shawn avery

this guy could very well become our next president. while obama and clinton are still battling for delegates and primary votes... az. senator john mccain is emerging as the republican front runner as of last night. John Mccain Captured. Near Hanoi, North Vietnam: This photo, showing an unidentified man being pulled out of a lake, was radioed to Tokyo, October 27, by the North Vietnamese government. In a broadcast, October 27, Radio Hanoi reported that an American pilot identified as Lieutenant Commander John Sydney McCain, U.S.N., was rescued from Truc Bac Lake near Hanoi, October 26, after parachuting from his crippled aircraft, which had been hit by Communist ground fire. The broadcast said that McCain had been pulled from the water by North Vietnamese soldiers, treated for injuries and jailed. October 26, 1967. mccain would spend the next 5 and a half years in vietnam as a prisoner of war. here's an excerpt from wikipedia, which is quite vivid. the irony of his capture is the ...

Obama releases statement on Edwards' exit salon.com - Sen. Barack Obama has released a statement responding to reports that his rival, former Sen. John Edwards , is dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. It's a pretty flattering statement, which is interesting since Edwards reportedly has no plans to endorse any candidate yet. The full statement: "John Edwards has spent a lifetime fighting to give voice to the voiceless and hope to the struggling, even when it wasn’t popular to do or covered in the news. At a time when our politics is too focused on who’s up and who’s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters -- the New Orleans child without a home, the West Virginia miner without a job, the families who live in that other America that is not seen or heard or talked about by our leaders in Washington. John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this -- that two Americans can become one, and ...

it would be impossible to describe how busy i have been lately. moving, editing video, more moving, rehearsals for two bottletree shows with two different bands, more moving.... and a somewhat faster pace at the office... lot's to do. however... i can sum up two major events from the past week from my schedule. obama's rally in birmingham, which was quite inspiring, and the through the sparks show last thursday at bottletree. the majority of these photos were taken by j. purvis and the video clip of through the sparks was recorded by alison hulsey. more details later...

Humans Force Earth into New Geologic Epoch Humans have altered Earth so much that scientists say a new epoch in the planet's geologic history has begun. Say goodbye to the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch and hello to the Anthropocene. Among the major changes heralding this two-century-old man-made epoch: Vastly altered sediment erosion and deposition patterns. Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature . Wholesale changes in biology , from altered flowering times to new migration patterns. Acidification of the ocean, which threatens tiny marine life that forms the bottom of the food chain. The idea, first suggested in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, has gained steam with two new scientific papers that call for official recognition of the shift. Vivid metaphor In the February issue of the journal GSA Today , a publication of the Geological Society of America, Jan Zalasiewicz and M...

tonight: through the sparks w/ kristy kruger at bottletree. kristy's drummer is the guy we met in austin during sxsw who became our drinking buddy. apparently he wrote a very glowing review of lazarus beach for no depression magazine... but i think it may have been too positive? i dunno. maybe not . i've never read it. anyway... its going to be great to see him at bottletree tonight... which will make good on an agreement made late at night somewhere in downtown austin. here's a grainy, retro promo i made for the show. the trippy visuals are trees that have been mirrored in four two directions. the text looks a little bit odd at this size... but you get the idea. last night alison and i went to see ' the machine ' who are considered one of the world's best pink floyd tribute band. i was expecting a lot of obscure stuff, and although they did play ' see emily play ' and a few deep cuts, it was mostly the hits. but that's ok, because it killed. o...

1. the race i'm gonna be slightly more bold and shorten my list of folks most likely to win the election. it looks like huckabee and guliani are probably toast. among the gop, mitt won nevada, but mccain won south carolina. and who the hell knows which dem won nevada. anyway... i'm sayin' its gonna be down to these four... clinton, barack, mccain, romney 2. moving with massive help from alison and ashby... i got the moving completed this weekend. it is a big relief, and quite an upgrade. and it is super quiet. it will be a longer drive to southside/dowtown, but i'll also have a lot more cash... 3. upcoming shows i started editing the footage i shot for the through the sparks show this week. and it also looks like wiseblood will be coming out of hiding for a short acoustic set at bottletree on february 1st. this is the first wiseblood show since... the first wiseblood show... which was way back in sept. '06 at artwalk. this show next week will be the first ...

this looks even better... U23D . the first all digital, live action, realtime 3D concert film. U2 re-invents the wheel. nice. more info, including screenings in the u.s. on their page . here's the review in variety: Breathtaking when performance, technology and cinematography click at the same moment, "U2 3D" is a concert film that should draw well from the band's fan base and tech fanatics. It has its overwhelming moments, especially in the early going, as the filmmakers emphasize a frenetic swirl of angles and effects. Eventually, the pic settles down and the artistry of the Irish band and their unique onstage power become the focus. Pic is an enveloping experience, particularly when viewers are placed in a great spot in the audience and Bono or U2's guitarist, the Edge, are little more than an arm's length away. Less involving --and maybe even vertigo-inducing (pun intended) -- are angles from high overhead of Larry Mullen Jr. drumming; it's suc...

