Shepard Fairey, the street artist behind the iconic Andre the Giant “Obey” poster (“No more rhymes now, I mean it. Anybody want a peanut”, RIP Andre the Giant) and the Barack Obama “Hope” poster, May Day exhibition is running until May 29th at the Deitch Projects in Soho.

Fairey brings his street art inside and tries to convey a political message with his sharp graphics. The exhibit’s title May Day is the name of a day observed in many countries as International Worker’s Day or Labor Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations coordinated by unions and socialist groups. Shepard provokes conversation with his propaganda images set in a pretend socialist society. Telling us to obey or as one piece in the exhibit states, “trust what you hear not what you see.”

I was looking forward to seeing the artist’s work close up rather than up above on some water tower. And I was surprised by my degree of enthusiasm when I arrived at the gallery. Most of the pieces were multi-media and layered. Some pieces overlapped transparent material to create depth and others layered the canvas with old medical journals and wall paper to simulate a flyer cloaked wall. This technique added not only a visual, but emotional complexity to the work. The piece American Favorite saturates the recycled layers in the deep hues of an austere stenciled image of a gas station. The title adding subtext to the generic and aesthetically pleasing design. It was captivating and impressive to see Fairey morph his street style into respectable gallery fare.

The exhibit caused me to have a delayed reaction to the recently released Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop. I caught it in LA at the Arclight with some friends expecting nothing and loved it. The always likable Rhys Ifans narrates the film about Thierry Guetta a French transplant living in LA with his wife and kids. Guetta compulsively records everything in an attempt to work out the remnants of a childhood trauma. He begins to obsess over graffiti art while recording his cousin, street artists Space Invader while visiting family in France. He befriends and obtains exclusive footage of such artists as Shepard Fairey and the elusive Bansky. Thierry is automatically lovable with his mutton chops and spare tire, but he also seems sort of mentally unhinged. Banksy pulls a bait and switch on Thierry by encouraging him to leave Banksy his footage and go back to LA to make art. Banksy inadvertently unleashes a ravenous fame whore. Guetta transforms into the street artist Mr. Brainwash and begins to make a mockery of his talented friends while weighing down his pockets.

Personally, I feel that May Day is an example of genuine originality and talent while Guetta’s show is an example of the exploitation of art in the pursuit of fame. A deflated Fairey appears in the film at Guetta’s overhyped LA show Life is Beautiful. Lost in a manic sea of oversized hot wheels and spray cans he appears sincerely hurt that someone he trusted could defecate so successfully on his belief system . Shepard seemed resigned that sometimes all it takes is a gimmick. It is sort of ironic that Fairey has been accused of doing the same thing, but maybe that is par for the course when you comment on logos and iconic imagery by imitating them. In the past he has taken legal measures to stop the use of his copyrighted images while successfully using other’s copyrighted images such as the high-profile Associated Press photo of Barack Obama by Mannie Garcia.

I absolutely love this photo because I absolutely hate Terrance Howard. He comes off like such an egotistical douche. He is a good-looking guy and not a bad actor, but its the attitude he exudes through the way he talks and walks. It makes me just want to punch him in the face. I’ve always felt this way about him and was so disappointed when he popped up in the first few minutes of Iron Man. I automatically thought well, great, now I’m going to hate this movie. Howard didn’t appear too often as James “Rhodey” Rhodes in the first movie and sort of disappeared behind the action and Robert Downey Jr.’s wall of charm. I went into Iron Man II prepared to deal with Howard’s presence, but got a surprise treat. He had been replaced by Don Cheadle.

It wasn’t as weird as when they replaced Becky on Roseanne or Jan Brady in the Brady Bunch Variety Show, but it did seem strange for Howard not to want to be in the sequel. After all his character develops into the sidekick War Machine and his relationship with Downey’s Tony Stark is a major plot point. I’ve heard two reasons why the role was recast: Howard wanted too much money and that Howard was such a pompous a-hole that they didn’t want to work with him again. I like to think it was the latter.

The best part of the Iron Man series is Robert Downey Jr.. He is a great self-deprecating clown on and off the screen. Some of his best roles have been complicated showman with dark interiors like Chaplin and Sherlock Holmes. This movie is  action fluff, but Downey’s magnetic charm and spontaneity make it solid.

