EM:  Occupation and Position.
Photographer

EM:  What neighborhood do you closely identify with?  What makes your community so unique?
I currently live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but I think the things that I love about it the most are the parts that remind me of Austin, Texas, and the neighborhood around South Austin specifically where I lived for 3 years after college. I hope to have the chance to live there again someday, but for now it’s nice to be surrounded by people that really inspire me creatively and are doing work I find really interesting — not just in photography, but also in music, writing, fashion, anything really. Austin is a great place, but straight chillin is a top priority on everyone’s to-do list there and I worried if I didn’t get out I just might freeze!!

EM:  What’s the greatest item that you found at your local garage/estate sale?
I found this great old American flag in Austin at a car repair shop turned junk store that has hung over my bed for the past few years. I think it gives me strange dreams which make sleeping a bit more exciting.

EM:  If you could interview one unsung hero, who would it be? Why?
It would probably be Magnum photographer Eli Reed who is currently a faculty member at the University of Texas where I studied for a few years. He was somewhat of a mentor to me while I was there and is a photographer who truly cares about the individuals he photographs on a level much deeper than to simply tell their stories or for his own recognition. He would approach photographing Tupac or Russell Crowe with the same attention and enthusiasm as he would a person he met on the street. He really teaches that work should be inspired out of a compassion for the human struggle and not by ones own ego, something that is lost on many artists and journalists especially those working at his level.

EM:  What’s your favorite youtube video.
It is easily this Dee Brown no-look dunk clip from the 1991 Slam Dunk Contest:

I just watched it 5 times in a row answering this question!  It’s soooo goood!
Nothing like that clip to pick you up when you’re down.

EM:  Where are your favorite local spots to eat?

There is this great dumpling joint in Chinatown called Shanghai Café that I try to get to a few times a month. I’m also a big fan of Caracas, this Venezuelan restaurant in Williamsburg and also in the East Village. I really like Taim in the West Village when I feel like being healthy. This Mediterranean restaurant called Tanoreen in Bay Ridge is also delightful, but a bit of a trek. And….just about anywhere with cheese fries on the menu.  

EM: What songs are at the top of your playlist at this very moment?
There’s a couple people that I saw last week during CMJ on there: Patrick Watson, who is pretty great, The xx and Heavy Trash which is Jon Spencer’s more recent band. A few Pulp greatest hits are on there as well as an Atlas Sound album a friend just sent me. Johnny Cash, Elvis, Dolly Parton, The Byrds, GNR, Les Paul et al. are never too far from the top of any playlist as well. I also listen to a lot of podcasts  — I’ve recently gotten hooked on The Sound of Young America. It’s put out by this guy who is pretty awesome at what he does, Jesse Thorn, a friend of one of my good buddies from Austin. Check it out! He actually owns the url: maximumfun.org

EM:   What is your current bedside read?
I often read my computer in bed — and occasionally fall asleep on it so I guess that’s my bedside read.  Does that count? Some pop non-fiction books, too? Any magazine I can get my hands on – usually ones stolen from work.

EM:  What is your favorite city to visit when you travel abroad? And why?
I like most cities I’ve visited, but I’d prefer not to go to the same place twice if I could go somewhere new instead.  India is where I’d like to go next — I am trying to collaborate with some of my writer friends on a project out there and make one of them go with me.
Of past travels, I went to the Arctic Circle on a grant five years ago which was pretty rad and wouldn’t mind going back there again.  It was light 24 hours a day!

EM:  What new projects you are building on right now?
I just started working on a project about the end of the world — or what I imagine that world to look like if I woke up one morning and everyone was gone.  It’s more conceptual than work I’ve done in the past and I think somewhat inspired by living in two major metropolises in the past year (New York and Hong Kong) where it is hard to see nature amid all the man-made structures and hard to find space where you are truly alone.  I really love walking home by myself late at night because you almost get that post-apocalyptic feeling.  I’ve also always been really obsessed with death and dying — I think in part because when I was growing up, both of my parents were afflicted with serious health problems and I was always afraid I’d lose one of them.  I think this obsession is something that’s made me really drawn to photograph, because I think I believed that if I could document life happening then maybe it wouldn’t slip away so fast and I could have some sort of control over everyone’s mortality.

I’d like to get back to that town in the Arctic as well — Nunavut — if it hasn’t melted away in the next 5-10 years.  If I can get money for it again, I’d love to do more serious work on the effects of global warming up there.  I went there a week after getting my first digital camera in 2005, and needless to say, the digital learning curve is steep, so it’s pretty painful to look back at those images and see what could have been.  I’d like to continue my Disney work at all the parks towards a book  — Tokyo, Paris, Florida, and the new Shanghai resort that’s slated to open in 2014 are all on the list. Space Mountain here I come!

