Fake French Naomi’s extensively photo-blogged the very fun weekend we shot Halloween Face 1 and 2 — Cool!

N will be reinterpreting Alicia Silverstone in an upcoming Ball Deep project.
More on that soon…

Previously on Halloween Face: A Real Horror Show - (Quicktime), (Youtube).

And now,

Episode 2:
Derek Youngbeard gives Maxi a haircut.
A discussion of his method.

Cast:
Derek Youngbeard - Nate Davis
Maxi Van Go - Libby Gery
(J)Z / narrator - David Greenfield

HF_02 - (Quicktime), (Youtube)

Next episode: 12/20/06
Thematically related MPFree: Junior Senior - We Like Music (W.O.S.B.)

And please view Halloween Face’s sister program, Date Face!

P.S. Does the movie come out like a blank white screen? You need to get Quicktime 7 dudes.

WHFR took the weekend off for toikey. So I’ll take a holiday too — not only from my radio show, but also from this not being an indy-rock or album-blog…

I’ve always liked The Walkmen. We share a love of Christmas, a taste for the John Szarkowski canon of photographers, and maybe more basically, a similar ‘tude.*

Like, redoing an entire Harry Nillson album song for song — Pussy Cats in particular (mostly covers, recorded with friends over one drunken weekend) — is a real Ball Deep kinda move. So in lucy liu of my show, here’s…

Pussy Cats starring the Walkmen 
and
Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats (ZIP file)
Oh, and no effing “Bonus Tracks”. 37 minutes is
the perfect album length!

Yeah, you knew Momma Donna wouldn’t leave you hungry.

Thanksgiving,
DJ Hot Donna

P.S. I probably won’t leave the album up long, so grab it while you can.

* Our ‘tudes were more aligned when I thought the song They’re Winning was We’re Winning. “Weeeeee’re winnniiiiING. I know it’s not faiir, but what is?” just seems more honest. But whatever — I’m sure it’s a typo.

Click above to download a wallpaper-sized version of this picture.

Our number one guy’s dead. Shame on you, God.

California Split, Popeye, Thieves Like Us, A Wedding, OC & Stiggs, Buffalo Bill, Brewster McCloud, Company (minus Neve Campbell). And yeah Nash-MASH, Long Goodbye, McCabe and Mrs. Miller…It’s all the best. And it’s stupid when people say he wasn’t successful in the 80s, cuz Name another avant garde director besides Andy Warhol who was nearly as successful, in terms of good work or moneys.

Robert Altman once said, “Rules of the Game taught me the rules of the game.” We’re sorry we’re not wise or concise enough to think of anything that good…

Talya’s promised to blog about this too. She’ll probably be more insightful.

Oh and while we’re at it, Rohmer’s not dead but he’s very old. And every time we see one of his movies, (like Suzanne’s Career last week) its a reminder of why we’re doing this.

OK
L + W

They’ve been begging for this a looong time.

We’re still waiting for the Hollywood deal to close on our 21 “Yump” Street project, but we’ve begun production anywayz…

911 Call: (MP3)

In the lieutenant’s office: (MP3)

Voice talent: Darin Guerrasio

Buck! Buck! Buck!

Lev’s show airs every Sunday at 11pm on WHFR. This week’s episode is a tribute to Ball Deep fave-band, video client and friend, Books on Tape, who announced his retirement on Friday ——> MPfree.

PLAYLIST:
Books on Tape retirement party:
 Upon Rock City
 Grey Matters
 Siberian Sound System
 Deathbomb Mafia
 The Crucial
 Killing Machine
 Frission
 Kingston
Lil Wayne - Miami Vice
Unk feat Andre 3000 & Jim Jones - Walk it Out (remix)
Young Jeezy - Child of God
Baby Cham - Vitamin S Acapella
Skream w Warrior Queen - Check-it
Lee Perry & Dub Syndicate - Kiss the Champion

There’s something worth saying about BoT, because you might not know it from the music. When recording in the studio, he performed every song “live” — playing his distortion pedals, samplers and KAOS pads straight into a recorder. So if he didn’t like a take, he couldn’t fix it — he had to rerecord the whole thing. That’s probably partly why his live show’s so good. He doesn’t have to re-adapt his music for a performance setting.

