ASHES

|June 28, 2012 | Found Images

Here.

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|June 28, 2012 | Photos By J.Yuenger, Travels

Another haunted Summer.

Versions

|June 28, 2012 | Stuffs

DJ Jimi :

” Trick, stop telling that lie

  We done hit you from the back for some Popeye’s

  You got a three piece white, a small cold drink,

  Some red beans, a biscuit and small fries “

Also DJ Jimi :

” Trick, stop talkin’ that it

  And buy a juvenile his outfit

  I want a shybe Girbaud shirt, Polo socks,

  Girbaud shorts and a pair of Reeboks “

DJ Jubilee :

” Trick, stop talkin’ that ish

  And buy Jubilee his outfit

  I want a white tee shirt, some khaki pants,

  Some all stars and some money for the dance “

Concert

|June 28, 2012 | Found Images

Ruins Are Useful

|June 28, 2012 | Found Images

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|June 27, 2012 | Found Images

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|June 27, 2012 | Found Images

The Hexen 2.0 tarot deck.

Chi.

|June 26, 2012 | Found Images

Wayne Miller, Walking Through The Alley 1946-48. As per a recent discussion with R. ( a Chicago Son, as I am ) about all things sweet home, especially alleys.

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|June 26, 2012 | Found Images

Colour Of Space.

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|June 26, 2012 | Found Images

Recent Events Dictate

|June 26, 2012 | Recent Events Dictate

WE MAKE RECORDS ANYWHERE. We do what we have to do. Through the generosity of a comrade, I am making a record in an old photography studio in New Orleans. I got the band to help me bring a bunch of stuff over there, and we strung a few cables and hung a couple of blankets, and now we’re in business. The vocal mic is in the back room, where they store the chemicals and paper they barely use anymore, where they cut mattes and frame prints. We’ll cut guitar overdubs back there too, but after-hours, because I can hear the attorneys on the next floor muttering between takes. We Do It Ourselves, and we’d rather you didn’t knew we were here.

It smells back there, a little, but I worked in a commercial photo studio not totally unlike this one when I was 19 years old ~

( A nightmare of a swing / graveyard-shift job. I was often the only person in the whole building, sweating, turning off the lights, slamming the transparency holder into the giant Hammerite-grey enlarger, switching on the vacuum pump, feeding the dupes I shot into the E-6 machine, all night long sometimes – I haven’t thought about this since then, but I’d heard that the building had been a draft induction center during the Vietnam war, and sometimes, in the pitch dark, wired on burnt coffee-sludge at 3AM, I would imagine the ghosts of the Chicago boys who didn’t come back looking over my shoulder, saying, man, you’ve got a terrible job. I was a nightmare kid, too, a not-good employee, and it’s a wonder to me now that I lasted sufficiently long at that place to save what seemed like enough money to move to NYC. ) ( it’s never enough )

~ so I don’t notice the odor of developer, much. I like it here, for the same reason that I live in a town as unlikely and inconvenient ( I was going to say ridiculous, but then I didn’t say that ) as New Orleans : I’m most comfortable when I’m surrounded by old things. There are stacks of Mardi Gras photographs from the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and product shots for newspaper ads of the grand old department stores of Canal Street. The guy who used to own the business lets us go to the top floor and look around, and there are thousands of negatives, antique plate-glass ones even, and vintage Sears catalogs, and record albums ( I say unto you, N•O•L•A people, Chris Owens! ), and typewriters, and cameras. I could live up there.

I once had the privilege of being allowed into the archives of the National World War II Museum, where they store uniforms, trench art, field gear. Everything there is made of wood and brass and bakelite, and I was like, so, can I make a cot in the corner? I won’t get in the way, I promise.

What was I saying? Recording. It’s peaceful. The woman who runs the place is sitting behind me, and she’s glowing in the light coming through a big window which was certainly made before the 1920s. She’s editing headshots and passport photos, and I’ve got headphones on as so to not disturb her, and I’m recording the singer of the band, who is in the back room, behind a closed door, screaming into my expensive microphone about murder, and witches, and digging graves.

I do my thing, which is, at this stage of the process, knowing how to set the compressor ( all buttons in! ), knowing when to step in and help, knowing when to let it roll. To the woman sitting in the pool of sunlight, I say that this is some strange job I have, huh – by which I mean assisting this howling guy with the meter and tone of his misanthropic poetry – and she agrees that it is.

I’m wrapping it up, at least for a while. I shut down The Graveyard, my cool little spot in Mid-City ( which is the reason I find myself recording in a photo studio ), and I’m looking at spending at least part of another Summer in New Orleans ( Looking down the barrel of. Everyone who can go, goes. It’s not the nicest time of year to be here, okay, it’s the worst, although the magnolia trees are in bloom this week and this is a striking, stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of thing ) because I have to finish all this music I’ve committed to. Some interesting projects, all different. Almost done. I should make a list of these things and note stages of completion. And then I should go.

The Mummies Of Venzone

|June 26, 2012 | Found Images

Here.

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|June 26, 2012 | Found Images

Thomas Prior, ” Ongoing “.

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|June 25, 2012 | Found Images

From Mister Brick Label’s Collection of Firecracker Labels. Wow!

Various And Sundry

|June 25, 2012 | Various And Sundry

* A Saudi man has been beheaded on charges of sorcery and witchcraft.

* Fidel Castro leaves people guessing as he writes cryptic, haiku-like notes.

* Over the next year, the Army is swapping its camouflage pattern. The move is a quiet admission that the last uniform — a pixelated design that debuted in 2004 at a cost of $5 billion — was a colossal mistake.

* An extensive visit to Key West.

* I’ve been telling you about this place for years, but don’t just take my word for it.

* Our biggest political division is the war between the empty places and the crowded places.

* Starbeat Presents What’s Happening!

* Something about Bob Welch.

The Honch

|June 25, 2012 | Found Images

Here.

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|June 25, 2012 | Found Images

I got caught up in the history of the U.S.S. Cusk for a couple of minutes this morning. Then, when I was looking for a better photo of the 1960s Yokosuka, Japan club in the third picture ( because the sign actually says Shitkicker’s Bar ), I found all this.

Today, I Am Interested In :

|June 25, 2012 | Found Images, Today's Interest

The Hong Kong Café.

Cuba Interiors

|June 24, 2012 | Cuba, Found Images, Travels

From Patricia Galagan’s series Cuba Interiors, this photograph shows the exact look of some of the rooms I was allowed to visit last year in private homes in Havana. In fact, Ramón’s ( cousin of Kevin, my half-Cuban, New Orleans-born traveling companion – he was our guide for the first half of a week-long visit, and is shown here in the yellow shirt ) Centro apartment ( that’s here, in my shitty snaps ) looked exactly like this. To first-worlders, these photos depict romantic patinas, beautiful states of crumbling, character. Given the choice, I personally would opt to live in mottled, ancient plaster rooms ( I do, in fact ), but as Kevin’s other cousin ( the charming and somewhat crafty Augusto ) explained to me, it is almost impossible for regular people to get paint, and when it is available, the cost per gallon is more than a month’s salary.

Marcy Ave.

|June 24, 2012 | Found Images