A group of animal rights activists from DXE and UPC including myself marched to the San Francisco Ferry Building yesterday to protest the selling of so-called ‘humane meat’ at a market inside the building.
My wife Leslie wrote a great blog post about the action, which includes photos, a video that ends with security guards trying to shut us down and prevent people from photographing and videoing the protest, and more.
Here’s how her post begins:
ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS DEFY SECURITY GUARDS IN SAN FRANCISCO
By Leslie Goldberg
When I heard “You’re all under arrest,” my heart jumped in my throat. I flashed on who-will-take-care-of-the-dog-what-about-babysitting-I’d-promised-I’d-do-tomorrow- and what-about-the-cat-and-what-about-all-the-work-due-for-my-class-this-week- what-if-I-can’t-get-to-my-class.
I’ve never really been in jail before.
It was an “International Respect for Chickens Day” protest. We were in the San Francisco Ferry Building which is a sort of foodie plaza where you can spend all sorts of money on “artisan” cheese, olive oil, nuts, fruit, pricey bread and “humanely-raised” meat.
In fact, it was in front of one of these “humanely raised and cruelly-killed” meat places where two animal rights groups, United Poultry Concerns (UPC) and Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), had joined to cause a disruption.
“HUMANELY RAISED,” shouted long-time activist Hope Bohanec of UPC.
Jesse Malin and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins covered Bob Dylan’s “From a Buick 6” at photographer Danny Clinch’s book release party last night (Tuesday, October 14, 2014) at the McKittrick Hotel in New York.
Plus check out Gary U.S. Bonds covering “From A Buick 6”:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” Rolling Stone has a great review of my book in a recent issue. Read it here. There’s info about True Love Scars here.]
Neil Young is recording an album that will include songs with “big band arrangements,” according to music contractor Gina Zimmitti, who is involved with the project, and who posted photos and wrote about the sessions on the Facebook page for her company, Gina Zimmitti Music Contracting.
Zimmitti wrote that at one session, the musicians played “awesomely loud big band arrangements.”
Young has used an orchestra in the past, most notably on the songs “Expecting to Fly” and “Broken Arrow” recorded with Jack Nitzsche that appeared on Buffalo Springfield Again, and on the Harvest tracks, “A Man Needs A Maid” and “There’s A World” which Nitzsche recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra in London.
Violinist Marc Sazer has participated in at least one of the recent sessions and wrote on his Twitter page, “Recording with @neilyoung, great to have a great choir live in the room with us!”
Neil Young project today. Arranger/ conductor Chris Walden. Contractor Gina Zimmitti pic.twitter.com/cAkkAEciRH
The album is titled Storytone, according to arranger/conductor Chris Walden, who posted that information on his web site, along with a release date of November 4, 2014, but has subsequently removed that info from his site and replaced it with “untitled” and “2014.” Of course Neil Young is known for changing things at the last minute, so it’s possible that the title and release date could change, or even that Young could decide not to release the album at all.
Walden, according to Wikipedia, is known “for writing big band and orchestral arrangements for recording artists such as Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, Jennifer Hudson, Paul Anka, and Christopher Cross. He has been an arranger for ‘American Idol’ since 2007 and has worked for producers like David Foster, Phil Ramone, and Tommy LiPuma.”
The possible album title, Storytone, apparently refers to a rare early electric piano that Young may be using on the album.
Rare 1939 Storytone piano.
On the Piedmont Piano Company website is info about the Storytone piano pictured above:
This is an extremely rare and historically important instrument. The Storytone piano was built in 1939 in a joint venture between Story & Clark and RCA – the piano has normal strings and action but no soundboard – the sound is amplified by pickups and a speaker system making it the world’s first practical electric piano. The sound is very beautiful considering its design during the infancy of amplified instruments. As you can see the design is striking – art deco at its most radical.
Sessions for the album have taken place at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage and at EastWest Studios, both in L.A., during the last two weeks of August. Young concluded a tour of Europe with Crazy Horse on August 8 of this year.
Niko Bolas, who has worked with Young on such albums as This Note’s for You, Freedom and Living With War, is producing, according to Gina Zimmitti.
On August 19, Zimmitti posted:
“We don’t feel cheesy calling this one a ‘precious moment,’ and posted this photo:
Zimmiti wrote about this photo: George Doering, Chris Walden, and Neil Young (L to R). First day recording Chris Walden’s fantastic arrangements for Neil Young. — with Chris Walden at Sony Pictures Scoring Stage.
On August 23, Zimmitti wrote:
“2nd day of recording with Neil Young and producer Niko Bolas – this time for some awesomely loud big band arrangements by Chris Walden composer-arranger ! — with Chris Walden at EastWest Studios.”
She also posted this photo on August 23:
On August 27, according to Zimmitti, Young and the orchestra were back in the studio for more days of recording, this time working with arranger Michael Bearden.
Bearden has worked many successful musicians including Madonna, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Chaka Kahn, Patti Austin, James Ingrahm, Babyface, Lenny Kravitz, Yoko Ono, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Anita Baker, Edie Brickell, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Liza Minelli and Michael Jackson.
Speaking to Billboard earlier this year, Young said, “I have new songs that I’m working on, and I haven’t stopped doing that. I do it when I feel like it and I’m collecting them. And sometimes I play them live before they come out as a record, and because of the way everything is people hear them before they come out, on the Internet. But I still feel like I’m gonna make records of them.”
One song that Young performed live numerous times this summer with Crazy Horse in Europe is called “Who’s Gonna Stand Up And Save The Earth?”
“I’d like to make a record with a full-blown orchestra, live – a mono recording with one mic,” Young told Billboard. I want to do something like that where we really record what happened, with one point of view and the musicians moved closer and farther away, the way it was done in the past. To me that’s a challenge and it’s a sound that’s unbelievable, and you can’t get it any other way. So I’m into doing that.”