GOP : mitt romney vs. john mccain DEMS : barack obama vs. hillary clinton [a scary factoid: here we have 3 senators and 1 governor. governors tend to win . ] luckily, a lot can change once the southern primaries take over. as for the famed black-southern-democrat vote... who knows... a black man running against the wife of the "first black president." we'll see soon enough... this august. here's some wiki info for the democratic party. john edwards could still mix it up this year. ALSO : we own the sky - we are starting to create the online presence soon. the wiseblood record will be printed in february or march. time to do some heavy reading. more soon. birmingham just got a new record label.

this is one of elvis' final shows. it was filmed about 6 weeks before his death. the music is quite forboding. he sings about leaving, loneliness... and the clip ends with "my way." damn. this footage has been used in the past to make fun of him... some claiming he was drunk. he was obviously nervous... and the way he reacted to forgetting lines is how i would have reacted on stage. if you have ever had stage fright, or fucked up in front of a lot of people while playing music... you will get it. poor guy. too many trans fats and sleeping pills.

wow. so alison just reminded me that today has been a year since the raindrop festival... and a year since we met. i kept remembering it as the 16th... but that is because i BLOGGED about it on the 16th. awesome. so... yep. 1 year. here's the official photo gallery courtesy of morgan jones ... also... i'm guilty. i drink vitamin water... both the water and the flavored version. i'm a bad person. i have been meaning to change this for a while... but i have been reading lately about the plastics. wow. spooky. here's an article that was posted today : Glug, glug, glug-- that’s the sound a ginormous number of us make as we sip bottled water in our cars, at the gym, behind our desks. The sound you DON’T hear is the thwack of 60 million bottles a day being tossed into U.S. landfills, where they can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. If that’s not enough to turn your conscience a brighter shade of green, add this: Producing those bottles burns through 1.5 million barrels ...

it took led zeppelin about 2 or 3 weeks to record their 2nd album. slackers. during the past two nights, the spots gathered at red mountain music studio (i guess that's the name) and recorded for about 2 to 3 hours each night... taking long brakes to hang out on the roof and whatnot. the first night everyone was tired and we only got a few ideas recorded. but last night was incredible. we started recording around 9pm, took long brakes, and brian had to leave for about 20 mins at one point... all things considered... we still managed to get 10-12 ideas recorded. enough for an ep of live improvisation, which is kind of our thing, you know? i messed around with alison's new camera. trippy .

clint wells. session guitarist, producer, founding member of the spots, and essential gun-for hire in the bham music scene... is also a fan of jesus. this is funny. also... here's my initial music schedule for 2008 as of today : 01.24.08 - w/ through the sparks @ bottletree 02.23.08 - industrial/electronic night @ speakeasy :: solo dj show :: 03.17.08 - w/ the spots @ speakeasy 04.25.08 - w/ various tba @ bottletree - raindrop music festival 2 04.26.08 - w/ wiseblood @ bottletree - raindrop music festival 2 06.06.08 - w/ the spots @ speakeasy- 2 yr. anniversary party 06.07.08 - w/ the spots @ speakeasy- private show 2008 has gotten off to a busy start... beginning with the new year's eve show at speakeasy which involved some set-up and footage editing for the projections. i've got a few film/video installation related projects i'm working on as well as some promo stuff: next month - doing some photography/design work for the manhattan south boutique. this month - shoot...

2007 was quite transformative. the following is a narrative listing ( in no particular order) or the events and developments that comprised and defined my 33nd year on planet earth. 1. adult add : following up the suspicions that i had been having for a few years, i got tested for, and diagnosed with, adult a.d.d. i've read two books thus far and i have many more on my shelf to tackle. as a very very right brained, creative person, the disorder sometimes helps me, but for the most part, it has been holding me back for years. the more i learn about it, the more empowered i get. its amazing how many ceo's in the world have this. apparently i'm a master of multi-tasking, but i also have big issues with motivation. 2. local creative scene: after living in bham for 6 years, i finally became a part of the overall creative scene machine. building upon the relationships i built in '06... in 2007 i found myself donating music to a documentary, being part of a national releas...

another one bites the dust... as seems to be the case with every odd numbered year, 2007 went pretty damn fast. we held a little funeral party for it. it pretty much sold out. this was our last show of the year obviously, and also our best ever at speakeasy. we have been playing a residency there once a month since the summer. the spots were formed in an effort to be an anti-band. no songs. no writing. no rehearsals, no singing... minimal recording... just pure fun, with no agenda of making anything important out of it. since then... in about a year and a half - we've played festivals, various types of venues and exhibition halls, including the bham museum, been on the radio twice, tv once, had numerous blurbs in the papers, played a residency, drawn news cameras, gotten paid silly amounts of money, played numerous public and private shows, released an ep and professionally recorded a live record. not bad for an improv band that puts more effort into it's show posters than it ...