Our friends over at Drifter Sthlm just sent us a few copies of Volume #1 of their Fanzine! Its limited to only 50 copies world wide, and we received 5!

Including artwork from our very own Mike Jones, these are sure to go fast!

Only $8! In store only! Child’s Portion!

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

So I know I’m not pictured here. In my underwear. And I know that these are not photos of guns, knives, Guitar Hero controllers, and other things you may expect to see in photos (at least if you’ve been a Bloglin reader for a while).

But, well, this is the kind of thing I take photos of. I am addicted to collecting photos. And I am addicted to thinking about collecting copies of The Catcher in the Rye. So I have started my own little hybrid collection: Photos AND Actual Copies of The Catcher in the Rye.

I have been doing this for 2 or 3 years, and in fact, I had a great time looking for copies of this book in Japan. I found 3. It is officially universal.

More than anything else, this book taught me that it’s ok to type how you talk. I know that’s a bit of a ‘hiding in plain sight’ concept, but if you read your average email out loud, you realize that it sounds pretty square. Catcher showed me that people communicate through grammar and tone, and, well, I am forever grateful.

I have gotten several emails so far (from people who know of my little collection-within-a-collection) and I’ve been happy to tell them that I’m not sad at all for Mr. Salinger. I’ve never taken the time to really try and dive-deep into his mythos; I’ve always been content to let him stay mysterious in my mind. Seems like he wanted his peace more than anything, and I’m bittersweetly happy for him that he (hopefully) has it now.

And yes, I concur with Mars, Oh Mars: If you can hear us—be you on high or down low—please buy a guy a drink. He earned it.

RIP

Today sucks. Two massive institutions have passed on. The elusive, enigmatic author JD Salinger has died of natural causes in his Cornish, NH home. Salinger’s last work was published in 1965 and he hasn’t given an interview since 1980. I mean, he could have really died in the 80s for all we know.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” Catcher in the Rye – opening line.

News also came in today that leftist academic Howard Zinn has died. When I was in college as a history major, Zinn was a god. His seminal tome “A People’s History of the United States” changed how Americans look at their past and took the spotlight off the founding fathers and put it on the laborers, feminist activists, and the Native Americans; the real backbone of the nation.

“Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

Someone in the afterlife buy these cats a drink.

Some say Planet X is the twelfth planet in our solar system, and a second renaissance of consciousness will overcome humanity when it returns to our orbit. What else is out there? In this new Bloglin segment, we’ll delve into the most provocative theories and findings from the new age. Don’t call them conspiracies…and keep this between us. We don’t want to get tracked down by the New World Order!

Walter Cronkite’s consultant during NASA’s Apollo program and alien archaeologist Richard C. Hoagland, proposes the existence of a omnipotent power source outside of this dimension which, if harnessed, facilitates inter-dimensional travel, warp drive, gravity control, and even an infinite energy supply on Earth. The key to mastering these hyperdimensional physics lies in the secrets of the Tetrahedron.

The hyperdimensional physics theory relies heavily on the work of James Clerk Maxwell a physics professor whom Einstein lauded as the most important sceintist working in the field since Isaac Newton. Discovering the theory of electromagnetism, Maxwell also believed in the presence of up to 26 dimensions in existence of reality. Maxwell posited that if there was an energy traveling through these higher spatial dimensions, that we could see the energy coming out in the dimension in which we perceive to exist in right now by using tetrahedral geometry. The science community, specifically a fellow named Oliver Heaviside removed these spiritual and supernatural based theories and revised them into the Maxwell Equations studied today.

Stay with me…

Master mathematician HSM Coxeter, explains how tetrahedral geometry is critical in understanding Maxwell’s dimensional energy transference.

For any system: If you have visible up wellings of energy coming through from other dimensions, you’re also going to have energy from this dimension is going to go out, and that in welling point will be hexagonal

Our lead image today is an actual photograph of Saturn’s north pole from the Cassini probe. It’s an image from NASA so that’s as hi-rez as we’re gonna get (sorry Crook). You will notice the Hexagonal shape swirling in spiral right at the pole’s center. Mainstream science claims this to be nothing but a phenomena in the planet’s weather pattern, however Hoagland claims other wise. Here’s an interview on the matter:

Note that the hexagon shape derives from the Tetrahedral Star (double Tetrahedrons) seen in this diagram:

Perhaps you can better visualize it with this:

Knowing that the Star of David originated as the symbol of Saturn, do you think the hexagonal formation on the planet is just a weather pattern? Proceeding with the cloud formations stance, how could the Ancients have even seen it in order to represent it in their iconography?

