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Music

25 Intimate and Revealing Backstage Photos of Famous Musicians

By Tom Hawking on

We all know what our favorite musicians are like on stage — whether they’re shy or flamboyant, whether they’re chatty or businesslike, whether they’re funny or taciturn. But we also know that what we’re seeing on stage is ultimately a performance. Off stage, however, it’s a completely different matter, and thus backstage photography has always provided an interesting insight into the music world, particularly when the photos in question aren’t posed or contrived. We’ve pulled together a collection of such photos, images that seem to capture sides to performers that we rarely get to see, giving a glimpse of the person behind the persona — whether it’s a tearful Kurt Cobain slumped in a corner, Bob Marley playing soccer, or Lemmy reading a book (with nary a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in sight!), these are like all great photos in that they capture a moment in time and in doing so also capture some part of the subject’s personality. We hope you enjoy… Read More

Music

Your Favorite Musicians’ Unexpected Favorite Records

By Tom Hawking on

You may have read recently that Mitt Romney Paul Ryan is the world’s most unlikely Rage Against the Machine fan, and the spectacular WTF-ness of his inexplicable declaration of fondness for left-wing agitrock will endure as one of the stranger moments of the 2012 campaign trail. The whole strange business also got us thinking: well, there are plenty of features around wherein artists have been asked to choose a selection of their favorite albums or songs. Surely there are some wacky choices in there? We got reading, and yep, there are some real winners to be found… so here’s a selection of such choices that we found particularly interesting — either selections we’d never heard of, or selections we just wouldn’t have expected. Who’d have thought that Bradford Cox was the only person in the world to like the second MGMT album, or that Frank Black was into weird faux-Greek music, or that both Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were experts on reggae? Read on for more… … Read More

Pop Culture

10 Terrifying Facts About This Year’s College Freshmen

By Judy Berman on

It’s the end of August, which means it’s just about time to terrify all Americans over 25 with “The Mindset List,” Beloit College’s annual roundup of 75 facts about this year’s incoming freshmen. There’s some good news: Kids — sorry guys, adults – born in 1994 have grown up in a world that’s made significant strides in gender equity and LGBT rights. But then there’s the stuff that will totally shock you (or at the very least make you feel ancient), like the revelation that people for whom Kurt Cobain has always been dead and The Real World has always been on the air can now buy cigarettes. Click through to learn where the heads of our nation’s youth are at — if you dare — and visit “The Mindset List” for the complete rundown. … Read More

Photography

Wonderful Photographs of Famous People Snapped By Their Famous Friends

By Emily Temple on

It’s well known that famous people often run in packs (rat, brat), and we’ve even heard rumors that they do normal things like hang out and take pictures of their friends. Since we’re obsessed with the ephemera of pop culture, we spent some time tracking down a few of those snapshots, whether staged or candid, rare or widely recognized, taken by everyone from Truman Capote to Lady Gaga. Click through to see our gallery of photographs of famous people snapped by their famous friends, and you may just begin evaluating your own photo albums for potential stars after you’re through. … Read More

Music

Excellent Photos of Awesome Musicians Hanging Out Together

By Tom Hawking on

One of our favorite features run by our friends at excellent UK website The Quietus is their regular excerpts from the Rock’s Back Pages archive. They recently exhumed an old article from the NME, wherein Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan, and Mark E. Smith held a “summit” at a south London pub. As it turns out, we happen to own this exact NME – we found it for $1 in a second-hand record shop years ago — and leafing through the article again got us thinking about similar great meetings of the minds that have been caught on film over the years. We’ve put together a gallery of some of our favorites, with grateful acknowledgment for the title and a few of the shots to the wonderful Tumblr Awesome People Hanging Out Together. … Read More

Art

Mind-Blowing Text Portraits of Famous Musicians and Artists

By Caroline Stanley on

Thanks to My Modern Met, here’s a late addition to the roundup readable art that we posted over the weekend: the lovely text portraits of German photographer Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Using biographical information about his subjects that’s readily available thanks to the Internet and sites like Wikipedia, he layers white typeface on a black background to recreate their likenesses — a visual nod at the old school DOS input mode. Click through to check out a selection of his surprisingly-detailed (and readable!) portraits of cultural icons like Patti Smith, Ai Weiwei, and David Bowie. … Read More

Music

The All-Time Coolest Author/Musician Collaborations

By Emily Temple on

Collaborations between musicians and authors seem obvious, like they should happen all the time, but the truth is, good ones don’t come along that often. Earlier this month, however, author, poet, and memoirist Mary Karr released her first album, Kin, in collaboration with country singer/songwriter Rodney Crowell, and boy is it good. Though we might be a little biased since we’ve always been die-hard Mary Karr fans, we love the album, which combines Karr’s sublime poetry with Crowell’s formidable musical talent. Inspired by their collaboration, we got to thinking about other fantastic author/musician pairs, from the time Kurt Cobain and William S. Burroughs recorded a Christmas album together to the time Bono hacked a Rushdie novel for lyrics. Click through to see a few of our favorites, and let us know if we’ve missed one of yours in the comments. … Read More

Pop Culture

A Peek Inside the Notebooks of Famous Authors, Artists and Visionaries

By Emily Temple on

It’s no secret that we at Flavorpill are fascinated by the marginalia of our favorite artists’ lives — we swoon over their doodles, dig through their sketchbooks, and posthumously ogle their beach photos. Recently, aided by one of our favorite Tumblr destinations for literary ephemera, Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!, we’ve indulged in a little more snooping, and put together this collection of a few of the notebooks, journals and diaries of some of our favorite creative minds — authors, artists, actors, musicians, scientists — so as to better get to know their inner selves. Click through to page through the notebooks of a few famous creatives, and let us know which one looks the most like your own in the comments. … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Judy Berman on

1. Sir Paul McCartney made a surprise cameo on the East Coast telecast of 30 Rock‘s wildly uneven live episode last night, in which he smacked Jack Donaghy in the face. “To be slapped on live TV by Sir Paul… #filethatinmydiaryunderperfect,” Alec Baldwin tweeted later. Meanwhile, because life still isn’t fair, the lucky… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Not to totally ruin your Monday morning, but apparently Maggie Smith would like for the next season of Downton Abbey to be her last playing the Dowager Countess of Grantham — at least, according to The Daily Mail. [via Deadline] Update: A press representative for Carnival Films says that the… Read More