Did you ever share a stage with James Brown, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Ike & Tina, Count Basie, Maceo Parker or Hank Ballard? No? Fred Wesley performed with ALL OF THEM -- not to mention lead the JBs and scored a few...
expand review soundtracks -- and he's gonna tell you all about it in Hit Me, Fred. Acknowledged as one of the architects of funk music, his influence is still heard in music today... but c'mon, that's not what you care about. You want the drug stories and inside dirt, and Fred gives it all up! (I just flipped to a random page and it's a story about taking acid and quitting the JBs for no apparent reason.) Like Bootsy says, "Fred Wesley, he'll tell you like it is, even if your feelings get hurt, but coming from Fred, for some reason it makes you wanna do better... Stories are stories but this is real life." Lots of pictures scattered throughout, too. Hardcover; 320 pages. -Larri Byrd
For all fans of film noir and graphic novels, I present "M." Photo-realistically painted by Jon J Muth, this was originally released as a four part graphic series in 1990 and has finally been compiled into one beautiful hardcover. It's an epic...
expand review remake of Fritz Lang's original serial killer thriller released in 1931. If you don't know Lang already, you might have heard of his famous sci-fi film Metropolis. This was his first film with sound and has gone down in history for laying the groundwork for every serial killer movie following it. The graphic adaptation was painstakingly painted over two years by Muth, focusing heavily on the Noir element in page after page of beautiful tonal watercolors. You really won't believe your eyes. Even I was like, "That's a painting?" As for the story, it's a beast of a tale that involves the hunt for a whistling pedophile child murderer by police in the Berlin underground. Sounds pretty dark, eh? It only gets intensified by the pages. Hardcover, 189 pages. -C'mish
Gas Book #16 features a retrospective on the work thus far of Lodown magazine creator Marok. It's an intense bombardment of visuals from the magazine, his personal artwork, and freelance projects for companies like Stussy, Supreme, etc. 63 pages, hardcover. Imported from...
expand review Japan. Recommended. -mgmnt
Graphic novel slash comic book from Kid Acne. You might be familiar with Kid's work from those irresistible Chocolate Industries covers (Caural to be exact). A muscular little book with thick matte paper, and coming in around 60 pages. Includes a sticker...
expand review sheet featuring characters from the book. Imported. -mgmnt
New book from Gingko Press showcasing the work of Rchard Colman in beautiful form. The rich colors pop out all the sad, morbid, sexually awkward, lonely and fantastic moments in Colman's work. Hailing from Los Angeles, CA, you can see the influence...
expand review of the strong West Coast art movement at the turn of the century in his work. Imagine Beautiful Losers meets Edward Gorey, Henry Darger and Marcel Dzama. This book collects a massive amount of his paintings and tour photos, as well as a truckload of personal sketches. Hardcover, weighs in at a heavy 148 pages. -C'mish
First of all, this book is not hip or cool retrospective on skateboarding, some it is even straight cheesy (especially the design). However, this is a valuable full color resource if you're looking for pre-90s skate material. The book starts way back...
expand review to the early 1900s (yes, like 1918), tracing skateboarding's roots to Doc Ball who apparently was the first to attach roller skate wheels to a plank of wood. They even have recent photos of him skating. Then there's photos of the oldest known skateboard (from the Depression Era), 1950s scooters, the earliest skate ads (1961), and photos of the Hobie team circa 1965. The book really starts to get interesting when it starts showcasing the early decks (complete with collector's pricing). There's over a hundred examples from the 60s alone. Skateboarding really came into its own in the 1970s, and this book has some incredible documentation of the decade. There's awesome action photos, advertisements (1975 OJ ads), and skate mag covers. The book proceeds in similar fashion through the 80s (great Santa Cruz/SMA product shots), and the 90s (where it starts to lose it). The book concludes with a short long board chapter and photos of private skate collections. Hardcover, 176 pages. -the mgmnt
Let's face it, mix CDs never replaced the mixtape (cassette) as a meaningful gift. Something about the mixtape symbolized real effort. Personalizing the cassette sticker and the tracklisting was almost as important as the music itself. Here's the digital age solution complete...
expand review with fake-out cassette exterior and tracklisting insert. Open it up, and there's 64MB USB drive, enough for about an hour of music (this was done on purpose to keep length limitations of an actual cassette). Don't need to tell you that this makes an incredible gift.
-the mgmnt
Special Sound edition of high-design periodical Visionaire. Visionaire is known for their elaborate, one of a kind editions, but this one might trump them all.
Packaged inside a specially produced domed case, this issue consists of five 12-inch picture disc records, that...
expand review together contain more than 100 minutes of sound content - from audio experiments to unreleased songs, samples and spoken word pieces.
Also included is a MINI Clubman "Vinyl Killer" record player: a battery-operated toy car, containing speakers and a needle. As the little car moves along a record's groove, it plays each track, acting as a fully portable record player and sound system.
Beyond all this, the issue also includes two CDs with all of the sound content gathered digitally, as well as a booklet of credits and instructions.
Contributors include: musicians David Byrne, Courtney Love, Michael Stipe, Adam Horowitz (Beastie Boys), Antony & the Johnsons, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Karl Bartos (Kraftwerk), Andrew WK, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Danger Mouse, Malcolm McLaren, Ruyuichi Sakamoto; artists Robert Wilson, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Doug Aitken, Gary Hill, Sylvie Fleury, DJs Miss Kittin, Trevor Jackson, Towa Tei, Michel Gaubert; fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Helmut Lang; bands Littl'Ans, Fischerspooner, Unkle, Animal Collective, SunnO))) and many more. -the mgmnt
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