get avant-scary with Thick Wisps

Tonight from 7 to 10 PM Eastern time, the online radio station free103point9 is presenting a live Halloween broadcast featuring Thick Wisps.

To tune in, go here:

http://www.free103point9.org/onlineradio/

And click the link to launch the online radio player.

Cashmere Jungle Lords video hits 500 mark

500 viewings, that is.

Which, for me, is a pretty high number.

the Drumatics so-o-o-o rock

Another cool group of performers on ConcreteBeat--check 'em out on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gx2PztdNB0

Or go see 'em at ConcreteBeat.

Museum of Russian Icon, Clinton MA

http://www.russianiconmuseum.org/

My wife & I got to go here the other day. Cool museum full of, well, Russian icons like this and this.

free Baby Opaque

For those of you who knew the C'ville based band back in the mid 1980s, that's all I have to say.

Go here for MP3s of their music:

http://www.babyopaque.com/

more Mary Ellen Bute, Norman Mc Laren films

Above is Spook Sport, a Mary Ellen Bute movie done with Norman McLaren. Posted on YouTube by autochromex. Good for Halloween.

Below is part one of McLaren's extraordinary Pas de Deux. Posted by superchat9000.



Link to part two of "Pas de Deux".


Another Mc Laren, A Phantasy (posted by ypsis):



And there's yet more McLaren to be found, like Begone Dull Care, Neighbours and Synchromy.

recently on uberkayness--Stuckey's etc.

formerly known as Stuckey's, pt. 2--what used to be the Stuckey's in Thornburg VA off I-95

formerly known as Stuckey's, pt. 1--what used to be the Stuckey's in Toano VA near I-64

on & off the five mile loop--scenes from Jamestown Island and the James River

north on the Jamestown Ferry--pictures on and of the ferry

heading south on the Jamestown Ferry--brief video of the river crossing

Mary Ellen Bute, John Whitney, Harry Smith: Abstract Films

Reading Albert Glinsky's book on inventor Leon Theremin, I saw mention of a filmmaker I'd never heard of, Mary Ellen Bute. I found a couple of her works posted on YouTube by AnimArchiv.


Rhythm In Light:




and Tarantella:




Looking around for Bute, I came across John Whitney's computer graphics work, Arabesque (courtesy postingoldtapes):




And some work of Harry Smith (courtesy donjuanauxenfers):



For those of you wondering: yep, it's the same Harry Smith who helped kickstart the folk music revival in the mid 20th century with his LP compilation of old 78s, Anthology of American Folk Music.

hurdy gurdy player on Concrete Beat

The cool NYC street performance blog Concrete Beat has performance & interview footage of a hurdy gurdyist, Melissa the Loud. Very cool music and the interview includes a peek inside the hurdy gurdy's mechanism.

C'ville driveby--Nobody Home

Thanks to my brother's driving through Charlottesville, I got to play ghost for an afternoon and haunt some old locales with a digital camera.

Below is my driveby pic of what was once the TKE fraternity house.



In its basement, I saw & heard many more bands than I can reliably recall. Local bands like The Next of Kin, Continental Drift, Rude Buddha and (I think) Bad Brains from D.C.

And sometime later, a band I was in, Nobody Home, played its first show in that basement. Indeed about a year later, I think my friend Dale and I played what might've been NH's last C'ville gig (of sorts) in the living room of TKE.

For a while there, Nobody Home used an office space to practice in. Below, the low building to the right was formerly a convenience store near that space. Necessary snacks were procured there before practice.



Here's the building in the photo below. Go thru the right hand door & up the stairs to the second floor. There our space would be, behind the two windows in the upper left hand corner.



Yep, those two windows . . .



And around the corner, I think the space was four of these side windows in length.



It was an office space with wall-to-wall utility carpet, faux wood paneled walls and drop ceiling. But we were there in the evening after the other offices (and our day jobs) were done. Our only nighttime neighbor was a Karate studio down the hall.



The C&O Restaurant may be the only other place standing where Nobody Home (or any number of far better known bands) played in C'ville in mid-1980s.



I guess while the restaurant is still doing well, the sideline of booking live music is long over with.



Just as it was at TKE, before Nobody Home ever played the C&O, I saw more bands there than I can remember. This would include: The Next of Kin's famous rendition of "Hawaii Five-0"; former UVA music faculty George Starks on saxophone; an all-woman metal band called Black Sabbath's Wives (decades before The Osbournes), Martin Atkins, Alex Chilton and others that may yet jog my memory.



I was glad to see the C&O still standing. I had moved away 21 years ago & probably hadn't been near this town in well over 15.



Unlike Trax or the Mineshaft, other bars where other bands (and sometimes NH) had played, the C&O was here to make that past not quite so remote.



And I remember what a friend Jim (who worked at the C&O once upon a time) once said way back then about everyone wanting to be in a band. It was as if he were positing that, in some corner of a collective imagination, so many were converging on the same piece of real estate: a bohemian Levittown full of bands and bars to play in, tour vans loading for the next show down the road.

on uberkayness--ruins of old Smithfield

Pics of the buildings formerly known as Little's Supermarket and Angelo's Restaurant.