The year was 1963. The place was St. Paul, Minnesota. The band was Dewey Decimal and the Librarians. The rest they say is history. What we do know is that they "produced a sensation at Macalester College and throughout Minnesota during the 63-64 school year" and went their separate ways soon after. But alas, they have since reunited. Here they are playing 'Winkin, Blinkin and Nod' at the 25th reunion of the Class of 1964 at Macalester College. [youtube]http://youtu.be/bi-PcGFyO8I[/youtube] via Super Furry Librarian
Finnegans Sleep
[youtube]http://youtu.be/iL0dV2OvHMM[/youtube] If reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake in bed isn't enough to put you to sleep perhaps Elling Lien's 12 minute music box version will. Lien "took the first few paragraphs from the first ten chapters of Finnegans Wake... printed them onto strips of paper... then punched out the vowels (including Y!) and ran the cards through a punchcard music box player" Good night! h/t BibliOdyssey
The Smiths on the shelf
It seems like the taking of one art form and reimagining and repackaging it as another is all the rage these days. Christoph Gowan is probably the best known artist in this genre for his ongoing series The Record Book.Now thanks to Standard Designs in London I get to see how my favorite band looks in books. They have transformed the four studio albums released by The Smiths into shelf candy. Wow!and if you like some of the other influential bands of that time Standard Designs also serves up some Joy Division and New Order.Previously on Book Patrol: Christophe Gowans: One for The Record Books
A ‘Radical’ Library for the Hip-Hop Set in the South Bronx
“If we make it cool to read books in the South Bronx...then it’s a victory” -Rodrigo Venegas, aka Rodstarz, one-third of the rap crew, Rebel Diaz, and founding member of the cultural collectiveWelcome to The Richie Perez Radical Library, a new library created by the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective. The library, which was named for a South Bronx educator and activist who died in 2004, features "works by influential thinker-agitators, such as Angela Davis and Malcolm X, with writings by hip-hop luminaries including KRS-One, the RZA and Jay-Z." The collective partnered with Bluestockings, an independent Lower East Side bookstore, to gather...
Singing about "Gods’ Man"
Original edition of God's Man, 1929 The music kind of started pouring out for this when I was looking at the “God’s Man” book- Jim JamesJim James is best known as the frontman for the very successful band My Morning Jacket. In 2008 while performing at the University of Iowa James fell off the stage and got banged up pretty bad. In the months following, while recuperating, James was given a copy of Lynd Ward's seminal wordless novel Gods' Man which as James says "really struck a chord."How much of an impression did the book have? Well, his latest album and first solo release, “Regions of...