db does a blog

"And/Or” - My first curated gallery exhibition.

Even though I’m not technically “art world” qualified to curate an exhibition, I’m super excited by Marquee Projects' invitation to do so & proud of the resulting body of works!

I’ve also come to understand that, even though I didn't know at the time, I've actually been curating since the age of 13. I would make mixtapes. (Original mixtapes were simply collections of songs on cassette tapes made by using the pause button on a cassette recorder. No actual mixing was involved). I would give these tapes away to my 3 friends to show off my impeccable teenage taste. As I grew older & became a DJ, I would be hired by clubs for the curation of my record selection. (As Paul Morris always said, “You’re a better selector than a DJ” ;) ) Success with DJ’ing led to record companies hiring me to curate compilations of particular styles of music. Even the books I’ve written & produced like STICKERS, ART SLEEVES & Sm;)e are simply curated collections of ephemera, record covers & images.

The “And/Or” show itself includes a combination of artists I’ve become friends with over my time in NY, who have worked with appropriation or works my family owns that won’t be for sale.

Don’t cancel me for not having more female artists. I reached out to 4 or their galleries & either got a polite “no thanks”, or no reply at all.

Press Release from the gallery below..

Some history about “History of our World- Part One"

In 1993 I’d been working for a year or so in my first music business job at the indie Hip-Hop label, Profile Records as A&R under the guidance of vice-president Gary Pini. Also in 93, the two owners of Profile split up. And because Gary & I had put together several successful Techno & House compilations, the remaining partner offered Gary & me our own electronic music imprint.

Gary suggested that since I had a successful club night called NASA focusing on the exact music our label would be releasing, we could call the record company NASA MUSIC. However, my partner in the club thought that Profile should pay for this, even though the name actually belonged to a government space agency. Long story short, we didn’t have the name issue sorted by the time this album, our first release needed to go into production. So even though a double 10” vinyl set had gone out as promo as NASA MUSIC, the final CDs & cassettes were released on Profile.

I’m incredibly proud of this mixtape, primarily because it was the first UK Jungle album to come out in the US. Also, Gary suggested we reach out to Simon Reynalds, who’d just written the first article for a mainstream American publication, Spin Magazine, about this new dance genre, to see if he would write the liner notes for the album. Simon went on to write some of the best ever music history books, including my fave Rip It Up & Start Again.

It’s also pretty incredible that I picked 5 of my fave UK labels, Moving Shadow, Reinforced, Production House, Suburban Base & Formation, & simply said, ‘can we license 5 tracks from each of you to make up this 25-track mixtape compilation?’ And the 5 hottest DNB labels of the day all said, ‘sure’.

I asked Dave Nodz, who was doing the art & graphics for Suburban Base if he'd create a robot character for front cover for the album, and then Rebecca Meek, creative director for Profile took Dave's drawing & fleshed out a truly amazing package for both CDs & cassettes.

I remember the excitement I felt when someone in the business department at Profile told me the album was doing really well & we should start working on a Volume 2.

Thanks to Emory Marvin for sending me the cassette! I’ve never had one till now. 31 years late but better than never.

BARRY MCGEE in NYC June 2024

Those who know me, know I’ve been a psycho Barry McGee nerd/fan since the mid 90’s. (Just throw his name into the search here & see all the entries) Back then I was trading shit for his zines or buying his painted bottles from graffiti rats for $100.

When working on my first book in 2008, I wrote to him, asking if I could make one of the faces on a bottle I owned into a peel-out sticker for the back section of the book. He wrote back saying no, but then said he’d make something original for it. When the email arrived with the image of the painting, my jaw literally dropped.
He has occasionally used B’s or D’s for eyes in his faces but here was one with a D for one eye & a B for the other. Not only did I make the stickers with it, JK5 tattooed it beautifully.

Over the years & as my career in music & art developed, I’ve managed to scrape together enough funds to buy a couple of really significant works by him, which I get incredible pleasure from & sometimes can’t believe they are mine.

Knowing he was about to open a show in NY on Sat, I went to the gallery on Thur hoping to catch him & his crew installing it. Over the years I’ve met Barry a few times at book signings & gallery & museum openings but this was the first time I’ve got to spend an hour with him. We talked about future projects & I showed him the CRASH BANG book which he seemed to really love, asking all kinds of questions about the punk characters included & how I was really “in it”.

He also gave me new stickers to add to his panel in the Stuck-Up collection.

We discussed how we’re dealing with getting old & noticed a strange but cool numerical thing. He’s 58 & I was born in 58. I’m 66 & he was born in 66. Must mean something 🙃 Knowing he hates & is not on any social media, I don’t have to worry about being too much of a fanboy here.

