The ballad of Sandy Denny: Return of the folk queen
| Another overdue reappraisal.
Category: {music}
Music
Byrne & Eno reuniting
Byrne & Eno reuniting
| New album of “electronic gospel”.
The CD cover meme
Okay, here’s a web meme I can really get behind…. I’ve never been tempted to try one of those long list affairs filled with questions such as “what was your favourite breakfast cereal when you were a child?” The CD cover meme is more my kind of thing and it goes like this:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.4: Combine all three elements in your photo editing software.
5: Share
Et voila! Without further ado I give Someone or Something Else by Tolnaftate, that well-known Berlin Techno outfit.
Someone or Something Else by Tolnaftate, Feuilleton Records, 2008.
For the record (as it were), Tolnaftate is “a synthetic over-the-counter anti-fungal agent. It may come as a cream, powder, spray, or liquid aerosol, and is used to treat jock itch, athlete’s foot and ringworm”, and the quote, I’m pleased to say, was from HL Mencken, “All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.” The pylons were unwittingly supplied by this Flickr user. Flickr has a pool devoted to this meme and they encourage you to add your own creations.
Via Sleevage which features some choice examples.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
Arthur #29
The Arthur schedule is definitely back on course with a new number following promptly on the heels of the last. The Brothers Mael make the cover of this issue and there’s lots more goodness inside. Go thou here for free downloads or a subscription to the paper version.
The skull beneath the skin
All Is Vanity by Charles Allan Gilbert (1892).
The subliminal skull is another of those perennial motifs that recur in art from time to time, and one which has become especially prevalent since the late 19th century. There seem to be a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that if you’re going to show how clever you are by hiding one image inside another you may as well make the hidden thing something that everyone recognises. A secondary reason would seem to be the waning power of the vanitas theme. As painting became more pictorially sophisticated it wasn’t enough to simply show a skull and expect people to accept this with a stern moral as the principal content. Hence the development of death as a non-skeletal character in Symbolism and the reduction of skulls in pictures to a kind of playful game.
Holbein’s anamorphic skull in The Ambassadors is probably the grandfather of all the later versions but the more recent popularity of the hidden motif can be traced back to Charles Allan Gilbert whose 1892 picture, All is Vanity, drawn when he was just 18, was sold to Life Publishing in 1902, and subsequently spread all over the world in postcard form. Despite giving birth to a host of imitators, Gilbert’s picture is the one that still inspires artists and photographers up to the present day.