Link: photo-eye

I am not an expert on Norwegian Black Metal. This review will deal strictly with the book True Norwegian Black Metal, as I read and processed it over a number of days. Clearing my mind in this manner gave me the space to think about the work, and just the work, on the printed pages. It is not the music or the musicians, but Peter Beste’s interpretation of them that I am coming to grips with.

via
Riobert Popper

These are only very low resolution copies of the actual images, which are full size 10328 px x 7760 px = 80.1 megapixels. I promise you, if you look at this image in full resolution, you can see every detail, every tiny ink stroke on his tattoos, every hair, all the … Well, I’m glad I’m not shooting fashion or doing retouching, because the files coming out of the IQ180 are huge. Around 90 mb as raw files, and if you save them as 16 bit tiffs (you have to import them via the CaptureOne raw converter software for the best results), they turn out as 480 megabyte files… Heavy cameras demand heavy computers, and my iMac I5 with 8 gb ram came to its knees a few times.

“I’d always been into music—printing up fake press passes and sneaking my camera into concerts since the day I first picked up a camera,” the photographer Laura Levine told me. “Typical New York City kid. I worked for all of the usual suspects—Rolling Stone, Creem, Trouser Press, Spin, Sounds, the New York Times—and, later, the record labels. But the publication I ended up working most closely with in the early eighties, during its brief but crucial existence, was the New York Rocker.

Link: Very bad late ’90s hip-hop cover art – Boing Boing

Forty years ago, with his band Pentagram, Bobby Liebling invented a style of fiendishly heavy metal that hardly anyone heard. He spent the ensuing decades in a haze of hard drugs and big trouble. Now, with the genre he spawned on the rise and a young wife and baby boy in tow, Liebling is feeling the first rumblings of success. Here’s where things start to get weird.

Link: Meet Dr. Doom: Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling Returns | SPIN.com

via: HEAVY DISCUSSION

“I can’t believe I wasted half my life helping Tipper put warning labels on this stuff when I could have been seeing these guys do their thing live,” Gore said of W.A.S.P. “They used to whip raw meat at the audience. How bad-ass is that?”

“Cause I’m burning, burning, burning up with fi-ire! ” added Gore, screaming the lyrics to “Wild Child.”

Link: Recently Single Al Gore Finally Able To Listen To W.A.S.P. Albums – America’s Finest News Source

via: Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой – Boing Boing

“Shine” by Final Placement from sharity world on Vimeo.

via: Epically bad teen Christian rock band becomes internet phenom Boing Boing

Photographing U2 has become more difficult as they have become more well known. The Joshua Tree was taken over a period of three days travelling through the desert. It’s unthinkable for U2 to do that now. For their last album I had two hours in bad weather.

Even after 28 years I always try to take a different picture of U2. If I’m stuck, I’ll go to Holland, smoke a joint and come back with new ideas.

Link: The day we clicked: rock photography | The Guardian

Another holiday soundtrack to fill your home with warmth, a free downloadable playlist from the ficitonal fundamentalist polygamists of HBO’s Big Love.

Tracks include:

We Three Wives
Deck the Compound
and, Silent Wife

Listen and download your favorite compound classics

Link: HBO: Big Love – A Juniper Creek Christmas

Behold NYC Bloggers Do the Holidays, a tour of urban goodies in list and link form. The WFMU contribution, courtesy of Otis Fodder, is a playlist packed with 80 tracks that will either make you freak out or keep you from freaking out, depending on your metabolic set point.

Holiday Freak In (2002) and Holiday Freak Out (2006) are compilations Otis pulled together for his special people, and now you’re a special person, too. A guy who really likes Christmas music liked them a lot. You can read that guy’s interview with Otis and commentary while you download. Cuz that’s gonna take a while.

Link: Happy Freakin’ Holidays Playlist – WFMU’s Beware of the Blog

Kurt Cobain’s Guitar Hero appearance | Offworld

11 Unintentionally Hilarious Hip-Hop Videos | The Rap Up:

Silliness has always been a part of human nature, but it appears to be more fashionable now that we have an assortment of tools to document our goofiness. After all, YouTube and other video sites gave independent directors a chance to showcase their work, prepubescent rappers a chance to gain recognition, and hip-hoppers an outlet for round-the-clock unintentionally comedy. Here are th 11 Most Unintentionally Funny Hip-Hop Videos: