Sussudio

Last night we did some networking at North Bowl. More photos of last night’s escapades to come soon.

Hey! You kids! 2008 Top 10+!

///////// elo kiddies! //////
here’s this year’s kaleidoscopic musical cavalcade!
////// BONUS! DOWNLOAD the 2008 For Your Pleasure mixtape HERE /////

1. Stew: Passing Strange
This years musical highlight, bar none. The best kept secret in songwriting genius, Afro-baroque pop smarty pants Stew takes a bright bow in the klieglights of Broadway for his debut autobiographical musical Passing Strange. Featuring gospel raveups, formative stabs at California hardcore, a heart-wrenching song about getting stoned with your choir director, musical pastiches of bohemian Amsterdam and German anarchist industrial agit-prop (on Broadway!), all in the service of a supremely moving story about the search for the meaning of art in life. Get a taste of it here in the multi-part “Drug Suite” (sort of a “Quick One While He’s Away” to Passing Strange’s “Quadrophenia”)

2. The Last Shadow Puppets: The Age of the Understatement
Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys turns out to be a stone cold genius. Inspired by pre-Ziggy Bowie, Love, Scott Walker, and Ennio Morricone soundtracks (and really, who isn’t?), Turner crafts a widescreen symphonic pop record worthy of its influences. Bonus for the cover photograph by cerebral 60′s pinup photographer Sam Haskins.

3. Dengue Fever: Venus on Earth
A fantasia of lounge, surf, and Nuggets style garage rock sung in soulful Khmer by a Vietnamese version of  Shirley Maclaine during her Irma La Douce phase. A band with a story too detailed to detail here, detailed here, resurrecting and re-interpreting Cambodian rock, the fascinating and heartbreaking history of which is told here and here.

4. Stereolab: Chemical Chords
Venerable indie collective have not sounded this vital and energized since 1998′s Emperor Tomato Catsup.

5. Brian Eno/David Byrne: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Giant pulsating musical brain Eno and supreme art shmengi Byrne have been stalwart members of a mutual admaration society that has yielded some towering masterworks (as well as indirectly causing the formation of the Tom Tom Club) Topping off this embarrassment of riches is this wonderful, quietly self released record. Pastoral, textured, quietly muscular pop. If I could weave it into a blanket, I would nap under it forever.

6. Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer
Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer is a smart but unhinged tsunami marinated in German cabaret, Sparks records, and theatrical punk rock. Its goth dork quotient is elevated mightily by the fact that the album is accompanied by a book of Victorian-by-way-of-Guy-Bourdin crime scene photos with text by Sandman auteur Neil Gaiman. In brief, a marinated tsunami.

7. Neon Neon: Stainless Style
A neo 80′s synth pop pastiche concept album about the very personification of the coke dusted 80′s aesthetic and culture – aluminum car magnate John Delorean. I was almost afraid to listen to the record lest it sully the rad-ness of the idea. But then I would not have heard the softly flanged homage to Raquel Welch. Which is awesome.

8. REM: Accelerate
Venerable indie rock stalwarts have not sounded this vital and energized since 1986′s Life’s Rich Pageant.

9. Fotheringay 2
Long unreleased album by English folk rock supergroup. They were named for Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and executed for treason following her alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I of England and place herself on the English throne. That description also serves as an effective portrait of their sound. Lead singer Sandy Denny, who died tragically young, had a voice for the ages.

10. Cluster Live 07/Harmonia Live 1974
Krautrock maestros reform in 2007 for an herb tea soaked knob-twiddling Motorik live jam that fondly recalls their 1974 cannabis soaked knob-twiddling Motorik live jam, finally issued this year.

11. Sea and Cake: Car Alarm
Venerable 90′s indie rock outfit have not sounded this vital and energized since 1997′s Nassau.

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///////// (re) discovered and reissued ///////

Lost Sounds, Eponymous, 2004

The best thing about listening to Jay Reatard’s unjustly underrated analog synth punk project is that it makes me think of this.

Psychedelic Furs: Talk Talk Talk, 1984
Pretty in Pink. Again. And Again.

Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia: My Elixir; My Poison, 2003
English accented stream of consciousness monologues slurred by a blurry chanteuse over guitars played by Lava-Lamps. Or something.

Vanusa: 2, 1970
Va-va-voom! Stupifyingly sexy Brazilian brassy psych lounge jazz.

