It’s that time of year when wearing combat boots, ski-goggles and pointing a laser at someone doesn’t mean you’re surrounded by testosterone bros at an urban paintball game (although that’s hot!), it means your surrounded by dusty, crusty ravers and cosmic queens from all corners of the globe at Burning Man.

Now that I’ve been promoted to Editors’ Assistant and I’m not not simply ‘the Dick’ I’ve earned the right to join the annual EVB migration across the desert to celebrate spending no money and ditching the skinny jeans for proto-industrial Mad Max outfits. Yikes!

Come join our crew of dusty, scantily clad boys and celebrate 25 years of desert shenanigans at the East Village Boys soundsystem and laser show (not quite Jean Michel Jarre, but hey!) It’s going to be seven days and nights of chroming laser love! Find us around 9.30 and Genome.

Here’s a taste of what we’ll be listening to as the short bus makes its way to Black Rock City. No doubt I’ll have to climb atop and do a Priscilla turn - an interns work is never done. - Love Dick

Driving To Black Rock City Mix - Dick William [download]

Third Stone From The Sun - Jimi Hendrix / It Was A Good Day - Ice Cube / Better Dub Better - Hard-Fi / Anti-American Graffiti - J Dilla / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (Vampire Weekend cover) - Hot Chip and Peter Gabriel / Odessa (Junior Boys Remix) - Caribou / Why - Carly Simon / Late Night Tales - Lindstrøm / A Town Called Malice - The Jam / In Between Days - The Cure / It’s Better Than Good Time (Walter Gibbons 12″ Mix) - Gladys Knight / Diamonds (Todd Terje Dub Remix) - Paul Simon / Sound of da Police - KRS-One / Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys /  Wild Boys - Duran Duran / Invert (Parce Que Edit) - Discodeine / Plastic Dreams - Jaydee / Stella - Jam & Spoon

2010 is the year that the legendary Glastonbury festival came out. As a way of celebrating their 40th year they created Block 9 a whole field of gay party nonsense. It housed club installations The NYC Downlow and London Underground, both by radical set designers Gideon Berger and Stephen Gallagher of Block 9. The weather and moods of the revelers were stunning. A perfect English summer, no rain, no mud. The festival had a great sense of warmth, energy and love about itself. At night Horse Meat Disco rocked it in the NYC Downlow tent. GutterSlut and Hot Boy Dancing Spot heated up the Vogue Fabrics tent. Horny trannies, performance artists, club kids, bears, geeks and freaks of all sexual perversions mixed and matched and partied! Some dropped like flies in the morning heat, a field of ‘trannies unplugged’ was a unique sight I never witnessed but wish I had.
Lovebox Festival in London was equally special. It has become a must do event on the bristling summer calendar. Set in Victoria Park, London’s oldest public park (and one of its most beautiful, too), it felt like back at Block 9 in Glastonbury, this time ‘London edition’. The Festival was extended by an extra day, the first time since its interception seven years ago. Sunday was ‘gay day’, and just like in Glastonbury’s Block 9, the crowd was a mix of all of the above.

Some of our more avid readers (and that tanned boy who keeps emailing me images of his aroused piercing… yawn, so 1990), will know from one of my mixes of last year that I have a deep love of disco. You certainly wouldn’t ever catch me burning disco records, like all those soulless white dudes did back in ‘79. Surely that whole debacle smacks of racism and homophobia, no?

Anyhow, as you know, I’m in love, so no more negativity from me!

I’m here to let you know about the release of four new double albums in the ‘Disco Discharge‘ series. Don’t let the series name send you running for the clap clinic, these four new collections, titled Diggin’ Deeper, European Connection, Disco Boogie, and Pink Pounders, are sticky only because you want to plat them on rotation. Spanning the ’70s to the mid ’80s, the comps combine well-known classics alongside lost gems.

To give you a bit of a tease, we have an exclusive mix, crafted by the elusive Miss Cheescake just for us, mixing together some of the best cuts from the European Connection discs.

Disco Discharge: European Connection Mix - Miss Cheescake [download]

Burn your ass but never your vinyl!

All images courtesy of Disco Discharge

I know this is our third event promo in a row, but it’s been a busy week! Anyway, Spring is here and it’s that time again! EARL DAX’s latest PUSSY FAGGOT, Thursday, April 15. As usual, there are too many people performing to list, but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.

In addition to all the performances, this is the also opening night celebration for BIG ART GROUP who are marking their ten-year anniversary by taking over Abrons Art Center for four days. Aside from that, PENNY ARCADE hosts the evening on the heels of the publication of the Semiotext(e) book of her plays, photographs and critical essays.

