Melissa Bryan

"Underground to the extreme" Austin TX musician, travel nerd, aspiring coffee snob, feminist. I have an unhealthy relationship with my dog. New album, Return of the Woman, out now! Web Facebook Twitter Return of the Woman by Melissa Bryan

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"Why, are you dark inside?” she asked with a look of genuine concern when I told her I was looking for a black scarf. She’d already directed me to a stack of bright colors and was asking questions about my life. She told me she’d been living in Istanbul for five months, working at the market, selling scarves and souvenirs to tourists. When we found what I wanted she unfolded the scarf, gently placed it on top of my head and around my neck, tying it in the back to show me how to fashion a hijab that wouldn’t slip off. A few days after I left Istanbul I got a text from my cousin who'd gone back to the market to visit her. "The Syrian girl said hello and sends her love." I'm glad she's safe. #istanbul #syria #spicebazaar #misircarsisi #refugees #refugeeswelcome #safety #travel #instatravel (at Spice Bazaar)

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It doesn’t look like much. Actually, it looks kinda cheesy and like a waste of my time. The Rock and Blues Museum sits in the back of a small music storefront on a barren street in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I hand a five dollar bill to the friendly, weathered lady at the cash register. She leads me into the front room. “We love our local musicians. This is all Clarksdale.” I look around at the walls covered in LPs, photographs, posters. “Wow.” I say it out loud. She directs me to the next room. “It’s in chronological order, starting with Vaudeville and the Blues. I stop in my tracks, pull out my phone and and look at the time. I should’ve left town an hour ago. On either side of me are 15 foot long handmade bookshelves filled with LP covers, records, photographs, type-written letters, contracts, and newspaper clippings. I peek ahead. Old record players, jukeboxes, hotel bedside radios that play a song for a dime. Lithographs of John Lennon’s erotic drawings (covered with a polka dotted curtain) opposite four full sized busts of the members of KISS. Five longboards serve as backdrop for the section on surf music. A small room of posters in black light. Page long descriptions, printed from a home computer and tacked on colored paper provide context. In total, 3,000 square feet of music and memorabilia. Forty-five years worth of one man’s life of collecting lovingly displays the birth and evolution of rock ‘n’ roll. 

I stare at a mid-century radio and take a deep breath. I’m overwhelmed. Not just by the unexpected avalanche of information in front of me, but by the pure love and passion behind it. I wonder how many hours no, years, it took to put everything together. I’m in awe of the tenacity it took to create the display and the unbridled devotion to share a lifetime’s obsession. 

I feel the rhythm of the earth in this room, in this city, in this state. This is the ground that started it all. The history of my lifeblood is cataloged right in front of me. There is so much love in this space that my knees get weak, my heart feels like it’ll explode and tears well in my eyes. For a moment I feel like I’m floating. My favorite songs have the same effect on me and I am grateful. I am reverential. I know how lucky I am. 

I take a deep breath and start at the beginning.

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I'm the one in the middle. #iran #iranissafe #everydayiran #myiran #esfahan #isfahan #instatravel #traveldeeper #yoiran (at Shah Mosque)

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Back in October I spent 12 days in Iran. Here's my intial writeup. More on instagram and so much more to come!

Iran was fantastic. I'm a little worried that nothing will compare to the greatness of the last 12 days. In just my last two full days in Iran, in the city of Shiraz, I was stopped 4 times by strangers for a picture, passed a man smoking weed on the street, saw a woman openly breast feeding a baby on a bench on a busy corner, and was welcomed to Iran by a police officer. I lingered In an ancient bazaar where I stopped a gracious soldier carrying a dozen roses to take his picture. At least a dozen people approached me, welcomed me, asked where I'm from. I ate ice cream made from noodles (our guide insisted it's "starch"), delicious red and green jello (they call it jelly), a pomegranate stew that will likely become a staple, and a "Kentucky sandwich" (fried chicken) while learning more about the seen and unseen of Iran. I drank enough sugar filled drinks to rot out all my teeth and coffee at a hipster coffee shop. I saw the tomb of a beloved poet, a botanical garden, and a stunning stained glass mosque complete with pink tile. The crowning - I donned a chador to view a fantastic mirrored shrine that would make Liberace jealous, where women prayed on one side and men on the other. Here we were ushered into the International Relations room, served a local musk willow drink with biscuits and given hand written cards expressing acceptance of all people. I'm in glitzy Dubai now, a stark contrast to Iran. My hair is free and my arms are uncovered. The people of Iran will always be with me - their kindness and warmth, their senses of humor and the genuineness that frees them from the grasp of cynicism. I have at least a thousand pictures to go through and feel a profound sense of responsibility to share my experience. While some of the men in suits would like you to believe Iran is a bad place, please remember that for the people of Iran, though the struggle is real, their resilience is greater. More than half of Iran's 75 million people are under 35 and they want a better life- fewer restrictions, more opportunities, less ideology. So many of them look to America as a dreamland. I'm holding out hope for them. #iran4real #iran #shiraz #everydayiran #instairan (at Shiraz, Iran)

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Flasher, Shiraz. #iran #iranissafe #iran4real #shiraz #instatravel #instashiraz #iranian #everydayiran #traveldeeper #streetphotography #stophr158 (at Iran Shiraz Persia)

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#Sarajevo #Bosnia #balkans #bih #bosnaihercegovina #bosna #donotforget #unitednothing #library #dontburnthebooks (at Vijećnica)

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I am proud to stand with Planned Parenthood. In honor of Pink Out Day, if you buy my (pink) LP “Return of the Woman” in the next 24 hours, proceeds will go directly to Planned Parenthood. Not only that, I will match your donation. So, buy my (pink) record for $10 (that includes shipping) and $20 goes to Planned Parenthood. Additionally, gifts made today to PP are doubled so your 10 bucks becomes 40 bucks. Please stand with me to give women critical medical care and ensure we keep the right to make our own health care decisions. Plus, you get a free record (and help me get rid of these boxes)! Do it! (CD and digital sales are doubled and donated also, but they’re not pink.) 

