More comps arrive.

Penguin sent one single copy (cheap fuckers) of the new edition of Kafka's Metamorphosis I did covers for, part of their Classics Deluxe series. I think other new ones are Julie Doucet doing Little Women and....I'm forgetting.
The Kafka book comes out at the end of February.

First satisfied customer.

My comp copies of Crickets 2 arrived the other day (finally!), and D&Q should have it available soon, I guess.

Bored in NY?

If so, go to Cinders Gallery next Friday night for BREVITY'S RAINBOW, a show of tiny art. Andrew Jeffrey Wright, David Shrigley, Kim buzzelli, Royal Art Lodge, PFFR (Wonder Showzen), and Rich Jacobs are some of the people involved. I am in it as well:

"Girl Dreams Werewolf". it's about 4 inches.

Bored?

You can see Moonrats play tomorrow night. At the Knitting Factory. Yes, the knitting Factory sucks. But Moonrats' new album is incredibly catchy.

Raphael Lyon's week long residency begins.

So for the past couple days you might have noticed a dude working hard inside the display window both during trading hours and in the middle of the night and early dawn.
Providence based artist and musician Raphael Lyon has moved in above the store and has committed himself doggedly to his incredibly layered and complex art piece "All Bones Build" V1.
"All Bones Build" is a large scale, touch sensitive- dark activated, 3
dimensional 6 oscillator spellcasting diorama and crystal cave. This
installation is a meditation on the potential of fractal topography, fungal
biota, and the productive necessity of decay.
The residency will be going all week, culminating on Sunday Feb 3rd, when it will be unveiled in all its glory. Mudboy(Providence) and Megafuckers(LA) will be performing, and Lyon will also be signing copies of the "All Bones Build Fantasy Play Set and Poster Kit" at the opening. The limited edition Fantasy Play Set contains an 11x17 fold out silkscreen poster, accompanying sound track by mudboy, and all you need to make at least one 3d fractal cardboard crystal.

Tahli and I's window installation on it's last night....


Totally cleaned out, scrumbbed clean, with a cameo from our first installation by Saelee Oh



Home made circuitry boards!

Raphael's LA home.

And the view from raphael's house.

Laying down the reflective tint.

Once the huge drawing scroll is taped to the front of the glass, Raphael starts cutting the tint.

And cutting....

and cutting.....

the first part is done!

Josh helps lay down the scroll for the main window.





and none of this even hints to what's going INSIDE the window.....

MONO BROTURE

Last fall this dude Renko from Berlin came in to the shop and dropped off some copies of a zine he does with some friends called Mono Kultur and everyone who saw them here was pretty blown away. The concept is that each issue is one long interview with one (or sometimes a crew) person of importance like GZA, David Shrigley, or Wolfgang Voigt (pictured above) augmented by really nice photos and smart questions. So we had Renko mail us a bunch and they all look really nice, as expected and are sitting in the shop (but have been selling pretty quick...). I wish everyone took as much time to make things look this nice, check their site for more info: http://mono-kultur.com/issues

Tahli's Best of 2007

Jordan Crane's postcard set. Beautifully drawn, coloured and printed.


Sarah, from Lucky Dragons hand draws these bird pins. Each one is slightly different.


Bob Richardson
Terry Richardson put this book together about his dad, Bob. High Fashion photos from the 60's and more!


The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family.
Probably my favourite book of 2007.


Anders Nielsen's skateboard deck.



Will Sweeny's t-shirts.


A taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney
Not really 2007, but who cares? Apperntly Morrissey's Favourite author.


Lori d's art.

Maybe one day we will be as rad as Schneider.

Charles Schneider is one of the those rad guys who will continually surprise us-When you ask him what he's doing it's always the exact opposite of what you expect. Up until recently, I knew him as the author of a great book of cartoons and the dude who played the bad comedian in Ghost World. A couple months back he happened by the store with copies of a couple Bob Moss albums he produced (which are totally amazing folk records you should buy from the store) and mentioned he was writing Tom and Jerry cartoons(!). He is also a documentary filmmaker, a character actor who has appeared in Zodiac, and Tombstone amongst others(Bride of Re-Animator!), did the rad serial killer paintings in Art School Confidential, published author, gallery artist, and bearer of one of the best speaking voices ever. I saw him last week at the theatre, and when I told him he should come to the February 2nd screening of Timothy Carey's incredible movie, World's Greatest Sinner, he off handedly mentioned that he already saw it-at Carey's house back in the early eighties! Tomorrow he'll come in and tell me is working for NASA training mice how to yodel. With Schneider you never know....
Here is a work-in-progress documentary about folk musicians in utah that he posted on youtube: parts 1, 2, and 3.
If ever there was a ANP cover feature ready to go, here he is.

