Part romantic, part beatnik, part general pain in the ass

"I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty. I don't have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I have are on my feet. I don't mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don't need much money. I believe it's meant to be that way. There's a 'struggle' you have to go through, and if you make a lot of money it doesn't make the 'struggle' go away. It just makes it more complicated. If you keep poor, the struggle is simple. " -Von Dutch

Kenneth Howard a.k.a Von Dutch was born on September 7, 1929 in Compton, California. ^[1] Von Dutch is best known as the father of the modern pinstriping. Von Dutch was one of the original guys that were experimenting with pinstriping, he was also the first to develop a distinctive style.

According to Von Dutch, he started drawing flying eyeballs at the age of 18.^[3] His sister Virginia Howard Reyes were there the first time he drew it, and can confirm that Von Dutch drew it in 1948.^[2] According to Von Dutch's sister Virginia Howard Reyes, Ed Roth created another version of the "Flying Eyeball" before Dean Jeffries.

For several years Dutch painted and pinstriped nothing but motorcycles, moving from shop to shop, saturating each area. By the mid-fifties he had done thousands of bikes, but very few cars. Striping cars started as a joke when he was working at Al Titus' motorcycle shop in Linwood, California. The whole car striping idea started to 'snowball' and he was there. More...

A young Kenny Howard (Von Dutch) perfecting his pinstriping craft at Bud Ekins' shop, 1965.

Worth watching....An Interview With Von Dutch

Sometime in the 1980′s Von Dutch attended the Lead East Nationals and the organizer of the show, Terry Cook, was lucky enough to put an interview with him down on tape. 

For more info see: 

Kustomrama  

KENNY HOWARD | THE MASTER PAINTER & STRIPER ALSO KNOWN AS VON DUTCH

The Life and Times of Von Dutch By Bob Burns

We'll do it LIVE!

A follow up in my quest for new music experiences and to broaden my musical tastes. These are two Radio Stations I have found that have great Live Sessions and a large archived library of previous sessions. One on the east coast in Philly the other on the west coast in Seattle. 


In Philly, Radio 104.5  host's local bands as well as select national acts to play LIVE in the XFINITY Performance Theater.  Some of my favorite Archived Sessions include: Cage The Elephant, Philly locals Circa Survive, Terrible Things, Punk rock royalty, Social Distortion, Local Natives and many more.





Seattle's KEXP 90.3 a tiny 10-watt station back in 1972, KEXP has grown over the years into an innovative, influential cultural force in the Seattle community and beyond, offers a large archived library of live session's. Here I found some favorites: The Black Angels, Arcade Fire, Beach House, Band of Horses, Old 97's, Revolver, Best Coast and many more.


So get your eyeballs and earholes on over and and indulge in the sights and sounds.

In Search of Indie

In my quest for new music experiences to broaden my musical tastes, there are a few web sites that I repeatedly return to. My top pick which I visit everyday is Daytrotter. They have a new downloadable session everyday and it is a great way to start the day. My favorite finds at daytotter so far are April Smith and the Big Picture Show, Catfish Haven, 22-20's, J.Roddy Walston and the Business, Dawes, Backyard Tire Fire and to many more to mention. Also Bands I knew and liked already doing some raw sessions. The Black Angels, Cage the Elephant, Circa Survive, Death Cab for Cutie, Local Natives, and Social Distortion. Any hoo to get a sampling check out Best of Daytrotter 2010, and Readers Choice 2010 Once you start trotting you'll never surf again.



About Daytrotter: 

Daytrotter -- One band a day, every day, 28 Daytrotter Session songs each week.

As Bands are they’re traveling through America’s heartland – take two hours out of their travels between shows to stop in for a Daytrotter Session at The Horseshack in downtown Rock Island, Ill. The name of the city is not ironic. They use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments. These songs are them as they are on that particular day, on that particular tour – dirty and alive. We want you to make this your new home as it is ours. We promise that you will love it here.

The Horseshack, Rock Island, Illinois. 
Daytrotter Sessions are engineered by Mike Gentry, Patrick Stolley, Brad Kopplin, Brett Allen or Nick Krill.

The Daytrotter recordings are made with minimal mic’ing, through discrete preamps and with some limiting to the mixing console, where they are printed to 1/4” analog tape running at 15 inches per second (usually BASF 468). The analog master is later transferred to a computer and converted to MP3.

There is no set formula or pattern to the recordings, no specific mic setup, etc. They are all live, no overdubs, straight to tape. What you hear is what happened in the room that day.

Things Down Under

I discovered Amanda Fucking Palmer one late night on twitter, when she found this young kid on the streets of San Fran and bought him into her house where she did a impromptu web cast of the kid playing some amazing piano. It was intimate and spontaneous, and I was hooked on this eccentric character I knew nothing about named Amanda Palmer: 

Her new single Map of Tasmania from her forthcoming album "Amanda Palmer goes down Under" is a wild ride to regions few have traveled. (For those of you outside Australia “map of Tasmania” is Australian slang for a woman’s pubic region.) 

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer^[2] (born April 30, 1976), known professionally as Amanda Fucking Palmer,^[3] is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls.^[4] She has since started a successful solo career, and is also one half of the Evelyn Evelyn duo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Palmer

Bob Dylan - Like a rolling stone

A true turning point: 45 years ago today Dylan went electric at Newport.

DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC
The Newport Folk Festival, July 1965

from Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, New York, 1986, pp. 301-304.

At the Newport Festival in July 1965, Dylan played three songs with a rock backing and unleashed a storm of derision.

http://campus.queens.edu/depts/english/dylan_goes_electric_the_newport_.htm

"When They Fight, They Fight" Generationals - Public Assembly, Brooklyn,...

This is the first song in my soundtrack of summer 2010 The Generationals-When they Fight they Fight.




You can download their Daytrotter Sessions from May, 13th 2009. Songs include:
Angry Charlie
When they fight they fight
It keeps you up
Faces in the dark
Listen and download here...http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/generationals-concert/20030674-3738000.html