***
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www.rebeccadavisphotography.com

www.rdphotographs.blogspot.com

Two of LA’s mad scientists step away from their insidious lab to share with all some favorite records and influences from their jazz collection.  Experience the experiments of Soul in the Park on Wednesday, November, 11th 209. Guest selectors: COMPUTER JAY
(http://www.myspace.com/computerj) and DAKIM (http://www.poobah.com/dakim.)  And resident selector: RANI D. (http://www.myspace.com/djranid)

FREE / 21+ / 10pm-2am

LOCATION:
Footsie’s Bar
2640 N. Figueroa St.
Los Angeles, CA 90065

***
http://www.myspace.com/soulinthepark

Kings of Convenience
Virgin/EMI
(2009)

Since their 2001 debut Quiet Is the New Loud, Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe have had a fruitful musical partnership. Gentle harmonies, intricate guitar arrangements and eloquent songwriting have always been the duo’s strengths, and with their third studio release, they show no signs of stagnation. Imagine cold winters in Norway, from where the Kings of Convenience originate, and the sensation of a warm hearth and hot tea. There is something undeniably therapeutic about the music, where whisper-soft vocals, violin strings and rhythmic guitar make for contemplative and mature listening.

The way the two Norwegians enunciate their lyrics should be an object lesson in eloquent oration. They treat their words like delicate silk, not allowing the instrumentals to drown out their songwriting. Declaration of Dependence features lyrics about unrequited love, political protest and self-purpose, but given the strain of well-articulated melancholy, you’d be hard-pressed to notice the exact sentiments of the songs without their lyrics. There are little signs of Erlend Øye’s more electronic and dance-leaning side project Whitest Boy Alive. Instead, you get classic Kings of Convenience in all their understated musicality. The bossa nova-inflected “Mrs. Cold” and “Boat Behind” make for brief upbeat breaks to the rest of the album, but the central tension and feeling of the album is about reconciliation — that between friends, lovers, strangers and societies.

***

http://www.kingsofconvenience.com/

http://www.myspace.com/kingsofconvenience

Scion Presents An Art Exhibition exploring Sci-Fi
Scion Installation L.A. - Culver City, CA
11/21/09

Euphoria Left the Room is an exhibition addressing the sense of creativity and visionary imagination, which throughout the 20th century was set free through experimentation and what-if scenarios governed by the “if anything was possible” logic commonly displayed in Sci-fi literature and film. This exhibition wishes to question what fragments of this avant-garde thinking and visual experimentation are still at work in contemporary art practice.

Curated by Judith Schwarzbart - curator of the 2008 U-TURN quadrennial in Copenhagen…which is the first international festival for contemporary art to be held in Denmark.

November 21 – December 12, 2009

This exhibition contains work by artists and architects based in Copenhagen, Berlin, London, & Vienna:

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen / London
Ferdinand Ahm Krag / Copenhagen
Ann Lislegaard / Copenhagen
Maria Loboda / Berlin
Tommy Støckel / Berlin/Copenhagen
Florian Zeyfang / Berlin
Lisa Schmidt-Colinet / Vienna
Alexander Schmöger / Vienna

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | 7-10pm
Complimentary Valet & Open Bar

http://www.scion.com/space

Scion Installation L.A.
3521 Helms Ave (at National)
Culver City, CA 90232
Gallery Phone: 310-815-8840
Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00AM-6:00PM

“Now get your patchouli stink outta my store!”

Nothing? Well. Recall “rings on his fingers”… “awful cooking smells”… unbuttoned shirt and a greasy, salt/peppery ponytail. Light a little incense, maybe fondle some original-press wax. Is it coming back to you now? Are you thinking, “High Fidelity, circa early 2000?” If you are, you’re absolutely right: it’s that “f***ing Ian guy”.

That scene was poignant for two reasons. The first: a flinching, sympathetic pain elicited by Tim Robbins/I. Raymond’s teeth getting KTFO’d a la rotary phone. The second (and worse): the guilty pang concomitant with the peer-pressured titter I added to my friends’ anti-world music scorn.

In the years since that incident, the American attitude toward world music has shifted rather dramatically from disdain to respect to even adulation. This phenomenon, like so many others today, owes itself to the advent of the internet. Open online forums such as Youtube and Facebook, in allowing artists and audiences to connect over distances physical, cultural, and generational, have provided a means of sonic exchange formerly cost-prohibitive or simply unavailable. Expanding access has also produced a more informed listenership and musicians’ community; greater interaction, facilitated by technological advance, has promoted change via interchange of ideas and approaches. No longer the exclusive province of Birkenstocks-with-socks or Guatemalan pants, we have today a new world music - a worldly music - a necessarily dynamic music purveyed by such global players as Sean Kuti, Tinariwin, Gogo Bordello, Vampire Weekend and Ozomatli, to name just a few. And amidst the throng of international artists reflecting this movement, one band distinctive in its new-world output and character is spreading its sound like a most exquisite aural disease: L.A.’s own Dengue Fever.

