Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Ghost on the Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club is out on DVD.

For me, viewing the DVD was a highly entertaining experience on many levels. Before his show at Merlyns Club in Madison, WI, Jeffrey was sitting quietly at a table. I asked if I could take a few photos. At the time I was at the top of my Tri-X shooting and lab processing game, and the resulting shots are still stunning to this day (see photo below with links to more from that date). Only after watching this excellent documentary by Andrew R. Powell and Kurt Voss did I make the connection, that Jeffrey was a huge Marlon Brando fan. Hence the intense brooding captured in this photo (part of collage left), complete with the leather jacket.

The DVD features many interviews with ex Gun Club band members Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth and Dee Pop, as well as close friends John Doe, Dave Alvin, Henry Rollins, Mike Martt and Peter Case that render a fascinating portrait of the complex personality of Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

On another level it was fun to watch the DVD and see where Powell and Voss chose to weave my photos of Pierce into the narrative. The filmmakers effectively resurrected one of the murkier, yet dramatic, photos of the batch (right) to describe Jeffrey’s collapse into alcohol abuse.

In the end, it is the intense recollections by those who knew Pierce that makes this a fascinating character study and interesting addition to the legends of modern pop, rock and punk music history. I was not a big fan and did not know much about Pierce, and I am grateful to the filmmakers to learn much more about the intense brooding character whose image I captured back then.

You can read more about the DVD and see video clips of the trailer at GhostontheHighway.com.

If you’ve got, flaunt it, but it might attract a crowd. Lindsay Lohan’s provocative poses overwhelmed New York magazine’s Web site and readers complained of not being able to load its pages, which contained nude photos of Lohan posing as Marilyn Monroe. Nice, a sexy girl brings a computer to its knees.

Meanwhile, over in The New Yorker magazine, Adam Gopnik wrote about French existentialist philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir tout ensemble and spared their webmaster some grief, by not publishing the photo. So, I had to look it up, naughty boy that I am. Here it is, and others by photographer Art Shay are at the Stephen Daiter Gallery website. I like his 1980’s photo of cartoonist Robert Crumb too.

Of additional interest to nude lovers, also in The New Yorker, is an excellent review by Peter Schjeldahl about The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s ten new galleries dedicated to nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century art. About the painting below Schjeldahl writes, “The lovely, small “Bacchante by the Sea” (1865) is like a Rosetta Stone of painting, in which a studio nude and a landscape differently translate a singular, poetic imperative.” Click on the nude below to see a slide show portfolio of work on display in the new Met galleries.

The shock and awe of it began while paging through the self-congratulatory pages of CREATIVITY magazine, the trade publication celebrating the exploits of today’s advertising movers and shakers. Forever looking to capitalize on how to grab people’s golden attention and sell stuff, CREATIVITY’s madmen and women take note of Brad Neely, the writer/director/animator of The Professor Brothers series of cartoons playing on SuperDeluxe.com, an adult humor website.

Super Deluxe is sure to push your limits of acceptable taste, if you have any left, for example take Disnutskin. Is it an age of enlightenment we live in or just an ever spreading cesspool? When you wrestle away from the noise, be sure to recenter back into your own song.

The Annual KPFA Grateful Dead Marathon is scheduled for Saturday, February 9, 10am to 1am Pacific Time. Support KPFA by calling toll free: 1-800-439-5732 or 510 848-5732.

They will webcasting Grateful Dead music all day via kpfa.org, DeadNet, nugs.net, gdradio.net.

Many musical treats, of course, and a fine array of thank-you gifts including CDs, DVDs, books, and DeadNet Store gift cards. Mark your calendars and spread the word! Deadheads (and others) can call any time to volunteer to work in the phone room: 848-6767, x618. It’s a lot of fun, and the food is usually pretty good, too.

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