasso show was boring, but then being French I've seen craploads of Picassos in my life and I'm of the school who thinks his  output is more quantitative than  qualitative. The "Malevich " show had very few Malevichs in it, methinks they would be better inside museums than headed to some hedge funder's ugly Connecticut McMansion, and if the pieces in it by the likes of Richard Serra, Charlie Ray, Barnett Newman, etc. were all fantastic, the whole thing hardly constituted "an exhibition". It was really a commercial display and nothing else.

Hands down, my two favorite art things in NYC were the Richard Paul show at Theodore Art (and I'm not saying this because Stephanie is a friend) and the group show Proofs and Refutations at David Zwirner. It had a slightly funky look that was such a relief after all the sanitized things shown in Chelsea nowadays.

Most underwhelming show was Chris Marker  - who should definitively stick to filmmaking, and I'm a huge fan -  at Peter Blum. Overall, nothing exciting at all in NYC, though I passed the Glenn Ligon and the Lynda Benglis shows because they're both coming to LA and they're coming to museums that have a far better exhibition space than the Whitney and the New Museum, respectively.
One show I really enjoyed was the Africa Project at the Museum of Art and Design.

I also indulged my records-buying new addiction in Brooklyn, so if you are ever in the Greenpoint area, my new found loves are Permanent Records and Film Noir, which isn't exactly a record store but has several bins of very carefully selected vinyls on the floor. If you like Wombleton in LA, you will like Film Noir. Also very good selection at the local flea market on Sunday, which I will let you Google yourself because I can't remember the exact location.

And with this, let's go without a transition to what you're going to do with Your Social Life this weekend in Los Angeles.
Since I just got back I hardly paid any attention to what was going on, so let's focus first on the fundraiser for Outpost. A bunch of my real-life friends and favorite artists such as Edgar Arcenaux, Taft Green, Euan MacDonald, Mary Weatherford, Nancy Popp etc. have donated works. Tickets are only $20, it's between 5 and 7 PM  and everything is indicated if you click the above link.

Max Maslansky is opening at EGHQ on Saturday in Culver City. Yours truly is planning to re-enact the Entente Cordiale and meet the delightful Emma Gray, whom I only know network-socially™ ( a new adverb you will thank me I've coined when it makes it into the OED). Totally looking forward to the show.
Also on Saturday, I understand there will be a sound performance at Las Cienegas, only a stone throw away from EGHQ.

Also a sound-based video (well, it's more complicated than that, but there are lots of  experimental musicians  in it and some live DJ-ing planned) by SASSAS founder Cindy Bernard at LACMA on Saturday night, from 8 PM on. Scroll down the link for ticket info, etc.

That's pretty much it for this weekend, but before I sign off let me remind you that PRINCE is doing his 21-day residency at the Forum in Inglewood and if you've never seen him, it would be a crime to miss it! I'm going tomorrow and it seems a large contingent of the LA art world is heading that way too.

Record Store Day Is April16

FBC! interrupts her writing session to let you know April 16 is Record Store Day, when you can do the unthinkable, that is walk into a record store, see what's out there, talk to some real human beings who are also knowledgeable about their wares and buy vinyls, or, if you really insist, CDs. Beats soulless mp3 any day, no?

It's all very well, you'll say, but are there still record stores around? Of course there are and here in Los Angeles,  like good bookstores they even abound. This blog very handily published a list, to which I'll add Origami Vinyl in Echo Park and Vacation Vinyl in Silverlake, and Atomic in Burbank. And, the latest project that I really like, the roaming vinyl truck just launched by Butter Vinyl. They have a website too, which I find a bit complicated to navigate  and would deserve a better layout, but don't let that deter you and please follow them, but most importantly, buy records from them and all the aforementioned stores. Nothing better than putting a vinyl on the turntable and hear that warm sound coming out of the speakers.

Help The Japanese People

The Japanese are as we all know  currently undergoing the triple whammy of an earthquake, a tsunami and the eminent likelihood of a series of nuclear meltdown.
if you wish to help, FBC! would like to point you out toward two charities that, unlike, say, the Red Cross (whether the American one or the International one), don't spend the majority of your donations on their overheads, but really to help the people.

