The art market entered a new phase on Wednesday evening when “The Scream”, a pastel drawn in 1895 by Edvard Munch, was sold for $119.92 million at Sotheby’s auction of Impressionist and modern art. The winning bid, which came by telephone, set a world record for any work of art offered at auction. [more inside]
posted by Trurl on May 3, 2012 - 61 comments

Maggie and Terre Roche started performing professionally in the late '60s, just a little late for the folkie boom but also a bit too distinctive to blend easily with the singer-songwriters of the early '70s, even when they became acolytes of Paul Simon and recorded backup vocals on There Goes Rhymin' Simon. By 1975, they had their own album on CBS, with tracks produced by Simon (and backed by the Oak Ridge Boys and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and ex-Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith... Seductive Reasoning is not completely a folk nor a country album, which no doubt hurt its commercial potential... Songs such as "West Virginia", "Down the Dream", and "The Mountain People" touch on early joy and disillusionment/disappointment, while "Jill of All Trades" and "The Burden of Proof" reflect a few more years of life under one's belt and the smoothing out that can come with them. "Underneath the Moon" and "Wigglin' Man"... are more straightforward getting-laid songs, funny as hell... while several of their albums have been as good as Seductive Reasoning, none were better. Nor did they have to be. - Todd Mason (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl on Dec 16, 2011 - 29 comments

Ron Murphy cut records, but not just any records. Responsible for cutting the actual vinyl master plates of much of the now revered Detroit Techno including Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Underground Resistance's seminal Knights of the Jaguar, and much more - he demonstrated impeccable craftsmanship and skill in both mastering records for sound and aesthetics at company known as Sound Enterprises source link AKA National Sound Corporation. Schooled in Motown, dubplates and jukeboxes, he is the bespoke-crafted, analog link between the digital future and analog past that is the roots of Techno music and modern techno DJ culture. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Feb 13, 2008 - 15 comments

When all of the good vinyl albums have been bought from the cardboard box at the local church bazaar, Nick DiFonzio buys the rest and scans the jackets. The result? Bizarre Record Covers. And because beauty, or the apparent lack thereof, is not only jacket deep, check out this trippy collection of 45 rpm labels from No Relevance, and this detailed record label discography, where you can see how record companies from the 1950s thru the 1990s kept trying to update and redefine their image by redesigning their labels.
posted by iconomy on Jun 23, 2002 - 10 comments

'Pope hit by meteor' sculpture sets a contemporary art record at Christie's and sells for $886,000. The artist says, "I like to think of La Nona Ora as a sculpture that doesn't exist, a three-dimensional image that dissolves into pure communication blah, blah, blah... " Has anyone noticed we all live in Bizzaro World.
posted by quirked on May 18, 2001 - 28 comments