Comrade

It's never too late to say thank you. Rest in peace.







"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
— Howard Zinn

Chris Ritson - Featured Artist

Chris Ritson - Decadent

Chris Ritson is a multi-media artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work presents an array of concerns that include the body, morphology and culture, in an entrancing and grotesque kaleidoscope. Ritson’s work reminds that underlying and supporting any cultural endeavor and achievement are mysterious organic processes, continual mutation, putrefaction and rebirth.



Images of the kind of bodies found in tabloids, fitness magazines, and pornography are clipped and reassembled by Ritson into new animals and abstract forms. Ritson employs intricate sculptural and collage techniques to create works that transform the utterly banal into complex forms that elude definition.



Ritson’s approach to dealing with the body is somewhat similar to that of Tim Hawkinson, though Ritson’s work is infused with more wonder, and more affinity for the mysterious and unnamable, as opposed to Hawkinson’s clever puns and ironies.



“I am nature,” Jackson Pollock famously proclaimed. Chris Ritson’s work approaches nature and humanity in a way that shifts the focus of Pollock’s quotation from the personal to the universal. Everything is nature.




Chris Ritson currently has a solo exhibition on view at the Basement Gallery in Oakland, California.


See more of Chris Ritson’s work at his website:
http://www.chrisritson.com/

Phish on Phriday

Last week we featured some tunes from 10-16-1994, and this week we’ve got more Fall Tour ’94 stuff for you.



From 11-4 in Syracuse, here’s Curtain>Mike’s>Simple>Mike’s>Tela>Weekapaug from the second set. I’m a big fan of Tela, and I think it’s rad to hear it in the middle of this group of songs. Go Page!

Radical

Martin Luther King is the Number One Most Radical American in All of History as determined by a unanimous vote taken among Bees and Trees.

Here’s the Entrance Band playing their very, very, very cool song “MLK.”


the ENTRANCE BAND - mlk

electRIC feel | MySpace Video

You can download the song for free Here

Phish on Phriday

Here we go with the first installment of our new and cleverly titled weekly feature in which we’ll provide some Phish tunes to get the weekend moving in the right direction.

And what better a way to kick the whole thing off than with some selections from my first Phish show: 10-16-1994, Memorial Auditorium in Chattanooga, TN. It’s a great show replete with relative rarities. My ticket stub is a real sign of the times. In the first place it really is a stub, because someone tore the ticket in half with their hands,(as opposed to scanning it with a laser), and in the second place the ticket itself cost $18.50. Crazy.



Rift and Horn start the show with style. Not rare but still fresh.

Rift, Horn - Phish - 1994-10-16

Also from set one is TMWSIY>Alvenu Malkenu>TMWSIY, which certainly surprised me. I won’t be holding my breath until I hear another one of these.

TMWSIY>Alvenu Malkenu>TMWSIY - Phish - 1994-10-16

Check out how quiet and respectful we in the audience are during the delicate opening of the second set Fluffhead.

Fluffhead - Phish - 1994-10-16

I also won’t be holding my breath until I get another encore like this: Highway to Hell and Harpua.

Highway to Hell, Harpua - Phish - 1994-10-16

Maybe next we’ll get into some more Fall ’94 jams.