Wooooo

Read this interview with David Byrne in the new issue of 'Woooo', a zine we just recieved from NYC. David Byrne liked it so much he put it on his website. You can read the rest of it there.



"David Byrne is a Grammy Award, Academy Award and Golden Globe winning musician best known as a founding member and the principal songwriter of the New Wave band Talking Heads. Wow! That’s a pretty amazing first paragraph I just pulled from Wikipedia! Thanks Wikipedia! Academy Award winner? Wow! What the hell is doing in Wooooo right? It’s not like he needs the press! Truth of the matter is this—I saw David Byrne riding his bike down Houston St. here in New York, and I chased him on foot with tape-recorder in hand, and I ran along side him and I interviewed him. That’s journalism man. That’s how it’s meant to be done. You don’t play footsy with agents and the like, you just get in there and you get the story. To be honest it wasn’t as hard as all that, he rides like Estelle Getty, I just leisurely strolled up to him and said—“How come your arms is so hairy then?” He just went “uh-oh” and we took it from there."

Has a girl ever been put off by your hairy arms?
If so they’ve been quiet about it.

Is it true Lou Reed advised you not to wear short sleeves on stage?
Yes.

Bit rude. Do you think if push came to shove you could beat Lou Reed in a fight?
No comment.

Who do you think would win in a fight between say, David Bowie and Lou Reed?
I dunno—both those guys trained with boxers, I believe—so...

Do you like that your hair went white? It looks pretty cool doesn't it? I like it.
I’m used to it and yes I think it looks better, much better, than when I was dying it.

And the mag's site here.

Army Seeks "Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band"

I just saw this:.

A summary of what the Army is seeking:

"Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of FOB's [forward operating bases] in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February 4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armour, eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is travelling on military rotary or fixed wing aircraft."



It gets better than this. Go to the Wired blog.

Coming Soon

It's official! We have the keys to a shopfront on Echo Park Ave, soon to be a gallery run by ourselves and Teardrops. There is so much to say about this that I'll have to do it in installments as things unfurl. We're in there most nights, trying to come up with a name among other things, so come over and add to our list of perverted acronyms.



for photos: TT

UPSET THE RIDDIM

A few weeks ago Chris Tipton aka the dude who does Upset the Rhythm aka maybe the nicest guy I've never met sent us several packages from across the pond containing cds and records that he put out recently for the shop and I keep meaning to talk about them, because really they all look and sound great. He put out one of the five No Age EPs, the last/first/only full length from Oakland's KIT & Brendan AKA BARR's last record which if you didn't get it is pretty special and more recently UTR dropped the new John Maus album (which is kind of my favorite thing to listen to right now, I listened to it 3 times on a plane from NY to LA last week, not to mention the cover art!) and a cd of the new Soiled Mattress & the Springs EP (12" version to follow on Teardrops) with the first 12" that Teardrops put out last year as bonus tracks. I normally probably wouldn't try explaining/demystifying why all these records are great and instead would just tell you to go hit up http://www.upsettherhythm.co.uk/ for MP3s of songs from all the above mentioned jams but I really think Chris is doing something to push things forward and that is the most important thing, so, uh, props.

ALSO on the related tip, the new Soiled Mattress & the Springs video that Peter from the band made is seriously a mindblower, serious next level, so here it is if you missed:

Sister Corita in Sydney

I may be overly optimistic but I imagine that my old friends in Australia read this. This goes out to you (Mum).

Neon Commune

Our friends at Not Not Fun have curated a festival at the ECHO CURIO, titled The NEON COMMUNE - an art exhibit/music fest running all of January, featuring every 'Not Not Fun' release in existence plus exclusive tapes, CDRs, zines, video, raw-some snacks, and dozens of live sets.

"A retrospective of our insider hyper-color cult and all the wondrous audio-visual personalities that have inspired and participated in the evolution of "the family." Every NNF release in existence, rainbow barf walls, raw-some/vegan eatery options, rare musical video documentation, NC-exclusive tapes & CDRs & zines, bands, dudes, ladies, COMMUNE-ity."

