Sometimes it's fun to be hollow.

From 

http://nastaciachubinsky.tumblr.com/

Tonight's homework.

I love uni.

Favourites, old and new.

Cosmic Distortion by Jen Stark, 2012.

I discovered her work a few years ago, really glad to see that she's still making art.

And a new favourite that I just discovered.

Boolean Taxidermy from Zeitguised.

i always thought that if i loved, i would be loved back.

how wrong i was

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Posting this here because fucking Pinterest won't let you go over 500 characters.

This is the first Elizabeth Wurtzel book I ever read - I think I was 15 or 16 at the time and obsessed with Courtney Love, Riot Grrrl and feminism. I hadn't even heard of Prozac Nation - that chapter of my life was to come later.

This book reminds me of a time of relative innocence in my life, but I always knew that I wasn't a typical good girl. I picked this book up because of Courtney Love but ended up by coming away with a different and better understanding of "femininity" and the type of woman I would probably grow up to be like. 

Wurtzel writes about Delilah, Amy Fisher, Hillary Clinton, Margaux Hemingway, Nicole Brown Simpson, Courtney Love, Sylvia Plath, Edie Sedgwick, Marilyn Monroe, and many more women whom I came to see as role models after reading this book. These are women who broke the mould and did everything for themselves. 

I still think that Elizabeth Wurtzel is one of the best and most important writers of the last 20 years; I'm not really sure what she's doing now but I'm prompted to find out. I know a lot of people don't like her (they think she's whiny or something? Try having clinical depression, we'll see how you like it), but she was a huge inspiration to me when I was a teenager. Her writing continues to be important to me and I'd say that this book is a very good introduction to her work.

I would say that the masculine counterpart to this book would be Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon by Pamela Des Barres, which I read around the same time as Bitch and can also highly recommend. Des Barres writes about Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan, John Bonham, Kurt Cobain, Eddie Cochran, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Rick James, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Ricky Nelson, Gram Parsons, Johnny Thunders, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Sid Vicious, Dennis Wilson, and most fascinatingly, G.G. Allin. 

Paul Morstad.

Good.

Reminds me of The Royal Tenenbaums.

Very Wes Anderson-esque.

Paul Morstad

Workers building the Auckland Harbour Bridge take a break high above the Waitematā Harbour, late 1950s.

More here.

Superfuckinggood

Swag.

Not the greatest picture but...

From left:

Wavves - Afraid of Heights

Sonic Youth - Kool Thing single

Shuggie Otis - Here Comes Shuggie Otis

Thee Oh Sees - Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion

Otis Redding - The Dock of the Bay

Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

Boston - Self-titled

Thee Oh Sees - Help (on neon green vinyl!)

What is it about serial killers that is so damn fascinating?

Today's readings:

Elizabeth Bathory

The Moors Murders
(I think I've read this one about four times now).

Richard Ramirez

Paul Bernardo & Karla Homolka

Edmund Kemper

Carl Tanzler

Interviews with Serial Killers

The Family Murders

Katherine Knight

Port Arthur Massacre

Wineville Chicken Coop Murders

I really don't know why I end up reading this stuff when I'm bored.

Potentially the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.

Click Chandelier Turns Room Into A Forest for the original article and better photos.

I wish blogspot would display large pictures properly.

Anyway...I want this thing. I would even consider holding off buying a new record player if it meant that I could have this chandelier.

Valerie June

I remembered the artist I was trying to think of in my last entry! It's the beautiful Valerie June.

I highly recommend.

Also the new Boards of Canada is great!

Stuff I'm diggin' lately.

TV!

First up...this TV show I found for sale at my local video store. Which I got for $7 because they went out of business.

It stars Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and...Matt LeBlanc. Believe me, I was put off by him at first too but I am SO glad I flicked the seven bucks on this because it is actually such a fantastic, well-made show. Obviously Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan carry everything effortlessly with their totally natural acting chemistry, and if you're used to seeing them in Green Wing then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Above and beyond that, it is great to observe the huge contrast and resulting conflict between two cultures that are still so, so different. 

The basic plot is that Beverly and Sean (Greig and Mangan, respectively), are a married couple whose hit TV show is spotted (sort of!), by a big American TV mogul. He flies them to LA to write the US version of their show and as you'd expect, shit gets fucked up. Of course, they were "promised" that it wouldn't, but they end up by bending to the will of Merc, the aforementioned TV mogul. The result is the absolute bastardisation of Beverly and Sean's pride and joy. For a start, Matt LeBlanc is cast in their show instead of Richard Griffiths, who starred in their original show. The contrast is at once absurd and hilarious. 

