JUMP FOR JOY

Check out their latest music:
www.jumpintothegospel.com/


VIEW ENTIRE STORY

DOWN SO LONG

YOUNG LORDS ONLINE:

MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/younglords

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Young-Lords/23186077901

BUY THE ALBUM ONLINE HERE:

Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/RodeoSongs/dp/B001KWLX26/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1231360318&sr=8-2

Emusic:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Young-Lords-Rodeo-Songs-MP3-Download/11270291.html

++++++++++

TEXT:

DOWN SO LONG
PHOTOGRAPHED BY GUY AROCH
for thecontributingeditor.com

What comes first, the music or the fashion?
The Young Lords, New York’s new smokin’ band has been regaled by the
fashion flock over the past year and been receiving buzz for their trendy
Saturday night parties. But is it all just skinny jeans and fop top hair that is
getting them noticed? Hardly. The band’s raw vocals with a tinge of
Southern Rock has been getting the boys lots of hype at SXSW and CMJ
as well as the opportunity to open for UK band, The Fratellis. But getting
to know the boys a bit better, music has been in their blood long before
the PBR was.

Growing up in Austin, Texas a city well known for it’s artistic side (the unofficial
town slogan is ‘Keep Austin Weird’) brothers Blair and Reed van Nort’s parents
encouraged them to check out new music. As lead singer Blair explains, “I was a
weird kid, I collected old jazz records. My mom would buy them for me at the
used record shop. Of course there was always a country element to what we
were listening to growing up in Texas too. Then one day she gave me The Clash
and Bruce Springsteen and it really opened my eyes to what else was out there.”
Reed grew up more of a punk kid but soon began listening to the country tracks
his brother was digging and they decided to start their own band. Having a band
in Austin is as unconventional as Sbarro in a strip mall but these boys knew they
had something and kept on going with it.

Blair met bassist Max Kamins when he came to New York City for school.
Max is a born and bred New Yorker. He demurely explains that he too grew
up surrounded by music because his father was a DJ. What he leaves out is
that his father Mark Kamins, is a DJ hall of famer who helped Madonna
out with her first tracks and produced The Beastie Boys first single for
Def Jam. Although he admits that the house music genre has never been
inspiring for him, the fact that music has always been in his life has certainly
helped. When the boys met out on the town the brothers explained to Max
how they were starting a band. Max was working on his own band and they
decided to meld their ideas and hit the ground running. Guitarist Adam
Gerard came into the mix when Blair met him at The New School and the
newest addition to the band is Grant Anderson on drums, an old Austin
friend who decided to move to New York.

With the lineup well in place they were ready to rock. Unfortunately the
industry was a bit slow on the uptake. “We had two or three people say they
would help us out on tracks and everything just fell through,” laments Blair.
They finally got some tracks laid down and things started happening.
Living in New York has certainly helped them acquire buzz. Blair agrees that,
“In some ways the fashion crew in NYC have more of an eye of what’s cool
than the music industry. Fashion editors hear us perform and then call us up.”
He continues, “the music magazines aren’t going to review us because we
aren’t on a big label so we started our own.” How is that going for them?
They opened for The Fratellis at Irving Plaza to a sold out show. “That was
an amazing night for us. It was funny we were not nervous at all. I guess
playing in your basement for so many years gears you up to be ready for the
big time,” joked Reed. The Young Lords also host a hugely popular dance
party at Home Sweet Home every Saturday night that has been voted one of the
best in the city. Next up for the boys between touring is a Tuesday night gig
at Webster Hall Studios where they will forgo the weekly dance tunes for a
real rock and roll throw down.

Giving even more love to the fashion flock, the boys all agreed the rowdiest party
they played was for a Danish fashion magazine at Santos Party House. Blair tells
us that, “it was such fun because fashion kids love to get wasted and rock out.
Sometimes we perform and everyone just stands around. Some people
who are really into music are so focused on the band, sound and vocals they
forget to have fun. That is definitely not the case with the fashion crowd.”

Music nerds take note.

- CATOR SPARKS

++++++++
VIEW ENTIRE STORY

SUPER CHARGER HEAVEN

VIEW ENTIRE STORY

HAIL TO THE CHIEF

CHIEF - YOUR DIRECTION MUSIC VIDEO


HAIL TO THE CHIEF

Chief likes to think of themselves as a happy dysfunctional family. “Our music is very passionate,”
explains Mike Moonves, the youngest member of New York City-based, Los Angeles-raised band.
“There is a lot of emotion flying around.” Bandmates Michael Fujikawa, 25, his younger brother
Danny, 22, Evan Koga, 25, and Moonves, 20, credit their familial closeness to making their
folk/rock and roll/country harmonies sound so unique. “The foundation of playing has always
been our friendship,” says the elder Fujikawa. Unlike most rock groups before them, there is
no leader in this band. “We are a four headed snake,” says Michael proudly. “Everyone
puts in their two cents,” continues Moonves. “…And there are a lot of cents,” adds Koga.
Chief credits everyone from The Band to Crosby, Stills and Nash to classical ballads to
TV on the Radio as their “conscious influences.” Although as Koga put it, the group is
“somewhat afraid of influences.” Michael agrees: “We do not deny the past, but try to look
to the future.” In terms of their own history, however, they can’t help but look back.
Both Fujikawa’s and Moonves went to the same Los Angeles elementary and high schools.
Koga, had known ‘the legend of Michael Fujikawa’ growing up in Los Angeles and they
later became friends at New York University.“We bonded over being hooligans,” recalls Koga.
“Walking the streets late at night.”

