Tuesday, December 21, 2004

3 days

last week is now a blur
the Japanese client arrives in town, calls in from the airport ,
meet them at the hotel , the 3 of us went to Empire State Building to Metronaps for 20 minutes restful nap , not bad at all , even the ambient music was ok .
Catch taxi over to Bed Bath & Beyond on 6th Ave. , Dinner @Cyclo .
Looking for DAT tapes Sat. , Sleep research meeting 5:30 , break down, Dinner @Mee
Sunday out to Woodside Queens for interview , Thai lunch , G train to Ft.Greene
by the time we got bk into town it was snowing and we headed to ABC carpet above Union Square perused the store and then finished up in Sleep and Sound.
then settled downstairs at Pipa under high ceiling chandeliers Tapas and drinks
watching the snow blown by the wind against the windows , drifting down over taxis onBroadway . The driver for the taxi ride home was Russian and once he got to joking about drinking vodka and i couldn't quite get all he was saying and as we rolled across 14 th St. it felt like our own NY Christmas holiday moment
The J team left AM Mon. Noyuri left this AM . We heard last night Noyuri's brother Akira had decided to move out of Aunt Keiko's old Apartment in Tokyo because of car noise on the highway outside .

Monday, December 20, 2004

About those drug stocks

Hmmm
First Vioxx , then Celebrex, now Alleve ...
next Ibuprophen ? watch what you take
there's some bad stuff going around

For GB

i met Gretchen in 1983 at Peter Nagy and Allan Belcher's Nature Mort gallery
in the East Village .
Soon after we had met again , decided to work on some projects and
did some fine works in the years we did work together ...
She created a series of art pieces : Video, CG , multiscreen performance hybrids
with my original music scores , piece specific soundesigns
She was pushing forward with innovative video presentations and editing while
deconstructing - AT& T corporate logos and ideas about affects of media ,
media saturation and overload in the "Wild Dead" ('83) ,
"Dumping Core" and "Total Recall" (@The Kitchen '84) ,
and "Aggressive Witness "('89 @ Wexner Center) electronic theatre performances .

Gretchen worked with Death Comet Crew aka DCC a few times ,
from our first photo session in 1984 after the gigs at the Pyramid with Melanie styling -
to the "Wild Dead" screening during a night of music & video I put together
@ Danceteria Two w/ DCC ,
DJ High Priest (Nick Taylor of Grey and DCC) w/ MC Phase Two,
Dominique from Dominatrix introducing us
and on the first floor a group i was producing -
Offworld ( Melanie S : metal perc , Sally Ven Yu / Berg: drums , DonnaB: guitar) played their rough ragged music tracks in what would be their one and only show ever
In 1984 Gretchen filmed the DCC music video for our track "Black Atlantic"down
at the South St. Seaport in a crowd of Wall Street banker types and
up on the highway downtown.

She also did the excellent ,quite memorable front cover design and images for DCC's 1984 "At The Marble Bar"12" on Beggars Banquet .
That cover was a collaboration between Gretchen, us and her good friend early CG artist Amber Denker and that cover stands as a striking and early use of computer graphics

Gretchen went on to edit the following music video's you may have seen :
Golden Palaminos "Boy"
New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle"
Megadeth's "Peace Sells"
REM "The One I Love:"

She worked with the Bill T Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Co. on their edgy performance
/ video piece , 1994's "Still/Here"

And so today
i hear the news . wow ... Goodbye Gretchen RIP