Stuff & Things

BOOKS & PUNKS

As many already know the book CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM that I worked on most of last year, which is being published by Phaidon, is currently at the printers. As far as I know it should be in people’s hands in early December. I may or may not have seen a copy already, and in either case I can attest that it turned out beautifully. This thing is a brick, at over 800 pages it truly is an epic piece of work. It’s substantial in every way. Beyond just a catalog of all 10,000 CryptoPunks, it’s filled with thought provoking essays and insightful commentary. Interviews and assessments. And it’s put together in such a way that you can pick it up, flip to a random section and spend a few minutes reading and walk away feeling like you gained something from it. It’s not a cover to cover read, but a collection of powerful stand alone work. I’m deeply honored to have played a role in helping shape this from idea to final thing, and will be proud to have it on my shelf, and delighted when I see it on others.

Which is inevitable due it’s size and color. I mean, look at this thing:

You might think being this thick, it’s 100% all encompassing. In our initial talks that’s certainly something we aspired to. The end all be all, totally comprehensive book on CryptoPunks. And in many ways it is, but also–it isn’t. As we got into it we realized how this is a living thing, changing day to day with new stories being written and old stories being revised. While working on it we kept having to change something because something else happened, a big sale, new information uncovered, etc. At some point we had to say “this is the cut off point” otherwise it never would have been sent to the printer.

I also concede that there’s a level of information many people will find interesting and then another level that only the super nerdy dorks like myself even care about. Where possible, this book sticks to the things that are most interesting to the most people. Don’t get me wrong, it goes deep. But not too deep, if you know what I mean. And I think it’s stronger for that. I’d be remiss if I didn’t send a massive thank you shout out to Stone at Yuga Labs and Belle at Zak Group who were my constant and often daily contacts obsessing over this thing as much if not more than I was.

That said, I am a super nerdy dork and I admittedly go too deep all the time, as any number of blog posts here can illustrate. Which brings me to the next point – I realized that I regularly find myself sending people links to things I’ve written on the subject, or hear from someone that they read one of my older pieces and that sent them of on a search of their own. There’s also been a few interesting things that have happened since our self imposed cut off date. So I decided I might as well go ahead and pull all that together, update old things, document and explain some new things, and put out an unofficial companion to CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM. I floated the idea to a few people and the response was an overwhelming yes, so that’s what I’m going to do. So I present: PUNKS NOT DED.

This one is not for everybody, but it’s definitely for some people. I’m pulling things together and deciding what new to include right now but thinking this is going to come in between 60-100 pages. I’m matching height dimensions as best I can so it’ll look nice on the shelf next to it’s larger sibling. Full contents forthcoming but this will include previous blog posts, expanded wiki articles, some updated and expanded history as well as some new events. Depending on how it works out I might dive into some closely related derivatives a bit more too, as part of the larger conversation, but that’ll kind of depend the page count I land on and what I need to fill it. I’m thinking there will be a few different versions of this.

In the meantime, if you haven’t ordered CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM yet make sure you do so you get the first shipment. It’s available from Phaidon as well as on Amazon and everywhere else near you. I can’t wait for everyone to get this thing in their hands, it’s just worth it.

Personal Uniform Update 2022

Recently Boris asked me if I had any updates to my Personal Uniform. Longtime readers will know that for more than a decade now I’ve endorsed a kind of “find one thing you like a buy a bunch of them so you don’t need to think about what to wear” policy which I call a personal uniform and I’ve written about it over the years updating and refining as needed. I told him a didn’t as I’ve basically not left the house in 2 years. But it got me thinking and that’s not exactly true. I last updated in 2019 and looking back at that now I do have some revisions. 

Pants & socks haven’t changed except for the addition of some Stance socks. I got a pair in a gift bag a few years back and they were pretty good and recently picked up several more in a simple design during a sale and am liking them quite a bit. They don’t have the “lifetime guarantee” like Darn Tough does but they are also a little more causal. Underwear has consolidated 100% into the David Archy bamboo boxerbriefs. I can’t really recommend merino underwear or T-shirts anymore, I like them in theory but in practice they just fall apart – especially the lighter weight stuff – and the environmental trade off isn’t worth it. Never say I don’t challenge and test my own positions from time to time. Shirts/tops where the most revision has happened and I’ll explain how that happened.

