Song of the Great Kataklysm

Books of Rotter, book of Rotter.

Bob Dylan Does LL Cool J (featuring Stephen Merchant)

Lou Reed: I Geek Art

Thanks Philco Brothers.

Shaq Curates an Art Exhibition

From New York mag:

"[Shaq is] curating “Size DOES Matter,” an exhibition opening February 19 at the Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea. Shaq made 66 selections for the show—which features works ranging from the ginormous (Andreas Gursky’s billboard-size photograph Madonna I) to the microscopic (a Shaq portrait by Willard Wigan)—out of over 200 images that founder Glenn Fuhrman and director Stephanie Roach showed him over dinner after a game.

How did you make your choices?
Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions of a person looking at it. It’s what you feel. I picked those things because they were beautiful. The thing about size—if it’s big or small you have to look at it. Because I’m so big you have to look at me. I think of myself as a monument. But sometimes I like to feel small.

Do you ever get time to visit museums?
I used to go a lot with my kids. Donald Trump is a great friend, and he has four or five Picassos on his plane. And that’s where I would look at them. One time, I was at a museum and tried touching a Picasso. You break it, you buy it, they said. I was told it would cost $2 million.

There is a lot of information to process here. But the thing I keep wondering is why it took me so long to embrace the Shaq Daddy. Maybe because he's Irish?

Gretchen Bleiler AT&T Commercial: "Perfect Day"

Why not "Satellite of Love"?

Camper Van Beethoven: Sponsor a Song

From techdirt:

American rock band Camper Van Beethoven is traveling to South by SouthWest this year without the support of a record label, so in order to raise funds, they're selling off the right to choose the songs that go on to their setlist for the 2 shows that they're going to play. The first 35 fans to pony up $102 get:

* A Santa Cruz Roller Derby Girl will walk/skate across the stage carrying a placard announcing your sponsorship of the song, within full view of the audience or cameras, to have the moment captured on film or video for all of eternity!

* You can have up to 4 names or one business on each placard.

Go here if you're interested in sponsoring and learning why they're doing this.

Devo Goes Corporate

Devo is back, but with a new look and plan:

Casale and Mothersbaugh only hint at the group's new look, but corporate America appears to be the primary target of its social satire.

"We're playing ball with corporate society," Casale said.

The band has re-signed with Warner Brothers Records and hired an ad agency to help shape its image, he said.

"The idea was that Devo was going to turn around their reputation for being hermetically sealed and not playing ball with society," Casale said.

Instead of being an art band targeting a niche following, Devo is now using focus groups to choose which songs to include on its next CD and what clothes to wear onstage, he said.

"We want to know what you think," Casale said. "Just like CNN says 'What do you think?' We want to know."

"There's color studies going on, different costumes being shown to people, different mixes of songs, and we're letting people kind of direct us toward a final product," he said.

The goal is for Devo to "penetrate every nook and cranny of our technologically advanced pop culture in the coming year," a recent news release said. "With an arsenal of new songs, videos, fashions, apps, toys, games, live performances and more, we will reach out to create something for everybody."

What do I think? I think it's Advanced.

"All the Animals" Now a Children's Book

I missed this:

Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming track “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” will serve as inspiration for a children’s book bearing the same name, TwentyFourBit reports. According to artist Jim Arnosky, Dylan approved the song title for use in the project, which will feature drawings inspired by Dylan’s lyrics. A CD featuring “Man Gave Names to All the Animals” will accompany the book. “From the first time I heard it, the lyrics created pictures in my mind of a land of primeval beauty,” Arnosky said in a press release. “I thought this vision would make a dream of a book, and I asked for Bob Dylan’s permission to make this dream come true. Happily, he said yes.” The song title itself references a line from Genesis 2:20, and appears on Dylan’s first Christian-influenced album Slow Train Coming, the first of three faith-based albums following Dylan’s conversion as a born again Christian.

Allowing other people to use your work (or let your work inspire other people's work in an official capacity) is Advanced. Especially in this case.

Metal Machine Music: Lou Reed Wins Again

After 35 years, Metal Machine Music is finally being understood and enjoyed (NY Times):

A real-time, chamber-music performance of an inhumanly generated composition: that was Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” as played by the Fireworks Ensemble at Miller Theater on Friday night. Mr. Reed recorded his 1975 album “Metal Machine Music” (RCA) by leaning guitars against amplifiers, cranking them up until the feedback screamed, playing melodies amid the sonic melee and layering and manipulating the results, including changing the tape speed of some parts. Then he chose four segments for 16-minute LP sides. It sounded like a riot in a shortwave radio factory: a fusillade of sustained, pulsating and scurrying electronic tones that adds up to a hyperactive drone, as consonant as the overtone series. It was proudly anticommercial and defiantly arty. It was Minimalistic process music at rock volume, an impersonal wall of sound. Now, 35 years later, it also sounds unexpectedly merry.

I'm guessing this means Mistrial will finally make sense in 2025 or so.

Faber Wants Morrissey Memoir, Posts an Open Letter

From the Guardian (don't you ever read the Guardian, Neil?):

A Faber editor has written an open letter to Morrissey pleading with the singer to bring his "much-rumoured memoir to the House of Eliot".

Lee Brackstone, editorial director at Faber, wrote that it would be "the fulfilment of my most pressing and persistent publishing dream" if Morrissey were to pick Faber as the publisher of his autobiography. The singer and former frontman of the Smiths revealed in late 2008 that he would be writing his memoirs in order to "[set] the record straight", and in November an essay from his forthcoming autobiography was published in The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in British Art, entitled "The Bleak Moor Lies".

Posting the open letter on Faber's company blog, Brackstone wrote that "forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasise that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere".

And so on. Basically, I just like the picture they ran with the story (above).