"Portrait Art," by Patrick Burke Video
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Lenni Decarlo, a beautiful, yet troubled young woman, has spent most of her life living in several different mental institutions. Lenni?s life has been anything but easy, and she has faced ridicule from her peers for many things, not the least of which is the fact that she is a lesbian. She also deeply believed in reincarnation, and thought that her purpose on the earth was to help others. All of this Lenni has chronicled in a mysterious journal that she keeps close to her. Angela worked as Lenni?s doctor until the hospital found out that Lenni had an emotional attachment to Angela and she was sent to another facility. Visit us online at www.reversedthemovie.com.
Eternia featuring Jessica Kaya: "Love"
In celebration of March's Women's History Month, Canadian hip-hop recording artist Eternia examines the prevalence of violence against women in Canada and around the world. Eternia is drawing from the third single "Love" released from her Juno-nominated album "It?s Called Life" to raise awareness for Amnesty International's campaign to Stop Violence Against Women. This sensitive and critical issue is portrayed through the music video for "Love," which features guest vocals of Eternia?s sister ? Jessica Kaya, and which is slated for release in Canada, Australia and select US markets throughout March 2006. "In their lifetime, more than one in three women around the world report being abused or suffer from other forms of violence," explains Eternia. "Love" is the most personal and meaningful song I have ever created; it illustrates the struggles of physical and emotional abuse my mother suffered at the hands of my father, while having to raise us. Many women endure abusive relationships, thinking that is the only way to survive and raise their children. "Love" is my way of expressing a mothers' ultimate sacrifice for her children." Non-profit organization The 411 Initiative For Change (411), uses musicians as the media to engage and educate young people on pressing social issues. 411 facilitated this collaboration between Eternia and Amnesty International. "Amnesty International is the world?s largest human rights organization," explains 411 Executive Director Tamara Dawit. "Artists, like Eternia have the unique humility to use their prominence in bringing awareness to issues of importance to young people. With just over half of the women in Canada reporting having been victims of at least one act of violence since the age of 16, this is an issue of great importance to Canadians." Amnesty International has more than one million members around the world ? which includes thousands of Canadians; ? who are putting pressure on decision-makers to stop violence against women in families, communities, and war as well as violence tolerated by government authorities. "Each person can help stop violence against women, but only if we speak out," asserts Eternia. "I hope that I can inspire other young people to affect change in their communities." Eternia has rocked rhymes from crowded subway cars in the Bronx to shows across Canada, the US and Australia. Following a slew of successful singles, videos and feature releases, her first full-length, It?s Called Life, came out in Canada and Australia in October 2005.
John Zealey: "The Moment Is Now"
The video features artwork by Patrick Burke. These sequential pictures are the contents of one of his notebooks.
The very first music video from When Time is Falling, solo artist Patrick Burke is from the U.K. in Scarbourough. This is one of his projects.
Pela is an American rock & roll band. At a time when the word 'America' has never been more fraught with meaning, songs that speak to our basic feelings and emotions about life could never be more resonant. Lost amongst all the geo-political tumult are the stories of every day America; the aches and pains and the beautiful possibilities. Yet amidst all the turmoil and uncertainty, new stories are being written and told by a new generation of American bands. Pela is clearly one of those voices.
To say that Blanche's Dan Miller is ambivalent on the subjects of trust, faith and hope would be an understatement. The shock-haired singer/songwriter/guitarist is not the type of person who hears such platitudes as "the sun will come out tomorrow" and takes them at face value. Thing is, that gray area between despair and hope, where human connections are fragile things that often behave according to their own fatalistic whims, is where we find the music of Blanche ? looking for hope amidst strewn half-remembered fragments of a happy life that always seems just two steps ahead. As one NPR commentator noted, "Just as 'jazz' no longer aptly describes all of its offshoots, the term 'country' is no longer a sufficient label for bands such as Blanche who make atmosphere as well as music." But it?s the point of entry that makes the most sense for the emotional landscape Blanche paints with their haunted words and the oddly-swinging, just-off-kilter-enough music to be found on their debut release, If We Can?t Trust the Doctors? The title is about faith, according to Miller, about the faith that you eventually must stumble down to meet. When Dan and his wife, Tracee, met tragedy and ailment on their doorsteps numerous times over the last two years ? the years in which they recorded this full-length ? they had to plumb the depths of trust, hope, faith and the other rock bottom human emotions that get you from sunrise to sunrise. "I was in a hospital waiting room and I just started thinking, 'Well, the doctors know what they're doing, right?' But once you start to doubt that, you ask yourself, 'What can you trust? What can you hold on to?' Your prayers don't always get answered, and you realize that everything and everyone you thought you could trust and depend on is vulnerable." Folks you think I'd be happy and delighted/ 'cause all my dreams are finally coming true/ but did I mention all my dreams are nightmares/and in my head I feel a storm about to brew ? "So Long Cruel World" Dan cut his musical teeth with country-punk band Goober & the Peas, releasing two albums, before the band broke up. Next was the short-lived Two Star Tabernacle, (in which Dan shared front man and guitar duties with Jack White), with Tracee playing bass and Detroit Cobra Damian Lang drumming. The band?s only release was a 7-inch they did with legendary R&B singer Andre Williams, recorded at White?s house. Although they never recorded an album, many of the Two Star songs took new shape and ended up on both the White Stripes? White Blood Cells and Blanche?s If We Can?t Trust the Doctors? Blanche