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Brightwell vs Club Underground vs Sunday

Posted by Eric Brightwell, October 7, 2011 12:25pm | Post a Comment

SUNDAY SUNDAY

If you find yourself free this Sunday, DJs Larry G (Supercrass) and Timothy L (Modernbrit) of Club Underground (and Amoeba, in the latter's case) are going to DJ a set of post-punk, indie and more at Brightwell between the hours of 3:00 and 7:00.

CLUB UNDERGROUND

Club Underground bills itself as "LA's Premiere indie/britpop/new wave/electropop/twee/60s/soul party since 2001. It occurs most Fridays at the Grand Star Jazz Club in Chinatown.

BRIGHTWELL

Brightwell Men's Shop Silver Lake California

Western Music - Kind of a Latino Thing - Happy Hispanic Heritage Month

Posted by Eric Brightwell, October 4, 2011 04:46pm | Post a Comment

Gene Autry and Lois Wile in the Singing Cowboy 1936

I love Western music. Not "Western music" as in "music rooted in European traditions," but rather the "Western" of "Country & Western." Cowboy Music. In many ways, Country and Western is an odd pairing. The two genres seem to be at complete odds. Sure, the performers evince a similar sartorial sensibility, but the subject matter of Western music is about hard-working buckeroos following honor and dogies out under the wide open sky.

Country, which I love too, is quite the opposite. Country celebrates the sedentary life - working and dying in the same small town, farm, or trailer court in which you were born -- and to hell with ethical codes of conduct; get drunk, cheat on your wife, and show up for your crappy job hungover.

Musically speaking, they're only distant cousins - no more closely related than Bluegrass and Jazz, House and Rap, Rock 'n' Roll and the Blues -- but of those examples, only Country & Western get so invariably lumped together as a single genre that people usually omit the "Western" altogether.

Happy birthday Bronze Buckeroo - Herb Jeffries turns 98 today.

Posted by Eric Brightwell, September 24, 2011 02:18pm | Post a Comment

HAPPY 98th

Today is the 98th birthday of actor/singer Herb Jeffries. Although not widely recognized today (especially among non-black audiences, during his heyday in the 1930s and '40s he was an enormously popular singer and the first black actor to star in Westerns. I'd probably know nothing of him except for my tenure in the Black Cinema section at Amoeba, where elderly gentleman reguarly treated me to their reminiscences about a black singing cowboy they'd idolized as kids.

Herber Jeffries was born September 24, 1913 in Detroit, Michigan to Afro-Sicilian pianist Umberto Balentino and his Irish-American wife, Mildred. He never knew his father and was raised by his single mother, who ran a boarding house. Although light-skinned and almost surely able to "pass," he identified as black and associated himself with Detroit's Howard Buntz Orchestra, which brought him a measure of local fame.

Erskine Tate Vendome Orchestra

Hispanic Heritage Month - Anglo America in Latin America

Posted by Eric Brightwell, September 18, 2011 05:24pm | Post a Comment

For Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15), the focus naturally tends to be on Latino experiences and contributions in the US. The US is a nation of immigrants (founded by illegals, some would argue) and currently the largest group of immigrants arriving are from Mexico (followed by China, Philippines, India, Vietnam, Cuba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Canada and Korea).

Individuals' reasons for coming to the United States vary but behind general trends there's frequently the specter of American involvement in the politics of their native countries that have made conditions less bearable at home whether it be the funding of right wing death squads, corporate exploitation, economic imperialism, secret anti-populist wars, CIA-backed coups and assassinations, or the American peoples' insatiable appetite for marijuana, meth, cocaine, rubies and gold.

Green Patriot Posters: Your Chance to Promote Climate Change Awareness Through Art

Posted by Eric Brightwell, August 28, 2011 01:42pm | Post a Comment

Silver Lake-based filmmaker and social activist Susannah Tantemsapya is the founder and executive director of Creative Migration, an inspiring non-profit organization that produces documentaries that promote various art projects which relate to social activism and change.

Right now Susannah is raising funds for her latest project, Green Patriot Posters, a documentary about… Green Patriot Posters - an art project that employs progressive poster art to raise environmental awareness. It you live in San Francisco or visited it in the winter of 2010, you may've noticed these striking posters adorning bus shelters around town. They've also graced billboards, museums and appeared in various media.

The project was initiated by Edward Morris, co-founder of the Canary Project and Green Patriot Posters, and Dmitri Siegel, director of marketing for Urban Outfitters. They partnered with Loudsauce, the first crowd-funded media buying platform that allows art and social causes to take their messages to the streets, replacing the normal slew of soul-crushing advertising with something both interesting and societally beneficial.

The film includes interviews with Shepard Fairey in Los Angeles, DJ Spooky and Michael Bierut in New York City, Mathilde Fallot in Paris, as well as people who encounter the posters on the streets. Green Patriot Posters is the only American film that's been invited to participate in Project Green, held in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2011. Help do us proud by contributing to this inspiring project. The deadline is is 11pm PST on Monday, August 29th. (Click here to contribute).

All kinds of cool rewards including film credits, cool stickers, posters, copies of the Green Patriot Poster book, autographed copies of the book, signed prints from Shepard Fairey and more! Seriously, as a human being, protecting the environment is the MOST patriotic action you can take.

*****

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