The certificate says that the organization is permitted to “use potion [sic] of premise ground floor will be used as an office for Station North Entertainment, Inc, a ninprofit [sic] organization with a 2 person staff and a visual arts gallery.”

Despite the humorous typos, we’re delighted that Station North and Annex will finally be able to move into the building at the corner of North Avenue and Charles St. Ben Stone, the director of Station North, said in January, as we walked through the then-under-construction space, that he hoped it could become a “welcome center” for the district.

On the other hand, I argued that Gaia’s attempt to engage the community made Cunningham’s show appear hermetic, insular, and safe. Without revealing the details of our exchange, it is fair to say that Cunningham thought my treatment was harsh or unfair. I asked her to write a letter to the paper explaining the intentions behind the show–because, if the show was not, at least in part, an attack on Gaia, I could not understand why an artist as good as Cunningham would devote so much work, and her first solo show, to a take-down of Gauguin. (It is really hard to overstate how much I liked her previous work).

Cunningham didn’t write a letter explaining her intentions, but the art website Daily Serving did release a fascinating interview with her today, in which she comes across as articulate as she is talented. It is definitely worth reading. Among other things she says:

“One thing I was very conscious of doing was giving a specific voice to the internal authority figure that is generally present as a form of anxiety within my practice. The authoritarian voice in my head is an amalgam of various domineering and dismissive voices. I tried to imagine specifically that the voice of judgment was Gauguin himself, knowing him to be emotionally abusive and excited by humiliation, of women and of Van Gogh and others who loved him. Under the fantasy of his tutelage, the only response that I believed I could use to affirm my agency was to fall far short of his impenetrable genius as a painter, sculptor, and image producer. Consciously taking a submissive role in the production of my objects, I’d sort of hoped to incite some judgment of my effectiveness as an image-maker, forcing a critical voice maybe similar to what Gauguin or perhaps Georg Baselitz might use to degrade my work.”

I did mention the intentionally ineffective image of a ship, but my criticism was directed more towards what felt like the kind of over-intellectualization that graduate school can engender. And the  interview is so full of philosophical musings, referring to Rousseau, Deleuze (or at least his concept of the rhizome), and Lefebvre–but while such intellectualism doesn’t always make for great image-making, it does make for a fascinating conversation. And it definitely makes me want to see the show again.

Cunningham’s show, which is now, “informally titled” Tan Penis Island is up through May 25 at sophiajacob. Cunningham is also one of the six Sondheim finalists, so her work will be displayed in the Walters Museum this summer.

The film centers on the divorce of a musical couple played by Ned Oldham and Kim Taylor (in a sort of reverse Kim Gordson/ Thurston Moore split). Porterfield and co-writer Amy Belk penned the characters with the actors–both  musicians in real life– in mind, so it was fitting that Porterfield took advantage of the premiere to give them a chance to perform. As Oldham and Taylor shared the stage to sing “Love Hurts,” in a tone reminiscent of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, it gave the audience a chance to see them interact musically–in a way the almost telegraphically constructed film didn’t (Taylor’s character, in fact, seems disgusted with Oldham’s because he doesn’t write songs anymore).

For Oldham, the premiere was something of a homecoming. He used to live in Baltimore where he regularly performed with his former band  Anomoanon  in the early aughts. Anomoanon came together at the after-party for the first time since 2008.

In the film, there is also clip of a hirsute Oldham and Old Calf  that is supposed to be from the ’90s, but was actually recorded in 2007, which you can watch here. The film seems to be as in love with music as it is with Baltimore and the performances after the premiere were a perfect way for Porterfield to share that love.

Buvoli is a renowned and wide-ranging artist, whose sometimes whimsical animations, videos, sculptures, and paintings often deal with superheroes, flight, myth, and futurism–except that Buvoli’s hero is “Not-a-Superhero.”

“He is an internationally-acclaimed multimedia artist whose highly inventive and playful artistic practice models in the most poetic and spacious of ways represent the very values for which the program has stood for so many years,” Ray Allen, MICA’s vice president for academic affairs and provost, said in a statement.

Buvoli is also an accomplished art educator who has been teaching in various universities for more than a decade. He is not entirely new to Baltimore, having exhibited at Maryland Art Place in the show in New Wallworks in 2011.

Image: Around, Around, and Away: Not-a-Superhero and the Myth of New York (Part I),

Porterfield’s two previous films, Hamilton and Putty Hill, were recently acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This month, he contributed a top ten list to Artforum magazine, where he showed hometown pride, writing about Co La’s new album and the Ravens’ Super Bowl victory.

