the
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
the
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Happy birthday, Andy Warhol! Pittsburgh's most famous native son would have been 86 today. He coined the word "superstar" - and within the art world, he was one of the silvery-shiniest. We've seen his iconic paintings of Marilyn, Elvis, Brillo boxes, and soup cans, but did you know he designed as many as 50 album covers, from spoken-word LPs to…
Those of us who embrace the adage "vanity trumps sanity" know it's often necessary to suffer for beauty. But who among the world's leading fashionistas would or could endure the discomfort of performing in an outfit that weighs 200 pounds? Flamboyant pianist-showman Władziu Valentino Liberace, of course. His famous, weighty King Neptune ensemble was one of many extravaganzas on display at the now-defunct Liberace Museum in Paradise, Nevada.
Die Nasty. Dream Orphans. Beat My Guest. Highway to Heck. No, these aren’t names of punk rock groups or titles of angst-ridden, teen-penned poems. They’re names of fonts. Four evocatively named fonts that co-exist among the hundreds of others in my Mac. Fonts that compete on a daily basis to be chosen for use in one of my literary or graphic masterpieces (ahem). I’ve rarely met a font I didn’t fall in love with. I’ve cruised the Internet super highways by night, luring new fonts to my harem. I’ve risked system contamination, blindly downloading free fonts from fly-by-night sites with seedy names like FontLust.com. Rogue fonts now reside alongside legitimate fonts that automatically enter the neighborhood every time I install new publishing software. Ah, but this indiscriminate font love now poses a major digital dilemma: I simply have more fonts than I can fathom.
Yes, I know that Brian Jones had nothing to do with the recording of the Rolling Stones song "Wild Horses," but I couldn't resist using the pun to get your attention as I introduce my birthday tribute to the band's founder and high priest of psychedelic '60s fashion. I reckon that Brian Jones was the dandiest heterosexual of the 20th century. And one of the randiest, too, having fathered at least five children with five different women by the time he was 23. But there was also real talent behind that foppish Casanova facade. Brian was one of Britain's earliest practitioners of Delta blues. A natural musician, he was arguably the most versatile member of the band he formed and christened The Rollin Stones in 1962. And while he didn't write, sing lead, or play solo on a single song during his career, his prowess as a multi-instrumentalist was unmatched in the rock world. Today would have been his 73rd birthday.
On this date in 1949, RCA Records issued the first ever 45 rpm single. So, why am I featuring their rival, Capitol Records, in this post? Because, as we celebrate this anniversary, it gives me the perfect opportunity to show how the little vinyl disc influenced the design of one of the world's most famous buildings - the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood. This landmark, built to resemble a stack of records, has been featured in countless movies and TV shows filmed in and around Tinseltown, so you're bound to have seen it.