Category archives: Band

  • Jean-Michel Basquiat's Band, "Gray"

  • 7 years ago
  • Jean-Michel Basquiat was a well known plastic artist based in New York and sponsored by Andy Warhol. Music was very important in the life and work of this artist, and in 1979 he formed an experimental band with the artist and actor Vincent Gallo. They named the band "GRAY" as a tribute to the book of anatomy published by Henry Gray in 1950. The band arises in the middle of the punk explosion of New York, but especially to a more experimental branch known as No wave.  No wave has a very industrial sound where the electric guitar is used not as a musical instrument, but as a tool that generates noise. He was also interested in the frenetic and eclectic rhythms of the seventies and eighties, like the incipient rap of the hip hop movement. Basquiat played the clarinet and the synthesizer and the band frequented famous venues like CBGB where Blondie and The Ramones made their debut, the Mudd Club, etc. The music from "Gray" can be heard in several films including "Downtown 81," starring Basquiat, talking about his life as an artist in New York. Nerea T. Ruiz  

  • Wearable Art: For Jazz Saxophonist Sean Sonderegger It's Nice To Have House Shoes

  • 10 years ago
  • My husband Sean Sonderegger is a gifted musician and teacher. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Originally from Los Angeles, he lives with his wife (me) and toddler in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Sean describes his style as "90s West Coast meets academia," pairing dress shirts with Dickies pants. He admits that he still dresses the same way that he used to when he was 20 years old in L.A., wearing blue jeans and novelty shirts. But always paramount in his choice of dress, the clothes must fit loose: "I've always worn baggy clothes, I like baggy clothes. If I could pull off wearing a caftan or some traditional clothes that were super-flowing, I would probably do it. But then again, I would probably gain, like, a hundred pounds because I just wouldn't give a fuck." Click on link below to listen to some of Sean Sonderegger's music, and then find out more about this madcapper's most prized fashion items after the jump. https://soundcloud.com/seansonderegger/sean-sonderegger-ensemble-eat-the-aircomposed-sean-sondereggerjoanna-cooper Jacqueline Colette Prosper, @yummicoco Novelty Tees  I like my novelty t-shirts, especially two from a Bill Laswell collection for Ropeadope Records, which includes a "Machine Gun" shirt from, I think,  a Peter Brötzmann album. It's not the original graphic that's used on the cover. People that don't know the record have no idea what it's about. Somebody came up to me[...]

  • Art for Progress 2.0

  • 11 years ago
  • Are you ready for Art for Progress 2.0? This month AFP will celebrate its 10 year anniversary. Over the last 10 years we've produced over 50 major events in NYC, Miami, San Francisco and Washington D.C. AFP has worked with thousands of students in the NYC Public Schools and with each year our programs are growing. AFP's Arts Education Program is supported by a generous grant from the Sansom Foundation which enables AFP to support programs that have lost funding, provide alternative programs for gifted students and community workshops in the summer. We are committed to taking AFP from a small growing organization to a large prospering organization that can have a greater impact for children and artists. Our first step is to launch our new artist blog website (May 19th). We're only a couple of weeks away from launching the new site and we're excited about all the possibilities. With plans to have guest bloggers writing about the arts, education and events, the site will have plenty of fresh content. We'll also need the artists to do their part by writing in their personal blogs and updating & sharing their work. The new site has all the bells and whistles that modern technology offers, and we're going to do everything we can to make it a huge success. We have a marketing budget to provide the proper exposure for the new site, and our site already ranks on the first page of Google for a number of important searches. Along with the launch of the new site, we'll be kicki[...]