jESiO: Apr 14, 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Radio Free Europe, er, Norfolk

It's kind of ironic I wrote the following after I wrote something similar about MTV/videos almost a year ago.

Local alternative station 96X committed suicide this week. Here's my take on it and other Norfolk music news in AltDaily's Groove Advisory.

Here's last year's MTV/WTF rant.

Who Ever Heard of Silent Art?

It's almost time for Art|Everywhere, the second annual street festival, urban renewal, block party, rad rad time AltDaily, DNC, Grow Interactive, etc. throw down on the streets of Norfolk. This year's party starts April 30.

Above is a piece that will be shown by the artist Davmo. He's a contemporary artist from Va Beach whose work incorporates elements of pop, surrealsim, and contemporary sculpture.

John Kohn was an acquaintance of mine when he was the drummer for local band Superock and salesperson at Alpha Music, where I often worked when at Sony/BMG and where I also bought drum-related gifts for Adam.

Last year John decided to become a Norfolk police officer and, in December 2010, was fatally struck in the head during a training excrercise. The repurcussion of this on the Norfolk Police Department and the local music community are still being played out. Bottom line: it sucks.

Anyway, back to art. Davmo created the above to honor John. Art|Everywhere liked it and agreed. Then the owner of the building where it was to be shown balked and refused to allow it due to "politics." Davmo went to the local media (shout out to Jesse from AltDaily, who made sure to point out it wasn't anyone involved with the art show who wanted this taken down):

So, in honor of John and in support of Davmo, I'm going to juxtapose some of my favorite Davmo pieces with some Banksy police images. I hope you enjoy. I hope you come to Art|Everywhere. I hope you remember John Kohn.