In Tokyo I would often go by the Adidas store in Shibuya on the everlasting hunt for vegan Superstars, but also to check out their small run collabs and test products. A few years ago I picked up Japanese made loopwheel hoodie that was a joint venture between Adidas and Reigning Champ. I remember reading into it at the time but it didn’t really stick with me beyond knowing that RC was a small boutique brand attempting to make the perfect example of classic athletic wear, overspec’d in everyway. As Gibson fans know this is the quintessential Japanese fashion brand thing to do, but to my surprise RC wasn’t a Japanese brand, they were Canadian. I really liked the hoodie and still wear it regularly, through Amazon Japan I ordered a crewneck sweatshirt for Bujinkan classes and was equally impressed with the production and quality – though the price kind of hurt. I think with conversions and such at the time it worked out to be around $300. 

After moving from Tokyo to Vancouver I was pleasantly surprised to learn there was a RC store a few blocks from my house and decided to revisit the brand. I learned that it was started by the same person who’d created Wings+Horns, a brand I’d learned about many years previous from an excellently made collab they’d done with the Ace Hotel. If you think this is starting to feel like reading liner notes on vinyl records to find mentions of other musicians to check out that’s exactly how it felt to me as well. I was also delighted to find that buying locally in Canada was much more reasonable in the pricetag department than as imports in Japan.

Last year I picked up a couple of “lightweight” t-shirts from them and have been wearing them pretty regularly. The build is A+ however the material was a bit too lightweight for my taste and the collar a bit too wide. I like a tighter neck. So I stopped into the shop recently to see if they had a more mid-weight option that would work better for my own personal quirks. The guy at the shop gave me two really solid options – their new “copper jersey” which is kind of exactly what I wanted, with the bonus of having copper infused in the cotton which fights off odor and bacteria – I got a few of these in my standard Large size. He also told me about their mid-weight standard t-shirt which is cut a bit larger, so given my preference he recommended a Medium. This worked incredibly well, I only bought one but I like it so much I’m probably going to swing back and pick up 2 or 3 more. I think the copper jerseys are probably a summer specific piece, while the mid-weight Ts could be a year round thing. They will be a nice contrast for the insane super heavy duty Iron Heart Ts I picked up in Japan just before moving which classifies somewhere between a short sleeve sweatshirt and body armor.

Anyone who has seen me recently knows that I’ve grown partial to classic track jackets. Don’t get me wrong my normal black crewneck sweatshirt is still the goto, but switching to a simple Fred Perry or Puma track jacket works well for most social occasions and temperatures.

Amusingly perhaps only to me, my “style” hasn’t really changed all that much in the 12-ish years I’ve been blogging about this, or the 10 years before that when I was talking about it – brands have shifted a bit, perhaps jointly because I can afford more than what happens to be on sale this week at Wal-Mart and because craftsmanship and simplicity of classic designs has found a market allowing higher end production of these basics.

Collectors + Investors

I woke up this morning to messages from several friends directing me to this tweet, asking my thoughts. Unsurprising, as anyone who knows me probably knows I’d have more than a few thoughts on something like this. I started thinking of snarky replies or gotchas that I could cleverly post and trust me dear reader, there were many that came to mind. But the more I thought about it, and read the replies from artists who seem to be bending over backwards to agree in hopes that the tweets author might check out and buy their work, I thought it would be better served with a more thoughtful response to illustrate why this is so problematic. Also, I would like credit for my display of maturity and restraint in not just posting a snarky reply. Sean from 20 years ago is wondering who the hell has hijacked his blog right now.

