Sad Song

I might have more to say about this later, but for now suffice to say what I've said before: I love the man and his work. He'll be more than missed.



Have been listening to Lou and Lou-related tunes all day.  Put on Berlin first thing this morning, and even though I knew it was coming, when I got to this song I was stopped in my tracks.  This performance might not be the cleanest of all time (who wants clean?), but it was recorded in the city they named the record after, and I like it.  (Thanks crazyritchie, whoever you are.)

Too young, to be sure.  But if it can be said of anyone, Lou Reed LIVED.  And if we want to take him at his word when he says "My week beats your year" then he lived to be well over 3,600 years old.  Methuselah can suck it.

Goodbye Lou.

Banksy in Chelsea

We're a few days into Banksy's New York residency.  I haven't been too engaged in the Painter Chase, but this piece is so close to Chome that I hunted it down.

Worth a look.  As all the press mentions, his pieces tend not to last too long before other taggers get to it.  If you review those press and online items, you'll notice that many of the images are different from each other in content as well as perspective: more or less in the way of images and verbiage, depending on when the taggers and photographers got to the spot.  You can see in the shot above that someone (who? a sympatico fellow tagger? one of the nearby gallerists?  Banksy himself?) has recently gone over "THIS IS MY NEW YORK ACCENT" to reinforce it, so that it is complete on the surface, above the other tags, at least for a little while on Friday morning.

And then there's the (slightly) greater context.  Again, this surface - like most un- or semi-sanctioned street art canvases - is continually evolving.  Some 'vandalizing' Banksy's attention-getting 'vandalism'; a Bronx record label making use of the attention; someone calling on (challenging?) Banksy to make use of his newly declared accent to use the megaphone of the attention to, you know, come out and say something; another stencil down left wondering out loud if the emperor's wardrobe is really all that impressive.  This could go on for a while.

What do you think?  Important urban art?  Commentary on the Gallery District/the Great New York Art Scene (now polished and sanitized for your protection and convenience!)?  A damn squit?

Look closer.  And keep looking - we should be getting more of these all month all over the city.

For all Intents and Purposes...

October begins tonight.