On the other hand, Dariusz Skoraczewski (in the bottom photo) is the principle cellist for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Sources tell City Paper that a position in the symphony that is equivalent of Skoraczewski’s earns upwards of $60,000 a year.

This raises the question: should the Baker awards work like the MacArthur Genius Grants, which clearly go to people who have already achieved great success and remuneration for their artistic work, or should they go to help those, like Parks, who have displayed a high level of talent and accomplishment, but with very little institutional support?

This year’s jury seems clearly divided on the question, and to be fair, they don’t really have to make a choice. The third winner, Jonathan Latiano, a large-scale sculptor and installation artist (the top photo is his work) with an MFA from MICA is somewhere between the two.

But let me make the case that the prize should not go to people like Skoraczewski, who are able to practice their art without the financial support of the Baker. First, there’s the matter of need. The city is full of talented artists and musicians who could desperately use the money in order to survive and create. If the award goes to someone like that, it not only rewards past work, but makes future work possible. Future work that may not have otherwise existed. Certainly, the award will help someone as talented as Skoraczewski create something impressive, but he has access to numerous other sources of support–so the payoff, for the Baker, is not as great. While Parks and Latiano express their gratitude in statements on the site (Latiano is especially graceful in his acknowledgment of the other artists in town),  Skoraczewski didn’t comment at all on the prize.

My purpose here is not to single out Skoraczewski. If there were a similar writing prize in town, I would equally argue that someone like me, who earns a salary for writing, is not as worthy a recipient as someone who receives no such support (for full disclosure: I did recently apply for a national Creative Capital grant for a book project and I have collaborated with Ruby Fulton who won one of the b grants). Baltimore-based grants like the Baker awards, in my opinion, should try to maximize their impact on the artistic community. As it is, we have no idea what the jury’s criteria is, since “The Mary Sawyers Baker selection process will be conducted by a private jury of national and international multidisciplinary experts who will consider all website nominations in selecting the Mary Sawyers Baker winners. Their process will remain private.”

The impasse revolves around two pieces that Cornish wanted to include in the show: a cross and a mosaic of the word “Jew.” James Abbott has not returned City Paper’s repeated calls or responded to emails, but in an email he wrote to Cornish, it is clear that the Evergreen Museum wanted a show that dealt directly and solely with the African American experience.

The Evergreen show, which was supposed to feature 11 panels in an outdoor installation, has a long history. Cornish first presented some of the work at Morgan State University in a show that coincided with the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2008. Cornish added a number of Jewish-themed works after he went to the home of collectors Ellen and Paul Saval to pick up some pieces for the show.

Cornish explained the situation to City Paper in 2011, when a subsequent show of the same work, In Each Other’s Shoes, opened at the Jewish Museum (where Cornish was the first African American to have a solo show): “During the few hours I was there [at the Saval house], I felt like I had gained two close friends, like they were kindred spirits. Ellen had cooked a meatloaf dinner, but I had to get back home to work on the Morgan show, so she packed it up as a sandwich. As I drove home, I took one bite of that sandwich and I knew I had to include the Jewish struggle in my show. We hadn’t even talked about anything Jewish, but just being in their presence let me know that the Jewish struggle was the same as our struggle.”

The experience changed the tenor of the show at Morgan State, which came to be titled Pre-Inaugural America: Jews and Blacks Ascending. For In Each Other’s Shoes, three years later, Cornish further expanded on the connections he saw between the Jewish and African American experiences, creating two-sided pieces like “Target/Shalom” on one side of which were photos of Martin Luther King and John and Robert Kennedy and on the other the word “Shalom.”

Cornish says that after arranging for the show at Evergreen, he spent three or four months cutting many of the pieces he created for those two exhibitions in half, eliminating all of the “Jewish” pieces but one, which he felt it was important to include.

When Abbott informed Cornish that the Evergreen Museum wished to exclude the mosaic that reads “Jew” or the cross, Cornish responded on May 3: “I disagree with your decision not to include the cross and Jew in the exhibit. Since this show is focused on the March on Washington 1963 please read these last words from the speech given by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on that day.”……..we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we are free at last.’  Just from these last few words alone the cross and Jew are substantiated to be included in this exhibition.  I have literally ripped my show apart to give you what you requested, however on the matter of these two works I’m strongly requesting that they are included.”

Cornish went on to write, “if you still disagree with my decision I must request a face-to-face meeting with you and your immediate supervisor and those parties who funded the show.  If all parties agree on your decision then I will have no choice but to reluctantly agree with your decision.”