The recycled premise hits all the comic book clichés: Rival families, daddy issues, revenge, double identities and the list goes on. The Avengers are introduced into this growing franchise. Scarlett Johansson can be impressive as an actress, but I’m sick of her being over sexualized. Her character’s alter-ego Black Widow does wear a unitard, but does she have to flash her bedroom eyes while notarizing documents. Johansson gains some street cred with a bad ass gymnastic fight scene in which she single-handedly takes out an entire security team.

After years of professional boxing and plastic surgery Mickey Rourke is typecast as a beast. He plays the bruised monster Ivan Vanko the vengeful son of Stark’s father’s old collaborator. The combination of Rourke’s real and fake prison tattoos make him even more horrific. Thankfully his dialogue is limited because his Russian accent is kind of terrible. Sam Rockwell overshadows Rourke’s evil barbaric physicist with his cocky over compensating Justin Hammer the CEO of Stark’s competitor. Rockwell’s fool is a slick dressed, fast talking idiot with some James Brown moves.

Gwyneth Paltrow does more than wear a pencil skirt well as Iron Man’s love interest and confidant Pepper Potts. She really tries to flush out her character and play it real even in fantastical moments. Pepper’s story line seems extraneous, but one of my favorite scenes in the entire movie is between Paltrow and Downey. Downey’s Stark attempts to apologize to Pepper with a crate full of strawberries in her office. The scene seems totally off the cuff. Downey is constantly distracted by inanimate objects and hilariously ends the scene by clumsily trying to throw the strawberries away in a garbage can way too small. Strawberries fall everywhere and the impromptu feel brings out the absent-minded professor side of the super hero.

The movie is about 30-45 minutes too long and there are way too many characters and sub-plots. Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan is always a nice addition to any scene, but appears less often than he did in the first movie. Like Faveau, the film’s director, Iron Man II is generally smart, but not afraid to have a good time or be the butt of the joke.

I took an endless afternoon walk through my old neighborhood passed the time warp Cronin and Phelan down Broadway passed dirt parks with basketball and handball courts. People were still throwing crap out of the windows of my old apartment building and I saw two parrots on the street. They probably appreciate pavement filled walks more than cages, but I feel like leashed parrots should be outlawed. It’s just creepy. This woman came down Steinway in a scooter wheelchair with a basket. I thought she was crying based on the faces she was making, but my friend pointed out that she was talking to her parrot sitting on her handle bars. Once again everyday parrot talk gets mistaken for a woman having a mobile breakdown. Tell me that’s not creepy?!

I met these two ladies along the way. Who knew there was a specialty store for used shoes, worn in scrubs and lady tuxedos. This bronze mannequin was so depressed about her shirt she tried to hang herself. Her friend was too busy being debonair with her Dorothy Hamill cut to call a suicide hotline.

An epic line boxed me in as I surfaced from the subway. Two awkward best buds volunteered details about a mandatory evacuation on 52^nd Street due to a manhole explosion. All York ticket holders were banned from entering the area and forced to create a makeshift line. Unfortunately, I didn’t make a significant connection with my two new friends and after some Thom York fun facts I started my pilgrimage to the end of the expanding line. The caution tape multiplied with every step away from 8^th Avenue. I landed in the center of Broadway diagonally across from the Winter Garden Theater.  Steam impatiently pushed out of several open manholes being evaluated by city workers and crowds of tourists. Fire and police vehicles swarmed around the four block radius. The cops left all of us fearful paperless ticket holders alone while an impromptu sermon with hymns broke out on the corner. A massive group of Midwesterners rocked side to side with their arms raised high to their lord and savior. It was bizarre, but good entertainment as we all waited for details. No details came, but I made it to RB’s back entrance after an hour. The paperless system added more waiting as they ran everyone’s credit cards at the door. The lines did not stop there. There was a chaotic cluster around one dude checking IDs for drink bracelets and then several lines leading to the bar. Thankfully, the bartender was generous with his pour. I bet Michael Stipe, David Byrne and Nick Valensi from The Strokes didn’t wait on any lines in the VIP section on the upper level!

The last time I was at Roseland I was sixteen. I started having ska flashbacks in the spacious ladies room. If nothing else the experience brought back memories of my high school friend Karen. She was a straight A student with an obsession for glam metal. She was pretty much up for anything and eventually became my regular concert companion. I was met with a wall of people when I returned drink in hand to the center of the filled to capacity venue. I tried to work my way through the exhilarated crowd, but ended up nestled or should I say lodged between a really good-looking guy and the sound booth. My surroundings fell away as York’s falsetto washed across the room like a deep exhale.