Amanda Lear: Sweet Revenge, 1978
The truth about Lear’s date of birth, the names and nationalities of her parents and the location of her upbringing has however been a matter of speculation and debate… At the age of sixteen, she relocated to Paris to study at L’Academie des Beaux Arts before joining St. Martins School of Art in London in 1964…In 1965, Lear was spotted by legendary French modelling agent Cathérine Harlé and, eager to find a way to finance her studies, she returned to Paris to catwalk for rising star Paco Rabanne…found herself being photographed for magazines like Elle, Marie France and Vogue and modelling for fashion designers like Mary Quant, Ossie Clark, Antony Price, Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel. After some time, she dropped out of art school, began modelling full-time and went on to lead a bohemian and flamboyant life in the Swinging London of the Sixties, hobnobbing with the rich and famous like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Eno, Twiggy, Sacha Distel, David Bailey, Yul Brynner and Keith Moon…While clubbing with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and her then boyfriend, the Guinness heir Tara Browne, in a Parisian nightspot named Le Castel in 1965, she was introduced to a man that was to change her life, on many levels according to some, none other than Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí... Although she remained Dalí’s confidante, protegée and mistress all through the Sixties and Seventies, Lear was also romantically linked to Brian Jones, which resulted in the Rolling Stones track “Miss Amanda Jones”, included on 1967 album Between the Buttons, had a year-long affair with the married David Bowie and was briefly engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music but in 1979 she married French aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d’Argens de Villèle who, in fact, was the former lover turned adopted son of controversial gay novelist Roger Peyrefitte….

De’Longhi – Coming To America

New from our crew at 160over90:

In Treviso, Italy, a team of skilled designers and engineers spend their days obsessing over the two ounces of espresso you receive from one of their machines. In De’Longhi’s first spot in the US in almost a decade the brand is reintroduced by depicting one of these designers transporting the Perfecta Espresso machine through an airport. Awkward exchanges set to the The Crayon Fields song “Do It First” lead the designer to his seat where he eventually rests knowing his prized machine is as safe as he is. Highlights from the outdoor campaign to come.

Enjoy.

Roll Call:

creative director: stephen penning
writer: brendan quinn
designer: kelly dorsey
director: branson veal
director of photography: ronny dennis
exec producer: brad lenz
producer: todd glinsman
production company: choreografik
editorial company: choreografik
editor: toshi mifune

Wasting the time of one Mr. Sheen

So we had an opportunity to work with Martin Sheen this afternoon on a TV spot. What a nice guy, as well as a damn fine American and one of my personal humanitarian heroes. I wish I had just had one of this man’s cojones. Of course, there’s his body of acting work, too: “Badlands,” “Apocalypse Now,”…that ridiculous scene in “Hot Shots: Part Deux” where him and his son Charlie drift by each other on passing gunboats. He’s also my wife’s favorite presidential Martin since Van Buren. And then there was “Project: ALF,” which we will never speak of again.

So how’d we tap this keg of premium talent? Well, uh, we asked him to record a voice mail greeting. It took him six takes, but I think he really nailed it on this one:

Martin Sheen stars in: The 160over90 Voice Mail Greeting

If you’re looking for a place to spread some holiday cheer, you could do worse than the San Carlos Foundation, one the many organizations he’s involved with. And for the record, I’m now connected by one step to Kevin Bacon (“JFK,” 1991), and just two from both Molly Ringwald and Nicole Kidman—all personal goals at various points of my life. Thanks, Martin. Next up: Annie Liebovitz shoots my Facebook profile photo.

The Best of 2008: Blogs

For the next month I’ll be sharing some of my favorites that made this year so grrrrrrrrrrrr8. Today I’m talking blogs. We love them. We read them. You’re reading one now. Here are some of the best this year.

Note: For the intellectual sort of blog reading look to Shepelavy.

Top 10 after the jump…

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Quantum of Admiration

This past weekend I saw the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. The movie was absolutely breathtaking, from the opening credits to the stuntwork to cinematography to the locations, including the Floating Stage at the Bregenz, Austria Festival House and the actual Palio di Siena bareback horse race in Italy.  The franchise took a first quantum leap forward with 2006’s Casino Royale, introducing Daniel Craig as the brooding, vengeful, ripped Bond who actually bleeds, amazing stunt sequences based on French Parkour Gymnastics and a ultra cool theme song by the guy from Soundgarden and Audioslave (wisely, the only holdover from the previous films was dame Judi Dench as M, or “Mum”).  Quantum of Solace is yet another step, perhaps most notably for the aforementioned credits and title designs, created by a Kansas City firm called MK12 (MK12 previously worked with Quantum director Marc Foster on The Kite Runner).  The theme song, “Another Way To Die”, a collaboration between Jack White and Alicia Keys, is also probably the best theme song since “Nobody Does It Better” or “Live and Let Die”.  Its amazing how the world’s longest running film franchise has been almost completely reinvented, dispatching the silly clichés, innuendo and product placement – Bond had recently taken to drinking Smirnoff and driving a BMW (?!) instead of the trademark Aston Martin – and attracting a whole new female audience without alienating its core male base.  This is more than an example of making a brand current, but about and trimming away the lazy fat that had sustained it for decades to reveal the lean, ripped form that made it successful in the first place.