Dengue Fever - “Tiger Phone Card”

Epi-Dengue-ology
A well-travelled friend of mine described her first experience of Dengue Fever this way: ‘I felt… transported back to some sort of olden days: walking down a crowded dusty street on a restless afternoon and this music coming out of roadside shops… or the bustling night life of a hot humid night with dancing girls, smoking men, free-flowing alcohol, romance, intrigue….’ Her response testifies to this band’s peculiar sonic ability to move its audience elsewhere in time and space, to wanderlust its listeners aurally.

When Dengue Fever was conceived in 2001 by Zac and Ethan Holtzman, the brothers had something very specific in mind: an indie band that would do late 60’s/early 70’s Cambodian psych/surf rock right. They sought other musicians with similar indie-music sympathies, eventually bringing together the sextet that comprises Dengue Fever. The group began by playing in and around Los Angeles and quickly garnered a sizeable local following. Critics, too, met Dengue Fever’s work with praise, a response that encouraged the music’s spread across city and state lines. With the implementation of English-language lyrics in its growing repertoire and the increased exposure afforded by song features in film and television (Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers”, “Weeds”, “True Blood”) as well as interviews on radio (”Fresh Air with Terry Gross”), the band began enjoying increased demand all around the United States.

In 2005, Dengue Fever took flight to perform in Cambodia. The journey, documented by John Pirozzi in 2007’s film “Sleepwalking through the Mekong” (also a track from the “Escape from Dragon House” album), was a first of many kinds: it was vocalist Chhom Nimol’s first trip back to her homeland since joining Dengue Fever; it was members Senon Williams, David Ralicke, and Paul Smith’s first visit to Cambodia; it was Dengue Fever’s first foray beyond the domestic indie scene.

Dengue Fever - “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong”

Two years after that inaugural trek, Dengue Fever travelled to Seville, Spain, to join the 2007 World Music Expo (WOMEX) and found itself the focus of attention on an international scale. It was also at WOMEX that the band received an impromptu invitation to join the World of Music and Dance (WOMAD) festival, a concert series begun by Real World Music founder, musician and human rights advocate Peter Gabriel. Though the group was unable to play WOMAD in November 2007, that contact proved pivotal: several months later, Dengue Fever flew to England to record at the world-renowned Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire; in June of 2008, Real World Records released “Venus on Earth” in markets outside the United States; and that summer, the band embarked upon its first European tour.

Such was Dengue Fever’s unofficially official initiation into the new world music scene. The DF-Gabriel affinity is also no puzzle. Peter Gabriel’s career has been grounded by an independent sensibility he has maintained since and through his beginnings with Genesis in the late 1960’s to mid-1970’s. It has been characterized, too, by an experimental bent informed by African music. Dengue Fever’s own development from local indie sensation to indie-global phenomenon bears clear analogues to Gabriel’s own. The most salient commonalities between the two beyond musical trajectory, however, may be movement, interchange, and cooperation. Through WOMAD and Real World, endeavours begun more than two decades ago expressly to promote music and dance, Gabriel has challenged Western audiences’ perceptions of world- genres. Building upon such legacy and partnering today with that forerunner, Dengue Fever has resuscitated 1960’s/’70’s Cambodian pop nearly snuffed out by Khmer Rouge suppression through new Khmer- and English-language songs that simultaneously reify the ‘new world’ concept and take the genre out of its former obscurity. That this partnering has taken Dengue Fever to so many sold-out performances in so many different countries across the globe attests to the genre’s - and Dengue Fever’s - new relevance in the music world.

Evil Monito spoke with founding Dengue Fever members, Zac and Ethan Holtzman about the band’s beginnings and evolution, its travels and its sentiments about shifting into the new world genre.

EM: You and Ethan came upon the Cambodian music DF now plays separately but contemporaneously. What was it about the music that so appealed to you in the first place?

E: I think that my brother and I have similar tastes in music. The music that I heard while first traveling in Cambodia made me excited. The kind of music I just kept on playing over and over again until the cassette tape broke and I had to tie a knot in it for it to keep playing. My first thoughts after hearing the music was that I wanted to get an undercover camera and do a documentary on some of the black market and expose the dark sides of Cambodia. This music would make for the perfect soundtrack. I actually looked into getting a baseball hat that took video. Too dangerous, so we decided to form the band instead.

Z: [For me, it was] the familiarity of the garage/surf rock sound combined with the Cambodian melodies and vocal techniques. A lot of the female vocalists crack into a falsetto they call “ghost voice”.