Nolan Zangas - "So Far So Good" Book

About six months ago, family friend, Taschi Belt asked if I would be interested in meeting Nolan Zangas, as he was looking for a publisher for his book. I confess I didn't know of him, so I looked up Nolan's work and was super impressed. I also couldn't believe how young he was.

She made the intro and on a cold and rainy afternoon, Nolan and I met at Big Wong in Chinatown for some food. We are both a little reserved, but I thought the meeting went OK and I liked him.

Nolan explained that he'd basically designed the whole book already, and I explained the non-traditional way that Blurring Books is working with artists, and we decided to move forward together. Nolan asked for help with the cover, so I introduced him to Sammie Purulak who'd just finished laying out CRASH BANG, my own punk photos book. Sammie designed a beautiful cover for Nolan and tightened up some of the layouts for him, with the end result being one incredible book! It’s like something between an elegant but very personal photography book and a writer's black-book. In his words, "The book features about 5 years of unseen personal work, documentary/street style images of my friends and surroundings all taken in New York.”

In the months that followed, Sean & my communications would take place while Nolan was in so many different countries and time zones shooting for big-name brands. Even at the peak of my DJing career, I experienced nothing like the air miles he's clocking up & loss of sleep he's dealing with.

The extraordinary thing to me is how someone has achieved this level of success at such a young age, 25 (he looks like he’s 20 though) and not let it totally distort his ego and personality. While he does not suffer fools gladly, he’s generally chill and even very considerate. People who know me well, know I’m a stress monster, worrying about everything. As with every project, there are hiccups and fuck-ups, but Nolan never threw a hissy fit or got unreasonably annoyed.

Over the weekend he staged a pop-up exhibition at Earshot and we did the book release, & the whole thing was pretty amazing.

This experience has set a new high bar for me as far as working with artists to create these beautiful objects, known as books.

Nolan putting finishing touches to his massive wall piece.

Mom came to say high.

Checking out my own recent sticker book.

Party pics.

The book

RICHARD PRINCE: Early Photography, 1977–87 : Gagosian

Such a thrill to see these works in the flesh!

My memory of how I first stumbled upon the artist is blurry, but even in London in the mid-80s among me & my non-art-world friends, we were somehow aware of the controversy of “Spiritual America” aka Garry Gross's photo of 14-year-old Brooke Shields naked. Though it was his re-photographed Marlboro cigarette ads that I cut out of magazines & saw as ART. I don't know if I knew or cared about his name yet.

I don’t remember if I bought the two books published in 1988 by The Deste Foundation, (a Greek art organization) in London, or when I moved here in 1989. One of the books shows work by John Dogg (a Prince pseudonym) & I think that’s when I started to search out his work in galleries.

Not only did I discover Prince’s name in these two books, but a slew of other artists became important to me because of them. The books, Artifical Nature & Cultural Geometry were curated by NYC’s very own Jeffery Deitch & when I reached out to him a few years ago to ask if he might contribute some text for my upcoming Stickers book, he was impressed that I had these early works of his.

When I first started working & living in NY, there were these African guys who sold art books on the streets of Soho. My copy of, "Adult Comedy Action Drama" was bought from them for $25. I was friendy with the maître d’ at a restaurant we used to eat at, who told me that Prince was a regular, so I left my book with them & they kindly had RP sign it.

I do know that from the early '90s & in the late '90s when I was working for Warner Bros & Ministry of Sound in those final days of record biz excess & fat paychecks, original Richard Prince art has always been beyond my reach. Thankfully, like me, he’s a book nerd. Not just a crazy collector but a producer/publisher of books like no other artist! There are still titles that are so rare I will never be able to add them to the pile, but with the collection I’ve amassed, including the ones I’ve had signed by knowing (or stalking) the right person, I’m doing fine.

Of the ones that sell for hundreds, rather than thousands, GIRLFRIENDS, NURSE PAINTINGS & DE KOONING are titles I've been searching charity & used books stores for a long time, so If you know of anyone who collects or trades art books, I’m not someone who only cares about perfect condition books (because they are too expensive if mint!) but always open to trades.

LIQUID SKY...

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2H8Rq7OiIA/?img_index=1

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2H8Rq7OiIA/?img_index=2

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2H8Rq7OiIA/?img_index=3

In a galaxy far far away… & what also seems like a million years ago:

For those who don’t know, Liquid Sky was a retail store that first opened at 482 Broome St in Soho (I believe in 1991) and then moved to Lafayette Street. But it was much more than a clothing shop. It was a universe within a galaxy. It’s really hard to describe what “it” was like because the internet has replaced the idea that you had to discover subcultures by walking around or being introduced to people. Liquid Sky was almost ground zero for a new generation of rave kids.

There was a symbiotic relationship between my club-night NASA & Liquid Sky, as it was a place for kids to hang out before going out, a place to ear about DJs & events, buy mixtapes, chat music etc. Plus, Carlos AKA DJ Soul Slinger (the owner of LS) was also one of the permanent rotating DJs at NASA. I think we even changed the name of the Chillout Room at the club to the Liquid Sky Room.