The whole thing starts at 8:00 in the basement with JOE BIRDSONG and HATTIE HATHAWAY’s literary smutfest READING FOR FILTH, with CHADWICK MOORE, DOMINICK, GLENN MARLA, MR. JOE, MAX STEELE and SHELLY MARS.

From 9-10 EVB will be hosting a HAPPY HOUR, with the premiere screening of East Village Boys of Spring (above), a film by JESSICA YATROFSKY; a performance by BABY ALPACA (watch their video “Vodka Lemonade”, below); and an open vodka lemonade bar, of course.

After you get good and drunk at our happy hour, the performances begin, with projected visuals by CHARLES ATLAS featuring black and white footage from the NYC and London underground, comic and solo performer MARGA GOMEZ; MACHINE DAZZLE; Philadephia’s “drag pariah” NEEDLES JONES; HEATHER LITEER (Click + Drag, House of Domination); THE FANCY, a New York-based chamber pop group; TransAmerica star BIANCA LEIGH; dance music recording artist FARRAD; LOKI, a duo featuring dancer/choreographer Ani Niemann and singer/songwriter Jo Lampert; and London’s “gay cowboy turned classical pianist” EZRA AXELROD.

DJs for the evening include SEAN B. and WILL AUTOMAGIC (SPANK!) and ANDREW ANDREW.

Visuals by CHARLES ATLAS and NIKNAZ. Lighting by LIZ LIGUORI.

PUSSY FAGGOT!, Thursday, April 15, 2010, 8 PM-4 AM (EVB happy hour 9-10 PM)
The Delancey Lounge, 168 Delancey (btwn Clinton and Attorney)
Admission is $10/$6 with RSVP to rsvp@pussyfaggot.net

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So it was with great pleasure, and a sharp pang of pain (thanks Abi), that this squeezed into my inbox earlier today. Those cheeky sluts over at Gayletter have finally realized they are no longer eternal twinks, but are in fact hairy bears (OK Tom, you could pass as a cub, or even an otter). To celebrate, they’ll be battling the crosstown traffic and heading to the west side for some cuckoo action at Hiro. Joining their midlife crisis will be East Village fashion designer and DJ Telfar, Magnan, and lots of free vodka. So stop shaving your crack and sack and join them to celebrate 40 years of Gayletter.

I first heard of Brad Walsh in 2006, when he was performing at the now legendary Misshapes parties, and running the photography site Junk-Mag, a project he started with his friend Kathy Cacace while attending Oberlin College to “get our college friends naked and on the internet because we went to school in very rural Ohio and what the fuck else do you do out there?” Since then, Brad has made quite a name for himself in New York as a photographer, party promoter, DJ, and most recently as a jewelry designer, all while chipping away at his own solo music. The end of 2009 saw the release of Brad’s latest album, Human Nature, a slick, beautiful album. Drawing equally from the underground and the Top 40, Brad is making a totally charming, clever and catchy kind of pop music.

Portraits of Brad photographed for EVB by Miguel Villalobos

Max Steele: I first saw you performing at Misshapes when it had just moved to Don Hill’s. Something that I think contributed to the success was the mix of genres / communities / vibes at the party, which has sort of gone missing from New York City nightlife lately. That mix of styles is also something I really like about your work.

Brad Walsh: My Misshapes show in 2006 was my first live performance in New York City. It will always be special to me because of that, and because so many people I admired were there that night and watching me. Misshapes was a great thing in its heyday - it was so comfortable to me. Anything went. You could be crazy, but you didn’t have to be. People always thought it was this clique-y, exclusive thing, but I think it was a really genuine and exciting moment for New York. Nothing really has compared since then.

MS: You had made your first album before you arrived here from Ohio, right?

BW: I moved to New York in 2005, had one very bad album under my belt before I got here, and finished my second bad album as soon as I got here. The press refers to my new one as my debut, and I don’t correct them.

MS: I’ve heard your second album and it is not bad, I really liked it, but I’ve never heard your first, Look At Me. What is your most and least favorite track from it?

BW: Oh, Look At Me was just that record you put out before you put out your record. It worked out my kinks and my discomfort with performing alone even to record. Worked out my influences. I do cringe when I hear most of it nowadays. I’m not ashamed of it by any means, but it really just amounted to a bunch of bad demos that needed to happen in order to get here.

MS: If your music was indicative of any specific time or place, what would it be? Do you feel like a real “New York” singer?

