Twittering Machines

 world record tote

For the fashion-forward vinyl lover, Acton Treadway of LA brings you the World Record Tote to tote up to 40 records.  The $175 price tag ensures that exclusive air and an empty bag for a while. I would have passed this company by without a mention except I also saw this:

barker belt

“A specially designed buckle allows you to crack open a cold one in a pinch. The buckle comes away from the 1.75″ belt with a snap release.”

Acton of LA are obviously geniuses.

Albert York passed away this past October and I was thinking about him this morning. I was introduced to his paintings by a college friend, Matthew, who collected his work mainly for his parents. The fascinating thing to me, beyond his small and introspective paintings, was his absence. York showed at Davis & Langdale Gallery for his entire career (1963 – 2009) and he rarely showed up at the gallery (and no one from the gallery had ever been to his studio). Instead, his paintings would show up all by themselves in the mail for his bi-annual exhibits.

One year, York sent along less work than usual. When the gallery called to see if anything was wrong, York explained he had run short on cash so spent some time painting houses with a friend. It’s relevant to point out that York was highly ‘collected’ and Davis & Langdale is a first-rate NY Gallery. Meaning, he easily could have just asked them for an advance, something most artists in his position take advantage of and more often than not abuse. I heard another story with a similar outcome, less paintings, and the explanation this time was his favorite cow had died.

I always had a soft spot for Mr. York’s paintings. You can look into them forever and never stop seeing something else, despite their small and deceptively simple appearance. They also do not photograph, York hated having his picture taken too, very much like another favorite Albert, Pinkham Ryder. And I always got a warm feeling knowing he was out there in eastern Long Island painting away. Or not.

From his Obit in NY Times:  Robert Kulicke [who York worked for before he became a full time painter and was responsible for his initial intro to Davis & Langdale] offered an explanation in the New Yorker piece: ” What Al doesn’t understand is that in art you never hit what you’re aiming at, but the difference may not be downward.”

Old Rare New: The Independent Record Shop
Emma Pettit

The book we want.

“Emma Pettit, formerly of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, has travelled across the UK and America into these eclectic spaces of musical exchange, interviewing record shop owners, collectors and musicians to provide a rich account of the increasingly rare independent record shop.”

Includes 160 b/w and colour illustrations. $20.42 at Amazon

Arkitip Magazine Subscription

Arkitip Magazine comes out 4 times a year and costs $95/year. I know. Each issue features one artist/collaborator and some sort of artwork. Past collabs included Shepard Fairey,  Peter Saville (pictured of Joy Division LP cover fame), Tommy Guerrero, KAWS and many more.

Workers Work Shirt, One Pocket
Manufactured and Sold by K&T H MFG Co.

Japanese obsessiveness fixated on generic vintage American work clothes = exacting and beautiful wearable reproductions. $170 delivered. I know.

Nurse With Wound
Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella

2009 reissue limited edition of 250 boxed double LPs includes fine art print of the front sleeve signed by Steven Stapleton. Whip it good.

Maldoror
Comte de Lautreamont

And you should read the novel that the NWW LP title is based on. One of the most wicked books around. The surrealists wouldn’t have been nearly as surreal without it.

No 8 Opinel Knife

Everyone needs one. $9.00

The Jazz Loft Project

“It isn’t necessary to imagine too much of what happened inside 821 Sixth Avenue from 1957 to 1965. Smith documented the goings-on with more than one thousand rolls of film (roughly forty thousand exposures), both inside the building and through his fourth-floor window. He also wired the building from the sidewalk to the top (fifth) floor and made 1,740 reels of audio recordings.”

Another remarkable obsession captured. $24 at Amazon.

An independent music explorer

Tom Waits
Orphans

Limited Edition deluxe 7 LP box set + 94 page booklet. Over 30 new songs, covers, “to pieces recorded in the garage with his kids”. $118 at Amazon

The Red Book
C.G. Jung

Jung’s ” confrontation with the unconscious” which he withheld from publishing during his lifetime because he thought people would think he was crazy.  Includes over 200 color illustrations (fucking beautiful ones to boot!) by Jung.

Available at Amazon for $114.07

a vintage accordion or farfisa pianorgan

Come on, you know you’ll be happier with one of these in your life.

An etching by Lucian Freud. (I can dream can’t I?)

a mechanical Victrola so you can listen to 78s during thunder storms

A Forced Exposure gift certificate
for 1 million dollars

A Mill. $450,000 (negotiable)

The perfect gift or some evil, dangerous hipster poser plot to destroy the planet? USB flash drive packaged/disguised as  cassette tape. 128 MB = $20 from SUCK UK. Available at Turntable Lab.

Or you could just roll your own and get 4 GB for $18 at Amazon.

Carl Sagan
A Glorious Dawn

Carl Sagan (rapping), Stephen Hawking (rapping), John Boswell (composing and arranging), Auto-Tune (auto-tuning), YouTube (viraling), Jack White and his Third Man Records team up to bring you this 7″ spaced-out everyman’s slice of the cosmos. In the b-side sits an etching of the Voyager Golden Record. Woa.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe

Or

A still more glorious dawn awaits

if we don’t destoy ourselves

Utopia beer from the Boston Beer Co. (aka Sam Adams) is 27% ABV and $150 a bottle

But what’s so special (and extra-especially expensive for beer) ? Every bottle of Utopia is a blend of four different varieties of the very finest Bavarian hops — Saaz, Spalt Spalter, Hallertau Mittelfruh and Tettnang Tettnanger — along with several different types of malt and a strain of yeast normally reserved for the production of champagne which is then aged in Buffalo Trace Distillery whiskey barrels and finished in Spanish sherry casks as well as muscatel and port casks from Portugal. The whole process can take  “anywhere up to 12 years”.

Julie Bradford, editor of All About Beer Magazine says “It is a delicious, complex, balanced beverage, meant to be sipped and savored.”

Sipped and savored? Doesn’t sound like beer to me. Give me a hundred plus cans of Dale’s and I’ll meet you in utopia. Again and again.

todays trip to the local church thrift shop
total = $3.00