Abbott responded to an intermediary that night: “With the below understood, I regret that Evergreen is going to have to bow away from exhibiting Loring’s artwork. We do not want the artist to be unhappy, while at the same time we do not want to deviate from the initially discussed and agreed upon exhibition. We are sorry that this had to happen, but the Museum cannot accommodate Loring’s wish. Again, Evergreen Museum & Library will not be exhibiting Loring’s work.”

“I want the word ‘Jew’ in the show,” Cornish explained to City Paper yesterday, “because, there used to be signs that said ‘No Jews, no Negroes, and no dogs,’ all across America. And in the show, there is a huge piece that says the word ‘Negro’ in broken plates. And so to accompany that, there is a word that says ‘Jew’ because of those signs.”

Cornish went on to say that “The Jewish people have always been in my corner as a black person and very apropos for the show.”

(Photos: Top, Cornish with the image of the cross; lower, the word “Jew” at the center of the dispute.)

The Love Parade, put on by Fluid Movement as part of the Transmodern Festival on Sunday should be the city’s biggest parade. It is the parade to celebrate Baltimore’s defining weirdness. Marching this year from the back lot of the Current Gallery up Franklin Street to Charles, down Charles to Center, turning on Howard and pausing under the Mayfair theater, which set the May Fair theme of this year’s event, the parade featured the Barrage Band—an Eastern European-inflected brass band— and the 901 Arts Drumline, in addition to people on stilts, in make up, crazy hats, and women wearing red and white striped dresses and yellow wigs who stopped traffic. (Photo by Noah Scialom)

This is the kind of thing that the mayor and the city should celebrate. If it is doing its job at all, the Bromo Seltzer Arts District should put everything behind this parade as a chance to bring together all races and all classes in a celebration of the diversity of the city’s arts.

The parade this year stretched about a block and a half at any one time and was made up of probably a couple hundred people. I am writing this as a participant journalist, as I was, admittedly, swept up by the parade. It was joyous to march through the city streets with fellow citizens, but I can only imagine what it would have felt like if there were 2,000 people. Imagine all of the city’s marching bands, artists, dirt bike riders, brass bands, and families, reclaiming dilapidated blocks of the city with celebration.

Baltimore used to host an annual Oriole parade, that, in the words of our own Jim Meyer, “once rivaled New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.” 

We could have a parade to rival Mardi Gras once again. And the Love Parade has been patiently laying the ground work for the last six years. (photos Baynard Woods)

Erstwhile City Paper contributor and Wham City Renaissance man Ed Schrader contributed the already classic-sounding “Radio Eyes” to Sub Pop’s anniversary compilation of up-and-coming bands. The video is reminiscent of the golden-age of ’80s MTV.

Ed Schrader’s Music Beat will play along with Dan Deacon and a slew of others Saturday May 4 at the Transmodern Festival.

“Both Kelly and Jake have decided to part ways with the band for personal reasons and to pursue other projects. We wish them all the best with their new endeavors and its [sic] certainly sad to see them go. BUT, the remaining four of us (Cory, Jeffrey, Chris, and Alex) will continue on as Secret Mountains. We’ve got some new material that we’re really excited about sharing and will have more updates in the future. Things are looking up.”

It is hard to imagine Secret Mountains without Laughlin’s vocals. She and Jake Winstanley, who also left the band, play together in the band Heavy Friends, from whom we will look forward to hearing more.

In the introduction to his new video “Post-Skatepunk/Ghettoclectic” the brilliant and eccentric rapper Labtekwon (Back to the Lab, Feature, Aug. 29, 2012) says “I love my black skin and natty hair. I like cereal” over an image of him eating what I guess is cereal. He goes on to say that he is a student of a wide variety of religious traditions and list the rappers he dug as a kid, before adding that “In middle school, I wanted to skate like Steve Steadham, Christian Hosoi, Mark Gonzalez, Steve Caballero, and Rodney Mullen. I used to read Transworld Skateboarding and Thrasher Magazine. Every day I listened to Dead Milkmen, Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies.” He concludes by saying “That was then, this is now,” and  breaking into his virtuosic,  “post doctorate, post modernist” flow.  Decades into his career and it’s still hard to find anyone as original as Labtekwon.

J. Roddy Walston and the Business, CP’s “Best Live Band” of 2012, also recently announced a new slate of live shows in the south.

A couple weeks ago, The New York Times Magazine wondered if David Lynch had given up film-making for Transcendental Meditation. He made his own music video recently, but local indie due Beach House–along with director Eric Wareheim–out-Lynch Lynch with their new video for “Wishes,” in which Ray Wise, who plays Leland Palmer (Laura Palmer’s father) in Lynch’s series Twin Peaks, lip-syncs Victoria LeGrand’s vocals in the middle of a brightly lit nocturnal football field wearing gold pants and a silver jacket. And it gets crazier from there–bringing out the cinematic creepiness inherent in the song.

