More pictures from Sunday night’s FRICTION show with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Women, The Beets, and Katie Stelmanis on Flickr. All images © 2008 Nghia Nguyen

More pictures from Friday night’s festive FRICTION show with Japanther, Ninjasonik, Killer Dreamer, and S.S. Pyramid Snake on Flickr. All images © 2008 Patrick Parault

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden created an impressive timelapse of the famed Cherry Walk from over 3,000 photos. It’s peak bloom people so get out there before the weekend rain washes them away.

I’ve been obsessing over my latest web discovery, the vintage photo site Square America. Its worth wasting a couple days of your job hours, I still haven’t been able to go through it all. The curator describes it as a “site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century”. Basically like Found Magazine but for photos only. You’re looking at a visual American history and human dynamics with each other. There’s some old school gems on there, like the one above taken from The Party set. That set covers all the bases of fun: “Almost 50 photos from one late 60s/early 70s biracial, bisexual, bacchanal.” It makes you wonder if Bronques‘ grandfather took them back in the day.

The photos themselves are fascinating and leave me with a chuckle but it makes you think something kind of sad. If photos are for a memory or moment, why do these make us feel relegated to being nameless faces that people forget once we’re gone? If we’re lucky our photo may just be found by someone in the trash, at a flea market or on Ebay one day. The digital age makes it even worse when we’re one hard drive crash away from losing everything.

Favorite sets so far include Photo Booth, Family Dynamics, Costume Party!! and Guns! Guns! Guns!.

The Chromatics cover of Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire on top is quite good. Chhhhheck it out.

I found myself standing in a loosely crowded room at The Barbary last night to see The Ruby Suns who are currently touring the States with Le Loup. It was another one of those all-ages shows that make me feel like an old man. This time, instead of being in a church basement surrounded by youth, I was in a familiar club, a place that is usually dancey, drunk, and loud. And to add to that, people are usually pissed off their asses (at least I am) at The Barbary, dancing and partying into the wee hours of the morning.

Last night, er, yesterday evening was a bit different. Instead of being surrounded by late night partygoers, I was surrounded by a crowd consisting of high school kids, the typical show crowd, and actual children as the evening sun poured through a glass door into the dimly lit venue. It kind of felt like I was at SXSW, CMJ or something like that, which was pretty rad, even though I’m used to being in the club at midnight instead of dinner time. It’s great that Philly has these all-ages shows, they’re something unique that I never experienced in New York, or anywhere else for that matter, with the only drawback being the lack of booze. My heart sank when upon entering The Barbary only to see the taps covered with a fire hood leaving me to decide between vitamin water and chocolate milk (kidding about the choco milk, of course, but it would have been nice!). The show ended while the night was still young and I could have easily caught another show, actually an entire bill, or stuck around The Barbary for a DJ night. These “after-work” shows are something I can get used to and certainly a unique and welcomed addition Philly’s already busy music scene.

The Ruby Suns ended their set by the time it was dark outside and frontman Ryan McPhun made a quip about how the night was still young. It was good to see him in such good spirits after a set that was plagued with technical difficulties. Getting the band set up and sound checked took a good while and throughout the show there were issues with the backing track volume, mic stands tipping over, and every time McPhun got near his mic, he received a zap on the lips. Despite issues with the sound, the trio soldiered through about half of Sea Lion, treating the crowd with their sun-struck psychedelic goodness. Since the Suns were performing as a three-piece, they used a backing track for some of the instrumentals and vocal harmonies, while all three juggled various instruments and traded off vocals. McPhun exchanged guitar for percussion and back again, while Amee Robinson swapped between guitar, bass, and keyboards, and Imogen Taylor was in charge keyboards, and the flute. Each bandmember’s ability to switch between instruments mid-song and not lose a beat was the most impressive part of their set.

The three-piece ended the show with a solid rendition of “Tane Mahuta,” serving up the best of the night and going out on a good note. The sizable crowd responded accordingly, giving the group a substantial cheer despite the sound problems. It would be great to see the band fully perform Sea Lion live, but with all the record’s intricacies it would make touring trickier and much more expensive. If Sea Lion serves as any evidence, I’m expecting the band to mature their live show and eventually flesh it out to include supporting members and instrumentation.

The Ruby Suns play The Mercury Lounge on March 23rd with Le Loup and FRICTION alums The Silent League.

