| Trish
Murphy CD Release Party
October 16, 2003, Playland Skate Center
Featuring Trish Murphy, the Texas Rollergirls and K-tel Hit
Machine
Trish
Murphy put on a hell of an event to release her
new album “Girls Get in Free.” In the true spirit
of Austin, TX, she stepped away from the traditional release
party at a record store or live music venue and rented out
the Playland Skate Center. As the title suggests, girls under
18 got in free and for everyone else there was a suggested
$5 donation at the door to benefit local teen-girl nonprofit
GenAustin.
Around 6:30 the Texas
Rollergirls kicked off the festivities with an
expo bout between the Hell Marys and the 2003 Champion Hustlers,
followed up by a match between the Honky Tonk Heartbreakers
and the Hotrod Honeys. As if the hard hitting action and cat
fights of lovelies like Bunny Rabid, Sparkle Plenty, and Lucille
Brawl was not enough, K-Tel Hit Machine belted out old 70s
favorites, like “Saturday Night” by the Bay City
Rollers, “I Feel like Dancin” by Leo Sayer and
“Kiss You All Over” by Dr. John for an all skate
complete with a raffle to skate with a roller girl. Trish
hit the rink as well!
The belle
of the ball, Trish Murphy, hit the stage to sing some songs
from her new introspective album including “Thelma and
Louis,” “The Trouble with Trouble,” and
“Eternal Dream.” Pop with a country twang and
lots of references to personal battles and landmarks, this
album is sure to be a hit with girls young and old and how
can the gents deny such a pretty young songbird.
Be
sure to pick up your copy of “Girls Get in Free”
and if you’re planning a CD release party any time soon,
takes some cues from Ms. Murphy. Sports, non-profit support,
FREE Beer, disco, roller skating with roller girls in short
skirts, drama (loyal Hell Mary fan, Cliff, was taken was taken
away in an ambulance with injuries to his knee)…the
only thing they forgot was to shoot Trish Murphy out of a
cannon and they may have done that in the parking lot after
the show.
-text
and images by beth sams a.k.a. the scarlot
harlot
The
Music of Andy Warhol
Andy
Warhol is the grandfather of punk rock art. Maybe it’s
the countless tabs, or the Butthole Surfers t-shirts, the
little 45’s in Record Exchange, the loving friends,
all these things. However, after one spin around the cozy
gallery I was convinced that the printmakers and artists of
today’s punk rock cum rock art are of a family tree
which has Andy at the roots.
To begin with the silkscreen usage is a gimme. His choice
to use a medium-screen printing-that was the strong-arm of
advertisement predisposes his link to the flyer dependent
punk scene. Without this integral link Warhol would not be
nearly as related to the genre.
More
importantly is Warhol’s use of transposing industrial
imagery over the recognizable imagery of the pop culture.
I’m talking about the Benday dots; technically used
for half tones. Warhol grafted them on top of many of his
subjects. Then there’s the big twist he added when he
intentionally printed images off registration creating the
shuddering, sloppy feeling of imperfect mass production. The
combined effect set a precedent. Not that everything is dots
and crookedness. There’s more.
Warhol broke the yolk of high art in reaction to the Abstract
Impressionists who preceded the Pop Artists, and by breaking
high art he took “art” to anyone who had a printing
press, and gave the idea of “art” a new visage.
Sure, printmaking and plastisol ink has been in art before
Warhol and yes Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg helped put Pop
Art in our heads. Thanks to Warhol the image of a cow’s
head from the side of a milk carton becomes a piece worthy
of using; more importantly a piece that places the viewer’s
daily images in an artistic context. Add some hot pink and
neon yellow and you have the smell of Kozik in the air. (Especially
the later stuff when he lifted Vintage Porn, NASA shots and
semiobscure B-movie actors for his Man’s Ruin album
art.)
And if
we want to talk about stark images of guns, harm’s way,
and mortality again we have Warhol producing the seminal works.
In his Death and Disaster series there’s the electric
chair prints with enough space on the right hand side to have
4 bands, the date and club printed right on them. Then there’s
the guns overlapping one another in various rotations. Without
guns and punk I don’t think there would be an Emo’s.
Warholesque LP’s that come to mind are the ultra-crass
Feederz “Teachers in Space”, with a picture of
the Columbia blowing up oriented in the center of the record
and the words “Teachers in Space” running vertically
on its borders. More recently and again where Warhol tread,
is Unsane’s “Total Destruction”. It’s
a full shot of the demolished grill of a car, from the head-on
perspective, with blood spattered all over it.
Then there’s Marilyn Monroe and I have just one thing
to say regarding Warhol’s influence on punk in this
department: Who killed Marilyn?
Many
albums and posters come to mind: Big Black’s emblem
reproductions, Turbonegro’s lift from Pet Sounds on
the cover of “Asscobra”, the Cows’ “Peacetika”,
Don Rock’s work, any artwork depicting fascists, communist
or dictator-like leaders. Warhol was there with Chairman Mao
and a hammer and scythe.
Warhol
also took pictures of everyone he ran with, celebrity to tranny,
and then printed colored blobs onto them with squiggly line
gestures, exaggerating and bringing forth his model’s
features. The Mick Jagger in the AMA is absolutely cool!
After
seeing “Cowboys and Indians” I had to think of
the Surfer’s album “Psychic…Powerless…
Another Man’s Sac” which is directly related to
this style of line drawing over photographic image.
One final note, the Camouflage pieces are ultra neon and slick,
my faves. One of them was recently reproduced as a sticker
in U.S. Maples’ “Sang Phat Editor” EP and
if you doubt Warhol’s ubiquity, take a look at the colorful
cammies the Hot Topic 6th grader’s wear and you’ll
probably note a connection. The Austin Museum of Art is displaying
the Works of Andy Warhol until November 9. On Tuesdays the
cover is $1.00. Take the chance to breathe it in. It’s
an hour well
spent.
-Kevin
Stack
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