Category: Music
Epically bad teen Christian rock band becomes internet phenom
The day we clicked: rock photography | The Guardian

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.
HBO: Big Love – A Juniper Creek Christmas
Happy Freakin' Holidays Playlist – WFMU
CLICK NOTE: I know you’re looking for the holiday soundtrack. This is the one playing at my house. Three great compilations courtesy of WFMU’s amazing blog. Download it today and get into the holiday spirit.

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
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:
Taking You Back: Freedom Rock
8BitFM
From Josh Spear, Trendspotting:
Do you find that tune from Tetris twisting and turning in your brain all day? Does the music of Metroid make you want to move your feet? Sure you’re probably a video game addict, but there’s nothing wrong with getting those sweet sounds of Super Street Fighter stuck in your head. The only issue you face is trying to find a place that will let you relive the soundtrack of your gaming life. Luckily, there’s now 8bitFM, an internet radio station dedicated to devotees of Double Dragon ditties and Super Mario melodies.
LA Weekly's LA People 2009
Some of my faves:
From LA Weekly:
Her Web site and moniker have become synonymous with the sloshed and sweaty shenanigans of L.A.’s cool kids and the underground ragers they frequent, but Shadowscene’s Ellei Johndro is far from just another “club photographer.” Unlike some novice shutterbugs who hopped the snapwagon when lens-toting characters such as the Cobrasnake started getting attention for their Web sites, Johndro’s had a passion for photography, editing and storytelling of all forms (creative writing was her major in college) since she was a teen growing up in Boston.
She started Shadowscene.com while still in Boston back in 2002, its original incarnation more of a personal showcase for her stark and, yes, “shadowy” cityscapes (lots of “streets and alleys,” she recalls). It wasn’t until she moved to Los Angeles seven years ago that the subject matter turned to after-dark hell-raising and earned serious hipster approval.
From LA Weekly:
Armed with his fourth novel since his breakthrough book, the memoir Permanent Midnight, Jerry Stahl has, in his own inimitable fashion, done a drive-by.
Pain Killers continues the adventures of Manny Rupert, the hapless, hopelessly romantic (in his own damaged way) cop-cum-detective we got to know and love in Plain Clothes Naked. This time a septuagenarian, Jewish millionaire named Harry Zell, who wields his walker like a shillelagh, enlists Manny to go undercover as a drug counselor at San Quentin. Rupert’s mission it to determine if a certain peroxide-blond, 97-year-old inmate is in fact none other than the Nazi Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele. As if that isn’t nettlesome enough for the illicit substance–susceptible sleuth, his first night on campus reveals his ex-wife and love of his life (who offed her first husband in Plain Clothes Naked by serving him a bowl of Drano-and-glass-laced Lucky Charms) has taken up with the leader of the prison’s Aryan gang … who happens to be Jewish.
From LA Weekly:
It’s odd, Jesse Thorn knows, for small children to adore public radio. “But it’s what my parents always had on in the car,” Thorn says. “I’ve been hearing Terry Gross my whole life.” All that listening time has given Thorn an uncanny ability to parse, in detail, the style and quirks of every interviewer to have appeared on NPR, nationally and locally, over, say, the past two decades. So it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that at 27, Thorn has already spent eight years with his own show, called the Sound of Young America, which he describes on his Web site — maximumfun.org — as something like Conan O’Brien on public radio, or Fresh Air, but more fun.”
From LA Weekly:
On a gray March morning, photographer Gary Leonard stands in the center of his gallery, a small room dimmed by overcast skies, sunlight feathering through the gaps between high-rises on Broadway Avenue. Leonard has a cold, but he’s agreed to meet with us, anyway, at his new gallery, Take My Picture, named after his recently retired CityBeat column. Later on, Leonard will sit behind a table laid with a collection of his black-and-white photographs, smiling only when asked, while the L.A. Weekly takes his portrait.
From LA Weekly:
When audio of Christian Bale’s tirade on the Terminator Salvation set surfaced, the actor unwittingly joined a select fraternity with Barbra Streisand and Bill O’Reilly: celebrities whose rants have been transformed into viral-dance remixes by RevoLucian. Almost as soon as Bale’s hissy fit went public, the Web picked up on RevoLucian deft a mash-up of Bale’s best quotes set to a synth-heavy beat. “Bale Out” turned “What don’t you fuckin’ understand?” into one of the year’s most addictive choruses and spun a little art out of the debacle. Considering how widely the song was heard, it’s almost surprising that nobody at the Newsroom Café recognizes songwriter and producer Lucian Piane, 28. RevoLucian is a pseudonym for what he calls “my remixes, my crazy things.”






