Paul Myers Wants To Show You One Cool Thing Today.

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1972 Polaroid SX-70 promo film by Charles and Ray Eames

In 1972 the Polaroid Corporation commissioned Charles and Ray Eames to produce a film introducing the new and revolutionary SX-70 instant-photography camera developed by Edwin Land.   The film demonstrates several potential uses for the camera and shows how it operates.  It was first shown at a Polaroid stockholders meeting and later used within Polaroid as a sales tool. The Eames Office used live-action footage as well as animated segments to create the film. SX-70 was the first of four films that Charles and Ray made for Polaroid.   The film won a Bronze Plaque at the Columbus International Film Festival in 1975.

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Clockwise: Todd Rundgren and his band, Kasim Sulton, Prairie Prince and Jesse Gress, at The Fillmore, Monday, Nov 24, 2014.

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Harry Nilsson lipsynching "Bath" on French TV 1968.

From a French TV show called "Nilsson et Peggy March" which aired in 1968. Harry walks to a pond as the credits roll and prepares, one assumes, to take a bath in it. Doo wacka doo.

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Alex Lifeson's Parents Ask, Why The Rush To Get On The Road?

"By September, we'll be out of debt and making $80.00 a night..."

A 17 year old Toronto boy, Alexandar Zivojinovich a/k/a Rush's Alex Lifeson, tries to convince his Serbian immigrant parents that it would be fine for him to drop out of Grade 12 and take to the rock 'n' roll road.

This footage, seen in the 2010 documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, was originally featured in Come On Children (1973) by the late Canadian film director Allan King (February 6, 1930 – June 15, 2009).

Needless to say, he did alright for himself...

(h/t to Paul Greenberg for digging this out).

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A Hard Day's Tonight: Questlove's First Day At The New Gig

Questlove took the OkayPlayer camera with him as he and The Roots made the finishing touches on Day One as the house band on the next generation Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

In this fun mini-documentary, in two parts here, we follow Questlove from his swanky new penthouse pad at the foot of Manhattan to the bustling backstage midtown at 30 Rock as he and The Roots jam with U2 on what was no ordinary day.

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Merry Crimson-mas: Robert Fripp's 1985 BBC TV Special "NY - Wimborne"

There's no place like Prog for the holidays. So here's the 1985 BBC TV special "Robert Fripp: New York - Wimborne" which chronicles the King Crimson guitarist and features song clips, interviews and photos from his career (up to 1985).

It's on YouTube in three parts:

And finally, we close with a Frippertronic nod to "Silent Night".

Merry Frippmas To Everyone!

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Dionne Warwick Lipsynchs "Walk On By" on a Paris Rooftop (1964).

I'm a huge fan of Dionne Warwick, I'm a huge fan of Burt Bacharach & Hal David, and I'm a huge fan of Paris in the 1960s.

So what a treat to come across this YouTube clip of Dionne  miming her Bacharach single "Walk On By" on the roof of the Paris headquarters of Radio France in 1964, surrounded by French male models. Wikipedia noted that this building is on the banks of the River Seine, in the 16th arrondissement, and was designed by the architect Henri Bernard. It had been inaugurated in December 1963 by President Charles de Gaulle, only months before this clip was filmed.

What's not to love.

Cool thing.

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Steve Reich On Ghana, Eno, Bowie, Radiohead And Open Windows

This film clip of Steve Reich talking about his music comes to us from the  Bloc Influences series. In it, Reich reveals how the community-based music of Ghana opened him up to the way he now approaches Western music.

"In 1973," Reich recalls, "my ensemble was playing at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, after the concert's over, a guy comes up with long hair, and lipstick, says 'How you doing? I'm Brian Eno.' 1976, we're in Berlin playing the European premiere of Music For 18 Musicians, David Bowie's there, and I think it had an effect on his piece 'Wailing Wall'

"But that's the way life has always been in the West. The door, or the window, between what's going in the concert hall and what's going on it the street has always been open, except when I was going to school! [Laughs] They slammed the window shut and built a wall! My generation took that down and now… I'm writing a piece now called 'Radio Rewrite', taking two songs from Radiohead and doing what I want to do with them. So my generation has restored, not something new, but the normal. We've gone back to the normal situation." 

Influences - Steve Reich from Bloc. on Vimeo.

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Jeff Tweedy Solo Tour. Plus RITUALS, A 2012 Mini-Documentary by Thrash Lab

Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy has announced a solo tour. I saw him solo at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver BC, in 2006, and I'm still buzzing from it. Here are some new, mainly west coast, solo tour dates, including a sort of residency at Largo in L.A.:

12-03 Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theater

12-05 Denver, CO - Paramount Theatre

12-06 Salt Lake City, UT - Kingsbury Hall

12-08 Seattle, WA - Moore Theatre

12-10 Davis, CA - Mondavi Center

12-11-12 San Francisco, CA- The Fillmore

12-13 Santa Barbara, CA - The Granada Theatre

12-15 Los Angeles, CA - Largo at the Coronet 

12-16 Los Angeles, CA - Largo at the Coronet 

12-18 Los Angeles, CA - Largo at the Coronet 

12-19 Los Angeles, CA - Largo at the Coronet

Go to these shows if you can, you won't regret it.

In honour of this announcement, I am posting the Thrash Lab mini-documentary RITUALS: Chris Storer's film about "the ritualistic behaviors of Jeff Tweedy in his hometown of Chicago, before his solo show at The Vic, a benefit concert to raise scholarship funds for his son's school. Enjoy this intimate and personable look at Jeff Tweedy's rehearsal process, family time and pre-show fan interactions."

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Old Grey Whistle Test's Bearsville Picnic 1977, w/ Albert Grossman, Mick Ronson, Todd Rundgren, Foghat and more.

