Thank You and Goodnight

28 August 2008

I have been invited to post here as a delegate from DFA Records. We will be getting musicians, collaborators and friends of the DFA family to contribute along the way. Check out the link for a whole batch of new music we are about to release or to just see who we are and what we do. Our postings will probably be a mix of shameless self promotion and totally random things that we want to share, talk about, brag about and most important, look like pretentious assholes while doing so. This is also a public way for me to grapple with the general idea of a blog, begging artists to grapple with the general idea of a blog, as well as a public way to use the word “grapple”, which sounds ridiculous when said out loud (did you just say it?)

GRAPPLE

(click the audio icon to hear it out loud and then start thinking of other words you want the robot lady to say.)

Anyway, wrestling with the “shameless self promotion” VS “random shit that makes us happy”, I bring up new DFA artist Jona Bechtolt aka YACHT.

He has been making music for quite some time both as The Blow with Khaela Maricich and as YACHT (now a duo with the addition of Claire L. Evans)

YACHT’s first single for DFA came to us complete with this video already made, a tribute to 80’s film TAPEHEADS

The video can be seen here:

Jona is also involved with this odd and collectable magazine called Veneer that is a very strange mixture of art and mostly essays that are both funny and serious or both or neither. To be honest, I am unsure what is a joke and what is factual and I like it that way. Veneer was created by Aaron Flint Jamison and is edited by YACHT’s Claire L. Evans.

Their launch party was a paintball fight with a published diagram that looks like something out of Luke Wilson’s notebook in the film Bottle Rocket:

Veneer apparently cobbled together torn out advertisements from other magazines, placed them in their own and then sent out dozens of fake invoices.

They got some great responses, both puzzled and somewhat irate.

The Veneer site, designed and maintained by Jona with Luke Fischbeck, Aaron Flint Jamison and Alexander Mahan is also a great showcase for other weirdo humor sites they have built / created / found.

YACHT recorded their new album “See Mystery Lights”, due out next year on DFA, in Marfa Texas and on the Veneer Magazine website I found the Marfa Ring.

The Marfa Ring includes the Marfa Gossip website, Marfa Craigs List, sites for a Marfa police department and Marfa Chamber Of Commerce, a Donald Judd website and a photo of the new Apple Store allegedly opening soon (next to the new Marfa Prada store):

The town of Marfa loved the Marfa Ring website, according to Jona. It was such a success that they have been given a grant from Rhizome to continue.