David Lynch is best known as an Emmy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe nominated Writer/Director/Producer.  He is the creator of such films as The Elephant Man, Dune, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet , Wild At Heart, and Mulholland Dr., as well as of the television series Twin Peaks.  With such a prolific and influential career in film making, it’s easy to understand why any of his outside ventures may be over shadowed.  Last year Lynch made one such venture with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, in which the director provided vocal contributions to the Dark Night of the Soul album, as well as accompanying photographs for the project.  A subsequent gallery show of the photographs took place at Los Angeles‘ Michael Kohn gallery from May 30 – July 29 of 2009.

With the hype surrounding EMI‘s refusal to release the music for DNOTS, we posted an extensive two-piece article about the project.  Unfortunately however, we entirely overlooked the fact that Lynch had a completely unrelated gallery show  later in the year.  “David Lynch : New Paintings“, was held from at the William Griffin gallery in Santa Monica from Sept. 12th – Dec. 12th, 2009.  Although Lynch was actually a painter, prior to ever beginning his film career, this collection represents the first of Lynch‘s original paintings to be displayed in the United States in more than a decade.

Due to our past coverage of Lynch‘s art, we were contacted and offered the opportunity to premiere the following footage by DFL.TV (The David Lynch Foundation).  The video not only contains exclusive coverage of the gallery opening, but celebrity interviews as well.  Among those interviewed are actress, Laura Dern, award-winning film-maker, Roger Corman, and even Lynch himself. (more…)

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Fred Cole is like some sort of musical version of High Lander or a vampire.  Since 1964, at a mere 16 years of age, Cole has been an enduring force in the music industry.  By organically adjusting, adapting, and adding to his signature sound, he has been able to move inconspicuously amongst mortals throughout the many passing decades.  Few others can lay claim to having performed shows with the likes of the Doors and Janis Joplin in the Sixties, as well as with Punk legends like Ramones in the Seventies, and bands like Black Lips of today.  Fred Cole has been there and transitioned admirably through all of it.

Fred met and married his wife Toody before he was out of his teens and they have been together ever since.  Through the births of their children, playing in various bands together, running a music/general store, and even living in the unforgiving elements of the Yukon, the Coles are like the Zan and Jana of sonic onslaughts.  From the garage rock/psychedelia of The Lollipop Shoppe, to the punk of The Rats, to the country-influenced The Range Rats, and the mashed up rough punk of Dead Moon, Fred has remained a vital voice in the music industry and Toody‘s has increasingly grown stronger and stronger.  After almost 20 years and being the subject of a documentary, Dead Moon disbanded in 2006, when the couple parted ways with drummer, Andrew Loomis.  Now, with the addition of drummer, Kelly Halliburton (Severed Head of State, Defiance), the Cole‘s are about to head out on tour with their most recent musical project, Pierced Arrows.

I caught Pierced Arrows during their last appearance in Seattle and they were an impressive live act; incorporating new tracks with classics from projects of the past.  Their sophomore album, Descending Shadows will be released by VICE Records on February 2nd.  The following video of the trio performing their new song, “Let It Rain” in the yard of their Oregon home. (more…)

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On Sunday night, Sean “Har Mar Superstar” Tillmann and his crew of band-mates rolled into Seattle.  The second to last show of their West Coast tour was held at Chop Suey, and it was the fucking jam.  Before his set, I sat down and conducted an interview with Tillmann, which was filmed with a flip video camera.  Two other past Monster Fresh interviewees/friends were also in attendance at the show: artist, Thea Wolfe and musician, Kimya Dawson.  Although it would have been nice to see a little more movement from some in the hipster Seattle crowd, we still had a full-on R&B dance party throw-down.  Some of this was recorded on the flip cam too.

The next morning I woke up with a message from Thea, who had been messaging  on Facebook with Har Mar bassist, Denver Dalley.  They band finally had a day off and wanted to go to a dance party, before heading up for their last show in Canada the next day.  Thea was set to throw it at her house.  Although the last minute party still went down, and went down well, Tillmann‘s crew never made it.  After partying and traveling for 6 straight days, their bodies decided to crash out under them and use the day off for what it was intended for… regeneration.