EM: How did the band begin penning its own, original Khmer-language music? And why did DF finally decide to incorporate English language into its lyrics?

Z: We wrote two originals on our first album, “22 Nights”, and “Connect Four”. We had a Cambodian friend help out with the translation. As Nimol’s English improved, we were able to have her sing parts of songs in Khmer and parts in English. It’s kind of like using a different instrument, sometimes a song will call for an electric guitar, and sometimes a classical. Having a few tunes in English helped pull in listeners that aren’t ready to listen to music in another language, yet.

E: On our last album, songs like “Tiger Phone Card” and “Sober Driver” helped us gain a solid fan base in some of the Scandinavian countries. We will often record the vocals to a song in Khmer and then in English and see which version seems to have more emotion and roll with that.

EM: What’s the story behind your being approached by Real World and invited to record at the Real World Studios?

E: We met Real World while performing at WOMEX in Seville, Spain. Shortly after that concert, at last-minute’s notice, they invited the band to perform at WOMAD (concerts around the world started by Peter Gabriel) in the Canary Islands. We were not able to make that show because it was so last-minute, but it started our dialogue. Eventually they put out our last album [Venus on Earth] all of the world [except North America], and invited us to the Real World recording studios to work.

EM: DF started out as a decidedly indie rock band. How do you feel about its present affiliation with world music? To what extent do you think DF might change perceptions of the genre?

Z: [World music] used to be a genre that I’d kind of avoid. It was more fake and whatever… positive vibrations-everybody happy, steel drums, Guatemalan pants, dreadlocked musicians in a feel-good festival. It all seemed artificial and not really what’s going on in the world. But then labels like Sublime Frequency, Buda Musique (which released the Ethiopiques series) came up. Now there are so many bands championing this new sound, like Chicha Libre… and then there’s those bands with a great combination of both world and indie rock like Beirut, Secret Chiefs 3, Gogo Bordello. So now I feel that world music is completely changing these days… world music in general has gone through some big changes for the better. Dengue Fever is part of that change. [It's] always walked the razor’s edge between being seen as a world music band and a rock band… the border between indie music and world music scene is getting foggy and it’s fun to be lost in the fog. People are realizing there’s more music to be influenced by than what’s playing down the street.

EM: How has the experience of travelling internationally and playing before diverse audiences affected DF’s sense of itself and the music it makes?

Z: We tend to view ourselves as foreign diplomats, representing Cambodia and the USA. When we play music we love it when people jump up on stage and sing and dance with us. It’s all about bringing people together and going crazy together.

EM: This summer’s tour in Europe was actually a return: what was it like to tour there this time? Did you notice any differences in reception? How did it feel for the band?

E: A lot of the cities we visited this time around were actually our second time playing there, but I would say about half of them were new markets… so… the entire tour was good, which is nice. I mean, we had 10 shows and they were all well attended. Like in Oslo, Norway, it was our second time playing there and it was at the same club, so it was a really good turn out. A lot of people that were excited came to the first show as well as the second show… we had run out of shirts, you know, we only had girls shirts? but they didn’t care, the guys just bought ‘em… so these guys [who] were all like six-foot-two blond guys wearing these medium American Apparel classic girl cuts… I guess they don’t care about the cut? That was fun.

The crowds were singing along… they did that last time but this time there was more of that when the songs were in English. You would definitely packs of people in the crowd singing, which feels good… it felt really nice.

There were [also] a lot of new markets. Like in Spain, we’d been to Sevilla and played, but we’d never been to Barcelona or Madrid. That’s kind of like saying, “Oh yeah, we played California, we played in L.A.,” but you didn’t play San Diego or San Francisco… there are just so many cities that you could do a whole tour in Spain. There was a good amount of people for our first time. We were excited.

Dengue Fever (f. Inara George) - “I Feel Love”

EM: Can you tell me a little bit about your most recent single? And what else is Dengue Fever planning for the future?

E: Yeah, we have a new song, a cover of Donna Summers’s “I Feel Love”. We made it like a psychedelic disco track, and we have Inara George from The Bird and the Bee on it - she’s a childhood friend, we all grew up together in Topanga Canyon. She’s singing lead and our singer Nimol is singing a little backup on the track.

What we’re doing now that we’re back, and were doing prior to this [last European] tour, we’ve been working on material for the next record. We’ve been really busy this year. Like doing the score for the Lost World film that we performed live, that was a big undertaking. But we’ve been working on new material for the next record and that’s pretty much our main focus, just getting into the studio 3 to 4 days a week and writing new stuff… that’s where we are.

EM: Finally, what’s “wanderlust-y” about Dengue Fever, as a band that produces a certain style of music?