[MP3]: The Ruby Suns  ”Kenya Dig It?”
Sea Lion, Sub Pop; 2008

Days 2 | 3 | 4

Here are a few shots from the first day on Wednesday. Mostly street shots and one of Cut Copy, the best live act I’ve seen so far.

Cut Copy at Karma Lounge

New York City playboy and FRICTION contributor/photographer, Pat, recently came back from a trip to Africa. While he was there the crazy fool decided it would be a good idea to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Luckily, he made it and is back at home in Queens in one piece. In his own words, Pat describes his feelings at Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa.

Despite my smile, I was terribly unhappy at the peak. My body shutdown due to the lack of oxygen. I wouldn’t have cared if the Playboy Mansion were up there with free tits and taco salad. I wanted to get the fuck out of there.

Ha! In all seriousness, it’s pretty impressive, climbing to and elevation 19,340-ft is no joke – but y’all DO know that Ray’s now probably scheduling a trip to Nepal to climb Mount Everest or something even more extreme.

This track’s for you Pat. Congrats! Nice suit by the way.

[MP3]: Erasure  ”Stop!”
7″ Single, Mute; 1989

UPDATE: Check out Pat’s pics from the trip. Here

I felt ancient standing among the crowd at the St. Vincent/Foreign Born/Pattern Is Movement show last night at the First Unitarian Church. Looking around I realized that I was 10-years senior (or more) to over half of the crowd, which pretty much filled a good portion of the room (Paul, this should make you feel really old, HA!). Shit, there was even an 8-10 year old kid in there who rolled right up front with his parents looking dapper in his suit and all. Must have been first communion, bible night, or some shit upstairs in the church and his parents decided to catch some of the show before heading home.

The “venue” itself is as churchy as church basements get – linoleum flooring, flourescent lighting, a backstage filled with those metal folding chairs and tables, and kid art hanging in the hallways. Stage lighting consists of dimmed incandescent bulbs recessed in the drop ceilings common to these sorts of spaces. Given the “sunday school/bingo night” feel of the place, it’s actually a pretty rad place to catch a show.

Pattern Is Movement was the main reason I braved the frigid weather last night and they were the first of three to take the stage. The classically train duo of Andrew Thiboldeaux on vocals and Chris Ward on drums were situated side by side on stage.

For a duo, the band has an incredible amount of energy and presence on the stage as Ward pounded on the drums with sweat flying and Thiboldeaux sang in an exaggerated tenor as he hammered away on the rhodes and mellotron. The resulting sound is unconventional pop music with weirdly phased rhythms and a bit of classical or theatrical flair in the way the vocals are delivered. This was my first time hearing most of the band’s new songs, so I can’t compare them to the recorded versions, but given the band’s unorthodox sound, their music flows and comes across extremely well on stage. Toward the end of their set, the duo unleashed a pretty kick ass cover of Radiohead’s “Everything In It’s Right Place,” pulling it off surprisingly well with just two people.

Pattern Is Movement is on tour now, making a stop at SXSW in support of their new album, All Together, out May 6th on Hometapes.

[MP3]: Pattern is Movement  ”Right Away”
All Together, Hometapes; 2008

It’s ironic that Nghia sent me an email this morning about Wired’s ‘Top 10 Holga Photos.’ Over the weekend I picked up my Holga for the first time in months which still had a roll of film in it dating back to sometime over the summer. I haven’t been using it as much since getting my Lomo LC-A, which is great because it uses 35mm film and is much easier to work with than the Holga (and smaller too). Anyway, after picking up my Holga, I *tried* to turn the focus ring/lens and it was completely stuck. I was like “wtf!?” and had to hold the camera like a jar of pickles as I wrenched on the plastic lens. It finally gave way and then I realized why the damn thing was stuck in the first place – it was because someone (read: Nghia) spilled half of a beer INTO the camera over the summer. I couldn’t believe the thing was still sticky after cleaning it many times. The shutter was still a bit sticky too – oh well, good thing they only cost around $25.

Check out the Wired’s Top 10 Holga shots. Here (thx Nghia)

Favorite site Fecal Face has some horrific images and a personal account from photojournalist Lyle Owerko moments after the events of 9/11. These are truly intense and saddening photographs of that dreadful day. Here

NYC based photojournalist, Lyle Owerko, was one of the first photographers to the World Trade Centers on September 11th and captured some disturbingly intense photographs, one of which ended up on the cover of Time Magazine. These are his words and images of that horrible day.

[MP3]: Queen  ”Who Wants To Live Forever”
A Kind of Magic, EMI; 1986