 Beverly does her best to stand staunchly against everything but unfortunately for her, LeBlanc takes a huge shine to her husband and co-writer, Sean. He becomes enamoured by the glamorous lifestyle that LeBlanc shows him and this drives a wedge between himself and Beverly.

Anyway, I'll stop now before I give too much away! Although I seem to be the last person to get on this boat as I only just found out about this show, which originally screened in 2011! I'm ridiculously keen to see the second and third season (currently in production).

Books!

This is the book I am currently reading. I came across it because I got a weird yearning for Bastard Out of Carolina, which I thought I owned but can't see on my bookshelves anywhere. Hopefully it's at my mum's house and not in the possession of some jerk who will never give it back.

Anyway, I first read Bastard Out of Carolina many years ago and I was immensely moved by it. It is loosely (not TOO loosely) autobiographical and I think it was probably the first book I'd ever read about being dirt poor and white. Luckily I can't relate to certain other elements of the story, such as all the incest that goes on, and also I can't imagine how awful it must be to grow up gay in Carolina, but still, Bone was a character I hugely identified with. I wish I'd read the book when I was younger. I think I was 19 or 20 when I read it. Having been the only poor white kid in both the schools I attended it was a huge relief to find something I could relate to in regards to that. 

So as I was saying, I got a hankering for this book a little while ago. I did a little research and found Trash, which is a collection of short stories by Allison. As you can imagine, the stories are largely about growing up with the label "white trash". I only just started reading it but even the foreword was great reading. It's so fantastic to rediscover an old favourite author.

I think what I love most about Dorothy Allison is that she refuses to just "forget" and "move on" from her past and view it completely negatively. Yes, her childhood was horrific and she struggled for a very long time, but she made it work to her advantage. I think I'm the same. Our histories shape us and inform how we express ourselves, however we choose to do so. I only hope that one day I have the guts to write about my life and let people know that the things that have happened to me only make me stronger, and I hope others can relate to that as well.

Music!

Well what do you know, I fucking love the latest album by Thee Oh Sees. How predictable! But seriously, this album is great. My favourite song is track four, "No Spell", which is so incredibly epic. Not as epic as "Putrifiers II", the title track off their last album, but it's definitely epic in its own way. Going to stop saying the word "epic" now as it just reminds me of all those stupid internet memes. 

My second favourite track is "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster" which has one of the best music videos I've ever seen. And I fucking hate music videos so that's saying a lot. I posted it on this blog a little while ago so if you want to see it, just scroll down a little bit.

Anyway, I've listened to Floating Coffin about 60 times and can't say I love it as passionately as Putrifiers II or Carrion Crawler/The Dream but it's still the best damn thing that's come out lately. Although I'm oddly keen on Queens of the Stone Age's new album too, which I wasn't expecting. And there was another recent release that I heard at work that I really liked but I can't for the life of me remember the artist's name. She was a lady, anyway, and the style of music was an interesting mix of country and soul. I wish I could remember her name! 

Unfortunately there isn't much else I've enjoyed lately, apart from Kurt Vile which I'm pretty sure I've already written about ("Girl Called Alex"?! So amazing oh my god don't get me started...). And the new Wavves is great, already wrote about it though...new Devendra was pretty good too but I wouldn't go buy it or anything.

Obviously I adore The Black Angels but I'm just not enjoying their new album at all. Same goes for the new Stooges record. Just cannot get into it. And Vampire Weekend can get fucked but no surprises there, I've always hated those assholes. I still haven't listened to the new Wire album, damnit. New Yeah Yeah Yeahs was a massive disappointment. Sigh. New Boards of Canada soon though! Yay, something to look forward to.

Storm Thorgerson

The article/essay I wrote on Storm Thorgerson. Pretty basic and not as good as I'd have liked it to be but I did pretty much hammer it out in one evening. Which goes to show that I would never get anything done were it not for deadlines.

Anyway, he's a really interesting guy. I just wish I could have found more comprehensive interviews. It would have been great to meet him and pick his brains, since what he did is what I might want to do one day when I get my shit together.

Storm Thorgerson (1944-2013)

Storm Thorgerson is the designer behind what are perhaps the most famous record album covers of all time. He was born in 1944 and grew up in Middlesex, England. He was was a childhood friend of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, who would later go on to form Pink Floyd. Thorgerson collaborated from them from the beginning and designed all of their album covers. He went on to design covers for Led Zeppelin, Muse, The Mars Volta, Black Sabbath and many more.