From a 1977 Old Grey Whistle Test special, taped at the Bearsville compound in Woodstock, New York, with Whispering Bob Harris interviewing Albert Grossman, Todd Rundgren, John Sebastian, Jesse Winchester, Paul Butterfield, and even a visiting Mick Ronson! Performances by Foghat, doing a smoking hot "Fool For The City".

Rundgren shows off his then cutting edge video gear, and later, the RA era Utopia peforms "Singring And The Glass Guitar" in all its pomp and pyramid power excess. An hour of bell-bottomed, bearded and Bearsvilled fun. Enjoy!

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"Walk Us Uptown": Elvis Costello & The Roots crank it up.

When Roots' producer Steven Mandel latenight skyped me from Vancouver last year, he had some great news. He'd been secretly holed up with his regular crew, Questlove and The Roots, but they were collaborating on an album with Elvis Costello.

I could tell he was excited to be producing one of his heroes of songwriting, it was all over his face and in the "how did I get so lucky?" tone in his voice.

That album, Wise Up Ghost, by Elvis Costello & The Roots comes out soon, meanwhile, PitchforkTV today offered up a "lyric" video for one of the tracks, "Walk Us Uptown" featuring Quest & Costello getting their little record wound up.

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David Bowie’s last couple of clips from The Next Day, "The Stars Are Out Tonight" and “The Next Day" were rather extravagant, high concept and seemingly high budget affairs, harkening back to the supposed “golden age" when MTV clips were water cooler conversation fodder.

This newest...

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David Byrne & Jherek Bischoff - "Eyes"

"Its all in the eyes!" According to the production team known as Georgia (Justin Tripp and Brian Close) who, along with Jordan Kinley, made this video for the David Byrne & Jherek Bischoff song, "Eyes", Byrne and Bischoff were asked to "perform small and subtle facial movements" which were later looped, cropped and cut as the main backbone of the clip. "Staying literal to the song title", says a statement on Georgia's website, "a lot of focus went into capturing simple eye movements (opening, closing, winking, rolling, staring)."

They later added "cel animated and collaged time lapse elements, as well as additional orchestra footage to complete the rhythmic + synesthetic look of the piece" which was premiered on PitchforkTV on July 9.

Cool.

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Laraine Newman is Hannah in GIRLS: Season 38

I am a huge fan of Laraine Newman. She in turn, is a big fan of Lena Dunham, and says, in today's Huffington Post, that she has seen and loved every single episode of Dunham's HBO series, Girls.

So when Gail Lerner sent her the script for GIRLS: SEASON 38, she says she was hesitant to make fun of Dunham, and even more resistant to the idea of playing Hannah. But she did it. And she did with all the attention to detail we've come to expect from this former Groundling and one of the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players. So enjoy this loving parody of Girls, which also stars Groundlings' Mindy Sterling, and features knock out performances by Wendie Malick, Martin Starr and more.

CLICK HERE to read Laraine Newman's funny Huffington Post introduction.

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French Duo KIZ Sample Their iPhone Marimba Sound

I happen to hate the iPhone "marimba" sound because my wife and I both use it as our alarm clock sound. So imagine how pleased I am that the ingenious French duo KIZ just took that sound, sampled it, and built a pleasing little piece of music around it.

DOWNLOAD : http://www.kizmusique.com/#!musique/cqwa http://www.facebook.com/kizmusique https://twitter.com/KizMusique

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The Dark Room of Vivian Maier, Finally Exposed!

As a compulsive user of Instagram, I've fallen in love with street photography all over again, rekindling memories of my childhood days toting around a Polaroid Swinger SX70 camera and capturing my small world as I walked through it. Still, it's just a thing I do for me, and I know I'm not a "real" photographer.

People didn't think Vivian Maier was a photographer either. But secretly she may have been one of the best ever. As this official trailer for the documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier, makes clear, Maier was a Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange quality street photographer posing as an ordinary nanny.  After buying an anonymous box (containing Maier's photos and negatives) at an auction, John Maloof wanted to know more.

According to the film's official website (link at the bottom of this page):

"Vivian Maier's photos were seemingly destined for obscurity, lost  among the clutter of the countless objects she'd collected throughout her life. Instead these images have shook the world of street  photography and irrevocably changed the life of the man who brought them  to the public eye. This film brings to life the interesting turns and travails of the  improbable saga of John Maloof's discovery of Vivian Maier, unraveling  this mysterious tale through her documentary films, photographs, odd  collections and personal accounts from the people that knew Vivian. What started as a blog to show her work quickly became a viral  sensation in the photography world. Photos destined for the trash heap  now line gallery exhibitions, a forthcoming book, and this documentary  film."

Finding Vivian Maier (official trailer)

WEB RESOURCES: www.facebook.com/findingvivianmaier www.twitter.com/vivianmaierfilm www.findingvivianmaier.com  (Film website) www.vivianmaier.com  (Maier's photographs)

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Earth Day 2013: Photography Tips From A Canadian Astronaut.

Happy Earth Day, but first, allow me to offer the following SPACEBRAG! Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield once gave me (and the members of Barenaked Ladies, for whom I was writing an authorized biography) a personal guided tour of the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Well, lately Cmdr. Hadfield has been aboard the International Space Station (ISS) taking out of this world photos (yep, I went there) of our home, Earth (pictured below).

"That's great," I hear you asking, "but how can someone like ME take better pictures from the ISS?"

Well, in the following video, Hadfield shares his techniques and his  passion for capturing the fleeting glimpses of our changing world that  has galvanized a vast and diverse audience of space-lovers.

Credit:  Canadian Space Agency/NASA To see more of Hadfield's images of Earth, follow on Twitter @Cmdr_Hadfield or like him on Facebook.