Click here to donate! Please share!

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I’m not quite this old, but I’ll admit to spending time in a Central Florida roller rink in the same decade. It didn’t look anything like this! Great reason to go to the Ogden though, as if I needed one!

From Orlando Weekly:

A photographer documented the rough and rowdy Florida roller rink scene of 1972

In September 1972, photographer Bill Yates was wandering the back roads of Florida when he stumbled across the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in Hillsborough County.

Every weekend, for the next 7 months, Yates documented the skaters, the go-go girls, the booze, the humidity, everything. He shot over 600 photographs, but the negatives were packed away and forgotten when Yates moved to Providence to go to school at the Rhode Island School of Design. 40 years later, the photographer unearthed this amazing time capsule.

The traveling exhibit, entitled Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink, was selected in the Photolucida Critical Mass as a top 50 portfolio of 2013 and will be on display at the Ogden Museum in New Orleans from October 3 through January 17.

All photos by Bill Yates, courtesy of the Ogden Museum.

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Bosnian Girl, by Šejla Kamerić.

The small print: 

Graffiti written by an unknown Dutch soldier on a wall of the army barracks in Potocari, Srebrenica, 1994/95. Royal Netherlands Army troops, as part of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-­95, were responsible for protecting the Srebrenica safe area.

Photography by Tarik Samarah

***

Sixteen years ago this week Bosnian Serb forces massacred 8,000 Muslim men and boys in UN safe haven of Srebrenica, the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. Hundreds, if not thousands, of women and girls were systematically raped by Bosnian Serb forces before and during the Srebrenica genocide. The graffiti artist and his commanders were their “protectors.”

Photo taken at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 2007. Originally a public project - on posters, billboards, magazine ads, and postcards in Sarajevo and Berlin. 

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Reblogging myself from 4 years ago. It’s been twenty years now since this genocide. 

[neil-gaiman]

Hi! I've always had trouble finishing my stories. Whenever I have an idea, I try to develop it into something and then realize that it's not going anywhere, or that it just seems bland and uninteresting. I always end up with a pile of unfinished half-ideas and this is really discouraging. How can I fix this?

Stop leaving the stories the moment they stop being fun, and finish them instead, even if it’s hard, discouraging work. You’ll learn more from a story you finish, however bad it is, than you will from all the beginnings in the world, however good they are.

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I suspect this is the answer to all the half written songs. I excel at starting. Ending...well...

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Love/hate

My job is classified. I cannot reveal specifics: names, places, identifying information of any sort.  Very often my job sucks. For instance, I hear about lots of rapes, which in turn makes me eat Doritos from the machine. You know how it is, one bag of Doritos from the machine leads to another leads to a self-inflicted mental beating because hell no, you really didn’t need to eat those Doritos from the machine, you fraud of a self-righteous nutrition snob. It’s not my fault. I shouldn’t have to eat these Doritos. It’s not her fault either. She didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted by the person who is supposed to love her OR his best friend. And what right do I have to worry about Doritos when she has to deal with that kind of shit? It’s upsetting on every level.

Curiously, my mood often changes in an instant. I’ll be sitting there, thinking about how I really can’t hear another one of these stories, wondering if it would be obvious if I “accidentally” hang up the phone (enduring another round of self abuse for even thinking that), using every ounce of energy to try stay present, to be connected. Suddenly, I have an opportunity. An opportunity to use a phrase I have never used before in a professional manner. I say the words, in all seriousness: “BUT YOUR MOTHER SMOKES CRACK!”  And I love my job again.  

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I'm so grateful these three would/will play in a band with me. They keep me in tune (Geoff), tell me when I'm playing the wrong chords (Chepo) and school me when I think Storm Troopers are the good guys (all of them). Seriously, I love them! Come see us blaze through a bunch of 2 minute pop songs on Friday at the Hole in the Wall and help us offset Chepo's stupid medical bills! ❤️

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I think I've survived Texnado15 but that was a precarious hour in the bathtub. #texas #tornados #whoneedsabikehelmet #devo

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I’ve been missing my mom so much.

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My old band is playing next Friday at a benefit for our dear friend and bassist Chepo Pena. Old cut and paste flyer starring Suzi Quatro pic from Creem Magazine assembled with love at Kinkos, SXSW 97 or 98. Lineup includes the much missed Inhalants and Power Snatch. Hole in the Wall, music starts at 9PM, 10$ donation.

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Goodbye Prednisone, old lover, until we meet again.

I’ve been home for 13 days. That’s how long I stayed with my lover after I returned. Unfortunately my lover is cruel. He is destructive. I only let him out to play on holiday, and when I say holiday I mean travel. Because travel is no holiday, it’s essential. Lifeblood. The time I feel most like me, as I would like to be. He is good for me for the short bursts - he helps me get around, he keeps me from sitting too still. He turns mean after two weeks together. The parting is hard. Freak outs, tears. Anger that’s not really there. Now I am just me again. I feel me everywhere. My left hip. My popping shoulders. Both feet. I’ll forget him and I’ll be okay, while looking forward to our next tango. I’m not sure how long I can keep the dance up but it’s working for me now. Long live the dance, long live my independence from my lover. Long live my wanderlust.