All your friends will be there.





The itinerary as such:

FRIDAY JANUARY 11TH – OPENING CEREMONIES
Black Black
Bobby Birdman
Hello Astronaut, Goodby Television (rare reunion show!!)

FRIDAY JANUARY 18th – NEON COMMUNE FEST DAY 1
Sasqrotch
Pukers
Robedoor
Foot Village
Emaciator
Goliath Bird Eater

SATURDAY JANUARY 19TH – NEON COMMUNE FEST DAY 2
Antique Brothers
Barn Owl (SF)
Pocahaunted
Ettrick (SF)
Eternal Tapestry (PDX)
Magic Lantern

FRIDAY JANUARY 25TH – CLOSING RITUALS
Metal Rouge
Midnight Gardeners
Josh Taylor's Friends Forever

More people may be TBA in this array, we will see. Every inch and aspect of these proceedings is taking place at our dear friends' sweet LA headquarters, ECHO CURIO, at 1519 Sunset Blvd. Please write to presents AT notnotfun.com or echocurio AT gmail.com for more information. Come out as often as you can and dish out some high fives and BYOB and a kick a few bucks to the touring folks.

Kramer's Best of 2007

Sorry this took so long!



"Help yourself help yourself: Because nobody wants to take care of you, because do you know how disgusting you are? For a fee and the promise of future friendship, I will tell you. And I like you right back; afterall I'm disgusting too."

Patrick Dewitt's Help Yourself Help Yourself, a self-help book published by Cali Dewitt's Teenage Teardrops, was an inspiration from the opening words. The collection of memoirs, jokes, philosophies, inventories, songs, and myths, is hilarious, crushing, wise, and fits neatly in your breastpocket.

'The Unwritten Songs of Boyhood' is a personal favorite:

This School is Cold Bricks
I Don't Wanta Get the Glasses
The Farah Fawcett Poster
I Don't Want To Play Any Pranks On Anyone (Because Everyone Should Leave Everyone Alone)

Rebecca Perkins as Alfred E Newman's Girlfriend for Halloween



Boy by Takeshi Kitano



Takeshi Kitano’s ‘Boy’ is his first book translated into English, originally published in 1986, before Kitano gained notoriety outside of Japan for directing the films Ha-Nabi and Zotoichi. The book strays from his characteristic yakuza and samurai ultra-violence with three stories about kids.

In the story Nest of Stars two bullied brothers find respite in an obsession with astronomy. They are too poor to afford a decent telescope so resort to burglarizing the school science building at night. ‘Okemesan’ follows a teenager who runs away from his stable but stifling home, and falls for a biker girl who cons him out of his money, but lets him stay with her at her mother’s decrepit apartment. Kitano’s writing is unadorned, deadpan but warm, and totally immersing. Though the subject is more innocuous than his films, the pre-occupations are the same – absent fathers, broodings on death, and society’s bullies. Chip Kidd designed a sweet cover, with a cheese-hole jacket that peeks into a vintage Japanese children’s cartoon.

Seeing Ezra Harkham Grow Into a Young Man



New and Used by Marc Joseph



This book is only photos of the shelves of bookshops, record shops, and personal collections. It suggested to me why I probably do Family in the first place. I remember being 15 and getting the train downtown to the record store and buying one 7" a week and listening to it over and over again until the next week when I'd get a new one. A 7" was a potentially life-changing thing. This book is all about walking into a shop or examining someone's bookshelf, the crazy excitement of the potential of discovering something that will change your life. With writing contributions from:

Lydia Davis, Stephen Elliott, Shelley Jackson, Jonathan Lethem, Thurston Moore, Eileen Myles, Bob Nickas, Aaron Rose, Jeremy Sigler, Stephanie Snyder, Ian Svenonius and Nick Tosches.

Simon Evans Show at Jack Hanley Gallery with Pocahaunted



I've already said a lot about this event already. Evans uses liquid paper, scotch tape, pencil sharpenings, and ball point pen, to form meticulously crafted, large-scale images ranging from old ships, to anatomical studies, to imaginary theme parks. Fragments of text are woven into the images - stories, jokes, and philosophies, from the hilarious to deeply personal. In 'Ten things I Know About Men' Evans scrawls: "Everything about the penis [scratched out in pen] when it comes to using the toilet." Plus Pocahaunted are so great.