There were two pre-parties in Austin on the Thursday night before the official festival began. Both clubs (Red 7 & Mohawk) had substantial lines to get in so easily switching back and forth was impossible. Happily, I did get to see All In The Golden Afternoon – their album Magic Lighthouse on the Infinite Sea is a fave around here.
I hadn’t seen the Rain Parade since 1985 and it was great to catch one of the few reunion shows. “No Easy Way Down” still slays.
This post unofficially brought to you by the mocha shake at Bentley’s Coffee in Tucson. So very happy that after the demise of Greasey Tony’s and P.D.Q. Records, that the drink (and Bentley’s!) is still around even after twenty years.
Approaching Prada Marfa late at night when there is only moonlight is absurdly spooky, especially after driving past the giant border surveilance balloon that looms just off of US-90.
I barely touched the radio dial this trip – the soundtrack was almost exclusively accumulated music and podcasts via iPhone I hadn’t yet caught up on. I just naturally assumed that outside of Marfa Public Radio, West Texas was going to be a broadcast wasteland. I gave in around Sonora and turned the radio on expecting the worst, but the first station that came up was playing Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” Great song. Had a moment…
The line-up for Austin Psych Fest this year was too important to miss, and I had been desperately wanting to get out on the road for a long trip and luckily everything lined up to put them both together. It had been over five years since I took a serious road trip and it was amazingly relaxing to unplug, let the scenery roll by, and check out what’s going on out there.
I switched over to Vienna as my main feedreader once the Great Google Reader Diaspora began. Until there’s an obvious choice in alternate feedreading-with-sync market, I’m back to the old era of downloading feeds directly. As a relucantly-former NetNewsWire and Reeder user, I’m damn impressed with how snappy Vienna loads everything.
LucidaGraphite is a Vienna style-sheet based off of the FeedLight style. I prefer Lucida Grande in black as my primary body text font and, well, perhaps someone else would like it too.
Another rarely seen Mecanorma typeface can be found on Heino’s In Einer Bar In Mexico. The character shapes in Contest are created by elliptical counter forms cut out of curved square outer shapes. This is a great typographic choice as it reprises the typically shaped glasses of the German schlager star.
I knew that in the 1980s, Rugby font was available from Mecanorma as dry transfer lettering, but never knew Mecanorma’s name for the font family. I haven’t dealt with (or even thought about) dry transfer lettering in 25 years, but it was a somewhat easy way to get a good looking design. I’m damn pleased that this era of analog tech has been buried for good. The transfer sheets weren’t cheap, the letters tended to stick to them, and woe unto you if the letters were misaligned.
Armed with the font family name (really, “Contest” for this one?), I found a scan of the 1982 Mecanorma catalog (courtesy of Matt Howarth) and there it is: Contest font. Wonder how many of them Spacemen 3 went through while lettering those album covers.
Hedgehog – “The Burning Sun In The Morning”
Föllakzoid – “99″
Beaches – “New Knowledge”
Sun Dial – “You’re Still Wondering”
Ojos Rojos – “So Wrong”
Steven R. Smith – “Old Skete 11″
Avrocar – “Tetra”
White+ – “silveR”
Matthew J Tow – “Night And Day”
Assuming that all appropriate plug-ins are configured correctly, this post will be the official RSS-ified beginning of the Quartz City Podcast. Right now, I’m going with a bi-weekly schedule – potentially subject to change as we move along but I think I can handle bi-weekly for now. Music mix episodes will still be posted on Mixcloud, but as we push forward with this I hope to feature more than just music. Here we go…
Track listing:
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – “Seven Kinds of Wonderful”
The Vandelles – “All Aloha”
Savages – “Flying To Berlin”
Moonbell – “Still Motion”
Steve Moore – “Dawn Of Primordial Life”
All India Radio – “Tomorrowland”
Marie-Pierre Arthur – “À partir de maintenant”
School of Seven Bells – “When You Sing”
Brother Sun, Sister Moon – “All You Need”
Jessica Bailiff – “Take Me to the Sun (So Warm, So Ready)”
Allah-Las – “Tell Me (What’s On Your Mind)”
Flavor Crystals – “Broadcaster”
Persephone’s Bees – “We’ve Just Begun”
The Hives – “Insane”
A Giorgio Moroder story: apropos of his appearance on a certain new album — a few years ago on ILX, someone named Tilman posted saying he’d been doing research into “I Feel Love“‘s production, saying he was “particularily interested in the delay effect that he uses to “double” the synth riff, and the other means with which he creates “metrical dissonances”, e.g. the echo effects.” He indicated that he’d contacted Moroder directly about this. Moroder replied with this graphic, adding:
“Dear Mr. Tilman this is the only way i can help you
saluti Giorgio Moroder”
This is the greatest thing ever, of course. Credit to my friend Grady for the reminder.
I hope that graphic makes it into every Encyclopedia of Symbology and at least one radio telescope transmission into space.
Cinephilia & Beyond has an amazing find: the complete collection of Orson Welles’ Sketch Book: “a series of six short television commentaries by Orson Welles for the BBC in 1955. Written and directed by Welles, the 15-minute episodes present the filmmaker’s commentaries on a range of subjects. Welles frequently draws from his own experiences and often illustrates the episodes with his own sketches.”
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