廃墟デフレスパイラル 〜ぼくたちの秘密の場所〜 Abandoned Japanese Buildings

Nice photos of abandoned buildings, the first ones I've seen from Japan. I had suspected that there would be few in Japan due to the limited amount of land, but apparently decay is busy everywhere. Site in Japanese, but if you click on the third button at the bottom of the page you seem to move forward throught the albums. I wish there was an organization that would hand over such abandoned buildings to music and arts organizations, who would be able to gradually repair them and turn them into galleries, studios or performance venues. Anyone?


廃墟デフレスパイラル　〜ぼくたちの秘密の場所〜

San Francisco is...Type!

Finished my entry for the Aiga's Definition: San Francisco invitational. Composed completely of photos of type I found around San Francisco.


Aiga Definition: SF info

soul sides: ALL ROADS LEAD TO APACHE

Nice write up on the strange 40+ year history of the "Apache" break-from Burt Lancaster to The Incredible Bongo Band, to B-boys, to Nas. If you've never heard the most famous version, by the Incredible Bongo Band, you need to "Jump on it!". The drums are just unbelieveable! Article has links to several mp3 versions of Apache.

soul sides: ALL ROADS LEAD TO APACHE

Crime Maps

(above: the house where John List murdered his mother, three children and his wife and then disappeared.)

I've created a flickr group called crime maps.

I created this group because I have been interested for a long time in the mostly unrecognized violent history of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Imagine if you could see a map with icons representing every crime that had been committed in the past century on any given block in New York City. First off, I'm sure such a diagram would be almost unreadable due to all the information.
Real estate agents would be hard pressed to sell that apartment which had been a crime scene. And a person might begin to feel unsafe anywhere with such knowledge of past criminal activities. But what a deeper understanding one would have of the best and worst parts of a place, the tragedies, the broken dreams, the anger and hopelessness. The courage and determination of investigators, or good samaritans. A deeper appreciation of the random odds of being in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

This group will probably not be able to compile such a map, but I hope that by sharing aerial views of various notorious places, we might realize the everyday settings of these acts, their unpredictable appearances, and how life goes on in such places. Our public places are littered with monuments to many forgotten heroes of the past; let us not forget those people who have tragically suffered, or the places we live where they were done wrong.

crime maps

San Francisco History

This week I found myself in the Civic Center, which I usually avoid, as it is filthy. I went to the Main library and found the San Francisco History Center. I'd been meaning to research the history of my building for some time: when was it built, who lived there, what was there before, etc.

They gave me a checklist of resources. One of the most interesting is the Sanborn Fire Insurance map. There are several map books laid out on bookshelves. Each one measures about 2' X 4'. They are beautifully detailed records of a city's architectural history. Each building is carefully drawn, with numerous notes and symbols denoting things of interesting to an insurance company, such as building material, number of fire escapes, how many units, what type of commercial use, etc. The pages are thick and covered with corrections, notes, and worn with age. Of course, these are gold mines for the historian, because they provide the most detailed visual record of a city at a given time. These maps were compiled for major American cities, so if you are interested, I advise you to search out the map for your city.

Looking through the 1905-1913 Sanborn books (and microfilms) was like time-traveling. On a given block, you might find stables, 'french laundries', 'chinese laundries' (the difference not explained) vaudeville & motion picture theaters, and my favorite, 'candy factories'. I spent most of my time looking at the maps of the upper fillmore and pacific heights neighborhoods where I live. As you might expect, some things had changed drastically, and others (mainly the private dwellings) had not. My building was an empty lot in 1905, but appeared in the 1913 survey as "The Grenoble Apartments". Apparently there was a wire glass skylight in the building, but it seems long gone. However, the number of units on the map was 26, which is the same as today. I had wondered whether the apartments had been chopped up into smaller rooms.

