The Year in Space Photography 2009
December 23, 2009
The attitude this holiday season is very much anti-Big Government (whatever that even means in a country of 308 million people). There’s a widespread doctrine today that says the gummit cain’t never do nuthin right. So here’s something that, I think, Big Government is doing well: taking pictures of our amazing, astounding universe.
The shot above is a Hubble false-color image of glowing gas and dark dust clouds in a star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia just over 6,000 light-years away. Click on image for larger size.
There’s a great selection of images at the Telegraph UK site here, taken in 2009 from the Hubble Space telescope, the Chandra X-Ray telescope, and the Spitzer Space telescope. Your tax dollars at work.
I always find these images of the vasty deep sky humbling. In one way they seem to be the ultimate rebuke to religion. Oh yeah, obviously the folklore and superstition of a Bronze Age desert tribe is the best way to filter and interpret our knowledge of the Universe. For sure.
I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that all the problems of our little planet don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy Universe. Someday you’ll understand that. Here’s looking at you, Cassiopeia.
Dali 3D Painting from 1977
December 10, 2009
Click on image for larger size.
Dali’s Hand drawing Back the Golden Fleece in the Form of a Cloud to Show Gala the Dawn, Completely Nude, Very, Very Far Away Behind the Sun
Two stereoscopic panels, oil in canvas, 1977, 23.5 X 23. 5 inches
Kids, Don’t Try this at Home! Professional Drivers on Closed Course! 3 Versions of “Cocaine Blues”
December 5, 2009
Another artist who combines historic levels of drug abuse, runs of startling creative energy and great longevity like the subject of my previous post, Anita O’Day is Keith Richards. Here’s Keith — without his famous band mates — performing one of the first blues he learned to play “properly.”
Hey, baby, come here quick / This old cocaine’s making me sick.
Cocaine Blues, a traditional blues classic, was originally recorded in 1927 by Luke Jordan. But perhaps the most influential early version is the one below, by the Reverend Gary Davis. Almost all other modern versions owe a debt to this one.
Cocaine — running all around my brain.
Cocaine’s for horses, it’s not for men / They say it’ll kill you, but they don’t say when.
It takes a full minute of screen time — wait for it — until they get down to playing but when they finally do Jackson Browne and David Lindley knock out an awesome duet version of Cocaine Blues on guitar and violin. Lindley also famously handles the falsetto at the end of Browne’s hit, The Load Out/Stay.
Anita O’Day: Jezebel of Jazz or the Greatest White Female Jazz Vocalist Ever?
November 28, 2009
Encountering Anita O’Day and delving deep in her recordings was, for me, a transformative experience. It was like the first time I heard Patsy Cline. I knew I was in the presence of a great talent. Then I read about her high life and hard times and my respect for her grew. She was the Keith Richards of jazz canaries. Click on image for larger size.
Leaving home at 14, Anita spent her teenage years hustling (and singing a little) in the Depression-era dance marathons captured so magnificently in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The first phase of her career was as a songbird in Gene Krupa‘s big band beginning in 1941.
This association produced her first big hit Let Me Off Uptown. It was a novelty number with spoken dialogue between the young white female singer and jazz trumpet great Roy Eldridge, who happened to be black. “Well, c’mere Roy and get groovy!” she invites him, and introduces his solo by exhorting, “Well, blow Roy, blow!” Racy stuff for the 1940s. These were the war years and a more permissive stance in entertainment, and music especially, held sway. This jazz duo famously did not get along because Roy always felt Anita was upstaging him by dancing during his solos.
After Gene Krupa’s marijuana bust in 1943 Anita sang with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. When Krupa reformed his band in 1945 Anita reunited with him for almost a year. In 1947 and gain in 1952 it was Anita’s turn to take marijuana possession busts.
In March of 1953 she was arrested for possession of heroin and did six months in jail. She and her long-time drummer John Poole, who introduced her to smack, were ‘hype buddies’ traveling the jazz club circuit across the country in the 50’s and 60’s, working diligently at the craft of jazz and just as diligently to score and maintain their mutual habit.
“We were spending 10 to 12 hours a day looking for it and playing games,” she writes in her autobiography, High Times, Hard Times. Note the long sleeved gloves in this 1963 concert appearance on Japanese TV.
It was during this period that Anita O’Day reinvented herself as a solo female vocalist. She recorded what many consider her best work for the Verve label between 1952 and 1962 and under the influence of heroin. Think Keith Richards during the Exile on Main Street sessions. She was also, at this time, Big in Japan, just like Tom Waits.
Dig the drum-and-vocal-only intro to Sweet Georgie Brown filmed by photographer and documentary filmmaker Bert Stern at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, released as Jazz on Summer’s Day (1960).
If this song doesn’t send you like it does me, brother, I can’t dig ya’ ’cause you must be dead.
