He played Cry, Cry, Cry and I Walk the Line, among others. He led a loving sing-a-long of “I Walk the Line” including all the other performers of the evening, including Marshall Crenshaw, Laura Cantrell and The Persuasions. He kept raising his guitar in Johnny Cash style and grinning, wearing his black suit and bolo tie (a nice touch). See X’s video “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline”:

Splendid Corp. recently designed this flyer for a nice show next week at Pianos—Michelle Amador will be opening for the East West Quintet, and performing with Goh Nakamura, and the Rachel Masons.

Michelle has a beautiful voice and writes jazz influenced pop songs that make you feel like everything’s gonna be okay. Goh Nakamura’s songs are sunny, poppy and cool. East West Quintet is a jazz collective that plays original and experimental jazz compositions.

It should be a lovely summer evening so go check it out if you can.

Splendid Corp. has been working on Michelle Amador’s full length album, Higher, (a preview of the artwork is here) as well as some promotions for her shows (Bam Postcard) and a single design for her song Because of You.

You can listen to Michelle’s music on myspace or find out more at her website, michelleamador.com.

I fell in love with this video last summer—here it is again. The tomatoes take on a dangerous tone in the wake of the Great Salmonella Crisis of 2008.

Found on the web tonight (um, yes, where else) is this website called Foldschool

a collection of free downloadable patterns so that you can make kids play furniture out of your own cardboard. That’s awesome. Their mission statement is also refreshing:

“Mass culture is run by superficiality and ecological absurdity. Foldschool supports craftsmanship as a face-to-face approach to design and brings together product and user the closest possible.

The mindset of foldschool is to restore design to one of its original missions: to provide a product at an affordable price through a smart manufacturing process.”

Found this thanks to the ecolect blog, which I just discovered via Springwise, which I discovered via something posted on a foodblog.

The wonderful wide internet.

(By the way, Springwise’s sustainability section has a whole range of interesting ideas listed, from charging mobile phones by dancing to a program in vancouver where a banner company is recycling its own ads into bags, and then selling them to make money to put into green programs. Not bad, Vancouver. Hello U.S.A.?)

I just randomly stumbled upon this very exciting story on silkscreening with cocoa on blue collar press’s website. I love when people print with unconventional materials, and the way they describe how the idea and poster came to be truly highlights the concept of chance in art and graphic design. (i think of the dadaists and hans arp, how he would let the scraps of newsprint fall and let that inform his compositions)

chance in DADA (from the book “dada: art and anti art” by Hans Richter)

for anyone who’s spilled some wine on a t-shirt or chocolate, or bike grease, or left a tea bag on top of some paper, and said “cool” instead of “oh sh**t” this is an inspiring story of someone who took it to the next level. i love how the poster became a subtle scratch and sniff.

I’m a little late to the table writing about this one, but can we just go back in time to last Saturday for a minute? I went to see Mission of Burma performing “Signals, Calls, and Marches” at the Bowery Ballroom and it was such an incredible experience I was glad we traversed through the “dangerous ceiling to floor lightning” and “flash flood warning” to get there.

Mission of Burma has always had a little near and dear place in my heart, growing up near Boston they were part of the pantheon of groups that I was too young to see when they were happening, but was always aware of as a “cool boston band” as I got deeper and deeper into music. Only around from 1979-1983, their recordings had an immediacy that still resonated to me in high school in the late 80’s early 90’s, and still resonates so much today. The experimentation mixed with the anthemic sing along, and the noise, the cool sounds, that almost scratchy tinny guitar sound so refreshing, making you want to pick up yourself and stop the bullshit and be glad that human beings make art.

Or something like that.

I never got to see Mission of Burma when they reformed in 2002, And missed a show last year somewhere outdoors in Connecticut for their new album “The Obliterati”. I heard that they were playing with Bob Weston from Shellac. I heard that they were still excellent live. So I jumped at the chance to hear them perform “Signals, Calls, and Marches” with all the songs that I know and remember. “Academy Fight Song” and of course “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”, “Max Ernst” among others.

It was exactly as I expected, a really great show. And they all seemed really happy to be playing. And this is the best thing, I think, about the punk/indie reunions in general, is that back in the day we all looked at aging bands playing super expensive arena shows that our parents or parents friends would go to as extremely lame, that we would never ever do that, we would stop playing while we were good, there wouldn’t be any nostalgia shows ever for our kinds of music. It was about NOW. But the way this scene is doing it is real, and the bands we want to see seem so grateful that they get to play again, and seem to be having fun and they are really good, and its not lame, and there are generations of kids who were too young and never got to see it who get their chance. Its a win win situation both ways, seeing these shows sometimes seems like a rare glimpse to see something you never thought was going to happen. The surprise of it all makes it all the more great. This was never supposed to happen. We thought we missed the boat. But it is and its pretty awesome, you’ve got to admit. At least I think so.

The tour is in conjunction with the re-release of the Burma records on Matador records. It looks like they did a really good job with the packaging. In a world of downloads, this seems like a special object. They each include a dvd of “unreleased live footage” and two of them have additional unreleased tracks and are remastered from the original analog tapes. The booklets look good too, from these pictures:

(I got these photos from the Matador Direct site, where they are entitled “ MISSION OF BURMA RE-ISSUE GLAMOUR SHOTS. )

I’m glad that Mission of Burma are getting some of the attention they deserve and it was a great show, making my little former bostonian heart proud.

Speaking of Bostonia, there are some great flyers and back in the day stories here at Joe Harvard’s site, where I got this Mission of Burma flyer that is spelled wrong from a show at Mass College of Art.

This Pere Ubu one is good too. I miss flyers.

its always a great sadness when another one of these jazz organ greats passes on. we will miss you mc griff.

the following is an album that i have and love the cover of (pardon the bad scan from google search-i should really scan the real record) i love, love, love the old jazz musician style with the funky suits and hats. i’ve always kind of wanted to dress like an old jazz cat.

more google images:

(what tantalizing red beans!)

Purgatory Pie Press
presents INSTABOOK 3
Enclosure Exposure
Data Protection Patterning
by
Elizabeth Duffy

Book party + signing-> 5.5% APR postcard
Saturday May 10
5-7pm
@
Printed Matter
195 10th Av @22nd St, New York City
www.printedmatter.org
212-925-0325

After hurricane Katrina hit, Nancy Collins and her husband went on a rescue mission. She had heard of a specialty printer in New Orleans who had been flooded by the storms. His facility took five feet of water and he was forced to close it. Three-quarters of the business had been letterpress, and eventually most of it would be sold for scrap. They were able to save about three-hundred commercially engraved copper plates. These are now in the permanent collection of the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies, Southeastern Louisiana University Archives and Special Collections, in Hammond, Louisiana. In November 2006, they were able to recover the half-inch thick steel dies, some of which are over a hundred years old.

The show, opening tomorrow at Abingdon 12, in NYC, shows archival prints of some of these saved historical artifacts.

HISTORY IN SMALL PLACES
A Solo Exhibition of Large Format Archival Pigment Prints
By Nancy Sharon Collins

April 24–May 24, 2008
Abingdon 12 Gallery
Opening reception Thursday, April 25, 6 pm to 9 pm
Viewing by appointment only April 26 —may 9.
212 206 6845
917 392 1417
613 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014

www.nancysharoncollinsstationer.com