London Calling

Why I love to photograph banjo players:

They NEVER MOVE.

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Terry Baucom and Tony Rice perform with Mountain Heart at FiddleFest in Roanoke, VA.

When I posted this twitpic of my office-in-progress, my friend Taryn requested some closeup shots of my monitor.  The monitor is one of my Favorite Things Ever, so I did.

The Monitor was originally Radford University surplus property, but I adopted it after it was on my desk at Whim for like ever.

The stickers come from all over.  My friend Grant asked me where I got the sticker on the back that says “Certified” (I forget what the rest said as I’ve since covered it up – Wilderness Rescue something).  When I told him some dude was giving them away for free, he told me he’d done a month-long course to earn one.

Most of them are bands.  My friend Walt was a promoter for Sony at the time and was forever giving away band stickers.  Thus, there are bands on the monitor that I love to freakin’ pieces, bands I loathe, and bands I’ve never fucking heard of.  It’s easy to guess which are which.

… Which also explains the Ozzy sticker.  In our old Whim office (remind me to post pictures of that awesome) the Monitor sort of blended into the background.  I’ve taken it with me in my travels since and it’s definitely an attention-whore.  When I worked at Ferrum people would come into my office and tell me how much they liked my “computer with the stickers.”

The Monitor’s right side is the most badass because I let it fall on that side in the back of my car, where it sat for several days while I commuted from Ferrum to Floyd on Cannady’s Gap Road.  The scratches and distortion are awesome.  Due to this, I decided if I ever get to do a grunge project I’m going to create my own distortion rather than fakin’ it with Photoshop.

The top is kind of lame, because I had to leave the vents open so it wouldn’t burst into flames (awesome as that would be).

I made a shitty photoshop collage of my favorite bits, because there’s just so much going on on this thing.  Sorry in advance for its massiveness.

So, that’s my monitor.  It gets a max of 1024×768, weighs 40 pounds, makes a horrible buzzing sound, and I love it forever.

More fake album covers (see the album cover meme post).

(photo credit)

(photo credit)

(I lost the photo credit for this.  If you know it, let me know).

Okay, I’ll admit that I did a 25 things and tagged my friends in it (sorry), but I don’t typically do Facebook memes.  This one, however, I thought was kind of fun and worth a few minutes of my time – perhaps as a warm up for the literature typography project I’ve been planning.  Plus I love album covers.

Band / Album Meme

1. Go to Wikipedia and access a random article - the title of the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to The Quotations Page and select “Random quotations” – the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” – the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Of all the Guns of Brixton covers, I think the new Santogold one (with Brooklyn instead of Brixton) is my favorite:

This is a great take on my favorite Clash song, topping even the Snoop Dogg one I heard on WUVT once during a Guns of Brixton covers set.  Sorry, Alma Mater Radford, Virginia Tech’s terrestrial radio station is way cooler than yours.  That’s about the only time I will ever say something good about Virginia Tech.

Is anyone else annoyed that the youtube video above shows the cover from Santogold’s self-titled album throughout this song that is not on that album?