Looking through a drawer the other day, I came across a printed cotton headband made by McCloud Zicmuse as a promotional item for his band Le Ton Mité. I often used to wear it at home while working. It now resembles an old pillowcase that resists immaculacy. The headband has an attached label that reads “zicmuse.com”. I decided to look up the website to see what happened to McCloud. I was surprised to find out that a pair of vintage trousers I donated to him became an art project about keeping the pants alive!
Often when friends visit me, I make an effort to donate some of my excess thrift finds appropriate for their needs or tastes. McCloud stayed here in 2003 as a guest of my former roommate, Mark Dober. I had forgotten that I gave McCloud a pair of vintage Lee olive twill work pants that were probably used by some Eagle Scout or park ranger in the 60s or 70s.
Photo by McCloud Zicmuse
McCloud has made all sorts of repairs to them over time including the installation of new orange pocket bags for the front pockets.
I’d like to imagine that McCloud was wearing these green trousers during some of the fascinating drama he experienced playing shows in Europe in 2007 with Maher Shalal Hash Baz (Tori Kudo).
Those hands! There is a handwritten description on back of photo.
Brother Dave, impresario of the aforementioned design observation site Grain Edit, has returned with the fourth installment of his Grain Edit mixtapes.
For this episode, Dave partnered with designer Mike Cina, and created an eclectic mix of wonderful tunes, including John Coltrane, The Clifford Jordan Quartet, and Doug Carn.
Interview with Mike, photos of the album covers, and the link to the mixtape are all right here.
Great-on Dave.
On the left we see Wipers frontman and guitarist, Greg Sage circa 1981; on the right, an Etruscan statuette of a kore from the end of the 6th Century B.C. The Wipers are a punk band from Portland, OR formed in 1977. The Etruscans are a pre-Roman Italian civilization who existed from 750-90 B.C.
What I’d like to pose to you all is that IF punk music is ancient Greece (ie. truth, discourse, liberal democracy and generally outrageous behavior), AND Rome is Grunge (ie. started out noble, built around Greek (punk, remember) traditions, grew massively popular before becoming too large and unwieldy, then collapsed and fucked up the world (and/or popular music) for years afterwards) THEN the Etruscans would be analogous to The Wipers. If you’re still with me, there’s more after the break including where Sonic Youth fits into all this…
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for those of you just joining us, occasionally we’ll recap some things you may have missed. here is the inaugural ’saturday matinee’ with french director eric rohmer.
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