He mixes a dizzying number of artists together, as documented in something like a bibliographic algorithm:

“Wish Book Volume 1 was made with music made by (in order of appearance): grimes+psy+beach house+skrillex+diplo+nicky da b+dirty projectors+lil wayne+nicki minaj+oneohtrix point never+tune yards+animal collective+rod stewart+the strokes+wiz khalifa+beyoncé+lcd sound system+death grips+ludacris+rihanna+the beatles+roy orbison+silver apples+katy perry+69 boyz+gary glitter+james brown+lmafo+black dice+the ronettes+r. kelly+black eyed peas+lenny kravitz+the misfits+2 chains+daftpunk+led zeppelin+the notorious b.i.g.+devo+lightning bolt+unknown artist recorded in jaipur, india+marvin gaye+radiohead+rage against the machine+salt n peppa+brian eno+madonna.”

The skittery, fun songs, seem like the result of  endless hours on a tour bus. But whenever he indulged in these frenetic mixes, they make a nice holiday gift to his fans.

Wendel Patrick, one half of Boom Bap Society (Best New Hip-Hop Night) and “Out of the Blocks” (Best Radio Project), has just put out a cool new video detailing his his work as a producer. Check it out here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The irony is that, in a country without government censorship of the web, the Times refuses to translate the obscene phrase, censoring themselves. In this case, the Times’ standards of decency (“All the news that’s fit to print”) greatly interfere with the paper’s ability to report the news. Robert Mackey, reporting on Ai Weiwei’s cover of PSY, cites and links back to “my colleague Michael Wines,” who wrote “a thorough explication of the meme in 2009.” How thorough? Wines defines the grass-mud horse as “a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity.”

But the Times wouldn’t allow Wines to translate it in 2009 and they still won’t today. So we’ll say it for you NYT: Fuck your mother.

Sick Weapons are finally releasing Birthday Gift in conjunction with their first show since they called it quits a couple years ago. They’ll be playing at U+N Fest on Nov. 9 at Metro gallery, celebrating the anniversary of “Best Promoter” Unregistered Nurse.

The record, released in conjunction with Reptilian Records, will be available at both nights of U+N Fest, online through Reptilian records,  and at Hampden’s Celebrated Summer record shop.

Keep an eye out for more CP coverage of the record and U+N Fest (Nov. 9 and 10).  The “Secret Headliner” of the festival’s second day will be announced soon.

After three of its members were sentenced to two years in prison for the crime of  hooliganism, Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk band, released a new single “Putin Lights up the Fires” (above in the Guardian‘s great video montage). The song shows that the women in Pussy Riot are not only revolutionary–they also rock.

An English translation of the lyrics were released today.

PUSSY RIOT “Putin Lights Up the Fires” lyrics:
(translation credit: @Russian_Market)

This state may be stronger than time in jail.

The more arrests, the happier it is.
Every arrest is carried out with love for the sexist

Who botoxed his cheeks and pumped his chest and abs.

But you can’t nail us in the coffin.
Throw off the yoke of former KGB!

Putin is lighting the fires of revolution
He’s bored and scared of sharing silence with the people
With every execution: the stench of rotten ash
With every long sentence: a wet dream

The country is going, the country is going into the streets boldly
The country is going, the country is going to bid farewell to the regime
The country is going, the country is going, like a feminist wedge
And Putin is going, Putin is going to say goodbye like a sheep

Arrest the whole city for May 6th
Seven years isn’t enough, give us 18!
Forbid us to scream, walk and curse!
Go and marry Father Lukashenko

A Russian judge sentenced three members of the punk feminist band Pussy Riot to two years in prison today for the crime of “hooliganism.” A dozen others were arrested by riot police after the verdict was announced.

The charges stem from February, when the band entered Moscow’s main church and performed a “punk prayer” to the Virgin Mary. They were protesting the links between the Russian  Orthodox church and President Putin.

The closing statements of the three women are immensely moving and articulate and they have become heroes not only in Russia, but in the U.S. where they have received the support of numerous celebrities and musicians.

However, it’s worth wondering how well similar bands would fare if they were to do the same thing in churches around the U.S. and other countries. There’s only one way to find out.