York’s performance had a sense of freedom and ownership. He strutted, quivered and gesticulated all over the stage and even while sitting at his piano. A blueberry haired Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers seemed to purposefully not upstage York. Although, he did manage to make it appear as though it was necessary for him to dance in order to play his guitar. The rest of the band included longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich on keyboards, Joey Waronker of R.E.M and Beck on drums and Mauro Refosco from David Byrne’s band on percussion. The strong group seemed solely present to serve York and his music.

They played his entire album The Eraser, but replaced the human less electronic beats with handmade sounds. It was thrilling to watch and listen to pure York. The band gave him the stage at one point so he could play a solo set featuring the live debut of a ballad with the working title A Walk Down the Staircase. The crowd was so plugged into his small silhouette alone on stage with nothing but his guitar. The rest of Radiohead was absent, but their music was not. York played a piano version of Everything In Its Right Place and for the encore There, There and the B-side Paperbag Writer.

It was sad to see them leave the stage, but they literally had nothing left to play. People exited like a stampede of ants through the main lobby. Everyone including myself pulled their cell phones out and pointed them at the band’s name encased in hot pink neon lights on 52nd Street. The womb like feeling of the packed venue dissipated as the rowdy road construction took over as the satisfied fans folded back into the chaos.

Walkabout (w/Noah Lennox) from Logos by Atlas Sound

The Ballad of the RAA from Hometowns by The Rural Alberta Advantage

I Felt Stupid (single) by The Drums

What’s It For (single) by Avi Buffalo

Generator 2nd Floor from Weathervanes by Freelance Whales

What if Mario was one of us?

I was invited to an empty vault steps away from Trinity Church down on Wall Street to watch a preview of the off-broadway play The Dudleys! A Family Game.The play was written by Leegrid Stevens a pseudonym for the show’s co-director Steven Gridley. Gridley sat like a maestro, in a fire hydrant colored chair made for toddlers, controlling a short table overwhelmed by equipment at the foot of the performance space. The classroom sized vault was donated to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Program by Capstone Equities. Gridley wrote the auto-biographical piece while completing his M.F.A in playwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts.

The venue was oppressively hot and left the audience reeling at the fact that vaults were certainly not created to store humans! The play centers on a mourning Mormon family before and after the loss of their patriarch. This personal story is told as if it were a Nintendo Entertainment System video game. One would assume that this is a memorable artifact from Gridley’s own childhood. The name Nintendo translated from Japanese to English means “Leave luck to Heaven”, a phrase well suited for this play about a family questioning their faith in a god that would allow such pain and chaos. They push the limits of their suburban lives in hopes of figuring out whether or not life is controlled by a greater power.

The concept was amusing and served as a solid storytelling tool, but one wonders how compelling the bare bones of this script would be not draped under this visually stimulating costume of an idea. The characters were robust as were the grounded performances of the ensemble. It is impressive to watch the cast members so honestly stay connected to their characters’ objectives while dancing like avatars in front of projected backdrops in motion. This play is not perfect, but its imperfections are to be expected when taking such theatrical risks. I cannot decide whether the scripts dependency on the concept is a problem or an ingenious choice that heightens the piece. It definitely serves as rich storytelling device while dealing with Erin Treadway’s jovial matriarch’s suicidal thoughts by projecting a health meter behind her to indicate the success of her attempts. It also adds depth to the guilt of her controlling sister in-law Meg, played by a relentless Karen Forte, while she accrues points by gunning down her disillusioned patients that chase her like slow-motion zombies.

The original score composed by Gridley and Jen Hammaker, accomplished Theremin player and member of the hilarious band Stickerbook, is not only catchy, but also haunting, especially as it lingers on some dreamy angst filled moments between Brandon Bakes and Anna Lamadrid. Gridley and his co-director, the talented actor-director, Andres Munar led the piece with a playful leash towards a solid climax. The final scenes transform into this perfect metaphor placing a devoted son in a fight with an unbeatable machine in the hopes of saving his sick father’s life.

Atlas Sound's Brian Cox at CMJ

Atlas Sound and the Selmanaires lead by Deerhunter front man, Brian Cox opened the show at the CMJ Music Marathon showcase at Le Poisson Rouge on Tuesday night. Cox departed from his typical flamboyant stage presence and tried on a Neil Young persona.

I enjoyed his languorous, digitally warped, acoustic musings. Some songs floated away saturated in mood and others aimlessly dissolved. He was very likable, but at times his banter with the audience fell flat like jokes without punch lines. That being said he wasn’t afraid to do what felt right musically like briefly rocking out on one of the two drum kits or switching between the electric and acoustic guitars with confidence and ease. It was a shame his set had to end because he seemed to grow more comfortable and playful as time went on.