BW: I think I’m not particularly “New York” because what I’m doing is not what I’m hearing in New York. I think the two struggling musical communities - not struggling, maybe, but upcoming - are gritty real rock, and poorly-produced electro. People call me electro sometimes but that’s not right. And I like to think I’m well-produced. But both of those semi-genres are extremely artistic and still somehow underground around us here in New York. I’m amazed that anything underground about New York remains underground with someone like Gaga out there dragging it all up and putting it on “American Idol” - which I appreciate, by the way.

MS: Speaking of Gaga, what are your thoughts about her, vis-à-vis “realness”.

BW: She’s as real as she is fake. I’m not trying to sound that pretentious, I promise. Let me think. I love her. I love her music, I love my interactions with her and I think she is a genius in several obvious ways, and that itself is its own genius. She lets us all see what’s happening, and everyone knows that she has manipulated us all, and we still want more. That itself is not a new concept, but somehow it feels very new coming from her. She admits the fakeness about herself, but the fakeness about her has nothing to do with her hair or makeup or clothes. A lot of her lyrics are about lies and holding back and hiding and false faces. They deal with love and feelings and that’s what it’s all about. She uses it to feed the genius. I’m proud of her, and thankful for her.

MS: I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but one of the things I like about your work (both photography and music) is that you’re really earnest and sincere in a culture that’s sometimes too ironic for it’s own good. Am I way off the mark? Is it all a big joke to you?

BW: It’s not a joke at all to me. I think some of my work comes off as jokey or ironic because some parts are familiar. Ripped off, even. Some, I say. Maybe it’s unconscious, but I think it’s just the amateur in me showing. I usually very much mean what I’m doing. I put a mask over my face but I try to draw my face on the mask, you know? Sometimes I think that you, Max, have a face that’s very bare and you don’t even have a mask in your closet as a safety. I respect that about you.

MS: Do you see yourself as part of a particular scene or community? Who do you think of as some of your musical contemporaries?

BW: I don’t think I’m part of a New York scene, because I don’t go to shows or do many myself. I don’t know who would be my musical contemporary here. My musical friends make music that’s nothing like mine, and the people who make art most like mine are not musicians. Maybe the closest would be someone like Josh Madden? He’s an excellent DJ and he likes to inject people with feeling through music. I think stylistically I’m on par with one of my best friends Kerin Rose, who is the designer behind A-Morir. Our brains mesh well and we like to be loud, but behind some obfuscation.
MS: How long were you working on your new album, Human Nature? You recorded the whole thing at home, right?

BW: Ideas and basics for a few years, though it was all recorded last year at my home studio, which is my ancient equipment, a mic on a stand, and me in a chair trying to figure out what’s next. It made me very wary of going outside which is why I now talk like this. I’m turning into Juliana Hatfield, who I really love, by the way.

MS: The cover art is really striking. I think it’s an apt metaphor for the music - there’s a very subtle amount of magic and trickery in it. What are you hoping to reveal about human nature?

BW: The album art has a clinical feel to it but the images of me are animal, which really was just a comment on the content. The album is about relationships, my relationship, and instinct and decision. Shrinkwrapping and sheening the animal chaos going on in each one of us. Turning a fit of human rage into an arrangement on a plastic disc. The same old feelings that every sex-focused living thing has, which is what we most associate with “nature.” We force formality onto it and call it “culture” so as not to kill everyone around us, but even mentioning that this is what humans do brings back the fact that we are animals. Don’t you feel a little sexy, or insecure, or dangerous, or at the very least hungry for food just thinking about all this right now? Thinking about being an animal makes you feel like the animal you are.

Boy/Girl (feat. CariDee English)

I Got What U Need (feat. Amanda Tannen of Stellastar)

Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah) - (Gary Glitter cover) [download]


MS: What record we be most surprised to find in your collection? Are you a closet country queen? Are you a secret reggae fanatic?

BW: I actually don’t think I have any contemporary country, maybe some old Shania. I mean, I have the odd oldie here and there. Hank Williams, Juice Newton. The most surprising CD in my shelf might be Meredith Brooks’ second album - the one after Bitch. Love her to death but I don’t know why I still have that.

MS: I want to know your biggest guilty pleasure.

BW: Probably snacking and watching cartoons. I fall right in. I’m interpreting “biggest” to mean “most often engaged.”

MS: How did your dog [Topper] get his name?

BW: There’s an old Cary Grant movie of the same name, but I think it really all boils down to my puppy’s last name, which is Bottom.