The setting made it even stranger. David Byrne, of the Talking Heads, has a book coming out next month in which he argues that music is made for a particular context. African drumming sounds the way it does because of the outdoor context it is played in, and organ music was developed for European cathedrals. Rock music was made for the crappy little club. As Jane’s Addiction’s drummer Steve Perkins told me a couple weeks ago, that band turned the Los Angeles of 1986 into song.

So it was uncanny to see Jane’s Addiction play at the Lyric, a venue created to highlight the voices of opera singers. It was not only the sonic fact that the amplified rock and roll fury often became more of a slurry, where so many notes blended together, but it was also something cultural. When I first became a Jane’s Addiction fan in the late 1980s, I was living in South Carolina and they were something strange and dangerous from L.A.

Aside from the few whiffs of vaporized weed and a crowded smokers’ balcony, there is nothing dangerous about the Lyric, and, alas, there is nothing dangerous about Jane’s Addiction. They played a solid show. When the sound worked out right, Navarro and Steve Perkins pretty much killed it not only on the old favorites but on new numbers as well. But there are different demands on a singer like Ferrell, known as much for his presence as his voice.

When I saw Jane’s Addiction at the first Lollapalooza in Atlanta, he was full of charisma—singing Sly and the Family Stone’s “Don’t Call me Nigger, Whitey,” with Ice T to break up a fight between skinheads and African Americans. But in Baltimore, a drinking-age later, he not only seemed incapable of hitting some of the old notes, but he only seemed half there. Sure, he was brilliant on a few songs, but he seemed to phone others in. He kept drinking from a bottle onstage, but one suspects it was as much to advertise the tequila company with which he is partnered as to get drunk.  He introduced “Been Caught Stealing” by telling the crowd how good he was feeling. He said he had a tailor in Baltimore making his pants (which he, strangely, wore pulled up above the navel). When he said “I used to have to steal them,” I couldn’t help but think of what Steven Perkins told City Paper about Mick Jagger: “You want to grab that urgency, that desperation that rock music needs, or it’s just a fraud. If you’re not urgent, if you’re not desperate . . .It’s tough to hear Mick Jagger sing, ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’—that’s crazy. He’s got it. You really have to live it.”

Fischer says the new album, whose title is the Cyrillic spelling of Badalova’s first name, is intended to focus attention on the singer, a poet born in Baku, Azerbaijan.  The two songs “Tall Tales,” and “Black on Black” demonstrate the wisdom of this decision. Badalova not only has a gorgeous voice, but her singing oozes charisma. And the rest of the band has found the right dynamic for showcasing these strengths.

The production and arrangement of these songs show real growth for this already promising band. Look for the album and a series of shows to support it next month. For now, enjoy these intense and dreamy numbers.

With Wells’ death, we lose a living connection to a call and response series that takes us back to the beginning of country music and beyond. The melody was first recorded as “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes,” in the 1920s, a Carter Family song, which laments the separation of lovers by the “wide world,” and its natural features and fates.

Roy Acuff recorded the melody again with 1936′s “The Great Speckled Bird,” a gospel tune comparing the Bible to a great speckled bird, in a fashion almost like that of the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Acuff’s song can be read as a response to the Carter Family. While they see nature as a tragedy, which keeps people apart, Acuff turns to the old saw that says nature is the book of god into theodicy. His gospel song wants to show that the natural world is good.

By the time we get to Hank Thompson, it is too late for that. Thompson takes the song to the industrial world of displaced rural people living in cities like Baltimore, working in factories, and drinking in honky tonks. The natural world is now sexual attraction, and as he loses his wife, he sings “I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels/ I should have known you’d never make a wife/ you gave up the only man who ever loved you/ and went back to the wild side of life.” Thompson is bringing back the sense of distance in the Carter Family’s song, but now it is the modern world, rather than the sea, which separates lovers.

At a moment when women were demanding rights, Wells took this melody, and Thompson’s theme, and responded from the position of the woman Thompson was singing about. “It wasn’t God who made honky tonk angels/ as you said in the words of your song/ too many times married men still think their single/ that has caused many a good girl to go wrong.”

Wells goes back and reclaims the longing from the woman’s position that is in the Carter Family song, because it is not the sea that actually keeps the original lovers apart, but rather the fact that the man ran off to sea.

But beyond this song, which she admits she recorded for a paycheck, Wells was one of the great female voices of country music’s golden era. Eddie Stubbs, announcer for the Grand Old Opry, and host of the late great radio Eddie Stubbs show, played in Wells’ band and often talked of her character and generosity of spirit. Listening to Stubbs talk about her during his show’s long run at WAMU, you almost felt like you knew Wells. Listening to her songs, you did.

God might not have made honky tonk angels, but if there is such a being, it would do well to claim it made Kitty Wells.