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plunderphonics
GET FUCT
Go stackable magnesium armchair - made in
usa
eX-Girl back to the mono kero
Two Drunk Cowboys
a table for peace
George Nakashima
total fucking destruction
PORNADO REPORT :
(goddess) Bettie Page
the real Bettie
Better living through shipping containers.
Escape from Amerika
"In Part 1 of this article I introduced the idea of a
portable dwelling based on a standard international
shipping container. As a housing alternative to
renting or buying. Aquire a suplus one that offers a high
degree of portability, customization, and security.
In the second half I get specific and lay out plans
for moving the idea closer to reality."
Latest Marianne Nowottney sighting :
An update on Marianne's new release "Manmade Girl." The record
has been mastered and the discs are at the pressing plant. We
hope to have everything ready for release by the first or second
week in June... It's a beautiful record. Think of her song "Harbor"
and "Grey City" and maybe purify it even more and you will arrive
at the essence of disc 1. The control she now has over her voice
is quite apparent and it is just dreamy. We started off the record
with something a little different--well not really, but it does
ROCK! :) The second disc is mostly instrumentals! At last we can
listen in-depth to Marianne's compositional ideas spread out over
a good length of time, many off-kilter soundscapes, structured
and nicely thought out. We are curious what will be the response...
but we think everyone will be astonished with the results and
thrilled to hear the new material. Marianne is really happy with
this release.
The song running order is below:
Title: Manmade Girl - Songs and Instrumentals
Disc 1
Fountain Of Youth
Panopticon
1000 Layer Pancake
Bourbon Prince
Barely Nearly
Rainy Days and Vinyl (Piano version)
Andre The Giant
Mustard Seed
Little White Leech
Sweet And Low
Rainy Days and Vinyl (Electronic Keyboard version)
Cover Your Mirror
Sapphire
Disc 2
Poppies
Nancy
Divinity
Walk In The Woods
Dog Of Ivory
Behind Glass
Skeletons And Cherries
Robots
Dire
Manmade Girl
Our Day will come
================
We will be offering a discount on pre-orders in about a week to all on
this list and any of your friends who will be interested...pass the word
around.
MDABC
Abaton Book Company
www.abatonbookcompany.com
t: 201.369.1591
f: 201.369.0297
Purchase Abaton audio and video products with your credit card at
cdstreet.com:
HERE
Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life As a Woman: The New York Years
Loba
Stockhausen's "Helikopter String Quartet"
Von Dutch
The poem/play "Poetry Killer" by Edgar Gibson Oliver is published in the Huncke-Times.
more on Herbert from the american museum of beat art.
Open air pontoon (or party) boats have been a recurrent theme for me. I have early recollections of homemade welded steel/painted silver jobs with oil barrel pontoons docked in grapevine lake and lake dallas. A while back (pre-net)the Popular Mechanics Magazine reasearch department rewarded me with (for a small fee) a xerox of a set of plans published in a 1950's issue. I'll post them asap. This project followed on the heals of my trampoline piece.
The Tom Thumb
Easy to assemble
-in progress-
The Grimoire
of exalted deeds (pronounced grim-war).
"A Death Metal magazine for assholes... written by assholes"
Latest Marianne Nowottny Sighting :
"Congratulations to Marianne and Donna (is God) as "Shell is Swell" charts on the Village Voice 2000 Pazz & Jop poll! They tie at No.780 (that's one vote from one judge) ....with Santana and a gazillion other bands!!?"
A message from Courtney........
Dear Fellow Recording Artists,
I'm writing to ask you to join the chorus of recording artists who want us
all to get a fair deal from the record companies. R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks,
U2, Alanis Morrissette, Bush, Prince and Q-Tip have called me with their
support and we need your participation as well.
There are 3 basic facts to all recording artists should know:
1. No one has ever represented the rights and interests of recording artists
AS A GROUP in negotiations with record companies
2. Recording artists don't have access to quality health care and pension
plans like the ones made available to actors and athletes through their
unions.
3. Recording artists are paid royalties that represent a tiny fraction of the
money their work earns.
As I was working with my manager and my new attorneys on my lawsuit with the
Universal Music Group, we realized that the most unfair clauses in my
contract applied to ALL recording artists. Most importantly, no one was
representing artists in an attempt to change the system.
Recording artists need to form a new organization that will represent their
interests in Washington and negotiate fair contract terms with record
companies.
Here's what you should know:
THERE IS NO ONE WHO REPRESENTS RECORDING ARTISTS
Recording artists don't have a single union that looks out for their
interests.
AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) has a contract
with major labels for vocalists and the AFM (American Federation of
Musicians) has a contract for non-singing musicians and session players.
If you're in a band, your singer is represented by a different union (AFTRA)
than the rest of your group (who are represented by the AFM).
AFTRA negotiates contracts for TV and Radio performers. They don't pay very
much attention to the recording business; it's not their priority.
