Month: September 2011

Song of the Day

THE RADIO DEPT.
The New Improved Hypocrisy

DOWNLOAD: The New Improved Hypocrisy

I love The Radio Dept., so the news that they have canceled their tour of North America has me kinda bummin’ today. I was looking forward to catching them at the Bowery Ballroom in November, but “family related matters” have shut everything down. I’ve had Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010…their compilation from earlier this year…on ‘repeat’ all day. Here’s hoping they reschedule, but in the meantime listen to ‘The New Improved Hypocrisy’, slide into a mournful groove and then check ’em out on their website.

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It’s My Birfday…

Other birthdays of note today:
Hilary Duff (24)

Bam Margera (32)

Young Jeezy (34)
Dita Von Teese (39)

Carré Otis (43)

Naomi Watts (43)

Mira Sorvino (44)

Moon Unit Zappa (44)

Janeane Garofolo (47)

John Sayles (61)

Brigitte Bardot (77)

Jim Grant For Barron’s

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Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is one of Wall Streets greatest critics, and Adrian Delucca had me head downtown to shoot him for a recent Barron’s feature. Jim’s office was pretty small, but an institutional yellow wall behind a doorway…

…and his wall of books…

…gave me what I needed for a couple of nice portraits…

Song of the Day

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Seeds We Sow

DOWNLOAD: Seeds We Sow

I never would have thought I’d see the day when I would include Lindsey Buckingham among the ranks of ‘indie’ musicians, but even though he’s a gazillionaire and still tours with Fleetwood Mac, with the self-release of his sixth album as a solo artist, he apparently now falls into that genre as well. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is the title track of Buckingham’s new record and besides some pretty high-toned lyrics…‘Sweet things pretty things are dying/In the penny arcade of Edgar Allan Poe’…it’s really a showcase of his acoustic guitar-picking technique. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is available as an Amazon MP3 Exclusive for only $4.99 (or you can pay full price on iTunes) and you can check out Mr. Buckingham on his website.

Driving Into NYC…

Stuck on the West Side Highway…whipped out my iPhone and fired up the very groovy Photosynth panorama app…..

Camille digs traffic! (Click on the image to make it get big!)

Larry Fink for Barron’s

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With over $3.7 trillion (not a typo…with a “T”) of assets under management, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, and CEO Larry Fink runs the whole ball of wax. And you would be right in assuming that posing for pictures is pretty far down his ‘To-Do’ list, so when Adrian asked me to shoot him for the magazine’s new ‘CEO Spotlight’ feature, I knew I would have precious little time and have to be nailed down and ready to go when he got to the set. The CEO Spotlight is formatted with the subject silhouetted onto the page and has to be shot on white seamless, but with few locations at BlackRock large enough for us to set up a mini studio, we decided to drop our paper right in a hallway on the executive floor. Enjoy…

Initial setup…

Add a couple of skim lights…

Insert CEO…

Change angles for a couple of variations…

Bake and serve…

9/12

I dunno about the rest of you, but yesterday really kinda did me in. The non-stop media barrage of 9/11 remembrances and videos brought everything back in all too lurid detail. It drove me down into the basement and I emerged with a couple of photographs I took back in 1984…up on the observation deck of the World Trade Center. I would much rather remember what it was like the day I took these shots…

Song of the Day

ORLY
Sit Back

DOWNLOAD: Sit Back

I wanna close out the week with a bit of silky smooth Rhythm & Blues. I don’t wanna sound too old-fartish, but with Rap ruling 90% of the radio airwaves, it gets harder and harder to find real music these days. But with Adele’s latest album selling over 10 million copies and singers like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings showing up on Craig Ferguson, there are glimmers of hope out there. Orly is a singer whose delivery is so strong & confident…and not to mention so damned sensual…that she could sing a Chinese takeout menu and make you melt. ‘Sit Back’ is from her recent EP, but she’s putting the finishing touches on her first album…and that’s where you can help. I’m reaching out to everyone on The List to ask that you visit her Pledge Music Page and kick in a few bucks to help her produce the record. And I know it’s not cancer or starving children or people left homeless by any one of the many recent natural disasters, but it certainly qualifies as well-intentioned support of the artistic community and if you kick in as little as $10 you even get a free album download! So jump over to Pledge Music and help her out and then go ‘Like’ her facebook page.

Here Come Da Judge, Here Come Da Judge…

Until recently, William B. Chandler III was a Federal judge in Delaware, serving on the Delaware Court of Chancery with the title of Chancellor. But then he retired as Chancellor and became a managing partner of the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and I got a call from Larry Gendron…Art Director at The Deal…asking if I could do a feature shoot with The Judge. Now Larry and I hadn’t worked together in years…ever since he was at Financial World Magazine…so I really wanted to impress him with a good job, but the offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, while very functional, aren’t gonna be featured in the pages of ‘Dwell’ any time soon. We were faced with a lot of beige walls and small conference rooms…but Kaz and I still came away with three situations that Larry liked so much he put the story on the cover!

We started with a view down a hallway…

…then moved into the Board Room for the opener…

…and finally, we stuck him in a corner of the Law Library for what ended up being the cover shot…

Song of the Day

ANDREW BELLE
Colorblind

DOWNLOAD: Colorblind

Andrew Belle recently dropped by the Daytrotter Studio and laid down a stunning cover of Counting Crows “Colorblind”. If there are any of you indie music fans who have yet to bookmark the Daytrotter site and visit it daily, you are missing out on a fantastic resource for new music. Not only will you get to hear new versions of songs you might already know, but there plenty of times like this when an artist will pull out something from left field that will prolly never get recorded anywhere else. Andrew was last featured on The List a year ago when I posted ‘Static Waves’, his duet with Katie Herzig. Head over to his website and give him a listen.