Life and all in Redding California
You may have seen it, but I had to share it here. It’s beautiful.
Glowing Man HD from Jacob Sutton on Vimeo.
Ran across this interesting video the other day. Highway 299 is the road from Redding to the coast. The Buckhorn Summit is characterized by some tight corners along the mountainside. This rider strapped a video camera to his bike, and went for a fast ride.
I’ve posted about this Redding band last year. They’re playing out tonight at Bombay’s, so go support a local band working it. Here’s a recent video. Tight tight tight:
Click on the Info button to enlarge the map. An ingenious and useful graphic design for visualizing getting around the country.
From Redding, it’s an easy hop on the Green Line to the Red Line, and then a straight shot to either San Francisco or New York. Or stay on the Green Line for either San Diego or Seattle. Nice.
Brilliant design work by Cameron Booth. Thanks for putting Redding on the map.
Redding musician Craig Padilla recorded lovely, evocative, longform organic/electronic music in his studio on West Street in Redding. Vostok was one of his major works. It went on to become his highly regarded release on the artist-run Spotted Peccary label. Lately, Vostok itself has been in the news.
You can listen to some of Vostok at the link. Hard to believe it was 10 years ago!
I was teasing Craig that the low droning sound that is heard on the recording was only Russians drilling on orders from Vladimir Putin to get him a really cold glass of water.
This lamp was once the valued possession of my now departed mother-in-law. She’s gone, but the lamp remains.
It’s been on a journey, as various relatives tried to find a place for it. None seem content with it. Now it’s at my house.
I don’t believe I’ve seen other religious icons made into light fixtures. The Buddha seems to have taken the transformation in stride. Still, it’s certainly not very dignified.
Nobody seems to want the lamp, yet we hang on to it for purely sentimental reasons.
Ironically, Buddhists have something important to say about that kind of attachment. From Wikipedia: “The Three Marks of Existence are impermanence, suffering, and not-self. The doctrine asserts that because things are impermanent, attachment to them is futile and leads to suffering.”
Admittedly, the human suffering here is insignificant. But there it is. We either suffer with the Buddha lamp, or suffer with idea of discarding grandma’s parlor light from the house in Summit City. And along with it, a part of her in our memory. Our attachment to the impermanent is the source of the anxiety.
And so the Buddha lamp offers illumination, with both warm light and insight.
Gathered a few images of this fisherman just upstream of the Diestlehorst Pedestrian Bridge yesterday. The fish got away, but not completely. Not from my lens.
Gone. That’s how it goes. Still, not such a bad way to spend a February Saturday afternoon in Downtown Redding.
Compatriot fish looks on, directly below the Diestlehorst. Free Winter entertainment for everyone Downtown. That’s Really Redding.
Wow, was it thirty years ago? Looking through an old box in the closet, I ran across these photographs I took at the Redding Civic when DEVO came to town in 1982.
Are we not men? We are DEVO!
Sure, it looks like the singer is wearing a flower pot hat, but DEVO fans know them as “Energy Domes.” I was a fan back then, but not enough to have bought a ticket. A friend gave me the ticket. Her 15 year old daughter won the seats from a radio promotion, and mom really didn’t want to go. Front row! Hence, the good shots. The show was much better than I expected.
This was the era of the “It’s a Beautiful World” single, which was a show highlight.
It’s a beautiful world we live in,
A sweet romantic place,
Beautiful people everywhere,
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say,It’s a wonderful time to be here,
It’s nice to be alive,
Wonderful people everywhere,
The way they comb their hair(Chorus)
It’s a beautiful world (three times)
For you (three times)
Everything I’d heard by DEVO was sort-of deliberately sterile sounding, I think. Art music. Almost a parody of itself. Certainly a sarcastic reflection of pop culture.
The funny thing about pop culture is that even self-parody acknowledgement of its own banality becomes more pop culture, perhaps even the best of it.
What I wouldn’t have guessed was how hard they rocked. Obviously, having risen through the punk clubscene, they’d learned to move an audience. This wasn’t studio music played live. They engaged the crowd, playing it hard with abandon. Up front, and hearing mostly the stage monitors, I was impressed. A tight rock band.
Devo singer Mark Mothersbaugh has gone on to become an accomplished artist in both film scores and visual arts. An extremely impressive list of accomplishments by any measure.
They still play as a band too. The DEVO webiste had recent video from a SF show at the Fillmore.
Amazing.
I like the final image in my series. You can tell this was taken some time ago. Outstretched arms aren’t holding up cell phones recording the moment. They were just in the moment.
All photos by Skip Murphy, 1982. Below, I wanted to post one of their many online videos, but it was so hard to pick one. This one was recorded just few days ago, 1-13-12 @The Fillmore. Impressive longevity for any band!
