2007-06-13

if raves happened in 1984 :

New/Nu Rave started in England last year and seems to be spreading. As a former, um, raver I can say this doesn’t look at all like it did in 1994. The neon colors and haircuts are straight up 1984. Which is a fantastic mash-up in my opinion. [Via PingMag.]

2007-06-12

this is how a city supports graf :


DC (despite a long and storied history of important graf culture) has a group of gentrifiers that make their presence known at various local blogs about their hatred of graffiti. Not often do readers get so upset about a topic as much as this one.

SF (who also has a more relevant contemporary arts community, just FYI) often takes a different approach. Like the huge tag (not a mural, but a tag) by SF legend AMAZE that went up before the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair. It was commissioned by the buildings owners and covers the old Gap location. Some more at SF MetBlogs.

(Fun fact: the Gap started in the Haight as a blue jeans and record store, they thought about calling it PAD -- Pants And Discs.)

2007-06-03

Sgt Pepper explained :

Friday marked the fortieth anniversary of the Beattle’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. John Timpane of the Philly Inquirer does a very thorough job of explaining the albums importance. It reads quite scholarly. Shockingly at a daily newspaper.

Link via Social Media List and Conversation Agent, who connects the album back to the changes happening in the web sphere.

recommended reading: conversations about the end of time :

This is one that I bought years ago in a bookstore in the Rockridge District of Oakland. It sat on my bookshelf for 6 years or so.

First published in 1998 in French (the English version is from 2000, I’m not so cool that I read the French edition), Conversations About the End of Time is four interviews done Q&A style with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau. Carriere (a screenwriter) and Delumeau (a Catholic historian) were new to me and contibuted considerably to the book.

The book is fascinating, not only because each interviewee is such a big and original thinker, but because it is amazing how much the world has changed in less than 10 years. This is both an easy read (because of the conversational style) but is as completely full of ideas and information as a collection of philosophy texts. I was especially impressed with Carriere and Delumeau. Their names don’t sell books to English-speaking audiences, but each had amazing insight.

2007-06-01