I think we all know by now that Rick Klotz is no stranger to controversy.
After beefing with streetwear brands and rockstars, he’s under fire from a new, more complicated, entity: The Jewish Defense League. Rick, and his veteran L.A.-based apparel brand Freshjive, produced a couple t-shirts this season that have been intensely scrutinized by certain members of the Jewish community.
I’m not gonna weigh in any of my own opinions here (You can read Rick’s personal defense and reasoning behind his artistic choices on the Freshjive blog), but the ultra-controversial terrorist group The JDL certainly voiced theirs this afternoon on Fairfax in front of Rick’s store Reserve, storming up and down the sidewalk with picket signs, bullhorns, and an artillery of verbal warfare.
Shelley Rubin is the current chairman of the JDL. Her husband, Irv Rubin, ran the JDL for 15 years before being imprisoned for planning a terror attack against an Arab-American Congressman and 2 attacks on a Muslim mosque here in L.A. He ended up “killing himself” in jail (read: being tossed 18 feet over a railing by other inmates), leaving his lil’ firecracker Shelley in charge.
Shelley showed up with her son and a collective of angry extremist Right-Wing Jews, belligerently claiming Rick hates Jews, support Muslims, and is gay. The ironic part being that Rick himself is Jewish and has done more than anyone else on the block in terms of enlightening the streetwear kids on Judaism through apparel and literature, and preserving Fairfax’s historic Jewish community. (The other parts about supporting Muslims is not necessarily a bad thing, last time I checked. And the Rick being gay thing, it would explain a lot, buuut I don’t think that’s so accurate either.)
You gotta read up on the JDL. Shelley’s late husband and the JDL allegedly provided Eazy-E protection from Suge Knight back in the early ’90s, as well as indirectly being involved with Death Row’s inception. I know, weird but true.
At one point, Shelley just started wrecking shop on everybody. Somehow, she got into it with Reza (The Arab Parrot). C’mon Shelley, you’ve taken on the Soviets and the FBI, but we all know this is a losing battle.
Will, Scott and Marcus, better known as Sober, Select and Nature have quite a feat on their hands: they have managed to produce ‘The Party‘ for two years now. Our hats go off to these guys, who are never not working. Their anniversary event is tonight at Zubar as always. Should be doubly as rawkus with a list of sponsors from Red Stripe to Frank 151.
They say the passing of the greats comes in three’s, but over the past ten days or so we have lost some really notable artist who have given so much to the world of film, fashion and music.
First, Sydney Pollack, the Hollywood great who has directed, produced and acted in so many things over a career dating back to the 60’s. as Oddly enough, he passed away just a day after the premier of his latest work on the HBO special ‘Recount‘.
Then news spread that Algerian born Yves Henri Donat Mathieu Saint Laurent, better known because of his label YSL, passed after a fight with cancer. A truly amazing designer, who joined the Dior fashion house at 17 and by 21 was the creative director after the sudden passing of founder Christian Dior, he is credited with many firsts such as:
fashion trends such as the beatnik look, safari jackets for men and women, tight pants and tall, thigh-high boots, including the creation of arguably the most famous classic tuxedo suit for women in 1966, Le Smoking suit. He also started mainstreaming the idea of wearing silhouettes from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. He was the first, in 1966, to popularize ready-to-wear in an attempt to democratize fashion, with Rive Gauche and the boutique of the same name.[5] He was also the first designer to use black models in his runway shows.
Then, just one day after the passing of Yves, we got news that legendary blues guitarist Bo Diddley was gone as well. The man has too many credits to his name, having worked with anyone from The Clash, to The Stones, to The Greatful Dead. The man made hit’s of songs that had NO chord changes! What else do you need to know?
This animated bit put together by Takashi Murakami (you may remember THIS post about his event at the Brooklyn Museum) featuring some of his characters as part of an ongoing collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Not really into the anime, but there are some great visuals going on here.
How do you go from that to playing Carlton on Fresh Prince? Apparently, some people have tried calling the number and have ordered some remaining pieces of the set…a true collector’s item.
This Thursday, April 24th, Centre will be co-hosting Quick’s Big Thing Concert at Palladium Ballroom. The free concert and awards show is intended to showcase local music. 10 awards ranging from ‘Big Group’ to ‘Next Big Thing’ to ‘Big Collaboration’ are up for grabs and there are a lot of familiar names from the Dallas scene listed. Among them is the likes of our friends from The Party, PPT (who’s newly released album, Denglish, is pure heat!!!), Odis, Ghosthustler, Kieth P, Prince William, Black Tie Dynasty and more…
Among others attending and playing will be Headkrack, Gordon Kieth and a headline performance by The Polyphonic Spree.
We are a little late reporting on this one, but saw it a while back and figured it was worth a post. The street vendor booth set-up is genius! Also, can you spot the celebrity fan taking a picture of Kanye in the last picture after the jump?
