Brad Klausen is a Seattle grapic artist and poster designer. He was an in house artist for Pearl Jam. Not surprisingly, the book features introductions by Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament. A majority of the posters featured in this book are tour posters for Pearl Jam, but pieces for several other bands such as TV On The Radio, Mudhoney, Eagles of Death Metal and Queens of the Stone Age are included.
The book has a simple layout. On the left hand sketches of the initial poster design and text describing the inspiration of the design, changes applied to the final design and some of the meanings behind design choices are balanced by a full page reproduction of the poster on the right hand page.
Klausen’s work is bold and graphically well constructed. Text is an important design element, though at times I felt that the actual legibility was lost in a couple of pieces where he became a bit to abstract for me. His sense of color is impeccable and his choices are bold and eye catching. The text that accompanies the poster images is also insightful to those interested in his design genesis and process. The printing quality of the book is great to, the colors are well reproduced on a level found with some of the better fine art museum catalogs.
If you are into poster art and graphic design this book is worth a look. If you are a big Pearl Jam fan this book will be an extra special treat.
I just found this video on youtube. It appears to be produced for Indonesian television (from the blank screen at the end where titles would go over the musical sequence) and synchs up with Emma Baulch’s book Making Scenes: Reggae, Punk, and Death Metal in 1990s Bali, which I published a review for some years ago at the Anthropology Resource Database.
It is a pretty good piece, though my Indonesian is even worse than my crappy Spanish, but better than my crappy German. Still it is worth a look if you have read that book, especially for the footage of Balinese black metal performance.
A TV special produced in 1993. Features a lot of neat stuff on Morris Sound Studios and the Florida scene. Produced in the middle of it all, not looking back on the subject.
The full documentary, available on line. Notable for being a slicker, independent documentary take on the subject. Has a minimalist electronica soundtrack along with the black metal stuff. Definitely has a feel that eschews the normal music documentary vibe.
Good English produced program, notable for some great stuff on pre-Black Metal influence on Satanism on music (Black Widow).
You have all seen some form of the internet meme taking the scene where Hitler reacts to bad news in the movie Downfall and adding subtitles to a comedic effect.
My first and still favorite is the reaction to the Morbid Angel record, the first one with David Vincent on vocals in years and a bit of a let down for many of the bands fans…
Then there is the Hipster Hitler reacting to the fact that he was the last one to learn about the Where The Wild Things Are adaptation…
Then there is Hitler reacting to the new Opeth album…
And there are several other out there, but some really good ones criticizing new heavy metal releases or some feature of the metal music industry that goes counter to core ideals. It is interesting because the scene lends itself to any emotionally laden rant, is infinitely programmable by changing the subtitle content so that if fits any specific context. There have also been several spin offs. I am sure I was late to the party on this one, but until I ran across the Morbid Angel one I had no idea. I don’t tend to watch random videos on youtube. I am just not that cool.
In a way it reminds me of the “Brokeback ______” trailer remixing a few years back. Someone re-edited a trailer to Top Gun so that the movie looked homoerotic, at least that was the first one I saw. Then they were doing it to everything. This seems the same. It will probably run its course, but I do like the ones that scream WTF at developments in metal.
It has surprised me how many heavy metal based ones are out there. In a sense it is perfect for the WTF metal rant. There is an anonymity to attack any sacred cow, a bit of trolling and a space where older griefs can be brought up in the rant. The emotional trajectory also allows for a bit of fun, a kind of breakdown at the end. While some of the language is rough and there are some pretty homophobic remarks in these videos, they do capture a certain populist truth about the authenticity of metal as projected onto the bands by their fans.
I heard some rumors a couple of months ago that Shia LeBeouf was going to direct a documentary on Marilyn Manson. That seemed strange enough, more because of LeBeouf’s career in the Hollywood game. How would his nice and teenage friendly image be affected by working with Marilyn Manson?
Then the LeBeouf directed video for “B0rn Villian”, a song called “No Reason” came out.
The video homages/steals from the alchemy sequence of Jodorowsky’s “Holy Mountain”. Mix that with some sequences of attempted bad touch, body piercings, weird images of various interpretations and Marilyn Manson reading aloud Shakespeare. There is a scene at the end where he puts a glass eye in a women’s vagina.
It is an interesting video as a piece of art and I must admit that I didn’t know LeBeouf had it in him. Might have been underestimating just how far he was willing to go to push those boundaries that he had some role as an actor in defining these past 4 or 5 years.
