Existentialism and the Expanding of the Universe


Recent Headline:
Chimps Beat College Students at Guitar Hero III:
Yes it's true. Not only did they nail the licks on more critical song selection, they seem to be outscoring humans on certain memory tests as well. A recent archeological find appears to depict ancient chimps gathered around a crude fondue, and next March for the first time a chimp will compete in the New York Time's crossword puzzle tournament.
The unfinished watercolor of Jimi Hendrix (12"x8") is from a few years ago, and was painted with thin washes of color. Much in the way an oil painting would be laid in with glazes of paint. In either medium the drawback is the amount of time necessary to follow a peice through. Though Jimi deserves better than his uncompleted status.
In light of the last, recent distraction from fresh Press postings we try to offer our 2007 Albums of the Year. Though it must first be admitted that we did not get around to the new Sigur Ros, Animal Collective, Neil Young... but we will.

2007 Albums of the Year:

Honorable Mention: King Crimson: The Collectable King Crimson Vol. 2: Belew's first live gig as Discipline in Bath, England (1981), drawn from a restored cassette recording. Also a Philadelphia gig from July 30th 1982. Excellent quality, great liner notes, we all should be drinking the Robert Fripp cool aid.
5. Explosions In The Sky: All Of a Sudden I Miss Everyone However you brand this type of avant-instrumental rock, this outfit has taken the helm. Everything I've ever heard from them is tight and original. It all comes down to if you got the palette.
4. Adrian Belew: Side 4 Lucky enough to see this tour at B.B. King's Time'S Square Aug. 8th, 2006, I can tell you that this is the 2nd best thing. Julie, and Eric Slick make up his Power Trio, and they rip through the first three sides, hit some classic Belew, and visit the Crimso years as well. I feel like ordering the grouper fingers, and an Amstel every time I listen to it.
3. Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank The addition of Johnny Marr to Modest Mouse was like adding triple sec to your favorite boozy concoction with a hint of fruit. It smoothes it out. No matter what Isaac Brock puts out, it's something to be considered, and here he has a few tunes that to me are amoung his best. Mixed within another smattering of what should be America's most popular band.
2. Iron and Wine: The Shepard's Dog Listening to this album is the equivilant of spending a late evening amoungst good friends. The dust blown off contemplative moments, raucous times, and the black bear claw that took grandma's dog. If the musical element wasn't intriguing enough, the enclosed lyric poster will bring it on home. An essential contemporary rock album.
1. Robert Wyatt: Comicopera: Whatever may come out between now and Jan. 1st could not top this album as the most important work of the year. Though I guess if I had a machine that could travel through time and still write this column, I would say that every time Robert Wyatt released an album. Though the present release puts Garcia Lorca to music, gets some Enotronic treatment, got some Paul Weller, Phil Manzanera, and even Dave Sinclair playing piano on a track. I dont want to give it all away, as you should make it a point to put this in your collection. No matter who you are.
Happy Holidays.

The Desire of the Grant Street Pragamatists

As the blogosphere withers, and it's cambium is drained of all cultural ambition, the Press ambles on... though with a slightly timorous gait. Mainstream society has found, and clung to the video-stream. As we are true disciples of the disposable medium, let us not forget the pod-cast. The Grant St. omnibus will remain flotsam for the ages, or maybe just the ham & eggs set. Time will tell. Art does not make for good digital media, though digital media makes for fine art. Have you washed your mouse lately?

The sketch (3"x3") was completed in early '04, and was a trial in getting to know my new rapid-o-graph pen. It requires some minimal upkeep, but a smart investment for anybody who enjoys a fine writing/ drawing instument. The drawing was to become part of a larger project that never came to fruitition.

Current Rotation:

1. Iron and Wine: The Shepard's Dog- A peice of haunting Americana roots influenced folk rock. This album has so many subtle textures it will fill your ear with something new every listen, lyricture included.

2. Explosions In The Sky- all of a sudden I miss everyone- Chaos theory with a setting of shear eloquence. A very relevant, exciting band.

3. John Cale: Circus Live- This is not "Songs for the Dying", this is Cale with some crack musicians tearing it up, and deconstructing some Velvet's material along the way as well.