The AFM acts like band members are sidemen and session players because that's
mostly who the union represents.
Record companies like this system because neither union represents all art
ists. AFTRA and AFM only negotiate session fees and other minor issues for
the singers or the "sidemen."
Who looks after our interests in Washington? Until very recently, Congress
believed that the RIAA spoke for recording artists.
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a trade group that is
paid for by record companies to represent their interests. The Napster
hearings last summer and a few other issues have let Washington know that NO
ONE speaks for recording artists right now. We have their attention and must
act quickly to make sure artists have a voice.
RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T HAVE A SAFTEY NET
Compare yourself to actors and baseball players. Like the music business, the
film and the sports industries generate billions of dollars in income each
year, but those industries offer far better benefits to the men and women who
create their wealth.
The Screen Actors Guild offers a fantastic health care plan to its members.
That health plan is paid for by the contracts that SAG has negotiated with
film studios.
The baseball player's union has negotiated a pension plan that ensures that
NO major league player ever finds himself without an income.
Why shouldn't recording artists get the same benefits?
RECORDING ARTISTS DON'T GET PAID
Record companies have a 5% success rate. That means that 5% of all records
released by major labels go gold or platinum. How do record companies get
away with a 95% failure rate that would be totally unacceptable in any other
business?
Record companies keep almost all the profits.
Recording artists get paid a tiny fraction of the money earned by their
music. That allows record executives to be incredibly sloppy in running their
companies and still create enormous amounts for cash for the corporations
that own them.
The royalty rates granted in every recording contract are very low to start
with and then companies charge back every conceivable cost to an artist's
royalty account. Artists pay for recording costs, video production costs,
tour support, radio promotion, sales and marketing costs, packaging costs and
any other cost the record company can subtract from their royalties.
Record companies also reduce royalties by "forgetting" to report sales
figure, miscalculating royalties and by preventing artists from auditing
record company books.
Recording contracts are unfair and a single artist negotiating an individual
deal doesn't have the leverage to change the system. Artists will finally get
paid what they deserve when they band together and force the recording
industry to negotiate with them AS A GROUP.
Thousands of successful artists who sold hundreds of millions of records and
generated billions of dollars in profits for record companies find themselves
broke and forgotten by the industry they made wealthy.
Here a just a few examples of what we're talking about:
Multiplatinum artists like TLC ("Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg," "Waterfalls" and "No
Scrubs") and Toni Braxton ("Unbreak My Heart" and "Breathe Again") have been
forced to declare bankruptcy because their recording contracts didn't pay
them enough to survive.
Corrupt recording agreements forced the heirs of Jimi Hendrix ("Purple Haze,"
"All Along the Watchtower" and "Stone Free") to work menial jobs while his
catalogue generated millions of dollars each year for Universal Music.
Florence Ballard from the Supremes ("Where Did Our Love Go," "Stop in the
Name of Love" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" are just 3 of the 10 #1 hits she
sang on) was on welfare when she died.
Collective Soul earned almost no money from "Shine," one of the biggest
alternative rock hits of the 90s when Atlantic paid almost all of their
royalties to an outside production company.
Merle Haggard ("I Threw Away the Rose," "Sing Me Back Home" and "Today I
Started Loving You Again") enjoyed a string of 37 top-ten country singles
(including 23 #1 hits) in the 60s and 70s. Yet he never received a record
royalty check until last year when he released an album on the indie
punk-rock label Epitaph.
Think of it this way: recording artists are often the writers, directors and
producers of their own records. They write the songs, choose the producers
and engineers who record their music, hire and oversee the photographers and
designers who create their CD artwork and oversee all parts of video
production, from concept to director to final edit.
Record companies advance money for recording costs and provide limited
marketing services for the music that artists conceive and create. In
exchange, they keep almost all of the money and 100% of the copyrights.
Even the most successful recording artists in history (The Beatles, The
Eagles, Nirvana, Eminem) have been paid a fraction of the money they deserved
from sales of their records.
This is a very big and very important project and we're in the early days.
Here's what we're looking for:
1. Artists who are willing to speak to the media to publicly lend their
support to the idea that recording artists need an organization that
represents our interests in Washington and with the record companies. We also
would like you tell your managers and attorneys that you support this cause
and that you expect them, as your representatives and employees to do the
same.
2. Anyone who can tell us specific stories about how artists have been ripped
off by record companies like the ones I told above. We're going to have to
educate the public and the media and Congress and the only way we'll do that
is by giving them examples they can relate to.
NOW is the time for action.
Artists like Garbage and N*SYNC have joined me in questioning bad contracts
and have also gone to court to change the system.
Record companies have merged and re-merged to the point where they can no
longer relate to their artists.
Digital distribution will change the music industry forever; artists must
make sure they finally get their fair share of the money their music earns.