Broadcast's Trish Keenan and David Cargill

I started to feel a bit impatient after a long bathroom line ending with no soap in between set changes, but that slowly dissipated with some assistance from my Jameson on ice before Broadcast hit the stage. Jammed between a tactile couple and a pole my mind fluttered with recollections of my trip years ago to Birmingham, England the birthplace of this dream pop band.

I visited two friends during their semester abroad and our limited funds definitely shaped my view of the UK’s second largest city. The highlights of my trip were visiting the local Tesco to spy on a supermarket cart boy who looked like a fairytale giant, being entertained by my friend’s homemade hand puppet in the image of this supermarket cart boy, a day trip to the Cadbury Factory and an unexpected Fugazi concert. Overall, I would say that the city of Birmingham inspires the need for psychedelic escapism. This gray city was where Broadcast found their sound in 1995. The only remaining members Trish Keenan and James Cargill still use hypnotic electric beats to pepper Keenan’s childlike flat voice.

The crowd clamored towards the front of the venue as black and white naturalistic images glowed on a video screen while the room vibrated with the echo of meandering electronic riffs. Personally, I was a bit tipsy and had no issue with my slow decent into the ol’rabbit hole during the solid half hour before Ms. Keenan even uttered a lyric. The stark projected patterns transcended into color and from the shadows beside the screen came recognizable songs such as Black Cat and Lunch Hour Pops. The sea of heads in front of me bobbed and weaved desperately searching for a song they could identify, but instead they found a performance more like an art installation piece. The band seems to be moving in this direction. Their latest “mini album” Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, being released by Warp records next week, is mostly disembodied melodies that occasionally evolve into full songs. It might not have been what the fans expected, but it was a unique experience with an organic feel.

Sibling rivalry

Life can sometimes feel like a scene from David Cronenberg’s (videodrome, The Fly) 1979 horror flick The Brood. One false move and you could be bludgeoned to death by a pajama clad unisex pack of anger babies. Yep, I said anger babies!

The Brood centers on Frank Carveth, a stone-faced father of the year type played by Art Hindle, his troubled wife, Nola played by Samantha Eggar and their mute angelic daughter, Candice played by Cindy Hinds. Nothing can turn Nola’s frown upside down, not even Frank’s wind resistant featherific hair, so she checks herself into an alternative psychotherapy facility operated by an over emoting Oliver Reid as Dr. Hal Raglan. The doctor transforms his patients’ mental anguish into physical manifestations such as weeping blisters and a pulsating goiter.

Things get real after Frankie finds bruises on his daughter after a sleepover with her loony mommy and her pus-filled pals at la casa de crazy pants. It suddenly appears that Candice’s injuries are connected to a string of mutant dwarf attacks in town. These tiny thugs come dressed to the nines in matching snowsuits (who took these midget terrorists on a shopping spree) to kidnap little Candice and drag her back to (dramatic pause) the mental hospital in the woods. This all comes to a disgusting climax when Frank tries to retrieve the apple of his eye and discovers that the pig-faced brood is actually the physical embodiment of his wife’s anger. Dr. Raglan crosses over to the white light and offers to tip toe into the anger babies den to save Candice from her freakish siblings. The effects are simple and obvious, but a room full of hooded, pajama clad dummies sleeping sitting up is traumatic. Frank’s visit with his wife only exacerbates her emotional state therefore her anger-based offspring. Nola lifts her house coat to reveal an external uterus, which she tares open with her teeth in order to give birth to more hateful gory self-sufficient babies. The doctor tries to keep his cool and escape with Candice, but as Nola’s emotions rise he finds himself in the center of a mutant toddler shit storm. They literally start falling around him from their bunk beds.

Most of the cast is too busy mugging for the camera or giving their best Royal Shakespeare Company audition to produce any truly organic moments, but their over-acting mostly enhances the absurdity of the film. Art Hindle’s under cooked performance as Frank would normally seem disconnected, but it serves as a perfect counterpoint to Reid’s scowling intensity. This is one of Cronenberg’s more underrated films, but this stepping-stone is autobiographical and a metaphor for the writer-director’s own divorce and custody battle. The plot might seem fantastical, but the struggle between meeting one’s needs and meeting one’s familial obligations is based in reality.  This small fashionable posse will haunt you until your next therapy session.