NEATORAMA HOME | RSS | LITE/MOBILE VERSION | BEST OF NEATORAMA | NEATORAMA SPOTLIGHT New! |

Archive for May 7th, 2009

Music Tidbits: Perry Farrell

This week’s artist was quite a treat for me, although I’ve always loved Jane’s Addiction, I didn’t know much about their lead singer. Turns out he’s done a whole lot for the music community at large.

• Perry Farrell was born in Queens, New York on March 29, 1959. His birth name was Peretz Bernstein. His mother committed suicide when he was only three years old –later referenced in the Jane’s Addiction song “Then She Did.”
• After graduating from high school in Florida in the early 80s, Perry decided to live the surfer’s life in Los Angeles, California, living out of his car and making money by waiting tables and working construction.
• Perry’s first band was the gothic band Psi Com. The music scene the group was involved with included a lot of big name bands like X, Fishbone and Black Flag.
• When Psi Com broke up in 1985, Perry began working on Jam Sessions with Eric Avery that would help lead to the foundation of Jane’s Addiction. It was around this time period that Farrell came up with his stage name, he chose Perry Farrell because it was a fun play on “peripheral.”
• Jane’s Addiction was named after Perry’s drug addict roommate, Jane Bainter. Eric’s little sister Rebecca helped the group find its other two members, Stephen Perkins, her boyfriend, and a friend, Dave Navarro.

• The group soon started to have a big following around the LA club scene and quickly garnered interest from multiple record labels. They chose to sign with Warner Brothers Records, but insisted on releasing their first album with the independent label Triple X Records. In addition, the group received the largest signing advance ever offered at the time, around $275,000.
• In 1991, Farrell worked with Ted Gardener and Marc Geiger to create the Lollapalooza festival as a farewell tour for Jane’s Addiction. For this reason, Farrell became known as a “godfather of alternative rock music.”
• Parry Farrell and Casey Niccoli worked together on a film titled Gift that featured Jane’s Addiction. The movie is a gothic, tragic, romantic story in the LA club scene with themes of sex and drugs. The movie was released by Warner Brothers in 1993.
• After Jane’s Addiction, Perry and Stephen Perkins started a new band, Porno for Pyros.
• Around this same period, Jane’s Addition reunited with Eric Avery replaced by Flea, who had worked with Dave Navarro in The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• A number of women dancers were hired as part of the stage show for this “relapse” tour, one of these dancers later became Farrell’s wife. He had this to say about meeting her, “Etty and I have been working together since 1997. The very first time I saw her come in and shake her… ponytail, I hired her and I fell in love with her on the spot.” She has continued to dance in every Jane’s Addiction tour since.

• In the late nineties, Perry decided to start a solo career. His first album features a number of lyrics inspired by the Kabala.
• Farrell occasionally DJs using the name DJ Peretz.
• The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival largely has Perry to thank for their continued success, as the festival was close to failure after its first incarnation in 1999. When the festival was scheduled to happen a second time there was no headlining group for a long time. Finally, Farrell volunteered to reunite Jane’s Addiction for the event, which helped bring in large crowds. Since then there has been a tradition of reuniting one major band every year. Perry has been the only artist to play every Coachella festival, occasionally as a solo artist or DJ and occasionally in a group.
• Jane’s Addiction donated all of their earnings from one show in 2001 to help negotiate the release of over 2,300 Sudanese slaves.
• In 2005, Farrell and his wife Etty began a theatrical band called “The Satellite Party.” The group’s music is focused around an imaginary version of their relationship together. Their debut album had appearances by Flea, Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons, New Order bassist Peter Hook and Fergie.

Satellite Party Image Via -EMR- [Flickr]

• Kidzapalooza is a kid-friendly stage at the annual Lollapalooza festival that was started by Perry and music producer Tor Hyams. This year represents the first time Kidzapalooza will be its own festival. It is planned for June at the Hollywood Bowl. Featured artists will include Farrell, Gary Oldman, Slash and Ziggy Marley.
• Perry celebrated his Jewish heritage by performing at the 2006 Purimpalooza, a music celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim and the birthday of Rabbi Yosef Langer.
• The NME awards of 2008 saw the first reunion in 17 years of all four original Jane’s Addiction members. They were the first American group to win the award of “God Like Genius.”

Sources #1, #2, #3, #4

---

Stephen Colbert Immortalized in Beetle

Scientists have named a newly discovered species of beetle, Agaporomorphus colberti, in honor of humorist Stephen Colbert.

One of the outstanding features of the species is the genitalia of the males. “This new species is similar to members of a clade within the genus exemplified by A. knischi…and unique in having similar, extremely complicated male genitalia…”

Link -via Digg

Roman Klonek

I just love the whimsical designs of Polish artist Roman Klonek! This picture shown is a detail from an animation called Cheewing Gum. Link to artist’s site. Link to an exhibition of posters. -via Everlasting Blort

---

Giant Spiders Invade Outback Town

Bowen, Australia, a town about 700 miles from Brisbane, is seeing in influx of eastern tarantulas, also known as “bird-eating spiders”. Dozens of spiders have crawled out of gardens and have made their way into public areas of the town.

While not deadly like other Australian spiders, the eastern tarantulas are venomous and can grow up to 6cm (2.4in) long with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in). Despite their common name, they do not eat birds, but can kill a dog with one bite, and make a human very sick.

They are also known as whistling or barking spiders for the hissing noise they emit when they are disturbed or aggravated at close range.

Audy Geiszler, who runs a local pest control service, caught one this week that more than covered his hand after he killed it.

“I think I’m going to mount this one in acrylic to show people how big it is. It’ll make a great paperweight.”