Evan, Danny and Michael have been playing music informally
since 2006. Chief got underway when Koga wrote the still crowd-pleasing “Mighty Proud”
and “Far Away.” Moonves came to NYU in September of that same year, just as Chief was becoming a
true performance band. He “was instantly impressed and amped.” He was asked to play bass at a
January 2007 show and came to the first rehearsal knowing all the songs and “he played perfectly,”
says Danny, who has known Moonves since he was in kindergarten. As Chief started to gain popularity
in early 2008, there was “an unspoken need to get serious,” says Moonves. What began as loft shows in
Bushwick, Brooklyn turned into downtown performances in such venues as Fontana’s, Piano’s and The
Bowery Ballroom in New York City. This past summer, the band, who are recording their second EP,
did a six gig United Kingdom tour including a stop at Hyde Park’s 02 Festival, their biggest show to
date. Dysfunction never sounded so good.

-Sara Moonves

VIEW ENTIRE STORY

THE VIRGINS!

Rich Girls Video




LIKE A VIRGIN

Rarely do you meet a real New Yorker, never mind four of them in the same room. Or rather three, but Erik Ratensperger has, by association, received an honorary membership. By all accounts these veteran New Yorkers are not what one would call “Virgins.”

With an underground following comparable to that of Lou Reed & The Velvet Underground, these guys are the ultimate urban success story. Spurred on by the creative elite, The Virgins are the brainchild of Donald Cummings and Wade Oates. Cummings and Oates met on a photo shoot for Ryan McGinley, who became a large influence on the band. With Nick Zarin Ackerman on bass, and Ratensperger on drums, the Virgins came alive. One of their first bookings was supporting Patti Smith at an Agnes b. concert in Paris.

The Virgins have a sound that trills with the rhythms of old New York. We’re talking about the city the way it was before the glassy towers went up and a Starbucks opened on the Lower East Side. These boys would not be out of place on the set of Uli Edel’s Christiane F, Mary Ellen Mark’s Streetwise, Larry Clark’s Kids, or more simply, the 2008 version: The Virgins.

They are the sound of their generation, pouring out vocals about their antics on the streets, drug binges and sexual activity. With New York as their backdrop, they have the city on lockdown, and are set to do the same all over the world.

-ANITA BITTON
VIEW ENTIRE STORY

GUYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN

GUYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN:
KANYE WEST ROCKS THE FASHION BOAT

On a tepid, clear night in Paris this June, fashion editors climbed the cold stone steps of a
city high school and filed into seats perched high above the building’s center courtyard.

Below, giant block letters covered the ground in a formation reminiscent of the opening credit crawl
in Star Wars. And although the words spelled out the Leonard Cohen quote, “There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in,” you sensed you were about to be taken to a world that was at once far,
far away and right here in the City of Light.

The show was, of course, Raf Simons’ thrilling spring opus—a compelling display of precision
tailoring and intricate materials. The collection’s sleeveless jackets and slim black shorts challenged
ideas about proportion and dress and captured all that is great about men’s fashion right now.

The show electrified the crowd, which in addition to the circuit’s regular observers, included fashion’s
new cover boy Kanye West, in town not for some press opp or as the result of a post-concert drive-by,
but because he was genuinely interested in what was going on and wasn’t ashamed to show it.

Following the show, West, in what had to be a reversal of roles for the music mogul, made his
way backstage to congratulate Simons. Seeing him there—curious, excited and eager to talk about
clothes—only confirmed what many inside of fashion understand about the world outside of fashion—
it’s as relevant as art or film, and more and more men want to discover more and more about it.

West, who also sat front row at Junya Watanabe, Louis Vuitton and lead a standing ovation at Lanvin,
is an interesting case study.

He loves fashion, really loves fashion because he intimately understands that clothes are more than
just covering, more than just something you put on. He understands they’re a reflection of the person,
and of culture at large. At their loftiest, West knows, clothes are transformative, and at their most basic,
he knows they’re just fun.

If you think West is alone, you’re wrong. More men—and not just the ones the industry likes to
pigeonhole as fashion enthusiasts—are openly embracing fashion. A recent article in the trade
publication DNR reported than men’s wear sales at retail continue to outpace those of women’s.
As Simons and West showed this summer the future of men’s fashion is now.

-Contributing Editor
VIEW ENTIRE STORY