brother in arts

Open studio day @ Crane studios
46-23 Crane St., LIC New York
(7 train to 45Rd.)

Studio artists on five floors from all over New York City & the world
Classical practices to the most cutting edge expressions
Painting, sculpture, mixed media, multimedia, installation, textile arts, fine jewelry, prints and much more
Building exteriors and stairwells by the aerosol artists of 5Pointz

... My friends in the Arts (Dad in the first place) would have loved this place.

Amazing how in a city that seems to resemble more and more a crochet of solitudes - a matrix with holes - places like this can thrive. Crane studios are a big commune, only apparently a beehive of isolated units this is in fact a place where artists create in a continuum, exchanging ideas, biorythyms (two female artists on the top floor are friends and expecting at the same time: they both have morning sickness and therefore rearranged their schedule in order to work in the afternoon only) and free time (Marissa, 3 floor, got everybody together for a Met game).
Five minutes in one of the 5th floor studios, where 3 friends from Art school regrouped to create, years after graduating (and you can tell, there's more than a similarity in their works) and already I had been invited to a dinner-party in BK by a couple, wife and husband (his craft is cuisine, he tells me, strictly Italian). Wife is German, she's a late addition to the trio of friends from Art school; her style is completely different: at first the three didn't get it, eventually they came to find it oddly inspiring...
I don't want to sound naive: I'm sure there is competition and not everybody dances in circles holding hands but let's keep it romantic and let's assume the majority does, ok?

Art inside out: the walls and stairwells are triumph of graffiti. A group of kids were scraping a huge mural to make space for new work.

string bikinis and wolfheads

"This is blabla for blabla radio, broadcasting live from New York city and very honored to have here in the studio with us... *famous gliz glam electro pop high brow brit duo*"

thundering applause

Live audience in the house. I was there, the tip of my nose brushing the partition glass. I mean, I LOVE *fam gliz glam elec pop high brow brit 2* lady singer.

Even after the neverending soundcheck and the vetos - strictly no pictures, "she can fase out the flashes when playing live in big spaces but in studio you never know, they may set something off..." (translation "the engulfing shades can't do zip if you've played Irving plaza the night before and are not wearing any make up") - yes even so I LOVE her.

Then the interview begins (it's a 2 songs/break/2 songs broadcast) and it goes something like this:

sweet martyr interviewer: so blablabla last night's concert blablabla set started as a slow burner then built it up and set the audience on fire blablabla do you deliberately tease the audience I mean what is your m.o. when deciding the tracklist for your live acts?

diva: mutters something.. silence... giggles... "yeah!"

smi: ok (faking chippertude, but struggling instead) long question short answer. let's move on, blablabla your coreography on stage blablabla animal references blablabla dancers wearing string bikinis and wolfheads

diva: yeah, we like ourselves a dancer in a string bikini and wolfhead, nothing better than that (and this was about the longest sentence she ever spoke)... giggles... coughs, clears her throat (still sexy in a "smoky too many gauloises and glasses of Pernot last week in Paris" way)

smi: blablablabla your sound blablabla can you describe ... creative process?

diva: ... uh... I really don't know... yeah!

smi: blablabla

diva: ... silence .. yeah

smi: OK (forcing enthusiasm in her voice like a turkey in an asshole) another long question short answer.

and so on and so forth

I felt bad for sweet martyr interviewer. I may be biased since I too am a music journalist and I find it extremely frustrating when subjects don't cooperate for no apparent reason (of course, I'll understand completely if you're shy/sick/deaf/enjoying the silence). but diva seemed to have no apparent reason other than her "persona" to act like that, flaky in a very intellectual way, you know? bad girl, too busy for that, creative-process-just-comes-natural-I-can-t-explain-can-you-people-just-let-me-sing?

Now, it helps if as an interviewer you avoid long winding questions which basically already contain the answers to themselves. That is just an accident waiting to happen. try and know your subject first, get his/her style, if you just so smell divadom (or boredom) make your questions short-snappy.

Wear a bikini string and a wolfhead. Ride a white horse.

That said, gliz glam etc. brit duo makes some awesome music. and lady singer - despite divadom, lack of makeup and conspicuous structural collapse of epidermis on her neck (my Dad, gentleman and fashion designer would call it "plisse'") - is still hot.

I think I Ooh la la luv her

I know you got soul

In the back-room (they call it "the cave") of Table50, last night, the light of white candles, bodies weaved in an energy-coil pulsating to the beats&breaks of:

Afrika Bambaataa | Kool DJ Herc | Jazzy Jay
DJ Spinna | Rich Medina | Ge-ology
Eli Escobar | DJ Center

At the light of white candles, pictures of one smiling face, a profile, groups of people, shiny happy people, scenes from a night-life I don't recognize. L.A.?