Z: Maybe when they check out our documentary of our trip to Cambodia they’ll get the urge to go there. We should be on the board of tourism for Cambodia.

E: The fact that the band started from a six-month backpack journey throughout SE Asia sounds like wanderlust to me.

***
For more on the band, visit: http://www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic

Art direction on feature story: Brian Yu

“It felt right at the time. We thought about “what it is to be” and “what do you want to do with yourself” and those decisions you make are based on what life is to you definitely depends on who you are as a person.   At the time, especially when you’re young like that, it sounds like a good idea to drop out of school and become dirty old punk rock musicians, ya know? So that’s what we did, and that’s never really gone away: the feeling of pursuing something as personal as music in that sort of way, at least for me. It was a good tool for discovering who I am and what I think about things.” After a pause, he facetiously remarked, “Beyond that, we were intent on becoming the first white, reggae three-piece to have massive chart and pop appeal, but The Police beat us to it.”

Prior to 1980, Meat Puppets was a late-night activity played by fetishists in the back of a butcher shop. However, brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood adopt the name for the band they form with drummer Derek Bostrom. Nowadays, the term “Meat Puppets” is synonymous with iconic and influential grunge rock, as well as the group that had the biggest impact on Nirvana’s sound. From underground punkers, to cow-thumpin’ rockers, to classic stardom through drug addiction and back, the Meat Puppets were and are one of the most prolific and dynamic bands that have ever sprung up from the underground. Recently, I was graced with the opportunity to speak with Cris Kirkwood about his life as a legendary bass player. He spoke in a witty, deeply profound, and absolutely hilarious manner. After only a few moments of talking with him, I was convinced that had he chosen another vocation, he would’ve made a great fortune as a stand-up comedian or an author of existential philosophy. Here is what he had to say:

EM: Well, aside from Deliverance, what influenced you early on? What made you guys play the style of music that you do?

KIRKWOOD: Well, Curt and I were definitely old enough to be children of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I mean, all of the rock stuff, definitely… The Beatles were a huge influence. They were one of the things that turned me on to what music could be. I started getting into different kind of music and it made me want to make music. I started seeing it as a tool to, you know, explore the depths and lows of the human mind. So I started getting into all kinds of different stuff, I got into bluegrass, indigenous musics that sort of reflected a region and I got a kick out of that, and it opened my eyes to the idea of regionalism as opposed to, you know, say, nationalism specifically. I liked the idea of people making noise because of the foods that are available to them and the kind of topography that they live in. I started tracing back the roots of music and getting into jazz, classical, things like that and realized, “oh my god, the depths that exist, the heights, and the fuckin’ depths of thought and the wherewithal to achieve the level of ideas of being involved in something as complex and lofty as that. And the language it took for something like that really blew me away… then I realized, “Jesus, I’m way too retarded for that! I like to smoke way too much pot!” then I thought, “oh, punk rock… well there’s something I can handle [sarcastically]” [laughter] So, you know, all sorts of different stuff influenced us, and one of the bands that made me realize that rock and roll was tolerable was that I really dug Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead… I liked the sense of humor and the musicianship and fuckin’ the extreme weirdness as well, and the improvisational side of it as well and certainly in terms of rock and roll because I really wasn’t that into rock at the time. I was brought up to see it as sort of an advertisement for the size of your dick. I just wasn’t that taken with it, you know? But I got into it more when I found punk rock, because that was like “well, there’s a more raw form of expression” and I really got a kick out of that, and it was really easy to play. But punk rock kind of turned me on to rock and roll and I went backwards from there.
EM: It seems that the blending of those elements in your sound worked for you, since SST signed the band. How did that come about?

We started working with those guys when we put out our first 7” [record] with Monitor called World Imitation. [Monitor] was an arty/punky band from the scene that was going on in Los Angeles at the time, and we played a show with Black Flag sometime around ’81 and they really liked us, so they invited us out to play in L.A. and asked if we’d like to make a record with them. Black Flag had put out their first album, and ours came out shortly after that.

EM: How did that change the direction of the kind of music you guys were making? Did that give you any kind of realization that the Meat Puppets were going to be bigger than you’d thought?

We were one of those bands that allowed things to happen as they went. We weren’t able to make any other kind of music than the music we were making at the time, and it wasn’t like “oh, we’re gonna be huge” … Black Flag’s label [SST] didn’t seem like it was that big of a deal at the time, you know, but in retrospect, it’s become a hallmark of a time and place of one branch of American music, and a particularly healthy, thriving, interesting branch at that. But at the time, you couldn’t really see it that clearly since we were in the midst of it. Looking back at bands like Black Flag and Sonic Youth, these bands that went on to become a fuckin’ pillar of a certain type of American music, but at the time, it was just a bunch of dudes who were playing the type of music that they wanted to play.

