DAILYSESSION

By Patrick Hedlund – The Villager

A blurb in the “History” section of the Chelsea Hotel’s recently revamped Web site touts some of the countless boldface-named bohemians to have taken up residence at the legendary W. 23rd St. lodge. There are obligatory mentions of Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, as well as artists Larry Rivers and Willem de Kooning.

After trotting out a few more marquee names on the newly burnished site, like playwright “Eugene O’Neil” [sic] and composer “Virgil Thompson” [sic], the write-up concludes, asking simply: “Who will be next?”

Judging by the hotel’s policy to stop renting to long-term residents — a practice that ended with the contentious ouster of 50-year manager Stanley Bard two-and-a-half years ago — it’s not actually tenants of the aforementioned group’s artistic pedigree that the Chelsea wants staying inside. [Read More]

By Tom Carson – NY Times

Apart from a certain shared apprehension of immortality — complacent in one case, but endearingly gingerly in the other — the skinny 28-year-old on the cover of Patti Smith’s seismic 1975 album, “Horses,” doesn’t look much at all like Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein. But because the shutterbug was Robert Mapplethorpe, who was soon to become fairly legendary himself, that exquisite photograph of Smith on the brink of fame is as close as New York’s 1970s avant-garde ever came to a comparable twofer. The mythmaking bonus is that the latter-day duo were much more genuinely kindred spirits. [Read More]

By Steven Musil – CNet News

Hewlett-Packard has partnered with Ominfone to distribute the U.K. music provider’s MusicStation service on PCs sold in Europe, Ominfone announced Sunday.

The service, which boasts unlimited access to more than 6.5 million music tracks from the four major recording labels, distributes music in DRM-protected WMA files. Songs are downloaded to the user’s computer for online and offline play, but the songs are playable only as long as the subscription is active. [Read More]

By Matt Rosoff – CNet News

The major record labels continue to prove that they absolutely have no idea how the Internet works or how to capitalize on it.

This week’s story involves the rock band OK Go. Four years ago, the band shot some quirky homemade videos and posted them on YouTube. Users saw the videos and embedded them on their own Web pages. OK Go was able to cut through the noise created by thousands of album releases every year and become well-known in certain circles, if not exactly world famous.

Now, the band is promoting its new album, “Of The Blue Colour of the Sky,” and has released a video for the song “This Too Shall Pass” on YouTube. Do you love it? So much that you want to embed it on your music blog? Too bad–you can’t.

On Monday, OK Go singer Damian Kulash wrote a post on the band’s message board to explain how this happened. Major label EMI owns the rights to the recording. And although EMIcan theoretically earn a little money from advertisements each time somebody plays one of its artist’s videos on YouTube, it can’t collect the money when the videos are embedded on another site. [Read More]

Photo by Brendan Bybee

By Steve Delahoyde – Unbeige

Heading out to Utah this weekend for the start of the Sundance Film Festival? If so, one of the hardest screenings to sneak into is sure to be the just-announced addition Exit Through the Gift Shop a documentary by none other than everyone’s favorite anonymous celebrity street artist, Banksy. The film is described as a behind-the-scenes peek at Banksy’s work, or as Sundance promotes it, “a remarkable documentary that is part personal journey and part an expose of the art world with its mind-altering mix of hot air and hype.” Rumors are that this will be when the secretive artist finally reveals his true identity. But even if he did, would you really believe it? The guy is tricky. Here’s the trailer: [Read More]

By Steve Delahoyde – Unbeige

Now that Jeffrey Deitch has been named the new director at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, he has just a few months left before he’s likely to close up shop on his famed New York gallery, Deitch Projects, to absolve himself of any conflicts of interest. And he’s decided to let the space go out in a blaze of high-profile glory with the announcement that Shepard Faireywill be the last artist to exhibit there (at least under his command — he may still hand off the gallery to someone else). Art Info reports that Fairey’s show will go up on May 1st, just a month before Deitch’s takeover in L.A. Here’s a bit about the planned exhibit: [Read More]

By Matt Harvey – NewYork Press

The city wants to put a stop to the fakes for sale in Chinatown. But at the same time, it’s putting the squeeze on legit longtime merchants. MATT HARVEY investigates as the ‘Counterfeit Triangle’ slowly disappears.

What’s left of Canal Street’s hawkers and small merchants—Hispanic stereo salesmen, Chinese dry-goods merchants, Lebanese gold sellers and Jewish landlords—all agree on one thing: “The fix is in.” Everyone knows the clock is ticking.  

Two new hotels, including a 361-room Sheraton, are due to open on Canal in the next six months. Very soon, locals say, Canal Street will join Times Square, Astor Place, the Lower East Side, the Garment District and all the other former centers of down-and-dirty capitalist grit that have been safely gentrified. As Greg “Heavy” Duval, an African-American watch-peddler explains before the Christmas holiday, “Canal is on its last legs. They want to make this a franchise block.”  [Read More]

By Fact Magazine

“4AD can reveal that the label have signed New York outfit Gang Gang Dance, with a new album – the follow-up to 2008’s Saint Dymphna – due later on in 2010. [Read More]

By Freshness Magazine

Along with artist Todd “REAS” James‘ immediate family, hundreds of well-wishers, included fellow artistsSteve “ESPO” Powers, KAWS, Tomokazu “Matsu” Matsuyama, Jose Parla, Eric Elms, Suckadelic, and more packed Gering & Lopez Gallery last evening congratulate Jame’s debut solo exhibition in the U.S. Self-taught, Todd James’ extensive art works crossed across genres and mediums. Best known by his graffiti tag REAS, the New York City-base artist was instrumental at the height of the graffiti culture during the 1980s, which gave raise to other artists like FUTURA, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and more… Later, James’ cartoonish design was translated onto other genres, from The Source magazine’s original logo, cover art for the Beastie Boys, to more recently, a collaboration collection with Stussy. In this, his solo exhibition, titled Make My Burden Lighter, James explored further the fallacy of the so-called “American Life”.  [Read More]

By Adam Rath – NY Press

Before it doled out a fiveshots-for-$10 special designed to lure in passing college kids, Continental hosted some of New York’s most infamous punk shows. From 1991 when the club opened until 2006 when the plug was pulled on live music,The Ramones, Agnostic Front and The Cro- Mags were just some of the seminal local bands to take the dive bar’s stage. Fifteen years after opening the club, though, owner Trigger stopped hosting live shows in favor of pulling in a crowd that would pay for its drinks and enable him to keep the doors open. After more than three years of silence—save the sound that one too many Jaeger shots brings out of a New School freshman—Trigger is bringing music back to Continental for a onenight-only show featuring some of the club’s best-loved alumnus. [Read More]

By Jon Pareles – NY Times

Teddy Pendergrass, the Philadelphia soul singer whose husky, potent baritone was one definition of R&B seduction in the 1970s but whose career was transformed in 1982 when he was severely paralyzed in an auto accident, died on Wednesday night in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He was 59. [Read More]