Tag Archives: music

Levis Pakistan Originals:Inspire campaign features Strings

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KARACHI: Following the corporate/artist sponsorship model that has proven effective with Coke Studio, on May 30 Levi’s Pakistan debuted Zoe Viccaji’s acapella interpretation of the Strings hit, “Bichara Yaar”, on CityFM’s Breakfast Show.

“Levi’s Originals: Inspire is about how Strings are the originals and Zoe and Bilal are inspired by the originals,” said Adnan Malik, creator and executive producer of the campaign. “Levi’s wanted a twist on a photoshoot with Strings, but I thought they should give the stars of tomorrow a platform. The mainstream artists have done so many campaigns already, why do we want to keep seeing the same people?”

In the case of Coke Studio, promoting independent artists has translated to direct market gain. In recent years, Pakistan has become entrenched among Coca Cola’s 15 fastest-growing global markets. And for Pakistani artists who can’t access the-incidentally, dying-giant labels of the west, it’s a viable means of funding and distribution.

“Music is something I do for me, whether or not I make money out of it,” said Bilal Khan, 24, a veteran of Coke Studio and another Levi’s artist. “Levi’s is a cool brand, I wear it anyway. So I’m promoting something I believe in. Really this is just another way for me to make music.”

Keep reading at Express Tribune.

“Tell him what we said about Paint it Black”

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Thanks for the tapes, and for the tapes of all the bands you influenced. You did well, Alex Chilton…

From Citypages.com:

“Without Chilton no Jayhawks/REM/Mats/Huskers/db’s/Rain Parade/Game Theory/Posies/Teenage Fanclub,” wrote Twin Cities musician and producer Ed Ackerson. “The mind reels… Not to mention no Cramps, Panther Burns, Let’s Active. Chilton showed us how to write pop songs with teeth and anguish. Blurred beauty. Mangled melodicism. Proved guitar pop wasn’t for pussies.”

From Chicago Tribune obit:

“Among the many bands that have proudly cited Big Star as an influence and put their own interpretations on its sounds are Chicago’s Wilco and Material Issue, the dB’s, Teenage Fanclub, the Posies (whose Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow fleshed out the reunited version of the band that has performed over the last decade), Game Theory, Matthew Sweet, Velvet Crush, the Bangles (who scored a hit with a cover of “September Gurls”), Ryan Adams, Cheap Trick (which covered “In the Street” as the theme song for the sitcom “That ’70s Show”) and of course the Replacements, who went so far as to write a song called “Alex Chilton.”

And for the kids of the ’80s (me!)…

Hillbilly and Punk Art at L’Keg

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It Came From Left Field is a traveling three-man show of outsider art (if you can call it that in the face of, ahem, three MFAs) with strong Mississippi connections. I’ve seen the exhibit once before at the softly-lit, polished-wood Hub-Bub in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Maybe that’s why, when Ming Donkey and I finally exited the Hollywood Freeway close to sun-up Thursday morning, after driving over thirty hours with a U-Haul in tow, I felt okay about sleeping in the gallery. Maybe that’s why I was surprised when we stepped from a sidewalk (where the iron-reinforced doors say more about the neighborhood than the connotations of its newly trendy name) onto a dirty tile floor awash in fluorescent bulbs. But it was 4am, and curator Walt Gorecki was waiting in nerdy-hip business attire with a big grin and big glasses, despite the fact that he had a 9am clock-in at his paying gig, the Getty.

Keep reading at Razorcake.

American Artifact: the Rise of the American Rock Poster

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So I watched the documentary American Artifact: the Rise of the American Rock Poster (as yet unreleased on DVD) at a special screening at Mississippi State University Thursday night. Merle Becker, our director-cum-narrator, apparently quit some staid, high-paid 9-5 to travel the country talking to poster artists. In itself, this requires slight suspension of disbelief, but when she made the inflated claim that she was unaware of what she terms “the rock poster art movement” until roughly five years ago, my bullshit trigger immediately tensed; not optional audience sentiment at the start of an amatuerish documentary. American Artifact is mostly talking heads and posters that flash too quickly for real visual contemplation, betraying Becker’s background as the made-for-TV editor and producer that she’s been (often for MTV…I know it’s Industry, but come on, did she really not know about rock posters?)

But the film serves its purpose as a crash course in the poster art that accompanied the dawn of rock and roll and experienced a revival alongside the digital era’s disdain for handmade commercial illustration. It even manages to be entertaining, thanks to the gregariousness, passion and wit of the involved artists (Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin,Frank Kozik, Coop and Lindsey Kuhn to name a few). These guys are almost charismatic enough to rescue the film from its warm and fuzzy (and altogether viewer-alienating) personal journey narration and (always a bad idea) re-enaction scenes. With the exception of some amazing MC-5 concert shots, American Artifact also suffers from a lack of raw vintage footage or even stills—show footage, backstage footage, footage of the artists doing their thing—and the editing is often a cut-and-paste cheese-fest. In Becker’s defense, this footage may not even exist, and the outtakes during the credits are pretty fun. But in the hands of a more skillful filmmaker or a person intimately familiar with the material or the “community” (buzzword alert) being covered, this could have been a great documentary. Instead, it comes across like the Cliff Notes version of Paul Grushkin & Dennis King’s 2004 book Art of Modern Rock: the Poster Explosion, and I was the fifteen year old geek that devoured Crime and Punishment. So for me, the film was a disappointment—worth seeing, sure, but not worth seeing more than once.