4. Eno: Another Green World- 1975 masterwork, with Robert Fripp, John Cale, Phil Collins, and many others.

5. The Bears: Eureka!- For $3.00 more you can have the whole band autugraph for you through Adrian Belew's webpage. Either way it should be on your shelf, or better yet, in your player.

6. Compounds + Elements: An Introduction to All Saints Records- Found recently in Best Buy for $2.99, (sticker on cover said File Under Eno), this compilation featuring Brian Eno, and even his brother Roger, along with other great outfits makes for some of the best morning listening you will find.

The Is/ Ought Problem and other Fantastic Tales of Naturalistic Fallacy

Considering the Dualism of art and music or for that matter the theory of the "Mozart Effect", should music have an influence on art? What is the personal value to achieving pure non-verbal creative expression? I don't know, but we have our best people on it.

The pen & ink (7"x4") was drawn this evening and was laid upon the acidic title page of Rudolf Binding's "Angelucia", a small hardcover book rescued from salvage. Grant Street Press, Driven Ephemera. Check your nearest rubbish pail.

Current Rotation:

1. 801 Live: Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno, Bill McCormick & co., rip out a super tight set circa 1976. A "Third Uncle" that may go down in the top 100 songs ever.

2. Outloud Dreamer/ Drink the Sky: Sarah Perrotta billowed over intricate layers of texture. Though they disbanded in 2003, the Sarah Perrotta Band releases an album this Spring featuring Tony Levin and Garth Hudson.

3. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists/ Living with the Living: Joe Jackson references aside, if you were lucky enough to cop the bonus disc with the original cd, it makes for one of the freshest double albums in some time. This trio runs the gambit.

4. Lou Reed/ Set the Twilight Reeling: Already a big fan of Reed's 90's output, this has become my new favorite Lou Reed album. Tony Thunder Smith on drums, Fernando Saunders on some great fretless bass, the liner notes say play it loud. But first grab yourself a chocolate egg cream.

5. Ben Harper/ The Will to Live: Some vintage '97, an album that should frequent any rotation.

Where Somebody Winks You an Eye, One Flips You the Finger

Don your powdered wigs as we continually lower the thresh hold for the human race. In order is the proverbial 2 word review,: shit sandwich. Water, our most precious resource continues to die around us, so let us together produce garbage. Or maybe enjoy a Yangtze River carp spring roll with quails egg and uni. We maintain faith that science, art, progressive thought, and other forms of reason will prevail in these uncertain times.

The above is a sketchbook study in designer's goache of the Vermeer masterpiece, (5"x4" 140lb. hot pressed paper- 04.21.05). Exploring the goache in a semi-absract expressionist interpretation of the subject, a watercolor technique I was presently investigating. The interesting aspect of light, chiaroscuro, through tea stainded eyes.

Album in Review:

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Evan Sank

I rarely go into a new Modest Mouse album in company, as to me it is sancosanct. A moment to contemplate Isaac Brock's lyrecture and musical direction, and to participate in that particular isolationist Fung Shui. And If you consider the 12 plus years he has been releasing music you must wonder if he is not bathed in the fountain of youth, as it is reassuring to know they are looking forward to producing yet more material. Though I must admit I miss the signature chord bending stilettoes, this new album still fulfills all your Mouse driven musical cravings, then takes it to a new watery existance. Watch your top knot.

Casting the Stream of Consciousness, and the New Grant St. Soliloquies

Words fossilize the moment they're breathed, and your armchair may be made of leather. Together we will grapple with gravity, hoping for pure water. Let our collective being yield a newfound respect for nature, and of mankind. As the current rift between the two is spelling our demise.

The untitled drawing (5"x4" graphite on Bristol: 2005), was a study from an abandoned pen & ink project I believe was to be entitled "Intelligent Design (without connotation)".

My Current Rotation:

1. The Mammals: Evolver

2. Rory Gallagher: Irish Tour

3. Tarbox Ramblers: Tarbox Ramblers

4. Joe Jackson Band: Vol. 4

5. Moxy Fruvous: Bargainville

New Enhancements in Creative Virility

How accessible is art, and does priviledge yield exposure to finer examples of influence? How does one tarry the value of creative expression, or the affect it has on modern society? Has culture become no more than hobby? Though the only legacy that will matter will be the physical condition of our planet and it's inhabitants. And of a sudden I must quote you something from my TV Guide:

The detail from untitled (14x11 oil on canvas), is yet another trial in my exploration of oil painting. Layed in with such thin applications of paint, it seemed as if I was just staining the canvas. Hopefully this depression era style will lead to more buttery experiments, for it is a whimsical medium, radiating hue.