Link -via Arbroath

High Rise Escape Systems

In any building, it’s always good to know how you’re going to get out in case of an emergency. As we all know now, it’s not always easy in a skyscraper, or even a building with a few floors. Several innovative systems have been developed for these events, including the Evacuchute, a parachute designed to be used for jumping out of tall buildings. See it in action as well as some other ideas in The World Of High Rise Office Escape Systems. Link -Thanks, David!

---

Whale Fossil Discovered in Unlikely Place

While cutting through some Egyptian limestone recently, stone masons in Italy made an interesting discovery. A whale fossil! They called in experts who confirmed this was a 40 million year old whale. Then the fun really began. Well, fun for the archeologists paleontologists that is.

They went to the place where the stone was extracted and found prehistoric bone fragments and more. A bigger dig is currently underway. We hope this didn’t put the masons out of business.

National Geographic has a video report, with an unedited transcript:

“BEING MASONS WE WERE IGNORANT OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISCOVERY WE HAD MADE” SAYS SUPERVISOR RICARDO FRANCIONI.

BUT THEY KNEW ENOUGH TO CALL IN SOME ITALIAN EXPERTS WHO DETERMINED THEY HAD INADVERTENTLY CREATED AN ALMOST PERFECT CROSS SECTION OF AN ANCIENT WHALE.

IT LIVED IN EGYPT 40 MILLION YEARS AGO.

FINDING ANCIENT WHALES FROM EGYPT, A COUNTRY THATS 95 PERCENT DESERT, MIGHT SEEM UNUSUAL — BUT IT ISNT.

Link – via yesbutnobutyes

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Baierman.

---

What Is It? Game 98

W00t! It’s time for our collaboration with the always-fun What is It? blog. Can you guess what this strange contraption pictured to the left is for?

Place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, please – though you can enter as many as you’d like. Please post no URL or weblinks – let others play (you’ll be disqualified if you do so).

The first person who guessed right will get a Free Neatorama T-shirt. If no one gets it right, then the funniest guess will win.

Is it a prototype Dalek? Find more clues at the What is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update 5/8/09 – that was too easy! Here’s the answer: A TaylorMade golf club display stand, these can be found near the indoor practice area in a golf shop. It would not have held a full set, but a selection of different models of the same number club, I saw a display like this in a local shop and it was full of six irons. The clubs were available for customers to hit a few balls with each to compare the performance of the various models.

Congratulations to: Joe #8 who got it right first!

---

Neatorama Post No. 20,000!

I’ve been waiting for this post since our last one numbered 12,345 back in January 2008. It took us a a little bit over a year to post the remaining 7,655 posts reach 20,000 (that’s an average of 17 posts a day!).

I’d like to thank all of Neatorama’s authors, Upcoming Queue submitters, shop customers, and of course, all of you readers who make it all worthwhile!

---

You Can't Please Everyone

Chris of Cynical-C blog has a nifty series called You Can’t Please Everyone. In it, he collects one-star Amazon reviews of classic movies, music, and literature.

Take, for instance, The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews. The movie won 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture in 1965. Adjusted for inflation, it made more than $1 billion in earnings since it was made … yet, even it can’t please everyone:

This movie was made in the sixties, we live in the 21st century, GET OVER IT!

I loved it when I was ten, but I think I’ve out grown it

When I see garbage like this, I finally understand what is wrong with the world. I watched this movie on a dare and was absolutely mortified!!!!! I would have given it negative stars if I could have. As an animal lover and vegetarian, I was especially offended!!! Anyone who is a fan of this series should run, not walk to the nearest Psychiatrist. You are in desperate need of having your head examined. And we as a society wonder why violence and seriel killers have become a part of daily life. Well, ladies and gentlemen I present to you Exhibit A…….

This movie should be called the Sound of Mucus. The only redeeming quality is that the family has to run from nazis.

See more of Cynical-C’s You Can’t Please Everyone series: Link – via kottke

---

The Simpsons A Cappella

I can’t get enough of this: The Simpsons theme song, the a cappella version sung by Canvas. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Land-O-Links

---

Goodbye Waffle Maker: Megan Deal is Selling Everything to Move to Greensboro, Alabama

Graphic designer and writer Megan Deal is moving to Greensboro, Alabama to build a design lab for young designers in Hale County, one of the poorest places in the United States. In preparation, Megan is selling everything that she owns at her project website, goodbyewafflemaker.com:

This site is one part stoop sale and one part personal experiment. The idea was born during the March 2009 session of Project M in Belfast Maine, where 12 people sat crammed around a corner booth at Rollies, fueled by rounds of Guinness and Leinenkugels. By ridding myself of these possessions, I aim to both lighten my travel load and remove the obtrusive clutter from my everyday life. Questions, comments, and/or suggestions regarding this project or M Lab are welcome and appreciated.

Link – via swissmiss

---

Marvel Zombies

I won’t pretend that I’m "with it" when it comes to comic books, but it was a complete surprise for me to find out that, starting in 2005, Marvel began issuing limited series of comics in which the superheroes are … zombies! (Probably a better read than Spider-Ham)

Link to Marvel Zombie’s official website | Marvel Zombies at Wikipedia

---

Metal Heads Urban Art

German urban art group Mentalgassi covers big glass-recycling containers on the streets of Berlin with something unusual: giant faces! The results are weird "metal heads" that creepily stare at you as you walk by: Link – via Wooster Collective

---

Girl Walking AT-AT by Chiara Bautista

We don’t know much about Mexican artist Chiara Bautista ("Milk" on MySpace) – but we sure know this: from Lucha Libre to science fiction, her artwork is fantastic!

You can view her latest illustrations here: Link – via Computerlove

---