Saturday, December 25, 2010

The Last Post

Well, the last post for this year, that is... I Sea Stripes is going on summer holidays, joining Santa at a warm Waiheke beach.
To keep the project going, interesting, funny and sexy pictures from the archives will be posted in my absence!
Enjoy your Christmas and best stripes for the New Year!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Rafael Alberti


Rafael Alberti Merello (1902 - 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. Alberti published his first books of poetry towards the end of the 1920s: Marinero en tierra ('Sailor on Dry Land', 1925), La Amante ('The Mistress', 1926) and El alba del alhelí ('The Dawn of the Wallflower', 1927). 
During the 1930s Alberti's work became overtly political, beginning with Con los zapatos puestos tengo que morir ('I Have to Die Wearing my Own Shoes', 1930). The establishment of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931 pushed Alberti towards Marxism and he joined the Communist Party of Spain. His poetry from this militant period is collected in Consignas ('Orders', 1933), Un fantasma recorre Europa ('A Ghost Stalks Europe', 1933), 13 bandas y 48 estrellas ('13 Stripes and 48 Stars', 1936) and El poeta en la calle ('Poet in the Street', 1938).
A Loyalist in the Spanish Civil War, Alberti fled to Argentina following the victory of Franco in 1939. Here he continued writing and painting. His work in exile is full of nostalgia for Spain, notably the poetry collection Entre el clavel y la espada ('Between Carnation and Sword', 1941). He also published collections inspired by various themes, including painting (A la pintura ('On Painting', 1945))--Alberti had briefly been a painter before turning to writing--and the sea (Pleamar ('High Tide', 1944), Oda marítima ('Maritime Ode', 1953)). His autobiography, La arboleda perdida ('The Lost Grove') was published in 1942.
After living in various European cities, including Paris and Rome, he returned to Spain in 1977. Shortly after his return Alberti was elected deputy for Cadiz in the constituent Congress of the Spanish parliament on the Communist Party Ticket.
In 1983, he was awarded the Premio Cervantes, the Spanish literary world's highest honour. He was also awarded Lenin Peace Prize for the year 1964 and Laureate Of The International Botev Prize in 1981. He died at the age of 96 from a lung ailment. He was married to the writer María Teresa León.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Pat Matheny

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.
One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, latin jazz and jazz fusion. Pat Metheny has three gold albums and 17 Grammy Awards. He is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist Mike Metheny.
Metheny's versatility is almost nearly without peer on any instrument. Over the years, he has performed with artists as diverse as Steve Reich to Ornette Coleman to Herbie Hancock to Jim Hall to Milton Nascimento to David Bowie. He has been part of a writing team with keyboardist Lyle Mays for more than twenty years - an association that has been compared to the Lennon/McCartney and Ellington/Strayhorn partnerships by critics and listeners alike. Metheny’s body of work includes compositions for solo guitar, small ensembles, electric and acoustic instruments, large orchestras, and ballet pieces, with settings ranging from modern jazz to rock to classical.
Thanks, 'Frenchie'

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Mama Michelle Phillips

Michelle Phillips (1944) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She gained fame as a member of the 1960s group The Mamas & the Papas, and is the last surviving original member of the group.
While a member of The Mamas & the Papas, Phillips co-wrote some of the band's hits, including "Creeque Alley" and "California Dreamin'". During 1970, Phillips sang backup vocals on a Leonard Cohen tour. That year, Phillips married actor Dennis Hopper. The marriage lasted eight days. 
In 1986, she wrote an autobiography, California Dreamin': The True Story of the Mamas and the Papas, released just weeks after her former husband John Phillips' autobiography Papa John. In it Phillips describes such events as the first meeting between her and fellow Mama, Cass Elliot, winning 17 straight shoots at a crap table in the Bahamas when the band was broke and could not afford plane fare back to the United States, and how her writing credit on "California Dreamin'", which still nets her royalties, was "the best wake-up call" she ever had (she was asleep in a New York Hotel room when her then husband John Phillips woke her up to help him finish a new song he was writing).

Sunday, December 12, 2010

KT Tunstall

Kate Victoria Tunstall, better known as KT Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. She broke into the public eye with a live solo performance of her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later... with Jools Holland

KT Tunstall was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a half-Chinese, half-Scottish mother and an Irish father, and was adopted 18 days later by English parents who lived in St Andrews, Scotland. Her adoptive parents had no interest in music and owned no records—the only tape her father owned was a comedy recording by mathematician and musical satirist Tom Lehrer.
Tunstall grew up in St Andrews, a town in Fife, attending Lawhead Primary, then Dundee High School and Madras College in St. Andrews, but spending her last year of high school in New England at the Kent School, a selective prep school in Kent, Connecticut.
After school, having learned the piano, flute, and guitar, she left her native St Andrews to take up a scholarship at Kent School in Connecticut, New England, where she formed her first band, The Happy Campers.
She spent time busking on Church Street in Burlington, Vermont, and at a commune in rural Vermont.  She has said that: "...My earliest memories are Californian...", attributed to a sabbatical that her father took at UCLA in 1979.
She is influenced by David Bowie, Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Marilyn Monroe - Striped

The photographic journey of Marilyn Monroe begins with those by Bill Carroll, who captured the image of a beautiful 19 year old girl, dreaming of stardom on a sunny beach in California. The pure innocence and simplicity in these portraits present us with an era long gone by. 
The legendary photographer of the stars, Bruno Bernard of Bernard of Hollywood™. His many photographs of Norma Jeane to Marilyn Monroe capture the dramatic metamorphosis of this aspiring model into the world’s most provocative legend.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Gypset

I found this book by accident, going through my local library and if it wasn't for it's sick title and the author's Texas-sized ego, it would be a fantastic read.
Gypsetters are artists, surfers, designers, and bon vivants who live and work around the globe, from Jose Ignacio, Uruguay and Ibiza, Spain, to Montauk, New York. Gypset Style explores the unconventional, wanderlust lives of these high-low cultural nomads and the bohemian enclaves they inhabit, as well as their counterculture forbears, such as the Victorian explorers, the Lost Generation, the Beatniks, and the hippies. And along the way, author Julia Chaplin looks back at quintessential gypsy boho moments in social history - according to the publisher.
Author Julia Chaplin
Chaplin finds some very interesting characters, living their dreams to the max and she wholesales in fantastic ideas about how and where to live the perfect life. Great pictures, inspiring people, showing that everything you believe in is possible...

What I don't like is the title: the fusion of 'gypsy' and 'jet-set'. Chaplin refers to Gypsies (Rromani) as the ultimate bohemians, people full of wanderlust, happy wandering people - living the free life.
You don't need to be an Einstein or a Rromani scholar like Ian Hancock to come up with a comment like this on Amazon's book review.
The people Chaplin writes about couldn't be further removed from the gypsies she romantically associates with (but yes, she is a good advocate for the striped shirt...).  

Thursday, December 2, 2010

When Pataugas meets Jean Paul Gaultier


French fashion shoe emporium Pataugus joined forces with Jean Paul Gaultier, like everyone else in the fashion, furniture and design business, it seems... 

Great video though, of an encounter between Pataugas shoes and a marinière by J.P.G.