Here's the link to MercyCorps

and here's the link to Operation USA

and as always, Doctors Without Borders.

And as with every major disaster, it's not only the help you can send now it's also what you can do in the long run. The Japanese economy is likely to be in shambles for a while,  so maybe what we can do in the next few months is try to buy Japanese goods, for a change. Japan is going to need all the help we can give.



Image: Hokusai A Sudden Gust Of Wind, woodblock print, 19th century

Happy Birthday, John Cale

March 9, 1942, saw the birth of the immense John Cale in Garnant, Wales, the son of a coal miner and a school teacher. The world without John Cale would have been a helluvah lot different and very boring, indeed. Whereas the world could very well continue without Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, the Black Eyed Peas and the Jonases, you know, the prepubescent siblings whose name rhymes with "asses"?

But without John Cale and his talented cohorts, no Velvet Underground, so no indie songs for you, Williamsburg and Silverlake hipsters who think the music started with Sonic Youth  and ended with the split of the White Stripes - it didn't, in fact, but that's another story.

Cale has had the most amazing trajectory, from the musical avant-garde pioneering experiences of John Cage and LaMonte Young to the mythical Warhol's Factory. He produced the first albums of Iggy & the Stooges, Patti Smith, Happy Mondays and load of others.
He  has represented Wales at the Venice Biennial in 2009, has played at prestigious venues, old world theaters and dingy bars  alike,  has issued dozens and dozens of albums spanning all genres from pre-punk, noise, experimental music, contemporary classical music, scored the soundtracks of famed movies (American Psycho), resurrected Leonard Cohen's career by re-arranging Hallelujah (subsequently played to death by reality TV hacks, alas), was Nico's everlasting musical éminence grise, created music to the words of Dylan Thomas and William Burroughs... The list is endless and the resume would put to shame lots of stalwart musicians out there.

In short, he has had a career like no other and he keeps on touring and composing music, but alas hasn't issued an album since 2005. And it's a shame, so let's hope a record company will see the light and will help Cale deliver something fantastic in 2011.

We've been posting a lot of John Cale music on these pages last year, since the Welsh genius graced our shores with a concert at Royce Hall, his only one in the US in 2010 and so far, no other show is planned here in 2011. Which sucks, as Europe is seeing a lot of him these days. He just finished a mini-tour of Portugal, and is going to play at a few festival in Spain, Austria and the UK this Spring. Check up the Primavera Sounds Festival in Barcelona, the line-up is to die for, in passing.

Anyway, since it's already the 9th on the East Coast and in Europe right now, let's wish Mr. Cale a Happy, Happy Birthday and a most excellent health for the next couple of decades or so. May he continue to invent innovative music and rock the house everywhere he plays, and may the gods of Fortune shower him with wealth, because he deserves it much more than, say, Kanye West or the aforementioned and forgettable pimply teenage youth who pollute our airwaves and ear canals without contributing anything remotely interesting to music.
So, dear readers, to celebrate Cale's birthday and help him out to get that wealth thing covered, please buy some of his records* today, or if you are in Europe, book tickets for a festival he's playing at. You won't regret it.






* all of his records are excellent but one is dispensable, IMHO,so it's OK if you don't buy "Walking on Locusts".

Five Hundred And Lame

It's the 500 post on FBC! and as such, I don't know, I should mark the occasion somehow, but instead of writing something about, ah, the state of the art scene/world in Los Angeles or posting yet another Your Social Life listing, I'm going to leave you with a lame "see you in April!". FBC! will be on hiatus until then.

Yours truly just got a massive writing assignment of the kind that comes with a short deadline. So, not only I won't have the time to write/link/aggregate events but I won't even have the opportunity to check what's going on. I may post a few YouTube music thingies, but that will be the end of it. In passing, I looked at the stats the other day, and there was a huge surge of views when I went through the John Cale Is A God period last year. So I may post more of his, who knows....

I'm leaving you with a picture of one of the Jennifer Steinkamp pieces that are currently on view at Acme, and I will see you in April.