Saturday, July 28, 2012

Turn and turn about

YoYo subbed for me yesterday (I was fortunate to attend), so logically I will be subbing for Kanjena today from 3-5. (Will she be there?)

A Velvet patron recently recommended to me the No Smoking Orchestra led by musician and filmmaker, Emir Kusturica. Interesting! But I was more enthralled with a sort of predecessor of that band (for whom Kusturica briefly played bass and wrote a couple songs), Zabranenjo Pusenje, from Sarajavo, who played together  from '81 - '91. As Wiki tells it, they were a formative force of the New Primitivism cultural movement.

"The discourse of New Primitivism was primarily humorous, based on the spirit of Bosnian ordinary people from the cultural underground. They introduced the jargon, rich in Turcisms, of Sarajevomahalas (suburban neighborhoods) into the official musical and TV scene. Most of their songs and sketches involve stories about small people - coalmine workers, petty criminals, provincial girls etc. - put in unusual or even absurd situations. There are comparisons between Monty Python's Flying Circus show and New Primitives methods, as they share the short sketch form and utilize absurdity..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Primitives

What could be bad about that?

Wiki says, "Contrary to the then-prevalent punk rock and new wave, Zabranjeno Pusenje created a distinctive garage rock sound with folk influences..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabranjeno_Pu%C5%A1enje .  But they are punky in the purest sense - vital and socio-politically obstreperous.

If you can understand Serbo-Croatian, all the better. But I can't, and I'm still charmed.


Friday, July 27, 2012

Jazz hands!

Oh man, it's warm outside. Good thing I'll be playing some cool tunes tonight.

Fri @ 7pm, I begin




Morgan here – posting all late at night due to excitement and lack of time before my set. Technically, this is the day of my set, so I guess it’s fine. 

It’s been nice to watch the new Velvet come together. I’ve been coming to Velvet since the year it first opened, so I am a long time regular of this awesome place. I love how much it has changed and grown. It’s pretty rad – dare I say better than the last one?

Anyway, I have recently been recruited into a DJ staff position and I will be having my debut opening tonight at 7pm sharp. I’m not totally new to DJing as I used to spin at some places. Night Light and No Label. (RIP) My first DJ gig was at Ooh La La. I never planned my sets. I just went with what I felt and let the set take its natural course. I've got quite a few songs queued up right now and am really happy with how this set is turning out.

This is the first time I have ever carefully hand-picked a set prior to spinning. For me, this is a big deal – landing a DJ slot at the very place that has been my refuge for so long. Tonight, I plan to introduce myself with songs that are from the heart, songs that speak to me on a personal level.  I'll play the songs that have been accompanying me on countless bus rides to school and work for the past two years, some new, some old. A lot of you know me through talking to me, but it's about to get a tad more intimate. Funny how we can speak through music whenever our words fail us.



Saturday, July 21, 2012

The New Velvet's Special Weekend


I will be playing some rockin indie tunes tomorrow at the new Velvet. Such as the Japandroids :)
 
I hope you will join us for this monumental event featuring many talented DJ's and  help us break in the new Velvet and help out in raising some funds for our abrupt move. 
 
Click the image below for a SURL to the new Velvet location.

New Velvet Dreams

The Velvet clubwarming weekend is here and tonight I’m going to play various things that just make me happy, work wonders for my energy levels, touch me, and make me think of other special days in my life.

I also just want to say that the Velvet was the first club I went to after a long time away from SL. And I wanted to stay, even though it was obviously troubled at the time. With the club coming back to life with Maht as the manager, I found myself thinking of it as my SL home more and more often... Over this time, he showed me a lot of trust, not least of all by inviting me to become an assistant manager, and I genuinely appreciate that. Knowing that someone has faith in you is simply priceless. Yes, the Velvet is a true SL home to me: one I want to flourish, grow, and remain as musically inspiring and intellectually stimulating as it is now.

Finally, I want to thank my dear friends Dammi, Belle, Lux, and Kanjena for supporting me in my Velvet endeavors, either through advice, creative collaborations, being there for me whenever I felt disheartened, and many other ways.

David Bowie - "Outside"


A Heartfelt Expression of Gratitude

Velveetas,

My post yesterday was supposed to just be an invitation to come to our party this weekend, but I found I had a lot of emotions I need to express about our club, what it is, and why I love it. However, I was sadly remiss in not acknowledging the contributions of two people, without whom this week would not have been possible, and the club could well have just died.