 Thorgerson, having completed a Masters in Film, originally wanted to be a filmmaker but when Barrett and Waters asked him to design a cover for their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, his interest in design was fully realised. During the same year, 1968, he formed the design studio Hipgnosis with his friend Aubrey Powell.

Thorgerson is known for his striking, stark and surrealist style. He often used photography in his art and design but used no computer enhancement. Most of his photographs are of real situations that Thorgerson himself would orchestrate. Obviously having had limited technology at this time, he would utilise what he learnt during his Film degree on his photographs. Among the techniques he employed were multiple exposures and mechanical cut and paste techniques. 

A Saucerful of Secrets was Thorgerson's very first album design. His style evolved and became quite different, but the elements of surrealism and general strangeness started here and became a very strong theme in all of his work. Here he uses a collage style; he used this less and less of this throughout his later work, opting instead for stark, unusual and unsettling imagery.

A Saucerful of Secrets album cover, 1968

Thorgerson's next remarkable work for Pink Floyd was for their Wish You Were Here album in 1975. 

Wish You Were Here album cover, 1975

This album cover shows the themes that were developing in Thorgerson's style. Instead of collage, Thorgerson's favoured medium had switched to photography, and according to legend this one is completely real – the man on fire really is on fire. Thorgerson's continuing sharp style ensured that Pink Floyd's albums stood out on the shelf, and as David Gilmour said after Thorgerson's passing, his designs had been “an inseparable part of our work.” One could say that Thorgerson's designs evolved along with Pink Floyd's music.

Another album cover that illustrates this is his design for A Momentary Lapse of Reason, released in 1987. This image truly shows Thorgerson's love of surrealism. In order to realise his vision for this album cover, Thorgerson actually lined up hundreds of identical and perfectly made up beds on a beach. Again, Thorgerson shows us his passion for the stark and strange with another shockingly real photograph. He has turned a very traditional landscape – a beach with a horizon – into something extremely strange and surreal. He uses the technique of repetition to draw the viewer's attention in. 

A Momentary Lapse of  Reason album cover, 1987

Thorgerson named the surrealist artist Rene Magritte as a huge inspiration to him, and this is especially evident in his work for the Mars Volta for their album Frances the Mute in 2004. The album cover is an obvious homage to Magritte's 1928 painting The Lovers. Thorgerson was also inspired by the music on the album itself, stating that when he listened to the album he “imagined car drivers navigating their way through town i.e., through life, thinking they are steering a safe path but in fact having no idea where they are going, i.e., drivers wearing custom hoods - not hoods to hide their identity but nicely made velvet accessories that simply and surreally prevent them from seeing or having any idea of where they were driving.” 

Frances the Mute album cover, 2004

The Lovers by Rene Magritte, 1928

Storm Thorgerson's attention to the music of the bands' who commissioned him clearly paid off in his creation of album covers. The result is that his album artwork often relates to the music it is for, but is still in his stark, surrealist style. His imagery is often simple but so unusual that it draws the viewer in and makes them look at least twice. His designs are clearly integral to the work of the bands he has created artwork for, making him perhaps the most successful album cover designer of all time.

Bibliography

Batty, David. “Storm Thurgerson Dies Aged 69”. April 18, 2013.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/apr/18/storm-thorgerson-dies-69 

Baucom, Amanda. “Storm Thurgerson”. 2013.

http://www.spikerush.com/storm_thorgerson/index.php?section=biography 

No author or date specified. 

http://indie-cover-stories.tumblr.com/post/889909834/mars-volta-frances-the-mute 

No author specified. “The Mars Volta by Storm Thorgerson”. 2008-2013.

http://www.rockarchive.com/the-mars-volta_photo_print_mvol002st.html#.UZ9X0KKmjko 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Thorgerson 

http://www.artnet.com/artists/storm-thorgerson/ 

From the Little Golden Book The Colour Kittens, published in 1949. 

I absolutely adored this book when I was little.

By Pietari Posti

By Norito Shinmura

Church and Dove by Edward Bawden, 1927

By Bonnie-Marie Smith

By Brian Wildsmith

By Kathleen Lolley 

By Elsa Mora

Posted from my BRAND NEW laptop, by the way. 

Finally, a computer I can work with!

Next up I think I'll post my essay on Storm Thorgerson, possibly followed by a post on stuff I'm enjoying at the moment.

Yay!