We need to come together quickly and present a united front to the industry.
Your managers and attorneys will probably tell you not to rock the boat and
not to risk your "relationship" with your record company by taking a stand.
Most attorneys and managers are conflicted. Almost all entertainment law
firms represent both artists and record companies. Lawyers can't take a stand
against record companies because that's where they get most of their
business.
Even the best managers often have business relationships with labels and
depend on record companies to refer new clients.
Think about Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam's stand against TicketMaster.
Everyone knew he was right and yet no other artist took a public stand
against a company that we all knew was hurting our business because our
managers and attorneys told us it would be a bad idea.
Attorneys and managers are your employees. Make sure they know how you feel
and that you want them to publicly support the idea that the terms of
recording contracts are unfair and cover too long a time period. You also
want them to support an organization that will negotiate health and pension
benefits for all recording artists.
Artists have all the power. They create the music that makes the money that
funds the business. No one has ever harnessed that power for artists'
collective good.
And remember something equally important: Actors had to fight to end the
studio system that forced actors to work for one employer and baseball
players had to strike to end the reserve clause that tied a player to one
team for his entire career.
Even though "experts" predicted economic disaster once actors and athletes
gained their freedom, both the film business and baseball have enjoyed their
greatest financial success once their talent was given its freedom.
Join us now in taking a public stand. Your name will help get the attention
that artist's rights deserve. If you're willing to speak to the media or
testify before Congress, you can help make our goals a reality.
Do it for yourself, for your children and do it for the artists who inspired
you to make music in the first place.
Email us : HERE
Give us your stories and your support. Tell us we can add your name to the
list of artists who support this organization. And let us know how to contact
you directly as we move forward on this project.
If you're interested in learning more about my case with Universal, visit my
manager's website: HERE
You can download a copy of our cross-complaint and press releases that
describe the issues we're taking to court.
Transparency Made Concrete - An Instant Guide to Transperency and the Avante-garde / Concrete Made Transparent - The Use of Concrete in Modern Times
X-ray architecture - An idea hatched in the research department of OMA promises to transform the nature of buildings. Inventor Bill Price conjures up the ultimate material: translucent concrete.
...both from this April's Metropolis.
Raging Slab has a new double album out called "The Dealer". They played SXSW last week and will be in NYC April 1 @ The Continental
Ok so now we know, don't steal other kids skateboards; or else. Up agianst the wall Shaggy mother fucker.Support student boycot : Music Banned in School ! (follow the rad threads......)
"Arquitectonica's design for Rockrose Development Corporation, developers of the 74-acre
site in Queens where Pepsi-Cola was bottled and canned until two years ago, is still in
development. But it's not too soon to comment on the promise of this project and the
obstacles faced by the architects in fulfilling it. The project, expected to cost $1 billion, will
occupy almost 22 acres in the northern area of Queens West. It will include seven apartment
towers, for a total of 3,000 new units. There will be 13.5 acres of parks, streets and other
public spaces.
Arquitectonica is sui generis. Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear, the firm's
principles, were the first American architects of the baby-boom generation to start building on
a large scale.
The Spear House in Coral Gables, Fla., designed by them in collaboration with Rem
Koolhaas, was among the most photographed residential designs of the 1970's. Later,
Arquitectonica imprinted itself on the public imagination with the high-rises the firm designed
for Brickel Avenue in Miami.
As featured backdrops in the 1980's television series "Miami Vice," these towers helped
establish the new image of that city as an economic and cultural crossroads between Latin
America and the United States. And they defined the specialty for which Arquitectonica has
become known: a highly inventive, often colorful manipulation of the tall building type.
Arquitectonica is the Ricky Martin of contemporary architecture. While retaining Latin roots,
the firm has built widely around the world. Its cosmopolitan outlook suits Queens West.
There is nothing profound about this firm's work. On the other hand, there is none of the
spurious historical depth asserted by the retro buildings at Battery Park City and Riverside
South. This brings us to the obstacle Arquitectonica must reckon with in attempting
something fresh. Queens West, sponsored by a division of the Empire State Development
Corporation, is stuck with a Battery Park City-clone master plan and design guidelines.
For a site where views are paramount, the guidelines restrict the use of glass in favor of
masonry walls. Instead of encouraging new approaches to planning, the master plan
mandates neo-traditional towers on bases with uniform street lines. Can the bishop's-crook
lampposts, world's-fair benches, hexagonal pavers and other theme-park accessories be far
behind? Will we have Gene Kelly look-alike doormen dancing to "Singing in the Rain"?
Arquitectonica should be given the widest latitude in responding to the conditions of the site.
After all, the context here extends far beyond the neighboring low-rise brick buildings of
Long Island City. It also includes the midtown skyline, the river and its bridges, the airports
in Queens and, not least, the United Nations headquarters and all it symbolizes for the city
and the world beyond."
- Muschamp for NYT