However based on the photos, these sessions utilized numerous microphones. Oh well.
Some of Neil Young’s fans are skeptical regarding the project.
At Steve Hoffman Music Forums, a fan using the name “P(orF)” wrote, “It’s sad because I’ve been listening to him for 45 years, but my only reaction when I hear he’s doing a new recording is ‘What’s the gimmick this time?'”
And “Babyblue” added, “Yep, more and more Neil seems to be more about the gimmick than the actual music. I can see how this could happen to a veteran musician (especially a creative and eccentric one like Neil). It probably keeps things interesting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always produce good music.”
But there were fans who defended Young. “Six String” wrote, “I’ll wait until I hear the music before passing judgement. It’s only a gimmick if it doesn’t work…”
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” I’ve got a Goodreads. book giveaway going right now. It’s over sometime September 2, so if you want to enter, now is the time. Click here and enter.]
“Johnny in the Basement” by Mark Hamilton. See a bigger version of this photo here.
The New Zealand photographer Mark Hamilton has made a series of photographs inspired by lyrics from Bob Dylan songs.
The photos were exhibited backstage atClaudelands Arena in Hamilton, New Zealand when Dylan played the venue August 9 and 10.
The photographer was hoping Dylan would see the photos and like them.
“Imagine if he didn’t like it, if he retires after seeing those pictures!” Hamilton told the Waikato Times.
“At the end of the day they’re my interpretations and that’s art. It’s even like Bob Dylan himself, he reinterprets his music all the time. He’ll record it for an album but he’ll never play it the same again.”
Listen to Hamilton talk about his Dylan-inspired photos here.
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
Of just buy the damn thing:
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Bob Dylan and John Sebastian at Village Cafe in Woodstock, New York in 1964. Photo by Douglas R. Gilbert.
In 1964 Douglas R. Gilbert got the once-in-a-lifetime assignment to photograph Bob Dylan up in Woodstock, and elsewhere, for Look magazine.
Look never ran the photos, but now they will be exhibited at the South Haven Center for the Arts at 600 Phoenix Rd, South Haven Charter Township, MI 49090.
There are superb photos of Dylan with Allen Ginsberg, John Sebastian, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Sally Grossman — wife of Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman — who was later in the cover photo for Bringing It All Back Home.
Here’s what’s on Gilbert’s website about the photos:
In July of 1964, one year before his music changed from acoustic to electric, I photographed Bob Dylan for LOOK magazine. I spent time with him at his home in Woodstock, New York, in Greenwich Village, and at the Newport Folk Festival. The story was never published. After reviewing the proposed layout, the editors declared Dylan to be “too scruffy for a family magazine” and killed the story.
Some of the photos were used for The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall.
And they appeared in the excellent book: “Forever Young: Photographs of Bob Dylan‚ by Douglas R. Gilbert.”
[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.
Or watch an arty video with audio of me reading from the novel here.
–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-
Nearly all of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs have been donated to the University of Toronto by the Larry & Cookie Rossy Family Foundation, according to the Huffington Post.
The nearly 8000 photographs include images of Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, John Cage, William de Kooning, Paul McCartney, Patti Smith, William Burroughs and Iggy Pop.
Patti Smith by Allen Ginsberg.
The Huffington Post reports:
Comprising a nearly complete archive of Ginsberg’s surviving photographs, the collection, spanning the years 1944 to 1997, includes original snapshots and prints of various sizes. The silver gelatin prints are unique in that they are hand-captioned by Ginsberg. All of these images will be available to scholars, and some will be on display.
Although known primarily as a writer, Ginsberg was an avid photographer. The collection includes images of writers Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones), Paul Bowles, Doris Lessing, Josef Skvorecky (who was a professor of English at U of T) and Evgeny Yevtushenko. Other Ginsberg subjects were photographer Robert Frank, psychologist R.D. Laing, author and activist Dr. Benjamin Spock and psychologist, and drug guru, Timothy Leary. Ginsberg’s friend and, fellow writer, Burroughs appears in more than 300 photographs. Another frequent subject is Ginsberg’s lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky.
The Ginsberg prints provide visual insight into New York urban landscape from the 1950s to the 1990s. They also document Ginsberg’s international travels to Canada, France, India, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, the USSR and many other nations.
In 1971 Life magazine sent staff photographer Ralph Morse to photograph the wild rock ‘n’ roller, Little Richard. This was, of course, long after Little Richard’s ’50s heyday. He scored 15 Top 10 R&B hits in 1955, ’56 and ’57 starting with “Tutti-Frutti.”
The three former members of Sleater-Kinney — Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss — reunited last night to perform “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam at Portland’s Moda Center.
Also participating was Peter Buck, formerly of R.E.M.
YouTube video of the song:
Here are more fan photos:
Sleater-Kinney performing “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam in 2003.
A book of photos by Ringo Star, “Photograph,” was published earlier this year. Turns out the Beatles’ drummer and sometime singer is a pretty good photographer.
You can check out a gallery of his photos (24 of them) at the CBS News site and there are nine different photos by Ringo at The Hollywood Reporter. It’s definitely work a look if you care about the Fab Four.
Today we are more than two-thirds of the way through Banksy’s month-long “Better Out Than In” exhibit of art on the streets of New York.
So far, Banksy has generated more press and pushed more buttons during the first 22 days than any other artist in recent history. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. This artwork in located in Queens.
Today (October 22, 2013, Banksy writes on his website under this photo of his latest artwork: “Everything but the kitchen Sphinx. A 1/36 scale replica of the great Sphinx of Giza made from smashed cinderblocks.You’re advised not to drink the replica Arab spring water.”