was, literally, born in Dan and Tracee Miller's living room. "Our idea was to start a band with friends who shared our love for old country and blues music, and rock music that had that same feeling (i.e. Bad Seeds' Kicking Against the Pricks). We wanted to almost embrace everyone?s inexperience on their instruments," said Dan. "Once we started working on the songs, the lack of polish seemed to kind of enhance the emotion of the songs." Tracee, still fairly new to the bass guitar, was nudged into some singing duty as well, while Dan was still trying to figure out how to play guitar and sing at the same time without getting dizzy. Patch Boyle had never played an instrument before hurriedly grabbing his banjo learner?s permit, and Lisa Jannon, also a musical novice, jumped into drumming after an old snare, drumstick and maraca were grabbed from the basement. The man known simply as Feeny, although experienced on several other instruments, grabbed the reigns of the pedal steel and taught himself how to play. (His eerie/teary style would land him the pedal steel job on the Jack White-produced Loretta Lynn album Van Lear Rose a few years later.) "It felt like an odd family reunion," said Dan. Oh, what a long way Blanche has come. Tracee says that the band chose to ?practice on stage.? And to judge by their hypnotizing live performances, the process of wood-shedding new material in front of paying customers has paid off. They?ve recently completed two critically-acclaimed tours of the UK ? one with the Arizona-via-Chicago kindred spirits, the Handsome Family and another with longtime Detroit pals and collaborators, the White Stripes. Blanche live is like a weathered, sepia-toned tintype family portrait come to life and injected with Technicolor. If the Carter Family made an appearance on the Lawrence Welk show when country music iconoclast Lee Hazlewood and Nick Cave were co-hosting, it would look and feel a lot like Blanche does. But even that reduces the alchemy of these five strange people to an equation. Blanche is more than the sum of their parts. With Dan, frenetic yet stern, the preacher gone slightly astray from the flock leading the congregation and Tracee, a Stepford wife by way of Appalachian sweetheart at his side, you can?t take your eyes away. No one expects the Millers, but they?re undoubtedly striking. But what fills out the portrait is the long-gone family reunion of characters that are the rest of Blanche. Patch Boyle cradles his banjo and autoharp like a lost sweetheart or a dear, departed child and rocks it to life. Feeny teases only-he-knows-what from his pedal steel, bound to his seat but set fit to jump up and testify at a moment?s inspiration. Behind it all, Lisa Jannon manages to alternately tap and then pound out rhythms that let it all hang miraculously together. It has been said that they look like they?re out on Saturday night with Sunday morning never too far off, and that?s about apt. They are the portrait of Americana Gothic, Flannery O?Connor by way of a chill Detroit November. And for all the sorrow that provided a foundation for the band?s songs, Blanche?s music is not without joy. But the joy seems to come in the exorcism of dark secrets. When it came time to get this sound on record, the band divided time among three different Detroit studios. Warn Defever (His Name Is Alive, Ida, Tarnation) had just christened his new studio, Brown Rice, and Blanche was the perfect lab rat for Defever?s cryptic instincts. Next, the band headed for steel player Feeny?s recording laboratory, The Tempermill (P.W. Long, Demolition Doll Rods) for further recording. Lastly, the band knocked on the door of resident Detroit pop genius Brendan Benson. They holed up for a couple days of ?live? recording at Benson?s Grand Studio, dramatically reworking a song Miller wrote and played in Two-Star Tabernacle, ?Who?s to Say??, which would become the band?s first release, a 7-inch single. The song that you?ll hear on ?If We Can?t Trust the Doctors? takes the song down tempo and lets Miller?s stark vocal of a lovelorn man gone lost drip with longing and pathos. And it afforded Blanche the opportunity for an on-record family reunion of sorts, with White contributing a guitar solo and accompaniment and Benson singing backup harmony. It is, as one pundit put it, ?A haunting mess of beauty.? And it brings the band full circle as it prepares to share the snapshots of what Miller has found when he?s been looking in the far corners of his attic.
Daily Debrief: Sigh, e-voting still stinks
As Election Day approaches, many voters across the country are still skeptical about the accuracy and efficiency of electronic voting. On this Daily Debrief, CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh tells Kara Tsuboi why he prefers voting by paper and pencil, when e-voting technology will be up to snuff, and how Congress really messed this one up.
The Brother HL-2040 is a fast monochrome laser that fits tight budgets and small workspaces that have no need for fancy paper handling or a beefy work flow.
"It's Never Been Like That," was conceived with a live mentality, in a straight line, summing up a lot of the band's emotions and past experiences, sometimes conflicting, often disrupting. All the songs are autobiographic and set down emotional equations where disillusion and exaltation try to find a common language. This is a romantic album although very rigorously made. Rhythms are hard, arrangements straightforward, violently simple and close to the bone.
Does Gnarls Barkley's album "St. Elsewhere" shed light on his mysterious personage, or does it further obscure him? It's a complex record, to be sure. It employs the full spectra of pop music and human emotion. The warm, breezy single "Crazy" and the spry finger-snapper "Smiley Faces" recall "Songs In The Key Of Life" and "Good Vibrations" in equal measure. "On Line," a lament for the lonely and ambitious, could be a tricked-out G-funk holdover. Often dark and unpredictable, "St. Elsewhere" nevertheless retains its sense of joy throughout. Even Cee-Lo's darker moments, his introspection on "Necromancer," and the chilling "Just A Thought," on which our hero fights off suicidal ideation, flourish in their lush, funky surroundings. It constantly shifts its shape and never sacrifices momentum. And it contains a mess of contradictory clues about just who Gnarls Barkley actually is. Perhaps Gnarls Barkley will never fully reveal himself. But if "St. Elsewhere" is any indication, his music bears Marvin Gaye's depth of feeling, Jeff Buckley's emotive theatrics, and wild courage not seen since Prince's prime. Behold the most exciting debut of 2006. A psychedelic soul masterpiece.