According to Tetrahedral Star geometry, when placed in a circle (or rotating planet), the axis points (aside from the ones planted at the poles) touch at 19.5 (19.47 rounded up) degrees above and below the equator. This measurement of 19.5 degrees is like the Rosetta Stone to Hoagland’s research.

Now, let’s move forward…

Here is the controversial City of Cydonia on Mars. It’s the area where the “Face on Mars” was photographed. Hoagland asserts that this whole region houses ancient martian ruins of lost alien civilization. Hoaglund’s hypothesis is astoundingly supported by a certain measurement which repeatedly shows up when examining the area…19.5 degrees. In fact, all of the geometry of the ruins of Cydonia line up into a Tetrahedral Star.

Was Cydonia a city devoted to this higher dimensional power source? Why does 19.5 degrees repeat throughout the geometry? Is there a hyperdimensional “Message Of Cydonia?” Is there more to Mars than we are being told? Have the probes sent to Mars really just disappeared?

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Mikhail’s been screaming at me to write more for the Bloglin but I haven’t really left the house in the past ten days so I have to look around my apartment for content. Last time I wrote about my favorite Star Wars things. This time I’m talking about the favorite records in my collection. These aren’t my favorite albums of all time but they are records that are special, uncommon or funny. I’m calling this column, “Crap I Own: A Few of My Favorite Things.” And well here they are.

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10) V/A – My Pussy Belongs To Daddy

It’s important that all girls know who their pussy belongs to. Some might think that it belongs to them but nope, it belongs to daddy. This glassy eyed bovine cat enthusiast on the cover knows it, do you? Look at the cover girl’s walleyed stare. She looks like she’s on muscle relaxers or lightly mentally retarded. This is the photo they got of her where her eyes were open and she wasn’t drooling or trying to eat the cat. It’s funny to think that both the cat and girl on this album cover are dead now.

This is a novelty record of double entendre songs. Check out these titles. I especially like the song about Tony’s hot nuts.

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9) Georges Montalba – Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion

This record was released several times under different titles and with varying cover art. Georges Montalba was a common pseudonym used by organists, but on Fantasy in Pipe Organ and Percussion it’s being used by Anton Szandor LaVey, the late and dearly missed leader of the Church of Satan. You can even read an article full of factual errors about this at the Village Voice website.

The music is frantic and then serene. Haunting and haunted at the same time. It mostly features the pipe organ with some skeleton dance xylophones and large and ancient sounding timpani drums. Crashes of noise give way to music that starts out melodic before growing and growing until it is pure tribal rhythm. You listen to this record and think, “God, the path of the virtuous is dull. I want to live in Anton Lavey’s world of false identies, orgies and pranks.” Evil was never so appealing or beautiful as it is on this record. If you saw Crispin Glover’s movie “What Is It?” you heard Lavey’s music over the closing credits. This isn’t a novelty record and this isn’t a John Wayne Gacey painting. This is one of the great uncelebrated albums.

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8) The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majesties Request

This is my favorite Rolling Stones album by far. Most of their stuff from before the eighties is either life changing or entertaining but this…This…This is something else altogether. That title and cover alone are amazing. This is an original pressing with the lenticular cover art that looks three dimensional, Mick and Kieth and their pals dressed as wizards in a kingdom on another planet. Musically this is the most experimental and weirdest that the Stones ever got and a lot of people really hate this thing. This album and Frank Zappa seem to divide rock nerds a lot. I like both. She’s a Rainbow is beautiful. In Another Land is a weird one that I DJ more than any other Stones song.

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7) Village People – Renaissace

This is another one of those records that every record store clerk owns or has owned at some point. It’s the Village People’s punk album. That’s why they are looking so New Wave on the cover. The entire album sucks except for the final song, “Food Fight” which is a triumph of pop joy. It starts with someone yelling “Food Figghhhhhhhhhht!!!” and then a poppy riff about starting a food fight happens. According to Wikipedia a lot of folks consider this to be the worst album cover of all time.

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6) Livefastdie - Got Nitedo 7″

I treasure all of my Livefastdie records but this one was especially neat since they hand cut and colored these little pieces of paper to look like NES cartridge sleeves and then slipped them in with the cover art. These guys were heralds of what was to come and they never made a bad song. “Got Nitedo” is a song about how Camero’s friend came into school on Monday with his arm in a sling because he’d spent the entire weekend playing Kid Icarus nonstop and gave himself tendinitis.

