Dirty Orchjectors, and Chuck Biscuits update

Dirty Projectors has become the umpteenth touted, smart, beloved, but not huge-selling alt band to do the indie-orchestral thing, playing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Feb. 27.

It was probably inevitable. They follow Death Cab for Cutie, M83, Grizzly Bear, the Decemberists, Belle & Sebasitan, Air and Bright Eyes, all at the L.A. Phil; Joanna Newsom and, again, Grizzly Bear, both with the Brooklyn Phil; and Ben Folds with the Boston Pops. UPDATE: Even as I typed, Grizzly Bear was doing yet another orchestral gig, in London.

I didn’t expect when I got up this morning that I would be giving thanks to Henry Rollins. But thanks, Henry, for never singing “T.V. Party” with the Boston Phil at Tanglewood.

In other sorta Rollins-related news, it appears all but certain that Chuck Biscuits is alive and that his death was a hoax. Read more about it, if you’re not already too disgusted and offended by the whole thing.

Chuck Biscuits, RIP?

Very sad news, just in from The Daily Swarm:

Legendary hard rock drummer Chuck Biscuits, whose lengthy résumé included stints in such flagship underground acts as Black Flag and Social Distortion, died Saturday after a prolonged battle with throat cancer. He was 44… Chuck Biscuits was probably best known to the general populous for his work with Danzig. Beginning in 1988, Chuck played on that group’s first four albums, which are often hailed as Danzig’s best (thanks in no small part to Chuck’s powerful drumming style).

UPDATE: It's unclear whether this is actually true. James Greene Jr., the writer who first reported this, based on emails from someone claiming to be Chuck's wife, says that he has been contacted by family members, who deny it, but in an email to me he said he's still trying to verify it.

The vengeance of the mommy?

Oh, sorry, the vengeance of the mummy. Got it.

Note: That ain’t no ordinary gringo mummy, nor are those luchadoras any ordinary damsels!

(Thanks, Wrong Side of the Art.)

125th Street station

CMJ, MJ, obits

I’m covering CMJ like a chicken with his head tweeted off, including the four-word reviews that in the past people seem to have liked, though I haven’t done in a while.

The reason last night was my first out for CMJ instead of Tuesday: my report today on the Michael Jackson movie.

In other news: Alberto Testa, the Italian lyricist who wrote “Quando Quando Quando,” died on Monday at age 82. (Made famous in the U.S. by Pat Boone, in translation; Connie Francis did it in Italian.)

This follows news of the death of singer Carli Boni a few days ago, at 84. She did a lovely Italian version of “Johnny Guitar.”

‘Here Comes Your Man’ stage video, and Pixies news

With visual reference to the original videos of both “Here Comes Your Man” and “Head On,” this plays as the stage backdrop while the Pixies do “Here Comes Your Man” on their current Doolittle tour, which has been going through Europe this month and arrives in the U.S. via Los Angeles in two weeks, with opening acts.

Pixiesmusic.com “has been attacked by hackers in China,” and apparently as a result, the band has changed its official Twitter account from @pixiesmusic to simply @pixies. UPDATE: Now they say that Pixiesmusic.com is unhacked and “running clean as a whistle,” but they’re still on the new Twitter account.

Black Francis is eating fancy sandwiches.

Joey Santiago has ... “hamtrhax”?

Black Francis tweets new song titles

Ok...titles for songs on new record...in no particular order:

LAKE OF SIN

O MY TIDY SUM

RABBITS

WHEELS

DEAD MAN’S CURVE

CORRINA

SIX LEGGED MAN

THE WILD SON

WHEN I GO DOWN ON YOU

NON STOP EROTIC

CINEMA STAR

Lately he’s “recovering from Arles” (on tour), and feeling “sexual” and “sensual” while indulging “mindblowing” apple tarts, cheese and Valence Royale sandwiches (“goat cheese honey walnut chervil”).

narcocracy, n.

1. A body of people responsible for the implementation of drug laws. rare.

1983 National Rev. (Nexis) 29 Apr. 492 The National Research Council report of June 21, 1982 ... was promptly suppressed by the narcocracy because it questions the efficacy of marijuana prohibition and advocates complete decriminalization and the consideration of legalization.

2. An elite or dominant group of people whose wealth derives from the trade in illegal drugs; a government or state dominated by such a group. Cf. narcokleptocracy n.