Pre-Breakbeat Science, I was also partners with two German Techno producers in the record store, Temple Records, which was in the baement of LS.

(TEMPLE RECORDS SIDE NOTE FOR MUSIC NERDS)

My partners were Ingmar Koch, one-half of Cologne-based electronic “band", Air Liquide, & Can Oral, the brother of the other 50% of Air Liquide. Both of these guys were like the Cologne Techno Mafia & recorded under so many names it was impossible to keep track of!

Ingmar put out records under these names: Dr. Walker, Digital Dirt Inc, Ingy-Babe, John Amok, Unit 700 370°, Acid Force, Alternate States, Asbest!, Atlantic Trance, Black One, Brotherz In Armz, Cipher Code, Creature, Denpasar, Electrochic, Electronic Dub, Elevator 101, Ermionis Phunk Crew, Ethik II, Fridge Pro 1, Future Shock Project. Can Oral released records under his own name as well as Bizz O.D., 4E, El Turco Loco, Fuzz DJ, Geoffrey Mack, Gizz TV, Pig, Silent Movie, and Super-8.

Liquid Sky is about to have a well-deserved major retrospective book released, showing the incredible work done by the super-talented @reyzorro & the many others involved. One day Blurring Books hopes to publish REY’s full artistic monograph.

The clips above are from a much longer one on @liquidskynyc page that I was happy to be tagged on! The snippet of me & the following couple of seconds are actually from a pre-NASA party I threw called, ORANGE. I didn’t know this footage existed till Liquid Sky posted it :) I believe all the footage was shot by Soul Slinger’s filmmaker sister, @ruthslinger & comes from her full documentary shot in the early 90’s. The longer clip features many people I think of warmly including @chloessevigny @mellosince71 @mary_frey & many others whose names I’ve sadly/typically forgotten, plus one I’m so happy to still have in my life, Gabriel Hunter! (2nd clip shows us standing at the LS counter, me wearing yet another ridiculous Anarchic Adjustment hat)

* Any fashion kids interested in the 90’s fit. My shirt is a Duffer of Saint George & the hat was a leather Kangol.

** Music is Soul Sligners RMX

*** @reyzorro has a link to pre-order the book

EX GF Spotted.

Bonkers one!
Newish friend Robin Nixon, guessing I’m probably an old Orbital head, sent me this clip of their first-ever appearance on Top of the Pops performing their first-ever single, Chime.

The bonkers part is that I’d long left the UK by the time this aired, so had never seen it & consequently did not know my ex girlfriend, KB was the dancer!

The irony here is that KB was pure rocker chick, & we never really bonded over the rave thing.
When I left London in 89 she was making videos for the likes of Jesus & Mary Chain & Primal Scream

I’ve only ever had 3 real relationships & loves in my life. My first GF, Kate, whom I’m still in touch with, KB, who holds a very special place in my heart but for whatever reason, we don’t stay in touch & she hates social media so won’t see this, and of course, my life partner, Wini.

Reporting on a DJ set 1/12/24

I guess the difference between a club gig & a house party is that I was able to jump from era & genre, with such extreme tempo changes as 95 BPMs to 170 without having a bottle thrown at me. I don’t think I’ve ever played this collection of artists in a 3 hour period before! Frankie Knuckles, Kerri Chandler, Jerome Sydenham & Fingers Inc mixed with Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, New Order, The Smiths, Candy Flip & Section 25 into Roni Size, Ror-Shak, Blame, then, Four Tet, Burial, Overmono, & Randomer with a few feel-good classics like Sister Sledge’s Thinking of You & even a very questionable 90’s Italian house cover of Christopher Cross’s Ride Like The Wind, that was almost the biggest tune of the night 🤷‍♀️

Also, so amazing to have both my kids on the dancefloor with their friends! Thanks so much to @newsummer.nyc & everyone involved. thx @william.m.clark 📸

WARHOL @ BK MUSEUM

Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen enough Warhol to never have to see more, and then I get blown away by either how different they look in the flesh, or seeing works I’d not been exposed to before. As was the case with Revelation - Brooklyn Museum

Apologies for the cropping, wanted to show some details!

FRIEZE NY 2022

A few highlights & faves from Frieze NY at The Shed.

Not sure if it was simply Max & my moods but neither of us were particularly blown away.

Not to say there weren’t some of the best galleries in the world, showing a ton of stunning art works, that's far outside the price range of normal people, but my memory of Frieze was that it used to have several Fucking Me! moments delivered because of breathtaking beauty, shocking obscenity, or simply ridiculous scale.

Whatever, it was still fun seeing great art & watching this particular strand of humanity.

Tarik Kiswanson