It is with great pride that I now announce to you that rkthornwell.com is now manwomanchild.org.

Update your links. This change is binding. Now and forever.

All of the songs, all of the images, and all of back blog posts (since 2004!) from the old site have  now been moved to the MAN/WOMAN/CHILD site.

With tenderlovingkindness,
MAN/WOMAN/CHILD (R. K. Thornwell)

PS. If you are a feed subscriber, you may want to subscribe to the new feed.

It hardly needs the shout-out — it’s already totally famous — but credit where credit is due. This plain-jane blogspot blog is a vehicle for countless rants, free songs and shout-outs — not to mention dozens of beautifully curated classic rock “microMixes” — all from the mind of Bradford Cox, singer of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound. What really distinguishes this blog from most other musician blogs is not just the level of access and intimacy that we get into Bradford’s life and thoughts, but also his generosity. He gives away content left and right. I don’t know what his philosophy behind this is, but it really makes you think about what the internet could be. Instead of getting lost in some sort of weird pre-digital notion of copyright law or some valiant effort to protect his intellectual property (a pursuit that would in any case be in vain) he goes the other route: He gives most of his songs away for free. And he gains droves of fans in the process. Also Bradford’s voice is beautiful and the songs are just great so that doesn’t hurt either.

Check it out: http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

2. The Art of Ian Dingman

Yes, we’re finally getting around to writing about Ian Dingman. It feels like we’ve known about this man forever. We loved and bought his prints when they came out over at Tiny Showcase. We loved his sketches and his watercolors when they were commissioned and featured in countless magazines. And when he drew the artwork for the Criterion Collection re-issue of Bottle Rocket, well yeah, that was pretty awesome, too.   Time and again Dingman delivers. So by all means: Go to his website. Sign up for his newsletter. Buy his art.

Check it out: http://www.iandingman.com/

Enjoy,
MAN/WOMAN/CHILD

We only just discovered Blake’s work this week and already we love it. Not only has he done tons of projects (stuff for small magazines, t-shirts, screen prints, etc.) but he runs a great blog. Everything seems top notch but don’t just take our word for it. Check it out for yourself.

Look here: http://plaza.ufl.edu/bsuarez/
And the blog is here: http://blakesuarez.blogspot.com/

2. Bupp! for Mac/PC

This is an amazing audio App. Sort of midway between an old-timey arcade game à la Pong or Asteroids and…maybe some sort of sampling engine?  Totally weird. Basically, you construct a maze containing any number of obstacles. Balls are then dropped into it. The balls move around and ricochet off of obstacles, triggering vocal samples in the process. (There seems to be pretty much no way of predicting what sample will be produced by a given obstacle and position. You just have to experiment.) The graphics are simple and the motion of the balls is a little jerky but the whole thing is totally addictive. Seriously. We haven’t gotten hooked on anything this quickly since they opened up that breakfast burrito place down the street.

Check it out: http://www.mediascot.org/drift/foolme/bupp

3. George M.’s “Musical Episode” Podcast

Sometimes you just need some classic R&B in your life. Not just sometimes. Often. Maybe it’s because you’ve just lost the love of your life. Maybe it’s the end of the week and you’re tired; you need something to take your mind of work. Or maybe it’s because you’ve been driving for a really long time and you know this really good college radio station but you can’t seem to get it on your radio because their transmitter is so weak and also it’s your car’s fault and what the hell why didn’t you just replace the radio when you bought the car but now it’s too late because you’re probably not going to hold on to the car for that much longer anyway. We don’t know what it is that keeps us coming back but we know a good thing when I hear it.

Check it out: http://musicalepisode.podomatic.com/

Enjoy,
MAN/WOMAN/CHILD

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He had a piece go on sale at tinyshowcase.com earlier this week which was great. Some of the art on his own site is even more amazing. (link)

2. The new Need For Speed: Undercover for the iPhone.

I’ve played just about all of the racing games that have come out for the iPhone. A lot were great, but NFSU takes the cake easily. (iTunes link)

3. CreativeApplications.net

I don’t read very many blogs consistently. I have a whole mix of things that I’ve put in my Google Reader. Occasionally I’ll log in and nervously flick through the posts that have queued up before losing interest or clicking one of the outbound links. Suffice it to say that no one blog has inspired me so consistently as Creative Applications. I can literally go to this blog any day of the week and be guaranteed I’m going to see something totally amazing that will change my life’s ambitions. Outstanding curatorial effort. (link)

Enjoy,
RK

Photos:

Video:

Then the show moved indoors to the RISD Auditorium. Dan Deacon’s set began with a carefully orchestrated “wave” of finger snapping moving from one side of the audience to the other and then back and up into the seating areas before coming back down and around again. It got progressively faster as he directed the audience with his arms. This was followed by some equally choreographed waves of stomping; sort of audience “trust-building” exercises. At one point, we all got down on one knee and pointed at the sky and repeated after him…

The set itself was unbelievable. There were projections and lights and a crapload of people onstage. They had different visual motifs for each song and these were all manipulated to sort of “dance” with the music. There was a strobe light inside of a glow-in-the-dark skull that would go and off for different parts of the songs as well as several sets of lights that seemed to get triggered at different points.

Throughout his set, Dan played all sorts of logistical games with the audience, delegating tasks, etc. At one point the audience became a train that went out one set of auditorium doors and back in the other and in an endless loop. Drum sticks and plastic pails were handed out so the audience could drum along.

All around: awesome, awesome show. I couldn’t have been more inspired by everything I saw.

-RK

First:  Chicago. We did a nice tour of the area. Let’s see, first we had to for some tradish Chicago deep-dish pizza at Pequods in Morton Grove, IL. That wasn’t the original plan. We had wanted to go to Burt’s Place, a place that Anthony Bourdain had visited in his recent Chicago episode (from like a month ago) — I remember he was so-so on the food but made a point of how fat its patrons were and did the usual camera pan around the room showing a bevy of anonymous fat midsections. Anyway, turns out Burt’s Place is closed on Mondays. We went to Pequod’s instead. It had actually had gotten higher rating on Yelp! Either way, M’eh. (I gues I’m still not sold on this whole deep dish thing.)

Next, we went to a Sic Alps show in Evanston, IL. Sic Alps were awesome despite the very lame venue (felt more like a Jazz club. We actually sat through the show.)

I took some video although my camera didn’t make it through a full song.

Next day, saw the Museum of Contemporary Art which was awesome.

Saw Millenium Park which was also awesome.

And then what? We went on walking tours, went to Pilsen, had the best mexican food I’ve ever had at Tio Luis in Brighton Park.  Also went and checked out the Empty Bottle which had been recommended to us as a good bar. Very cool. And then, yeah, flew home. Here’s a gallery:

Links:

• Sic Alps
• The Empty Bottle
• The Museum of Contemporary Art
• Tio Luis on Yelp!

MP3: MANWOMANCHILD – Sticks & Stones (192kbps)

Best,
RK

PS. Lots more to come soon I promise.

WELL. We tried to go see the fucking  Magic People and Xerxes show — it was at the “Sweatshop” in Olneyville — but by the time we got to there it was a total hellhole with drunken teenagers making out and skating and throwing cigarette cartons, etc. (Is it always like that?) We stood around for a while but it was cold and no bands were playing so we left. Next, we caught True Womanhood’s set at Firehouse 13 before coming home and baking cookies. So, upon careful consideration I’d have to say that the real winner for the evening was probably the Neiman Marcus’ Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe we used. Delicious.

Links:

• Magic People
• Xerxes
• True Womanhood
• The Neiman Marcus’ Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.

Cross-posted on www.rkthornwell.com