shawn avery

the ghost of biggie smalls is haunting my myspace page. fellow myspacer, design student and m.c.d.c apostle, karen chenoa, has assumed my online identity for the week. this week i'm editing "dreams" and "hwy" for our mixing session on friday afternoon. i wanted to get some editing and recording done this weekend, but all i managed was a synth part. so what did i do last week...? thursday night i went to see through the sparks play at the nick and they completely blew my mind. everytime i see them, they get better. they played a few new songs and had a very nice mix. traci and leah hooked me up with a fucking mountain of music. i love indie rock women. so giving. so pure of heart, so obscure. friday night i did a lot of work at the office and ran errands. i went over to ashby's and then over to brett's where we all listened to a few hours of the notorious b.i.g. i was pretty into it. probably not as much as brett or aaron, but i was into it. ashby and ch...

randomness... i renewed my tag last week and i lost the sticker. that's gonna be a pain in the ass. my friend and diety, mary jane, is making me some kind of killer bright eyes compilation. in a repeat of the weekend of my birthday a month ago, i had all these plans lined up, and none of them happened. last thursday i was supposed to go see kings of leon here in bham but for some reason i felt really crappy... then i got some kinda virus... ashby's gf christine thinks the refugees brought it. goddamn that's kinda funny. friday night, ambulance ltd. was playing at the nick along with two local bands that i know... and i had been looking forward to this show for a few months but by friday night i was dizzy and completely sick. i thought i was gonna get some kind of rabid flu but it never happened. i still have some ickiness, but not too bad. i hadn't been sick since october, '03 so i can't complain. saturday i thought was the day of our friend jeff's blues fes...

so this is a part two of two thing. and i left off last time somewhere after my birthday in mid september. the last week in september, ashby and i got together with natalie, brit and stacey and finished up quite a few parts on various songs. we did hand claps and shouting on "na na na", complete with ashby doing female vocals of his own... we also worked out some delicate female harmonies for "midmorning." we did acoustic guitar on "in la puerta", and slide guitar on "gasoline." i sorted through the various vocal comps i did for the outro of a song that is still being edited. i actually had ashby run protools as i laid down about 4 more vocal parts. i decided later on though, that i liked a combination of the old and new takes. my mom was in biloxi for two weeks helping to manage state farm's operations in the post-katrina mad max vibe that is the deep south at the moment. crazy stuff. her house is being renovated... again... she's teari...

www.trinashoemaker.com >> trina shoemaker, probably my favorite producer in the (non-electronic) sense, is a baddass. check this out. i noticed this back in 2000 when queens of the stone age released their second album, which trina produced. get a copy of or download these two songs... " everyday is a winding road " from sheryl crow's second album - sheryl crow and " better living thru chemistry " from qotsa's second album - rated r. listen to how each song begins. crazy. same congos. same guitar rhythm. now of course the chords are different... but i can't help but come to the conclusion that trina likes to start songs with layered congos and a jangly riff. seriously... check it out. it's kinda funny... one song was a huge hit with happy lyrics. and the other never got played on the radio, and is very very dark. that's probably why i like trina. oh... what else... paint something on my paint app on my page. then take ...

a few weeks back i wrote briefly about my experience at the MOCA basquiat exhibit in LA. I had finally seen, after looking for years, my first (and the biggest) jean-michel basquiat exhibit. Instead of posting my 2000 words of notes on the exhibit, i posted (on myspace) the first "real" article about basquiat, which was published in december 1981. since then, i've read more about some particular pieces and i ran across this article about the exhibit. It's not the most flattering article. the article itself seems to be so concerned about dodging basquiat's hype, that it kinda gets in the way of the actual critique. that and the guy mentions nothing about how one actualy FEELS to be standing in front of a painting such as "pegasus" - 1987. the painting is about 7 ft. vertical, and completely envelopes your field of vision. everything in the painting... mostly repetetive words, symbols and phrases... is all in black and white... except for one one phras...

ok. two posts in one month. september marks one year of this journal thing. i might be taking a break from it for a while... my life will be changing shape here over the next month or so. i'm hoping all positive. i have a four sided life. it's possible that all sides might be in harmony. then again i'm old enough to know better... so... lemme break out a calendar and see what i've been up to this month. ok... i left for a few mins. got heckled by this black homeless dude downtown who always calls me white boy. an obvious mental case. that kinda sucks. homeless and nuts. i guess i don't feel too bad about turning 31. besides, some girl on myspace just told me i look like jeremy sisto. i'm gonna go ahead and file that under "huge compliment." so... the days leading up to my birthday 9/12-16th... were supposed to be all awesome and funky. some of them were. i spent some time editing "na na na" and another track. there were a few shows i thought ...

for the past 8 or 9 years, one of my favorite artists has been jean-michel basquiat. but he wasn't my absolute favorite. i thought a lot of his allure may have been hype. his race - and thus his "novelty in the art world", his omnipotent street cred, his early death at the magic age of 27, his association with warhol... there were plenty of reasons to be suspect... until i stood inches from his paintings last week in LA. he was the one. he's my guy. i'm reposting the first major article about basquiat titled "the radiant child" by art critic rene ricard. this article was written during the first moments of relevant hip hop. it gives praise to graffiti culture and some of jean michel's contemporaries. i've written a fairly involved review of my 90 minutes being immersed in basquiat, probably 2000 words or so. but then i realized that i'm writing from the point of view of a fan, almost 20 years after his death. my opinion is hardly relevant...