Lux Chiantelle is a name most of you know. She's been a dj and an assistant manager at Velvet for quite a while. Mallory Cerise has been around for less time, but is no less valuable. Between them, they alerted me to the problem in the first place, helped me find the land to move the club to, and helped, oversaw or outright did so much of the work to make our new club a home. They did a thousand thankless tasks this week, all out of love for a fictional nightclub that we have all agreed is somehow of crucial importance. From researching items from the old build, to Lux's amazing rebuild of the iconic Velvet sculpture, now updated and even better than before, Mallory and Lux worked ceaselessly from the moment we realized there was a problem to the time of this writing. The three of us will likely remain pretty busy with all of this throughout the next week or so as well.

I've been getting a lot of congratulatory messages in the last few days, but I hope that all of you will find a moment or two to thank Lux and Mallory, indefatigable heroes of Velvet, who propped me up when I was injured, perked me up when I was tired, and did so much of the actual work to make this thing happen.

If I am to get credit for anything, it is in choosing such capable, loyal, and wonderful people to lean on in what would have otherwise been an unimaginable week. From the bottom of my heart, I wish to thank them both. I will try and do so better than this in private, but I felt it was important to do so here, in public, as well, so anyone who reads our blog would know how important they are to Velvet and its future.

While I am thanking people, I also want to thank each of the djs who have recommitted to this new version of Velvet, donating their time to play music for people whether it was their timeslot or not. Some of them will have ended up playing three or more times in as many days by the end of the weekend, just so we'd have something happening if people decided to come and see the new build.

So I find I have a theme for this celebratory Grand Reopening weekend. For me, this is a weekend of gratitude that the club exists at all, and is populated with so many wondrous, huge-hearted compatriots ready and willing to carry a load in service of something they have decided is bigger than any of us could ever hope to be on our own.

Viva Velvet.

Maht

The Grates have a new album out

Remember when this blog was about NEW MUSIC instead of CLUBS BURNING TO THE GROUND? Jeez.

You should probably check it out.

Hug Hug, Kiss Kiss - Aleksei

Friday, July 20, 2012

Hey, there's a new club?!?

Eleven months ago, I took over as manager of the Velvet. It was not a job I especially wanted, but I felt I had a duty to the club, and to myself, to try and be a stabilizing force within this virtual place that had come to mean so much to me over the years. The club seemed to be in trouble, we had few active djs left, and I felt that I could either step up and see what I might do to fix it, or else walk away entirely from the place I thought of as my home in Second Life.

From the start, I had been uncomfortable with the layers of distance that existed between me as the manager of the club, and the people who owned the land, the build, and the club itself. It's hard to feel like you're in charge of anything but scheduling when you cannot decorate for Xmas because no one will log in to remove the Halloween decor. I asked for, and got, some additional permissions with regard to the club, but it still seemed like it was a matter of time before something happened that I would need to deal with and find myself unable to.

On Monday, events transpired that put the club's future in peril. A seemingly routine instance of the sim being unavailable was revealed to be a permanent deletion of our sim. The sim's owner was no longer an avatar in Second Life, and Linden Labs had deleted the sim. They allowed us a 24-hour reprieve to gather our belongings and clear out. I acted as rapidly as I could to secure a new sim, in partnership with Bohemian Ghost, where Velvet would be the cornerstone of the land we developed. In case it escapes notice, please note that the name of the sim on which we are now situating our little haven is "Velvet."

I not only had to claim new land, but also needed to build a new Velvet. And to do both of those steps meant I was now claiming ownership of the Velvet for myself. I have gotten blessings from some of the original folks (the ones I could reach). At the very least, the club's daily operation and its land are finally consolidated into one place. This won't make much of a difference to most visitors to the club, nor to most of the djs, but it makes a lot of difference to me, and it will make a difference to whomever should hold the job of Velvet manager if I decide to depart in the future.

I'm hoping that you all enjoy the new space. I know the floor has been somewhat controversial. Some people seem to love it, and some seem to hate it. To me, that is the clearest indication that it's the right floor for Velvet. The old floor seemed to provoke a lot of the same responses in people. We still have our bloodstain, and if you look closely at the current floor, you may notice that there is a ghost of the old checkerboard laid over the new tiling. Those who do not like the new floor are reacting to that same sense that motivated me to build the club anew in the first place: the Velvet has meaning, and it's important that it continue to exist. Cosmetic changes to the club's decor will never alter the spirit and the community that exists here.

My goal with the new build was to preserve the feel of our beloved, familiar space while making it into something new. Where I could, I have purchased a lot of the same furniture that we had at the old place, I have recreated, duplicated or bought some of the props and oddities that used to clutter our floors. I have also taken pains to not just recreate the old space, because this is meant to be a new version of Velvet. We have our ties to the past, but we are looking into the future, planting roots for what I hope will be many years of music and conversation.