The Lemur is a top of the range control surface for audio and media applications, that breaks from the prior art on several grounds. Its major innovation consists in its brilliant modular graphic interface concept and its exclusive multitouch sensor technology. The continiously growing palette of configurable graphic objects enables you to design made-to-measure interfaces. This endows the Lemur with the unique and protocol independant capacity to adapt its behavior according to the application you are controlling: sequencers, modular synthesizers, virtual instruments, VJ software, 3D animation tools and light control.
Understand much of that? Neither did we, but just watch the videos below and were sure you’ll be intrigued (and want one NOW!)
And, you can check it out in ‘action’ with this bootleg video of Kanye and Daft Punk’s Grammy performance. Catch a glimpse when the pyramid opens at about 2:45 in this video:
Somewhat interesting video interview (not much depth though). There are some cool pieces in the ‘Blason’ collection, but with the creative forces at the disposal of both Pharrell and L.V.M.H., you think there would be a little more substance
We’re all about the intersection of music and video. Someone told me there used to be a channel devoted to the same thing but I just don’t buy it.
Or so says the ‘About’ section of the Shots Ring Out website. Recently, Brian (fully 1/3 of the Shot’s family), came through the shop and gave us a heads up on the site. Based out of LA, the team, well, perhaps it’s best in their own words:
Shots Ring Out (SRO) is a music video blog. Music videos are an art form that we would like to celebrate and promote. Obtaining music videos, however, can be tricky. With some exception, you can’t really go ‘buy’ music videos to the same effect as you can with songs. We help people obtain music videos and discover great new artists. By this, we mean great bands and great filmmakers.
Believing music videos to be an art form in and of themselves, we try to showcase those who are pushing the medium. We always let you know the director of every video we showcase. This is not a video ‘dump’. All videos are hand-picked by us based on the fact that we feel it merits attention. This is a place to discover and discuss great, new bands and up-and-coming directors. It’s also a place to check out some classic works.
If you love music videos as much as we do (can you tell?), then you’ll appreciate their Monthly Mix and Video Classics sections. And just for good measure here is a video of Dallas native Erykah Badu’s new single ‘Honey’.
You can check out their opinion on the piece HERE.
So from the looks of things, it seems that Justice is gonna go ahead and stick with the SO-ME crew for their videos. And why not? Their last collaboration put them right at the #9 spot on last year’s best of list. Color me interested to see how long each can keep this up and where they take their art together. The whole electronica scene comes with a different set of rules anyways when it comes to videos, as we’ve seen with Daft Punk, R2DJ, Simian Mobile Disco, and of course Justice.
In this installment, we find that Justice and SO-ME have each taken their particular brand of art/idea and interlocked with motion design pros Machine Molle forming a Voltron-like super robot who brings to us another campy yet completely clever piece. For those of you who don’t know, Machine Molle have recently had their hands in the Wolfmother “Woman” video and the ill-timed iPod-esque-yet-still-fantastic shot for Kasabian’s “Shoot The Runner“.
We’ve read complaints (guess where) about the whole concept of the video, but within the realm of the whole Ed Banger Records visual style, this seems to fit, so suck it haters. Maybe it’s because we’re kids of the 80’s or the song in general that we’ve grown an affinity towards the video. Either way their creations and homages to production logos of yore, like CBS/FOX, HBO, and Cannell to name a few1, hit us on our good side, thus we lay our stamp of approval on this work.
We have no idea where this came from, but it’s a solid gold semi-oldie. Be sure to check out the guy on sax at 3:07 - no doubt he took liberal use of Clarence “The Big Man” Clemons’ moves. Marketing genius from the boys in LA! Was this the straw that broke the camels (rams?) back and sent the team packing to St. Louis after 1994?
“I like to ram it, as you can see. Nobody likes rammin’ it more than me!”
I am always weary of calling an artist ‘new’ because generally they have been honing their craft for years before they ever break into the mainstream conscious. Recently, after listening to quite a bit of Mark Ronson I noticed he was working with a vocalist that went by the name of Wale. Given that Ronson is generally a good indicator of emerging talent, I searched around a bit and found some of his recordings. Blown away. This guy has some serious skills and though he is haggard with comparisons to Lupe Fiasco and Kanye, he really stands out in my eyes.
After nabbing the URB cover alonside Justice touting his remix of D.A.N.C.E., Wale is in a sprint to breath some fresh air into the rap game. While the single Nike Boots made some headlines as iTunes single of the week, it really doesn’t do Wale justice. Instead go download his mix-tape he put together with Nick Catchdubs, who co-founded Fools Gold Records with A-Trak. Now if he isn’t in the right company then I dont know who is. Anyway, you owe it to yourself to download his mixtape…come on, it’s free:
Click Above to Download ‘100 Miles and Running’ for Free
British R&B sensation hooks up with Kanye on a Will.i.am produced track. You know it’s gonna be catchy. Song of Spring? Is anyone else getting a Daft Punk crunchy guitar in the background?