After a near fatal OD in 1968 Anita cleaned up — by withdrawing on a Hawaiian beach — and became a fixture on the Jazz Festival circuit. Call this the third great phase of her career as she continued singing and recording into her late 80s. In 2006 she released a new album, Indestructible and finally left all of us cool cats and kittens behind when she died on November 23, 2006 at age 87.
AIEEEE!
November 21, 2009
— from “The Dead Lover Returns”, Worlds of Fear, May 1952, Vol. 1 No. 4, Fawcett Publications
“To turn each cover. . .is to enter CORRIDORS OF HORROR never before conceived in the mind of man.” — house ad
If she loves me, she will ignore my decomposition!
November 21, 2009
— from “The Dead Lover Returns”, Worlds of Fear, May 1952, Vol. 1 No. 4, Fawcett Publications
Tiger Beat magazine — 44 Years of FAB! GEAR! Teeny Bopper Greatness
November 8, 2009
“They’re exciting! Helpful! Daring! Cunning! BUT. . . what is a GROUPIE?”
Founded in September 1965 and continuously published since them, Tiger Beat magazine has been serving the female ‘tween market place and “stoking the the star-making machinery behind the popular song”* prior to the invention of the word ”tween.’
When I first encountered it in the mid-sixties it was comic book-sized with garish color covers with B&W interiors on 68 pages of pulp paper. Today it is on slick stock, full color with the ever popular pull-out posters suitable for decorating suburban bedroom walls of adolescents across America. While I sit here and wonder: Are Pretty Boys Out?
There was a dance party TV show host, Lloyd Thaxton who was cover featured for the first 12 issues as Lloyd Thaxton’s Tiger Beat. When Lloyd left his TV show he was dropped.
Of interest here is the November 1965 issue that has 2 pages and 4 pictures on Bob Dylan; an article by Earl Leaf titled, “Groupies! Who Are They? Where Did They Come From? (6 pages); Beauty Secrets of the Stars with Lesley Gore, Barbara Parkins, Annette Funicello, Mia Farrow, Sandra Dee and Ann-Margaret and a feature called This Popsy Topsy Music World that mashes together Tom Jones, Jackie DeShannon, Dino, Desi & Billy, and Tina Turner with Bobby Sherman singing and Keith Richards backstage.
Even my own question is not too controversial for TB’s hard-hitting journalism. See this cover-featured article: Are Pretty Boys Out? George Chakiris, James Darren, Richard Chamberlain VS. Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, Sonny Bono and Freddy (of Freddy & the Dreamers) Click on image for larger size.
The current version is certainly more polished graphically but the content, of course, is pretty much the same. Even the logo has only been changed (improved) slightly. Thought it could be argued that nobody remotely like Keith Richards would be covered today along side the Jonas Brothers, Hillary Duff and Miley Cyrus. It’s the triumph of the Pretty Boys of both sexes.
Sorry, Lilo. You are strictly a feather weight in comparison to The Human Riff. Click on image for larger size.
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* Joni Mitchell, “Free Man in Paris”
Below, just because we quoted her above, we present a beautiful version of Ms. Mitchell’s classic “Big Yellow Taxi.”
Watching this is it any wonder that I (along with most white adolescent males) was in love with her and her music in 1970?
And please note: long before Carl Sagan popularized the notion that we are literally “star stuff,” Joni sang that “We are Star Dust, Million year old Carbon. We are Golden, Caught in the Devil’s bargain. . .”
The original Woodstock Festival took place on August 15 through the 18th in 1969. A month before on July 20, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. On September 14, 1969 Joni Mitchell played a gig at Big Sur, California and debuted a song titled “Woodstock.”
Forward into the Past — Time Travel Conundrum SOLVED by Fed Ex!
November 5, 2009
Placing an web order on Monday, November 2, 2009 I learn that for $76.89 I can get a delivery on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 3:00 pm.
But for a mere $10.78 more, I can get a delivery that’s much, much faster. I can have my package delivered on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 4:30 pm, 5 days before I even ordered it!
Personally, I think Fed Ex is charging too little for this service. Click on image for larger size.
INFOgraphic: What Do Frankenstein, Dracula, Jesus and Zombies Have in Common?
November 1, 2009
Sketch3D is Etch-A-Sketch in the Third Dimension
November 1, 2009
Gizmodo highlights the release of Sketch 3D a system you can use to generate 3D anaglyph line drawings in real time.
Built to resemble the familiar Etch-A-Sketch toy this version has three dials. The first two are the traditional drawing cursors. The third one controls the z-axis. This is the depth axis, extending the user-generated content (wire frame line art) into the third dimension. To see the effect in the screen capture below, you’ll need a pair of red-blue or red-cyan anaglyph glasses. Click on images for larger size.
Gizmodo Gallery 2009: Etch-a-Sketch 3D from Core77 on Vimeo.