Looking around the neighborhood, I saw that the building next to Eliza's Chinese restaurant on California St. had been a Chinese laundry in 1905. A church once stood where the Mollie Stone's supermarket parking lot exists today. At Steiner near Sutter was the wonderfully named "Dreamland Rink". Sadly, I saw how busy Japantown was at the turn of the century-many stores marked "Jap.", and other community sites like schools and churches. 30 years after these maps were made, some of these residents-Japanese-Americans-were being hauled off to concentration camps. Once the war was over, the community seems to have waned, despite 60s era attempts at revitalization (and business investment). Today the Japan center is a worn but popular mini mall of various Japanese stores and restaurants.



How to research your San Francisco building:

Sanborn fire maps history:

Sanborn fire maps sample:

Government Center

Hi all,

Posts have been few lately due to my week of government stuff. First I did my taxes, then I had Jury Duty! bleah. Anyway, I'm back.

622 Music Videos: From A Perfect Circle to Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs

Above: New Order + Arthur Baker + The Fun House = Confusion video, 1982

oh baby, hundreds of cool vids for the viewing. Enjoy!


GRAN FARO: --622 Music Video's - Various--, --From A Perfect Circle to Yeah, Yeah-

You are the big tree, but we are the little axe.

Don't let these people choose your music.

Damn.

Easytree.org, the best torrent trading site for unreleased, unofficial, and live recordings has been shut down by lawyers. Let me tell you about Easytree: It was not a place where people shared cracked software, porn, or even official music releases. In fact, if a post contained a song or two that had been released commercially somewhere, the community was very careful to remove it. So, what did the people on EZT trade? let's see...would you like to hear Iggy Pop give a lecture at a university? How about a 20 minute b&w video taped off French tv in 1972 of the Velvet Underground in concert? Maybe you'd like to hear recordings of Brian Eno sound installations from several years ago, in some gallery in Europe. You would have also found obscure Miles Davis and John Coltrane tv performances, interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their "Bed-In", or "HWY" the rarely seen film starring Jim Morrison of the Doors. As far as I know, the 'rights' to these various audio and video recordings do not belong to anyone–rather, they belong to everyone. To have corporations and their lawyers lay claim to a fuzzy recording of Janis Joplin singing in a coffeehouse over 40 years ago is absurd. Well, some may argue, there's money to be made in these recordings-perhaps the EZT people were making money from them, taking our profits away? No. There's a reason why it's called 'file-sharing' and not 'file-selling'. File-selling, incidentally, is what more and more corporations are engaging in. Well, ok, but if these people are freely sharing these files, well, then who's going to want to buy them if we officially release them? The simple answer is that the vast majority of these little cultural gems are sought out, or even known by, a very small part of the public. The people trading them, like myself, are the hardest of the hardcore fans. The musicians. The students of pop culture. And yet, to this small group of people, they are invaluable.

So,

A) If, say, Megacorp was to release this so-so quality compilation of demos by The Smiths, the number of people who would buy it would most likely not recoup even the costs of rereleasing it.

B) If there was any real profit to be made from these pop culture orphans, I am sure that they would have been strip-mined long ago. And finally, a tip for the lawyers: follow your teenager downtown to any decent sized city and you will find bootleg recordings being sold-often for exorbitant prices. Someone in Italy burns a copy of a Nirvana show, slaps a cover on it, and it ends up somewhere in Massachusetts selling for $30. That I disagree with. But don't go after these rival (and more tuned into what the niche markets want) file-sellers; No, go after the file-sharers, the real fans, some of your best customers.

So, why would megacorp want to shut down EZT? Well, the usual reasons that corporations, or the government, make mistakes: Greed. Ignorance. A confused sense of ownership.

Over a year ago, there was a great site called Sharing The Groove. They had the same amazing stuff, the same smart and helpful community. Then they were shut down by lawyers. This sucked. But I was happy when a few months later, Easytree.org appeared. There had been a migration from STG to EZT. And I guarantee you, soon there will be a new site, with people exposing each other to amazing, rare and strange music and musical videos. So, barristers, hum along to your Ashley Spears and Jessica Simpletons while you choose what finish to get for your new H2, but remember, we'll be back!