This weekend, we are having the official Grand Reopening celebration, with 30 hours of tunes spread across Saturday and Sunday. The goal is to welcome you all to what I hope will be a place that means as much to you as our former location meant to us. The other goal is to try and raise some money to offset the additional financial burden our new arrangement brings. But mostly, it's an excuse for a party, which is something Velvet has always done well. So come hang out, hear some tunes, and get swept away by whatever momentary lunacy has struck our collective fancy.

I think we need a place like Velvet in SL, and that is why it took me no time at all to decide it was worth the additional money and time to build it again. I think it's important to have a place where the music is eclectic and dear to the heart of the person playing it: from Vivi and Albert playing jazz and swing tunes; to Dox's love of early 80s post-punk blended with interesting stuff that came out on Tuesday; Mallory's love of the darker things; Cajsa, Nuala and YoYo's delightful eclecticism; and all the rest of us, who play a sometimes staggering array of music that can delight, or transport, or awaken something in our listeners. Every dj who plays at Velvet (and, I suspect, each of the people who come out to hear them spin) is someone who loves music, and who gets excited by the prospect of sharing that passion with others. This is why they are my family in SL. In that respect, we are all the same, and I am honored to be able to shepherd the Velvet into its latest incarnation as a home for music and the people who love it.

The faces change sometimes, the club gets a new look, new music comes out. But always, I hope, there is the Velvet. So please, join us this weekend as we celebrate our new future, tell stories about our shared past, and dance our asses off to the music of some of the finest djs in Second Life.

-Maht

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Velvet Relocation!

Hello Dear Velvet Friends,

Due to unavoidable circumstances the Velvet has moved to a new location. We are looking forward to another funtastic five years of music and frivolity. This weekend we will be having a housewarming fundraiser stay tuned for more details :)

Come join us at our new location (click the image for an SURL):


Monday, July 16, 2012

Hello all,

I am new to the Velvet family, and this my first post here.

Since one of the rules here is to play the music we love, I'm sharing with you today a song from a guy called David Fonseca. This one is taken from his latest album.
  

Let's see if you all like it as much as I do.

Cheers!
Lobito Brando

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Brunch Time With Belle!!


Wooo some new Ty Segall in store for you today and a new Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti tune (OMG this song is sooo sexy). See you at the place where music matters!!!

Monday, July 9, 2012

In the Summertime When All the Leaves Are Green

It's sunny and warm and sort of perfect today - a great day for BBQ, hot dogs, beer and rockabilly. Hope you can head on down to the Velvet for some of the most fun music there is. My set is from 5 to 7 tonight.



THE VERY BEST



My ears opened wildly listening to''Mtmtmk'' second album of THE VERY BEST. Afro based music and beyond..This is so 21st century..The happy edition...
 Listen to it at the VELVET at 3-5 pm slt Monday 09/07/2012..Chrisodd will also play some new tunes...

It's no secret


Actor Ernest Borgnine passed away over the weekend, at age 95.
A few years ago on Fox "News", he gave away the secret.

Speaking of which, I'll be enjoying myself at The Velvet tonight, 7-9pm, SLT.
I have plenty of music to share with you, and that's big fun for me.
I wonder what I'll play?? Let's find out together.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Brunch With Belle!!!

Zola Jesus at Amoeba Music Hollywood...what a dumb shit I wasn't there!!!!!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Oh, July. You so wacky.


I'm out the rest of the month. My dad is going into hospice.

There's a soundtrack for the flood: just on the edge of control, with only a moment of possible calm.

BTW? Fuck cancer.

Born to Go

Well we weren't born to sit around doing nothing were we? We have brains and bodies and this mind that enjoins the two, so we have to do something, right?
You can't do much without passion though.
The message from the powers that be is an instruction in paranoia, with the intention of sapping our will, making us scared to move, scared of people who are different, imposing fears to make us passive to their demand for our servitude...it's an old trick.
The passionate people are marked as the crazies, but what is really crazy? We are here on this spinning ball of rock in the middle of fuck knows what? The one thing we can rely on is the fact that we are part of this circular process, and that's a revolution.
Have no fear.
This is the machinima created by the music and art collective M4SK 22 for the MachinUWA 5 challenge in Second Life.
I did some of the character acting and some costume design.
The theme was "seek wisdom"



The Velvet is a great collection of minds, bodies and pixels, I hope to spend more time there now summer is here! x