Tag: Akashic Books

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Ep. #299: Jay Ryan

Jay Ryan is a respected and prolific screenprint poster artist who is based in Chicago, Illinois. He has been making screenprinted concert posters for some of the world’s greatest bands and musicians and festivals for over 20 years and runs his own print shop called the Bird Machine. He has served as vice-president of the American Poster Institute and hailed as a cultural hero by Time Out Chicago. Akashic Books has just published No One Told Me Not to Do This, the third volume of Ryan’s work, annotating and compiling selected screenprints created between 2009 and 2015. I first obtained one of Ryan’s prints when I went to see Fugazi, Shellac, and Blonde Redhead play the Congress Theatre in Chicago on Friday May 8, 1998 and collected two more of his prints on subsequent trips to the city in 2001 and 2006. I’m a fan; we arranged to chat about his work a couple of weeks ago. Sponsored by the Bookshelf, Pizza Trokadero, and Planet Bean Coffee.

Related links: thebirdmachine.com vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #92: The Jesus Lizard Week with David Wm. Sims

The Jesus Lizard Week celebrating the release of Akashic Books’ BOOK concludes with the band’s ace bassist and principal archivist David Wm. Sims. Here, David and I discuss how BOOK was Johnny Temple of Akashic Books’ idea, how the two Davids in the band spent the most time among members making this book with Henry Owings, Sims’ compulsive penchant for archiving things, being an anti-hoarder, how much he learned about his bandmates via the process of writing this book, Mac McNeilly’s obsession with pranks as a kid, how he and guitarist Duane Denison love hearing technical details from musicians about their work and tried returning the favour in BOOK, his emphasis that he just wanted the book to be cool but has some regrets about stuff that didn’t make the final cut, how he has no idea what the band’s legacy is, how their major label situation had less to do with the band’s demise than another thing, band chemistry, the coincidental nature of dramatic shifts in the band’s history, his relationship with Steve Albini and Steve’s piece in BOOK, Rapeman, David Yow being silly, his doubts about BOOK being the final chapter in the history of the Jesus Lizard, whether or not he misses the band, future releases by the Jesus Lizard, his current musical and vocational interests, and then The Jesus Lizard Week becomes the week that was.

Related links: akashicbooks.com/catalog/the-jesus-lizard-book/ vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #91: The Jesus Lizard Week with Duane Denison

The Jesus Lizard Week celebrating the release of Akashic Books’ BOOK continues with graceful, eclectic, and powerful guitarist Duane Denison. Here, Duane and I chat about where BOOK came from and why he hoped they could do better than an average rock band bio, how he’d written a lot about the band’s history already when the Jesus Lizard’s catalogue was reissued in 2009 and wanted to ensure he avoided repeating himself, how Duane’s role in creating the book eventually declined due to his touring schedule with Tomahawk, how I’m the only one who seems even vaguely interested in the odd chronological structure of the book, whether he discovered anything about his bandmates via BOOK, how David Yow and Mac McNeilly never married each other, his interest in informing and possibly educating other musicians and talking about the work, how the Jesus Lizard’s audience was very smart but rowdy as hell, the fact that indie or underground music now is more pop-oriented and metal fans are gravitating towards the Jesus Lizard, the backlash after the band left Touch and Go Records for Capitol Records, how the band fought for everything it had and was legitimate, the laughable amount of money the band received and were vilified as sell-outs for, why Steve Albini is given moral high ground when it comes to underground integrity even though he worked with major labels on a regular basis, how Duane is sick of talking about certain things and would like to get going actually, what a ‘re-enactment’ tour really is, what he sees as the future of the Jesus Lizard, the fact that I don’t know of a good album by Magazine, and then it’s all over.

Related links: akashicbooks.com/catalog/the-jesus-lizard-book/ vishkhanna.com

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