My Current Rotation:

1. Zappa/ Mothers: Roxy & Elsewhere

2. Bob Dylan: Biograph

3. Robert Wyatt: Shleep

4. Mason Jennings: Use Your Voice

5. John Coltrane: Live at Birdland

On the Island of Reil: Topographic Tales from the Salient Seas of the Insular Cortex

Some say the Insula can be thickened with meditation, thus creating the possibilty of more euphoric musical experiences. Though the hippocampus craves sleep, or there will be no new brain celluature to be had and we lose our functional memory. (And) seeing these two practices leave us at a deficit in our listening habits, we suggest letting your stomach be your stylus, and eating your records. Every night before bed ingest a few choice tracks, an E.P., or a side, to ensure that groovy feeling. Tonight I will start it all off with some Rob Wasserman and a Pinot Noir.
"Henry Ford on his Factory Floor Listening to that Tin Whistle Whine," ( 10.31.06 18x13, graphite/ colored pencil on paper), is one of a series of self destructing works.
Once in a small stockroom, I had noticed a stack of large sheets of paper on top of a filing cabinet. I was sent away with a quantity of these 24" x 36" behemoths of uncertain origin, and they turned out as a craggy cold pressed paper, covered with some strange sizing, or sealant. They become more brittle as each day passes, but I could not resist celebrating their existance, and here at least there may just be some permanancy. "Anthropomorphic Starfish," seen in an earlier post is also from this set, and are all of a surrealist nature. I have a few sheets left if anyone is interested, if not...

Reccomended Listening:

Gentle Giant: Aquiring the Taste (1971, Polygram)
If you dig your progressive music on the fringes of the jazz influence, Enjoy the tapas.

Ornamental Organic Accents
Or lay down your weary tune.

Divergent thought? Lateral thinking? Intristic abstractions somehow subliminally representative? It's like reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while piecing together the clues to Frank Zappa's conceptual continuity. "Colloquy in Blue," (19x20 w/c, on watercolor board), was completed 2.04.07. Accompanied by the rare B-side, (goache, graphite, ink-2.06.07). A special board that I can only hope will warrant consideration, and as the b-sides are covered in the framing (left for unsuspecting consumers, or other such mammalia), it seemed only proper to display a work that also had such astrological connotation.

My Current Rotation:

1. TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain

2. Adrian Belew: Coming Attractions

3. The Gourds: dem's good beeble

4. Tony Levin: Resonator

5. Yo La Tengo: I am not Afraid of you and I will Beat your Ass

Diligence in Procrastination

I thought it was best to contribute to the blog before my privileges to this grand micro-bit of eternal digital ether were revoked. And I must apoligize to those who may occasionally happen upon this site for my utter disregsard to it's upkeep. Though it is not if the entire Grant. St. works have been silenced, slight text has been published, (quite independantly,) and more grand works of the textile, visual nature have been had. Maybe soon we'll launch to a more commercial spot as to poison your minds, and grab your almighty dolla. Until then...

My 2006 Albums of the Year:

8. Headlights: Kill Them with Kindness- All over the map in a fresh mint sort of way.

7. Alejandro Escovedo: The Boxing Mirror- Nick Cave, Ry Cooder, Lou Reed, John Cale, but mostly Escovedo.

6. Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood- Commandingly Seductive, instantly Classic.

5. King Crimson: Collectable King Crimson Vol. 1- Maybe Fripp's new marketing plan, but anyway these 2 shows from '74, showcase an ultra-tight outfit.

4. Bob Dylan: Modern Times: When you consider the bulk of contemporary music's utter fodder, how can you deny this release? The Master has spoken.

3. Built to Spill: You in Reverse: Middle age guys who appreciate intricate, interesting rock & roll song structure, an unbeatable combination.

2. Brian Eno/ David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts- An entire side of bonus material to this masterpiece!? Indeed. The expanded liner notes will change your conception of modern popular music.

1. Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards

Here's to Being Active...