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(more…)

Los Campesinos! - Romance Is Boring (2010) [Arts & Crafts] // Grade: C+

Listening to a Los Campesinos! album is like forgetting to take your Ritalin. Everything moves lightning fast, you’re excited but unable to focus and an hour feels as tiring as a day. The Wales-based indie pop seven-piece gets even more erratic on Romance Is Boring, their fourth release and second proper album, produced by John Goodmanson (who’s worked with everyone from Blondie to Sleater-Kinney to Wu-Tang) and featuring guest spots from Jherek Bischoff (Dead Science), Zach Pennington (Parenthetical Girls) and Mr. Xiu Xiu himself, Jamie Stewart.

Most known for the lighthearted “You! Me! Dancing!” off 2008′s Hold On Now, Youngster… Los Campesinos! tread upon surprisingly more serious themes with Romance Is Boring. “The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future” is the closest to a ballad you’ll ever get out of Los Campesinos! and with it’s themes of love and loss, it’s the right setting for a welcomed slower pace. Romance is Boring‘s closing track “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State” too visits a deviation from Los Campesinos! normal rapid-fire vocals and frenzied guitar. When they slow down enough for you to process their lyrics, it finally hits you that Los Campesinos! are actually talented songwriters.

A few stylistic experiments aside, Los Campesinos! will always return shotgun vocals and slap-dash compositions. I can never get past how much lead vocalist Gareth sounds like Matt Johnson of Matt & Kim. Just look to the album’s title track, “Romance is Boring” and you’ll hear what I mean. But with tighter compositions and far less hands in the mix, I’d much rather just listen to Matt & Kim.

Like any other Los Campesinos! album, Romance is Boring is a base of haphazard sloppiness iced with a layer of totally infectious. By the album’s close, my head hurts and I’m tired from trying to keep up, but I can’t help but smile at this band that’s so hard to hate.

Styles P – Good Times

Jay-Z – Money, Cash, Hoes

Busta Rhymes – Touch It

Swizz Beatz – Guilty

DMX – Ruff Ryders’ Anthem

I don’t know about you but I love MS Paint graphics/paintings/artwork/whatever the fuck you want to call them or think of them as. There’s something really compelling about Using MS paint and it’s rudimentary capabilities in try to express a visual concept. From the rigid and meticulous attention to detailed free handed ones, through to the quick and sloppy gestural drawings and even the ones utilizing MS Paints trace feature, I love them all!

The other thing I love (which should be no surprise) is music, so you can imagine that I was like a kid in a candy store upon discovering that Public Collectors has devoted a whole little little section to displaying and trying to catalog all instances of MS Paint renditions of classic, cult and obscure album cover artwork.

The collection originally started as Forum activity in 2007 on a few Stoner & Doom metal forums has grown into a 300+ strong collection of album covers that range from all sorts of Metal, Alternative, Classic Rock, Punk, Krautrock, Hip Hop to you name it! There’s probably at least one album cover representing any over-arching genre of music.

The collection is maintained by Marc Fischer and it has since moved to a Flickr account that’s a real time killer to go through. Hell I had a hard time just settling on the five images I was going to use for this post because I loved them all!

The collection is open to anyone to submit their own MS Painted album covers. The only rule is that they need to be at least 600 pixels or less per side. Submissions can be emailed here. If you think your MS Paint chops are up to snuff and you have oh about 5 or 10 minutes to spare then fill some of the gaps within this mighty and rad collection.

Thanks to Sur Tes Tripes for putting this on our radar.

Mnemic - Sons of the System (2010) [Nuclear Blast] // Grade: F

Nu Metal tech doom thrash?  Sounds like these dudes have been listening to the new Exodus album and crabcore and fucking late-era Throwdown.  What the fuck?  Harmonizing, vocal effect, “spin kick” parts?  This shit is fucking Garbage.  Nothing new or interesting here.  Basically, an amalgam of shit that should have been aborted and left in the fucking dumpster for the nosy neighbor to find.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS FUCKING CRAP UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

So, once again, that is:

HAM
STEAK
Bumfucked Hillbilly
Backwoods Gear
By
Yellow Corn

That’s no t-shirt, friend. A bona-fide leather. Just out of frame to the left are Donald Duck and Chip ‘n’ Dale doing some Miami Sound Machine shit with a woman dressed as a slightly dubious chinese prostitute.

Oh, yeah. I guess I should mention, I snapped this doozy while at Tokyo Disneyland last week. It was epic. Did you know that “Light Speeeeeed!” in Japanese is “Light-o Speeeeeeeeeeeed!!!!!”? Well, it is. Again: epic.

Got some more street art photos to share, as well as—hopefully—a rundown of awesome loot I tracked down while there. Until then, hang your head in shame because your leather jacket doesn’t make enough of a statement.