Welcome back to Better Said Than Written, the podcast supplement of Artz of Culturez where I make a personal connection with today's trending topics. This is a special episode where my son has taken over the show. When I heard we were going to discuss vinyl records I just had to say yes. And so I handed him the mic. We talked about how I got into vinyl digging, my top four vinyl records, and how my son has an ear for music and a love for Sade. Take a listen...
Vinyl record artist, Lobyn Hamilton, is slated as one of the featured emerging artists. If you were paying attention, you may have seen his work on the hit show on Fox, Empire.
HARLEM, N.Y. The Harlem Fine Arts Show is on its way to New York City and will set up shop at the historic Riverside Church. The show is known to be the largest of its kind featuring art from the African Diaspora. The four-day traveling exhibition will have contemporary paintings, sculpture, and photography for sale, and is open to collectors, art enthusiasts, educators and professionals. The HFAS will showcase more than 80 national and international artists and galleries from Feb. 4 - 7, 2016.
If you never heard of Record Store Day, you're not alone. I just found out about this joyous occasion in March from a co-worker. (Thanks Matt!) So what is Record Store Day? It's an annual event that was founded in 2007 and takes place on the third Saturday of April. Record Store Day celebrates the culture of the independently owned record store. Vinyl record collectors, fans, artists, and independent record stores around the globe all takes part in this glorious day.
A number of records are pressed specifically for Record Store Day, and are only distributed to shops participating in the event. Too bad there isn't a record store in Montclair, N.J. where I can stand in line in anticipation to go vinyl digging.
There's also a website dedicated to the yearly celebration. RecordStoreDay.com provides a list of some of the 600+ artists, locally regionally, and nationally known who will be spending the day rockin' out to the culture of their indie record store.
There's even an Ambassador for the day. This year Foo Fighter's front man, Dave Grohl, will grace the official seal for 2015. Pretty awesome right? This year I didn't have enough time to go through the list of artists who were putting out limited editions for Record Store Day. However, 2016 I'll be good and ready to go diggin' through crates with fellow vinyl record lovers. Maybe I'll even run into vinyl record volggers Mike and Sandy, who breaks down what you need to know for Record Store Day!
Did you hit your local record store to celebrate the annual event? What's currently spinning on your turntable? Are you even into vinyl records?
E&S Gallery had a piece of art work of Malcolm X that sparked my attention to write this blogpost. The artist, Lobyn Hamilton, used recycled vinyl records from what I assume to be a snippet from one of Malcolm's speeches to create the image. As I examined the broken pieces of vinyl records that made up the image of the human rights activist, I wondered what would our nation, our culture and our views of the Muslim religion be like if Malcolm was still with us today. And as I started to do the math, I realized that nearly 50 years had passed since his assassination. As a matter of fact, it was 49 years ago, Feb. 21, 1965, that Malcolm X was shot to death right before he was about to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom, which was located in the Washington Heights section of New York City. Now I don't plan on getting into the specifics of who, what, when and why of Malcolm's death but I do want to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of change.
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