Downhill Battle, file sharing activists

www.easytree.org :: EzTorrent v0.3.2

Coco Curry Eating Challenge! - a photoset on Flickr

Coco Curry Eating Challenge! - a photoset on Flickr

Bootleg Video Review: Jimi Hendrix Experience, Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, NY, August 23, 1968

Nice video on easytree.org. The JHE performing live in my own neighborhood!
I have spent a lot of time in Flushing Meadows park , which is a decaying, at times futuristic, remnant of 2 world's fairs. But I never knew that The JHE (as well as the Doors, and the Who) had performed there. Note: they also do "The Star Spangled Banner". Here's the rest of the description from easytree:

JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

"THE NEW-YORK ROCK FESTIVAL"
SINGER BOWL, FLUSHING MEADOWS PARK, QUEENS, NEW-YORK, USA

Lineage: 16mm FILM > ??? > VHS > MPEG

Video Size: 352x240 (1638kbps)
Length: 0:23:16

This originaly silent colour 16mm footage has had a soundtrack added from the audience recording of the concert. Unfortunately the footage is not complete for each song so there are sections where the screen 'blacks out' while the soundtrack continues. During "Are You Experienced" Jimi breaks a string and, unable to re-tune his guitar, he places it on the floor and plays it with his foot while he straps on another before swapping the instrument lead!!! The recorder is front of the stage and at least on stage, incredible that he wasn't stopped by the JHE crew!!! Quality is great for that kind of document through bit grainy ,and shaky at some point. Definitely historical stuff!!!

* JIMI'S ARRIVAL ON STAGE (from a different source, probably same recorder)
* ARE YOU EXPERIENCED
* FIRE
* HEY JOE
* WILD THING

Loco For Gocco, Pt. 1

This past weekend, I took a class in Gocco Printing at my local Paper Source store. For those who don't know, Gocco is a small, easy to use screenprinting kit that is a lot of fun. As you can see from the picture above, it is about the size of a VCR tape rewinder. It's wonderfully efficient: you use the same mechanism to expose your screens and print with them. To expose, you insert 2 one shot bulbs and your xeroxed image, then press down on the machine. The bulbs flash and burn out, and your screen is exposed. Then, you simply paint with ink onto your screen (unlike normal silkscreening, you can paint with as many colors as you want on one screen, and keep them separate. This is because no squeegee is involved, just a pressing down motion that does not blend the ink.) The quality is nice and also has a lo-fi charm. Having taken a frustrating silkscreening class where getting from image to print could take hours, Gocco is a revelation. I will be posting some of the images I printed tomorrow, but for now, here are some Gocco links.


Gocco

Paper Source

ten on the turntable: experimental album edition

"BBC Sessions +" - Faust
"Microtonal Works 2" - The New Band
"Sonic Encounters" - Margaret Leng Tan
"Electronic Works, Vol. 2" - Morton Subotnick
"Ensemble Music 1" - Iannis Xenakis
"The Inspirational Sounds Of" - Jah Works
"Dubliftment" - Vibronics
"Faust" - Faust
"Thahandclaspinduction" - Rummage
"Return of the DJ Vol. 5" - Various Artists

Video bootleg review: Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico Live at The Bataclan, Paris 29 Jan 1972

Great video over at EZ Torrents (Easytree.org). 18 Minutes of most of the Velvets doing their thing in Paris, from a 1972 tv program. Lou sings "Berlin" and smokes a cigarette with Gallic indifference. He also does "Waiting for the man" and "Heroin". Nico does "Femme Fatale". Seeing this rare footage makes me love the internet just a little more.

Video quality: Good
Performace quality: Very Good

EZ Torrents

Book Corner: Mexicana!

Another great Taschen book, this time focusing on Mexican ephemera. Durable, affordable, nicely printed, Taschen books are hard to resist.

Taschen Books

ten on the turntable - album edition

Swell Maps "A Trip To Marineville"
Swell Maps "Jane From Occupied Europe"
Dr. Doom "First Come, First Served"
Conlon Nancarrow "Lost Works, Last Works"
Cornelius Cardew "We Sing For The Future"
Luiz Bonfa "Solo In Rio 1959"
Tod Dockstader & James Reichert "Omniphony 1"
Fanatik "Bas 1 Instrumentals"
Faust "The Faust Tapes"
Chris Cutler/Lutz Glandien "Domestic Stories"