This unusual way of working also affected the kind of music he made, which is so different from the laptop/glitch people he’s usually grouped with. Like, I don’t know what kind of music BoT would have made with Pro Tools, but I bet the unusual, sometimes droning, sometimes punchy timing of his songs comes from him approaching his music as a moving target and not as a static “canvas” on a computer screen. If the music sometimes feels more like classic dub than you’d expect, I think this is why.

But more importantly, BoT’s working methods were way inspirational to me and W…

The non destructive model provided by digital software and hardware allows you to cut and paste and mix and remix everything — you’re always able to undo any decision. That’s great for a lot of things but it’s also dangerous. It allows us artists to produce exactly what we think we want. In doing so it closes our imaginations to the surprises offered by our tools, our bodies, our friends and of all the other unpredictable contingencies of the world.

When you know you have to get everything right, it forces a degree of commitment and involvement that would be lacking if every take was just a scrimmage. That’s why we rehearse scenes a bunch of times, but film them only once (ok, twice if we’re working with video). Like BoT, we create high stakes moments of ‘being on’, for ourselves as directors and for the actors as performers.

Anywayz…
if you’re in LA, go see one of BoT’s farewell shows. Besides everything else, he has a easy-yet-manic, showbizzy stage presence — very Jewish in way I can’t explain, and very rare for an electronic musician. If and when his tour hits the East Coast, W and I will definitely tap that shit. For some reason, NYC never showed him enough love (theories anyone? It can’t just be the un-googleable name…)

Well whatever. Quitting well is one of the best things people can do — and retiring after putting out a sweet and acclaimed album like Dinosaur Dinosaur puts BoT in a Dave Chappelle/Ricky Williams/Bjorn Borg class of of heroic quitters. He never made an album that was less than awesome, saving me from writing him embarrassingly over-entitled complaint letters like I wrote to Kid 606 last year. Instead I wrote this, to which I only want to add

Breast Wishes, Todd!
From me and Whitney

P.S. You might have read in your local youth-culture section something about us doing a new video for BoT. For various reasons — mainly this retirement and/but-also cuz we had different ambitions for the release — that isn’t going to happen. No biggie. For those of you who were in the video, don’t sweat — the footage is all beautiful and we’re definitely planning to give it the repurposing it deserves.

P.P.S. Hah! I about to write good stuff about Todd (aka BoT) as a person; how he gave me and W our first break by inviting us to do a video; how generous and hospitable he and Kerri were to me and A when we visited L.A.; how he once played a show that had been cancelled for just me and W (documented in our music video. I’m the skeleton.)– but then I remembered, Todd isn’t dead! Man, that RIP shit is misleading…

Announcing a new online serial from Ball Deep Television:
Halloween Face: A Real Horror Show.

Way more info to come, but for now watch and enjoy

Episode 1:
In which J kills Z, steals his identity,
and slips it to his girlfriend.

Cast:
Z - Darin Guerrasio
J - David Greenfield
Maxi Van Go - Libby Gery

HF 01 (Quicktime) or if you must (Youtube).

Next Episode: Wednesday 11/29/06
and bonus MPfree: 40 Cal “The TV Real”

P.S. We’re hoping to get sponsorship from Zima. Wish us luck.

The original DJ Hot Donna was too busy reading Cory Kennedy’s blog preparing for this past weekend’s Halloween Face shoot to record his radio show (which airs every sunday at 11 on WHFR).

So DJ Hot Donna Too kindly and talentedly filled his shoes with a heavy-thudding-irresistable No Wave set — Enjoy! (Mpfreeeeee)

PLAYLIST:
Birthday Party - Sonny’s Burning
DNA - Size
Wire - I Should Have Known Better
Screamers - I Wanna Aunt
The Fall - Kurious Oranj
Elevator - Catapiller
Weird War - Girls Like That
Bauhaus - Rosegarden Funeral of Sores
Echo + the Bunnymen - Seven Seas
Swans - God Damn the Sun
My Bloody Valentine - She is Fine
Black Heart Procession - Oh Six
Blonde Redhead - Astro Boy
Lydia Lunch - Spooky
Castanets - Good Friend Yr Hunger
Gram Parsons - Return of the Grevious Angel

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Down