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August 18, 2008
Shorties
Pitchfork interviews Dave Berman of the Silver Jews.
Wired's Geekdad blog lists great webcomics you should not share with your kids.
Five Chapters is serializing new short fiction by Joshua Furst, "The Hurricane."
PopMatters interviews Camila Grey & Leisha Hailey of Uh Huh Her.
The New Yorker features new short fiction by Tobias Wolff, "Awake."
PopMatters examines the indie rock support of Barack Obama's US presidential campaign.
So why is the indie crowd flocking to Obama? To a larger extent than past politicians, Obama’s candidacy has been transformed into a cultural commodity, inspiring art and music and providing a means for social differentiation. In January, street artist Shepard Fairey created a now iconic campaign poster for Obama. The illustration depicts the candidate in a soft palate of reds and blues as he stares into the distance, a la JFK. The poster is an abstraction—Obama as a phenomenon rather than an individual. When Fairey uploaded a digital version of the image onto his website, Obama supporters started to use it as their email signatures and printed it out to put in their windows. In an interview with NPR, Fairey estimated that he’s made 60,000 hard copies. Having sold out its first run, originals now sell on eBay for up to $1,500, and a 45” x 69” stencil of the work was recently auctioned for over $100,000 on CharityBuzz.
New York Magazine profiles Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy.
When Pallett says there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing people fail, he means there’s nothing more beautiful than seeing people risk failure and leap into the artistic void. He does this every time he records. For one thing, he plays the violin, an instrument as rare in rock as the harp Joanna Newsom strums. He further complicates things by using looping devices to create fluid and eccentric layers of melody and rhythm (re-created live by playing the violin into a loop pedal). Then he sings over the music, crafting dramatic and wryly romantic pop songs about Dungeons & Dragons, Yukio Mishima, and semi-evil condo developers. On record, the effect is both symphonic and intimate, sinister and whimsical, with shades of John Cale and avant-garde disco producer Arthur Russell.
SpoutBlog lists the 10 best animated series spun off from movies.
The Guardian's books blog examines how movies steal our favorite books.
Southern Shelter shares mp3s from a recent Deerhunter performance.
RIP, Esquire fiction editor (and husband of author Joy Williams) L. Rust Hills.
The Los Angeles Times examines local signs of the resurgence in vinyl music sales.
Most major labels are releasing a mix of new and vintage titles, but at West Los Angeles retailer Record Surplus, which sells used vinyl, CDs and DVDs, the classics never go out of vogue. "Led Zeppelin doesn't stay for more than two days," said store co-manager Neil Canter, adding that sales of rock vinyl have doubled in the last few years. "Pink Floyd -- as soon as I put it out, it sells."
The New York Times reports that the first season DVD release of Gossip Girl will contain a 3-hour abridged version audiobook of the novel that spawned the series.
This collaboration, by Hachette Audio and Warner Home Video, which made the DVD, is an unprecedented twist on how publishers hitch their wagons to Hollywood projects. With films, publishers typically reprint a paperback with movie-poster artwork, and audio divisions similarly repackage audio books.
The Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog calls Sylvia Plath, "the original hip hop poet."
T-shirt of the day: "I'm an English major. You do the math."
This list at Amazon.com
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
