Art

Legendary album art designer Storm Thorgerson, RIP
Storm Thorgerson, whose album cover artwork includes Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, has died aged 69, the band’s management has confirmed.
A childhood friend of the founding members of the band, he became their designer-in-chief, fashioning a string of eye-catching creations.
Most-famously he designed the prism spreading a spectrum of colour across The Dark Side Of The Moon.
His credits also include albums by Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel and Muse.
His family released a statement saying he died peacefully on Thursday surrounded by family and friends.
“He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003,” it said.
“He is survived by his mother Vanji, his son Bill, his wife Barbie Antonis and her two children Adam and Georgia.” More…

Video: Homeless Berkeley Hippies Attack Stanley Roberts
A pair of dreadlock-sporting vagrants in Berkeley attacked noted KRON 4 reporter (and SFist favorite) Stanley Roberts this week while he was doing a segment outside Amoeba Music on Telegraph Avenue.
The journalist, best know for his “People Behaving Badly” news segments, was preparing a report on problematic panhandlers. He soon found himself on the receiving end of some bad behavior by said mendicants. More…

In the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy I watched along with countless others as the Media frenzied Halloween coinciding "Frankenstorm" Sandy appeared to make a beeline for New York and New Jersey. Sandy brought with it an ecological wake up, with a swirling natural example of a Fibonacci sequence contained in an immense storm and delivered to the doorstep of Wall Street in New York. Sandy had more “wake-up” painted on it than the equally sad storm of Honey Boo Boo foisted on the American public during prime time people programing hours. Sandy headed quite literally for ground zero of the Wall Street/Governmental poster child for disparity replete throughout our present system and the heart of Americas Occupy movement. The sweeping northern arm of the storm was in a placement for optimal damage around New York and New Jersey. The BBC had aired the scenario in a 2009 Episode of Hot Planet and it had painted this exact scenario as a probability of Global Warming due to slight temperature rises in the Atlantic. Hot Planet could not have been more uncanny in its prediction or theory. Add to this, the screaming silence of omission in the presidential debates about the environment and global warming. Now a "monster storm" was headed dead on and like it or not debate stopped upon the fact that this was to be massive! Indeed it was massive. Its' wake is equally so on many levels. The storm hit, emergency services scrambled, store shelves vacated, generators flew from the Home Depots stores in my area as if beamed up by Scotty on the Starship Enterprise prior to an ion storm that would deplete the dilithium crystals and render warp drive inoperable. The cacophony of preparation soon met the cacophony of real-time emergency action. It stretched many services to the breaking point as well as many lives. The onslaught of the activity is almost impossible to outline in coherent form, but chaos is a word now familiar to those who bore the brunt of it. The after effects equally so in scale and ramification. In its wake Sandy left emergency response further politicized by Mayor Bloomberg's reluctance to cancel the mass of supplies headed to 40,000 marathon runners while another 40,000 were literally and figuratively left in the dark. Bloomberg is reported to have finally conceded to pleas and threats from senior staff and even the New York Marathon organizers themselves. Mayor Bloombergs marathon priority in the face of so many suffering was demonstrative Hail Mary bonehead play if there ever was one. Clearly it showed the disconnect that exists in the disparity of real lives and the uppity out of touch privileged rich and galactically misinformed and/or uncaring. After affects met with slow or no response by FEMA bureaucracy, along with other large Aid agencies, some neighborhoods completely leveled by fire, a total disaster for great swaths and a near miss for others around New York. Yes, disaster all around was an understatement. continued below---

Occupy Sandy Relief - My House is Your House is Our House

These fine folks were running around the conventions making the world safe for Vermin Supreme while foiling all kinds of nefarious plots.

Ryan Harvey is a 28 year old musician, activist, organizer who hails from the outer suburbs of Baltimore. Nursed into activism through the power of punk music by the likes of CRASS, and local Baltimore bands; Ryan was at the WTO protests in 1999, as a kid. He's been at every major convergence of the Anti-Globalization movement since, and he defines these moments as epic life changing events. He has been a committed anti-war activist and organizer since 9/11, and works closely with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, having founded CivSol the "Civilian Soldier Alliance".

trippy shit live mixed for good times

VJing this wekend at the Cosmic Campout

by Amy Bugbee

Time and time again big business takes the joy out of art for the artist and the enthusiast, it becomes a product and a commodity, SXSW is a case in point. SXSW has been around a long time, 2012 makes year 26, and certainly back when it all began it was an amazing collection of bands from punk rock to singer-songwriters, and all points in between! It's first year it attracted over 700 attendees, and many great regional bands, today it is a music festival, a film festival and an interactive conference, which is now the largest segment of the 10 day barrage on the city of Austin, growing larger than the music festival that bore it. 

Not that Austin is complaining, even as the "Live Music Capital of America" it is the largest event the city has, and last year alone it raised some $167 million in revenues for local restaurants, hotels, and other businesses. It is now visited by nearly 30,000 attendees, vendors, panelists and performers. It is a sacred cow for the city of Austin.

I have been lucky enough to see SXSW from a few different angles, of course I have never been an official attendee - I mean who has $1000 to spend on a badge? Not me, but apparently thousands of others do, yes. Most of the official festivities happen downtown at the convention center and along 6th street, where thousands of music and media industry types do what most people do at conventions, they "network", and then get wasted and act like fools.