EM: So how did you go from playing with those bands early on to joining Nirvana on stage for their MTV Unplugged album? That must have been a huge deal. Can you tell our readers a little bit about that and how it changed things for the band?

Well, we got in there because Cobain was such a huge fan of the Meat Puppets and a lot of the bands I just mentioned, the SST scene, had a big influence on the whole Seattle scene. I mean, they had a huge influence ultimately, in retrospect if you look back it was a very fertile time in American music and they created a rock scene that we all put together from different areas of the country… and we’d been influenced by other people, so where does it come from? You can always follow the path backwards and we were just the next link in the chain that was forged up in Seattle. So Cobain invited us, and at the time people really dug [the “Seattle Sound”] and really dug Nirvana so we went on tour with them. [Kurt Cobain] really liked the Meat Puppets as a kid and he asked us if he could cover some of our crap and we told him that he definitely could if he wanted to, and that took off and led to us doing that Unplugged thing. For us, it was a cool thing to do musically and to see how somebody else interprets our songs. Suddenly, bands that were influenced by us became some of the most popular shit in the world, but basically, it was just something to do for us. The record company definitely liked it, it was all business stuff, but MTV didn’t want us to do it. They didn’t want Cobain to have the ratty old Meat Puppets on there to spoil their unplugged session but Cobain insisted.

Nirvana performing a cover of the Meat Puppets’ classic tune: “Lake of Fire”
(With Cris Kirkwood on bass and Curt Kirkwood on guitar)

EM: So MTV didn’t want you guys on there and Kurt had to push for you guys to include you?

Well, the Unplugged thing was a TV show, and it came down to what they’re trying to get across and what kind of art they wanted to sell. We never had the money to make a video or anything so we never got played, but we would have if they’d played the crap out of our little $200 videos. They could have if they had wanted to, but they didn’t want to because it wasn’t a part of their agenda. So when Cobain wanted to take us on there, [MTV] said, “Well, why them? Why not Eddie Vedder?” [laughter] but the cool thing was that [Cobain] insisted and it turned out to be a very touching, cool thing. One of the coolest things about that guy is that he wanted to expose his millions of new fans to the shit he liked and the shit he listened to when he was a kid. But the whole thing goes to show the effect of mass commercialism, I mean, the guy killed himself, which is a shame, obviously, it was like he had too much success and we never had enough, so how do you make yourself happy? Fuck it, you know? Figure it out… or blow your brains out.

EM: Fortunately, you never wound up blowing your brains out, but you did have some serious personal issues with drug abuse and anger…

No, I didn’t, but the lack of success definitely played a part in my eventual self-destructive ways, which is kind of ironic, because [Cobain] offed himself because, well, who knows why he did it, I mean, I don’t want to try to conceptualize why the guy did it, but he was obviously having some problems with being a celebrity. It’s like “screw it” … if you’re having that hard of a time, just bail, but I mean, if you gotta kill yourself, you gotta kill yourself. I had to self-destruct, and to be honest with you, it’s because I never felt like I got enough ego strokes or enough confirmations of the work I’d done over all those years, but mostly, I was just sick of being fuckin’ broke… but when we did find success and the money started coming in, I spent it all on hurting myself, so be careful what you wish for! But it’s a shame that the guy had to wind up killing himself because they’d come and hung out with us some more and he really wound up sinking himself into the life of a musician and it’s one thing to be a musician and another to be a celebrity… so just give it a little time, age with it, let it go. Just keep going. Keep poking at it.

EM: You eventually hit that ‘low’ with the incident at the post office thing and the assault. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Ehh, you know, after years of being a loser after my wife passed away… THAT was the low. That was the bottom, you know, and beyond that I discovered truly down ‘low’ is and I stayed there for a real long time; became a horrible, horrible fuckin’ mess… I was already a mess by the time she passed away, you know, it was because of our bad behavior that she passed away, but it was a treatable mess because you can get over them. You can get over drug problems, but you can’t get over being dead. I just couldn’t deal with the fact that she’d died… I was just GONE, and eventually, you know, years pass then just some more dumb shit went down. I wound up getting shot by a guard at the post office over nothing, just a stupid little argument with a lady in the parking lot. Actually, it wasn’t even an argument, I just told her to fuck off and she started yelling at me and got the guard, who got in my face, I told him to fuck off, he shoved me, I belted him, he went down and got his stick, hit me with it, took it from him and hit him with it a couple of times, then I turned around and he blasted me a couple of times in the back. I got about a year and a half on that one for assault, then another year before that already. I was in and out of jail after my wife passed away; I was just in the toilet. All my own fault; all my own fault. No one else’s fault but my own, you know. Bad decisions on my part.

