Grammys Follow-up

[For your weekend entertainment, a live, un-plugged version of Rehab by mutiple grammy award wining singer|composer|artist Amy Winehouse]

Music + Politics

[With thanks to HP in DC and VMcN in San Francisco, below a 'response' to the blazing hot Obama video "Yes We Can" — over 8,000,000 views — also included for context.]



Yes We Can




The 'Response'

Baltic Art Centre Exhibitions

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays
Gateshead UK

Barry McGee
21 January - 27 April 2008
They Don’t Make This Anymore

Barry McGee’s first major UK solo exhibition includes a selection of existing and new works in an installation created specifically for BALTIC’s Level 2 gallery. Rooted in the spontaneity and immediacy of graffiti culture, McGee’s direct approach considers both the melancholy and humour of life. Disrupting ideas of property, surveillance and control, his uncontained practice incorporates damaged surfaces, flash movies and hundreds of ‘tape’ paintings to question the privatisation of public space.


CUTUP COLLECTIVE
From 29 January

CutUp are an anonymous group of artists whose practice incorporates collage, film and installation. They focus largely on the creative potential of the city as a site and inspiration for interventionist art and disruption. At BALTIC, they will create an installation in The Street using billboards, light boxes and reassembled bus shelter advertising posters. The exhibition alludes to the city's role in choreographing movements - both of the individual and the crowd amidst scenes of protest, celebration and modern spectacle.

[images from Baltic Web site.]

Cajun Music at the Grammies

[with thanks to VMcN in San Francisco for the tip: "This year, there's a new category at the Grammys: Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album. A young band from Louisiana called The Pine Leaf Boys received a nomination for its second album, Blues de Musicien."]



"En provenance de Lafayette en Louisiane, les cinq jeunes poly instrumentists de Pine Leaf Boys bousculent avec un bonheur communicatif la musique Cajun et Créole."



YouTube video. Caption: "Pine Leaf Boys at the Philadelphia Folk Fest in 2007. This is the first 10 minutes of the concert."

listen to February 7, 2008 NPR Morning Edition feature]

[graphic from Pine Leaf Boys Web site.]

A Social Studies Initiative

Josh Greene:
Some Parts Might Be Greater Than the Whole

A Social Studies Initiative

Arizona State University Art Museum

February 18 through May 18, 2008

"As Greene continues to engage the community, you might enter the Museum to find one of the following occurring, which are current thoughts in the mind of the artist:

* The artist available as an actor in artists’ videos and other student/amateur productions.
* A crew of legally hired day laborers creating, writing, acting, and producing a television series.
* A pancake breakfast.
* A telemarketing operation with lots of rows of desks with telephones and telephone books on each desk.
* A basketball hoop and a challenge to people for games of "H-O-R-S-E".
* A chain gang doing some sort of work, maybe non-physical labor.
* The artist helping people re-enact moments from their childhood."

more

[image from ASU Art Museum Web site]

Sid Vicious dead at the age of 21.

February 2, 1979

Sid Vicious dies from drugs overdose
"Sex Pistols bass player Sid Vicious has died of a heroin overdose in New York.

His mother, Anne Beverley, found him dead in bed with his sleeping girlfriend in an apartment in Greenwich Village this morning."

more

Exene Cervenka dob February 1, 1956

[We highlight Excene Cervenka, born Christine Cervenka, of the legendary L.A. punk band "X" and "The Knitters" on the occasion of her fifty-second birthday with a vintage performance of "White Girl" from their second album "Wild Gift" in 1981. X was central to an extraordinary, creatively rich 'local' music scene in Los Angeles in the early eighties that included The Blasters, The Suburban Lawns, Los Lobos, and Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs.]