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Hear Kim Gordon reading from her memoir Girl in a Band

Mar 31, 2015

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith’s Just Kids.

Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the ’60s and ’70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.

Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and ’90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves.

Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.

This is part one of five exclusive clips, to be published every day this week at 5pm GMT.

KIM GORDON: GIRL IN A BAND | 1. Chapter One by Rough Trade on Mixcloud

You can now play Pac-Man in Google Maps

Mar 31, 2015

You can now play the classic arcade game PAC-MAN in Google Maps with streets as your maze. Avoid Blinky, Pinky, Inky, (and Clyde!) as you swerve the streets of some famous places around the world. But eat the pac-dots fast, because this game will only be around for a little while.

Click here to start!

Leonard Cohen Gets It Right On Doing Your Art For Purpose, Not Profit

Mar 29, 2015

It [has] to do with two things. One is economic urgency. I just never made enough money to say, “Oh, man, I think I’m gonna get a yacht now and scuba-dive.” I never had those kinds of funds available to me to make radical decisions about what I might do in life. Besides that, I was trained in what later became known as the Montreal School of Poetry.

Before there were prizes, before there were grants, before there were even girls who cared about what I did. We would meet, a loosely defined group of people. There were no prizes, as I said, no rewards other than the work itself. We would read each other poems. We were passionately involved with poems and our lives were involved with this occupation…

We had in our minds the examples of poets who continued to work their whole lives. There was never any sense of a raid on the marketplace, that you should come up with a hit and get out. That kind of sensibility simply did not take root in my mind until very recently…

So I always had the sense of being in this for keeps, if your health lasts you. And you’re fortunate enough to have the days at your disposal so you can keep on doing this. I never had the sense that there was an end. That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.

What a beautiful testament to the creative spirit and its true motives, to creative contribution coming from a place of purpose rather than a hunger for profit. – Leonard Cohen in Paul Zollo’s book, Songwriters on Songwriting

Flowchart: What romantic movie should you watch?

Mar 29, 2015

The romance genre is brimming with adventure, plot twists, heartbreak, joy and—hopefully—a happy ending. But with so many options to choose from, it’s not easy to find the right flick for your movie night. Unless, of course, you have Shari’s Berries’ fun and fabulous flowchart. You can pine for Ryan Gosling with your girlfriends, entertain your boyfriend with a Judd Apatow romcom or introduce your family to a classic love tale like The Princess Bride.

The Beatles’ Isolated Guitar Track for “I Feel Fine”

Mar 29, 2015

John Lennon plays I Feel Fine’s main riff on his Gibson while George Harrison sometimes doubles, and other times plays rhythm on his Gretsch Tennessean. At the time of the song’s recording, the Beatles, having mastered the studio basics, had begun to explore new sources of inspiration in noises previously eliminated as mistakes (such as electronic goofs, twisted tapes, and talkback). I Feel Fine marks one of the earliest examples of the use of feedback as a recording effect in popular music. Artists such as the Kinks and the Who had already used feedback live, but Lennon remained proud of the fact that the Beatles were perhaps the first group to deliberately put it on vinyl.

Pretty Cool Documentary on The Yorkville Music Scene in Toronto

Mar 29, 2015

If you want to know one thing about Toronto, let it be what went on in Yorkville during the 1960s.

When New York City found its artists burrowing in Greenwich Village, and while artists were flocking to Haight-Ashbury on the San Francisco scene, the hippies of Toronto were building their own cultural haven in Yorkville.

Located in the dead centre of the city, the neighbourhood became a place for Canadian musicians, writers, and political activists to form a community in one of their country’s largest metropolises. Singers like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot found themselves in the same cafes and clubs as migrated Americans including Rick James, Ronnie Hawkins, and Leon Redbone before making a name for themselves in the mainstream. Draft dodgers mixed in with curious Canadian youths, and a presence was born that shocked and alarmed the Silent Generation as the 1960s counterculture grew.

But after a few years of a flourishing arts scene and political demonstrations, the creation of an experimental university started Yorkville on its short road to decay. But could an educational experiment gone wrong be enough to destroy one of the most prominent cultures in Canadian history?

Check out the documentary preview below. An Indiegogo campaign didn’t quite make the goal for the production team, but keep an eye on their official website for more details.

The Windows 95 Launch Hosted By Jay Leno

Mar 29, 2015

August 24, 1995 was a historic occasion for the computer industry as Microsoft introduced Windows 95 at a gala launch event. The long awaited new operating system not only sparked the explosion of the Internet, but for the first time computers became home-based tools that would make our lives better. Forever.

Hosted by Bill Gates, the launch was beamed simultaneously to 43 other events in cities around the world, not an easy feat to do back in 1995. Microsoft enlisted late night talk show host, Jay Leno, who cracked that Windows 95 was ‘so powerful that it can keep track of all of OJ’s alibis at once’.”

See the first teaser trailer for the 24th James Bond adventure SPECTRE

Mar 28, 2015

See the first teaser trailer for the 24th James Bond adventure SPECTRE. A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE. Starring: Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Rory Kinnear, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Monica Bellucci, David Bautista and Andrew Scott, and Directed By Sam Mendes.