A girl leans over and points to that face on the pictures, "It's him" she say. She's glowing with pride and has a touching dignity in the way she holds herself up and the tears back.

"Yes, that's it, that's the picture of him I knew" I say. "Did you know him?"
She says something, it gets lost in the notes of "I know you got soul"
"He was your brother?" that's what I think I heard.
"He was my boyfriend" she says.
"How old was he?"
"31" she says.

And funny how one takes for granted the premature cause of death for a 31 years old dj can only be a bullet (Proof) or a disease (Dilla).
DJ Dusk died after being hit by a car. The driver was drunk.

"I just wanted to tell you me and my friend here are from Italy. And we had heard of him even back home. That's how far he's reached. I'm so sorry".
She takes one step forward and hugs me tight. I wish I could have told her something better, something more.

(from an Internet message board) A long-standing member of the world famous Rootdown Sound System and Descarga Familia, Dusk swiftly shifted gears from soul to disco to reggae to latin to hip hop and house. As a student of the late Rob One (RIP), Dusk spent his early years diggin' in the crates with some of LA's finest, including Cut Chemist and Marvelous Marvski... The soul controller and host with the most. Tarek, you are missed

More benefits to come:
LA benefit * Fri 5.12
w/ Afrika Bambaataa | Kool DJ Herc | Jazzy Jay
Cut Chemist | Haul and Mason | Blu Jemz
Pablo Like Picasso & Expo
@ club So-Ho

SF benefit * saturday 13th
w/ Shortcut | Sake 1
The Gaslamp Killer | Fran Boogie
@ Club 6

* more shiny happy people in the house last night (at least the ones I recognized):
Dj Duane
Miss Donielle
DJ Lindsey
Dj Myles
Dj Saucey



www.myspace.com/captanfamily

Coachella 2006

Best male artist
Common because he stages a 4 elements classic hip-hop show (breakdancing included, his own ass on the stage, thus I forgive him for once again serenading the random hottie from the audience) and is just too gorgeous to be true. Kudos to his styilist: rumor has it he used to wear crochet pants.



Cee Lo (1/2 of Gnarls Barkley) because he could move a crowd of zombies and has one of the best voices under pressure. Pure soul voice. This is the difference between a real artist and a spoiled instant-fame golden kid who can't sing and dance at the same time.


Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan and I don't need to explain why.


Best female artist
Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O. Best frontwoman, frontman, everything! Dramatic, intense, crazy, flamboyant. The body arched backwards, mic's head in her mouth, screaming with all the air in her lungs. A fake teardrop on her cheek, punk mime in torn fishnets.


Worst female artist
Lady Sovereign. Goes onstage drunk and stoned, is bored and tired and hot, we feel the same after 5 minutes. No energy, no connection, too bad for an artist known to be a mean-ass tireless rap tornado.

Best act overall, for artistic and strictly personal reasons
DEPECHE MODE. Oh my God Dave Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahann.

Best goosebumps
1-Sun setting while Sigur Ros's Hoppipolla's piano intro fills the air from the Jupiter-sized speakers of the main stage.
2-Cocteau Twins's Liz Frazer on Massive Attack's Teardrop. Unfinished sympathy when I had just finished saying "How I wish they played Unfinished sympathy".
3-Depeche Mode's Home and Enjoy the silence. Time stops when thousands of voices sing in unison "All I ever wanted all I ever needed is here in my arms"
4-Daft Punk's "One more time" under the midnight's moon, people dancing like it was some sort of pagan ritual... "Music got me feeling so free" ...
5-Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps". I swear you could hear everybody's heart long for that great love that never was.

Best space-act
Daft Punk, atop a silver pyramid, in robot costumes, with a psychedelic blur of light effects. Danger Mouse (other 1/2 of Gnarls Barkley) as Wiz of Oz's Tin Man.


Best (personal) discovery
Platinum Piped Pipers.


Best impromptu
Interviewing Bloc Party's Kele, in my bathing suit (to my defence: we had just arrived, after a 15 minutes's walk in 100+ degrees).


Best ink and needle tattoos
Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea. An inked spine, following the outline of an actual spine.


Best magic marker tattoo
Random girl, front, back on bare skin, as follows: "I need a miracle" - "That means an extra ticket"

Best button
"Dior not war"

Best audience in the world (according to Karen O)
Coachella's (To be honest, Coachellians are natural born rock-techno cognoscenti. They make, on the other hand, a barely lukewarm hip-hop audience, but that's cool - what counts is loving music, and speaking up for what you like).



Quite a trip, to the desert and back.