EM: So you take full responsibility with everything that happened during that period of your life?

Absolutely. I take it just because I can, you know, because what’s the point of lying to yourself? It was something that was totally stupid and I regret the shit out of it and miss the fuck out of my wife every day… but I’ve learned to live with the fuckin’ fact that I destroyed something as fuckin’ precious as my wife’s life, my personal life, my professional life, my health, I mean, I didn’t die, but I destroyed every other fuckin’ facet of my existence, and I finally figured out how to accept what happened and that it was my fault. That was the bitterest pill of it all. It’s one thing to be a tragedy, but a self-induced tragedy? That’s a fuckin’ hard nut to swallow! [laughter] but here I am! I’m a testament to the size and strength of the human gullet! [laughter] there’s a quotable quote! Because I was just saying that it was a hard nut to swallow, but I did it so I must have a pretty tough gullet, and that’s basically what I’m saying, so…

EM: Well you seem to have gotten back on your feet…

I’ve managed to keep from looking back and seeing it ALL as regret, and I’ve learned a lot about the healing qualities of time and whatever the fuck we are, and what’s “yourself,” like when you say the word ‘self’ who are you talking about? Life is a mystery, we are mysterious, there are no finite points that can be made, ultimately… I don’t think. It’s all wisdom and knowledge and everything is based upon or agreed upon according to the parameters of the human mind, which is finite.

EM: Do you have any final thoughts or nuggets of wisdom for our readers? Any witty quotes or advice for budding musicians?

Well, I’d always rather be rich than influential [laughter] errh, ahh, the best of both worlds! Ask Michael Stipe kind of how that feels! [laughter] Crispy ol’ Cris of the ratty ol’ Meat Puppets… If I stick my head far enough up someone’s ass and blow hard enough, I’ll have a brain bubble making machine. I say that it’s a rough & tumble business and [with a comedic sneer] ‘a scrappy attitude that might just serve them well!’ … ‘Although I’m not familiar with the band’s work, let them know that Mr. Kirkwood wishes them well!’

EM: And what can we expect from the Meat Puppets in the future?

More music! That’s really all Curt and I are into, so that’s what we’re going to do. We fart around a little bit with visual arts, with Curt taking it a little more serious than me. I’m more of a doodler and a line-drawer and he actually puts paint to paper, or canvas I suppose… We just use those things to decorate our musical work. I would say ultimately, the straight-forward, not trying to amuse myself answer would be: probably some more music!

Meat Puppets: “Rotten Shame”

Sewn Together OUT NOW on Megaforce Records!

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For more on the band, visit: http://www.myspace.com/themeatpuppets

Art direction on feature story: Brian Yu

To style a fashion editorial or an advertisement, it takes an entire team to produce an effective and more importantly, engaging pictorial. There are many details that go into these projects and often enough, the consumer, reader or viewer is not aware of how industrious these ventures can be. From make-up and wardrobe to set design and product placement, a certain sensibility and work ethic is commanded.

From what I can remember, I was always fascinated with how photographs came to life and narrated a story. Whether it was a fashion spread, a home interior piece, or a celebrity portrait, it was intriguing (and still is) how a blank canvas could be sculpted into an illustration. At times, inanimate objects become the focus and the model becomes void as ornaments synchronize and weave together. For those of you interested in getting to know who these amazing designers and stylists are,  Judy Inc. provides clients with a roster of artists who specialize in a variety of work, ranging from roomset and prop design to food/tabeltop decor. Purview for yourself - I am sure you will be impressed.

Kurt Salt

Risa Knight                                                                    Kah Li

Kert Salt

Hadrien

Deborah Ferguson

Midori

Ryan Jennings                                                                Ashley Denton

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For more info and illustrations, visit Judy Inc. here

EM: Who are your biggest style influences?

*** Special thanks to Aaron and everyone at Dwell for letting me walk around and snap a few shots.  Dwell can be found on newsstands everywhere and at their Website here.

WK Interact at Subliminal Projects this weekend. Check it out.

19th century guide on what to wear from the Daily Mail

Photo by Daily Mail licensed under Creative Commons.

Nowhere do trends make or break a company quite like the fashion world. From studded ankle boots to shredded chic, fashion is a veritable roller coaster of the newest, the latest, the things you just can’t live without.

Twice a year you can find them paraded down runways from New York to Shanghai, each month fashion magazines pack their pages with the pieces editors think we should all be wearing and every fast fashion store from H&M to Forever21 is in constant overdrive knocking them off as cheaply as possible. It’s an endless chase. Personally I find most trends to be pretty ridiculous and while all of us have played into them at one time or another (it’s virtually impossible not to!) I’ve prided myself on staying far away from “trend whore” status.

Trend Report board from Who What Wear:

Photo by Who, What, Wear licensed under Creative Commons.