1985 A. Henman in A. Henman et al. Big Deal v. 141 Informal narcocracy would ... come to mean a political system which ... is governed by a legal and ideological need to appear to be suppressing its principal economic activity, the production of illicit drugs. 1987 Times 18 Dec. 7/5 The temperature has hit 20°C in Palermo this week, causing something of a problem for the wives of the new rich, the ‘narcocracy’, ... itching to wear their fur coats. 1995 Arkansas Democrat-Gaz. (Nexis) 18 July 7b, It’s really disgusting ... A complete sellout to the narcocracy. 2000 Bangkok Post (Nexis) 10 Dec., Colombia, to be blunt, has been known as a narcocracy for a decade.

---

Copyright © Oxford University Press

Michael Jackson graphic novel?

MBV tipped me off to this report in Publishers Weekly yesterday about the industry chatter from the Frankfurt Book Fair. Apparently Michael Jackson had been working on a graphic novel called Fated with Gotham Chopra, son of Deepak, and now, according to Publishers Weekly, a Random House imprint is preparing to release it.

The plot sounds eerily, perfectly MJ:

The book, Fated, is about a Jackson-esque pop icon named Gabriel Star whose fame has left him isolated and emotionally cut-off. After a suicidal swan dive from his hotel one night, Star survives only to see his celebrity grow and discover that he’s becoming, per the publisher, “something not quite human.”

I can only hope that Paul Anka had something to do with it.

Another case of Obama imagery ‘plagiarism’?

You remember the whole controversy over Shepard Fairey’s Obama picture. Now there’s another case in which an artist is being accused of stealing editorial imagery without credit.

Noli Novak, one of the artists who creates the distinctive “hedcut” stipple portraits for the Wall Street Journal, has complained on her blog about José-María Cano, a Spanish artist (and musician), who makes large-scale wax paraffin portraits based on the Journal hedcuts, which have earned him, as Novak puts it, “recognition, praise and ka-ching.”

She takes issue with his approach, calling it “a bold case of plagiarism (?)”:

He cuts out portraits from papers, blows them up and painstakingly recreates them in wax paraffin ... dot by dot. He’s flying under the cover of “newspaper clipping” appropriation, but does that apply in this case? I say no way Jose!

Here’s an example of his work. On the left is his Obama picture, from his “Wall Street Journal Wax Museum” series, and on the right is Novak’s original:

And here’s some of that ka-ching, in situ at the Dox Center for Contemporary Art in Prague:

It’s almost exactly the same situation as Fairey: an artist has taken an image from a news source and recontextualized it. In Cano’s case he even clearly revealed its source; by placing the hedcut within columns of type, one could argue, he could be making a more general comment about a public figure’s imprisonment within the narrow bars of the news media. It’s Warhol’s soup cans — nothing new.

Except for two things. First, Cano’s picture — and every one he does has the same schtick — is a careful recreation of a copyrighted image, hardly the abstracted interpretation and “radically different message” that Fairey claimed about his own work.

Second, Novak would have a strong argument for artistic intent. Mannie Garcia, the freelance Associated Press photographer who took the picture that served as Fairey’s source, has said more than once that he captured that shot of Obama simply by shooting in quantity. “I want to avoid calling myself an artistic photographer,” he told Terry Gross. “ ‘Wire guy,’ I am comfortable with that.” But Novak clearly thinks of herself as an artist, even if an artist for hire.

Does she have a case? Better yet, does Rupert Murdoch?

(Via Romenesko.)


UPDATE: Some pretty major Shepard Fairey news, in case you didn’t see it elsewhere:

Shepard Fairey, the artist whose “Hope” poster of Barack Obama became an iconic emblem of the presidential campaign, has admitted that he lied about which photograph from The Associated Press he used as his source, and that he then covered up evidence to substantiate his lie. (NYT)

Flea: ‘I felt profoundly validated to be accepted by Brendan Mullen’

Weird to be mentioning Flea — and to be writing about death — for a second time in two weeks, but today in the LA Times he has a nice remembrance of Brendan Mullen, the LA punk godfather who died on Monday.

Randy Lewis and Chris Morris also wrote respectful obits of Mullen, who co-wrote the oral history We Got the Neutron Bomb.

Johnston clarification: Not really Frogger

Seth Schiesel reviews Hi, How Are You, the new iPhone video game based to some degree on Daniel Johnston iconography. Earlier coverage portrayed it as “a kind of psycho-religious version of Frogger,” but Schiesel sets the record straight:

Frogger is about dodging objects in motion and jumping from one moving platform to another. Hi, How Are You is about tilting the iPhone itself to direct a little cartoonlike figure along pathways suspended in space without falling off. (You can also put your finger on a virtual joystick on the iPhone screen instead of using the motion-sensitive tilt controls.)

So in its game play Hi, How Are You is very similar to Sega’s eight-year-old Super Monkey Ball franchise, a parallel that becomes obvious partway through, when you transition from controlling a bouncing cube with eyes to controlling a rolling ball with eyes.

OK!