I still need to go through my footage and decide how I want to edit and present the material.  Until I am able get all that shit together, however, we’d like to tide you over  by presenting you with a recently posted Har Mar Superstar tour video that was filmed on a  flip camera of their own.  In this video, taped on Jan. 22nd,  Tillmann shows of his dance skills and expresses his love for pop-star Hannah Montana by singing along to her hit track, “Party In The USA“, while driving a van up I5 to Portland. (more…)

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CONTEST HAS ENDED!

If you’re a die hard fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, then you probably already know about the Dick Towel by now.  If you read our November 6th post about the novelty drying devices, then you also know that the Sunny crew actually manufactured the product and constructed an official site to sell and distribute them.  In that post we mentioned that the towel would have made a wonderful Christmas or Hannukah present, but followed it up by asking, “As far as Kwanza?…..TERRIBLE!  Where is all of the dark meat?!”

Well, it looks like the folks at Dick Towel are all ears when it comes to concerns as dire as those regarding racial sensitivity in the mock phallus industry.  Beyond just adding hats and T-Shirts to their line of Dick Towel related merchandise, we’d like to present you with their latest addition……

…………. “THE BLACK DICK TOWEL”!

Finally!  This should please a lot of people, except for this guy of course [poor bastard].

The really good news is, in celebration of their latest wang cloth, the people at Dicktowel.com have offered to provide us with a couple of FREE Dick Towels to give away.  This means that we will be picking 2 winners (one for each color).

HOW To Enter:

(more…)

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Back in the Winter of 2005, I officially moved to Seattle.  As I was being hired for my first job here, a night auditor in a piece of shit crack hotel, I made only one request; I needed December 29th off to catch DJ Greyboy at a Macy’s department store downtown.  I scurried around the building and, when I finally found Greyboy‘s setup, the DJ was in the young mens section, spinning Steely Dan‘s “Black Cow” and he had a table full of free Dominos Pizza and cans of Pepsi.  He was down to talk and didn’t seem concerned that I was one of only 2 people who were there to see him at that point.  I asked him what a producer/DJ like himself was was doing in the tween wing of a department store like that and he explained that, since he was sponsored by Ocean Pacific, he sometimes had to make those type of appearances.  He asked me to add him on myspace, but explained that there was a fake music account for him and that his was the one without the music player,  “I don’t even fuck with the music“.  He further explained to me about a project that he was working on, which I believe he had planned to put out within the following year or so.  After that, Mr. Andreas Stevens seemed to, temporarily, disappear off of the map.  He made a slight resurfacing to work with the Greyboy Allstars on their 2007 reformation project, but his creation of acid jazz-centric solo albums like Freestylin’, had all but ceased.  He released a greatest hits style compilation in 2008 but, when he finally returned to his trademark sound on last years Era Correct, I completely missed it.  The music industry has changed dramatically in a short period of time and, whether it was due to his disinterest in forced adaptability/conformity (ie. myspace) or a misguided assumption of his own staying power, the innovator slipped off the radar in a genre that he was the major player in pioneering.

This post isn’t really about Greyboy, however, but it is about the phenomenon of our favorite artists evaporating off of the face of the Earth. It is also a heads up about the next triumphant return by one of the greatest beat-makers of the last 10 years, because it has the potential to get buried in the current musical climate.  The pseudo-resurrection, of which I’m referring, is of a one Ramble John Krohn, better known as “RJD2“. (more…)

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If you agree with Time Magazine and the T-Shirts that DJ Shadow made available on his official website, the 2-Thousand-Oughts made up the “WORST DECADE EVER“.  Fortunately for us, the first week of this new year has already began to show itself as promising, at least in the realm of music.

Towards the end of the last decade, artists like M.I.A. and Santigold began to garner more widespread notoriety, along with producers Diplo and Switch, who have both worked with each of the vocalists.  2009 also marked a collaborative effort by Switch and Diplo, under the collective alias of “Major Lazer“, a cartoonic Jamaican zombie fighter with a laser-cannon for an arm and sporting military fatigues.  The project yielded Guns Don’t Kill People….Lazers Do, a dancehall album chock full of aggressive beats and endless cameos.  Today Diplo and his Mad Decent label have decided to keep the momentum rolling into the New Year and have provided a free full-length album download by the South Rawkkas Crew. (more…)

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