Yet I peruse magazines as much as the next girl and during fashion week I am all but glued to my computer watching the magic unfold, I am a lover of fashion after all. Yes, I have experimented with some ensembles that I would rather forget, and maybe I once took deconstructing tees a little too seriously, but I have always tried to buy items that made me comfortable and felt like an extension of myself, rather than throwing together a look simply because Kate Lanphear or Carine Roitfeld told me I should.

Although I don’t necessarily participate in trends I do keep a close eye on them and when considering column topics for Evil Monito I figured I could funnel my keen perception for bullshit somewhere. Not all trends are crap and in some cases watching them develop and disperse can be thrilling, however the emphasis placed on having this season’s “it” bag or making sure you’re wearing gold because everyone is wearing gold for fall takes away from the individuality of fashion and instead turns everyone into these homogenized store window mannequins void of personality and character. In an effort to get people rethinking it all I’ve decided to spend my alloted once a week time slot exploring the background of prominent and underground trends, breaking them down and ultimately finding out whether they are worth the effort. Collectively we waste too much time trying to either look like each other or emulating carefully crafted images of what we think we’re supposed resemble instead of bucking it all and looking like (gasp!) ourselves.

My intention in all of this is not necessarily to make anyone feel bad about the choices they make, but to hopefully bring light to the humor and frivolousness of it all. These are not life and death decisions, yet the importance associated with being a part of whatever is the season’s latest craze, be it fashion, art, celebrity or otherwise, can sometimes make us feel like the only way to belong is to buy our way into it. In it’s purest
form fashion is about self-expression, it’s an art form that allows us to visually convey a feeling, a mood, a little piece of who we are at that point in time. It’s been said that we need trends as cultural and historical reference points, and yes where would the 70’s be if they hadn’t birthed bell bottom jeans, yet I believe there’s space between for so much more. My fear is that as it all gets condensed into a few easily packaged and distributed trends it loses the very essence that makes it so appealing in the first place. As one of the last bastions of true creativity and freedom, we need fashion to retain that whimsy and wonder and it takes us all pushing ourselves a little bit further, thinking a little more freely, to make that happen.

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To see more from Lindsey Ibarra, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/themisslinds/

Lil’ Wayne Disclosed (Los Angeles Premiere!)
Cinefamily Theater- Los Angeles, CA
11/10

“Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. is the internationally known rapper Lil’ Wayne — his most recent album went platinum in a week, and he just might be the voice of his generation. But this ain’t no VH1 rock doc. Rather, it is an intoxicating journey into the thoughts and world of an extremely complicated man whose creative force is something to behold. Lil’ Wayne never stops recording — he has a portable studio that he carries around in a black bag, and it allows him to lay down a track anytime, anywhere. His work is his own: unfiltered, uncensored, raw, and powerful. Director Adam Bhala Lough has gained unbelievable access to the artist’s public and private lives, and captures remarkably candid moments, such as Lil’ Wayne recounting his first sexual experience, as well as him talking openly about his drug habits. Following him all over the country and to Amsterdam, Lough mixes fly-on-the-wall footage of Lil’ Wayne in his hotel room and on his bus with artfully composed concert footage. The result is a shockingly intimate portrait of one of the most inspired (and eccentric) musicians of modern America.” — Sundance Film Festival 2009

Event Info-

“The Carter: Lil’ Wayne”
Tuesday, November 10th | 8 pm

Tickets - $12/free for members
You can purchase tickets in advance here

Location-
Cinefamily Theater
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90036

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http://www.cinefamily.org/about.html

Don’t get me wrong-I’m grateful now that I can diminish a minor seventh chord if I think hard enough about it. But the day I figured out how to switch the station from 105.1 K-Mozart (R.I.P.) to KIIS-FM or KROQ (in that order; not gonna lie), was the first day of the rest of my life. (The second being the day I learned how to record radio songs onto tape.) Suddenly, I’d discovered music that reflected my thoughts, feelings, dreams and goals (boys, maladjustment, boys, boys)-songs that today bring on melancholic rip curls of nostalgia. I’m willing to bet you’ve felt similarly.

That’s the power of music: to move our crusty insides, to reflect the individuals and cultures that conceived them, and in turn affect and influence our culture. Through the lens of personal experience, I’ll be examining songs through their constructions, influences, meanings and significance. I’m not an expert-and besides, when it comes to music, I don’t believe that anyone knows real story behind anything (although I do believe the one about Led Zeppelin and the mud shark is true)-but I do think that there’s something to be learned from every piece of art that has the power to become a sparkling gem firmly fixed to the bejeweled fabric of our musical culture. I hope to dig that up and hope you learn something too.

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To see more from Lydia Fong, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/lydia/