As an art dealer, I would refuse to sell art to someone who came in to my gallery and made a statement like this. I don’t say that hyperbolically – when I had a gallery this was a topic that came up from time to time and we were unapologetic about refusing to sell work to anyone who asked questions like “how soon will I be able to sell this and double my money?” or “do you have anything that will match my couch?” Additionally I’d actively and vocally advise artists to avoid selling work to someone with this approach because while a sale might be nice today, in the long run buyers like this will most likely make decisions later that will negatively impact the artist. And if you think of art as a long term thing, as I do, selling to a buyer like this is basically failing the marshmallow test. This is investing in the art and not in the artist. To me, the artist is always more important than the art. As an art dealer, I wanted to develop long term relationships with artists and watch them grow, and help out where I could. I wanted to look back on my life and the careers of artists I worked with and be proud of what we did together. This artist-first approach wasn’t always the best decision for the profit margin of the business but it allowed me to sleep well at night, and that 15 years after the gallery closed I still count many of the artists I worked with as close friends tells me I made the right decisions. As a dealer, I worked for the artists not the collectors. I wanted the value of the art to go up just as much as anyone else (and it has) but I deeply believe that this happens much more reliably by making decisions that are in the best interest of the artist, and selling to someone who only sees art as an investment simply isn’t.

As an artist, I would be disappointed to know that someone bought my work and didn’t want to be thanked for it. I would be sad to learn that they didn’t have any interest in supporting me or my efforts. This statement is both hurtful and dehumanizing. It says that this person sees artists as nothing but a factory to crank out things which will make them money. Amusingly this is one of the reasons I eventually got out of the technology start up world, which I wrote more about in The Interest Driven Life, but I couldn’t stomach having meetings with venture capitalists who didn’t give a shit about me or my dreams or my goals and only wanted to know how much money I was going to make them, and how fast. Now, I’m not knocking this kind of investing approach – I just think there are ways to do it which don’t hurt people. Invest in shitcoins or flip some Bored Apes. That doesn’t hurt anyones feelings, or make anyone second guess their life choices. I guarantee you no one at LavaLabs is going to be suicidal because someone is rage tweeting that their Meebit hasn’t doubled in value yet. Pure investors don’t understand (or care about) the difference between artwork and a collectable, between individual artist and for profit company.

For most artists I know, just admitting you are an artist is unspeakably hard. It’s a position filled with self doubt, insecurity and questioning choices, but deep down we do believe in our work and our vision and have to trust that somewhere out in the world someone recognizes and connects with that. I make art to tell stories, and find connections, and find communities, and build relationships. Not to make some investor money. I do recognize that I’m in a position of privilege to be able to turn down sales that I don’t think are a good fit, to people who I don’t like. Not everyone can do that, but that’s also why I try to forge the path so that it’s easier for the next group of artists. And I’m pretty sure I can confidently say that standing here at 46 years old, everyone who has bought my work in the last 20 years has done so because they either wanted to support me personally or because my work meant something to them personally – and I’m deeply thankful for that. I would sell my work to someone who loved it and planned to keep it forever over someone who was hoping to sell it at a profit any day.

As an art collector, I despised buyers with this kind of an attitude. Selfishly, because they usually had more money than me and would buy things I loved and it pained me knowing they didn’t actually care about them. I much prefer the Vincent Price / Dennis Hopper approach which comes from recognizing the value that the artists bring to the world, to culture, to society and trying to support that. I forget where but I saw Hopper speaking once and he said something like “If you do it right, being an art collector means you are just a care taker” going on to say that he saw his job as protecting the art he bought until the “real art” world recognized it and made space in museums for it. He says something similar at the end of this short video. He viewed collecting art as documenting a culture and a community. I visited his house in Venice Beach once and and stepped over carefully rolled up Basquiats in order to get a better look at framed photographs by artists I’d never heard of hanging on the walls. His love for the art and for his friends was unquestionable, and it made me feel so much better about my own collection which is almost entirely work by friends. Some of whom I knew before I bought the work, some of whom I became friends with after buying the work. To me, those relationships are so much more valuable than any individual piece of art, but often the art is a physical representation of that relationship. The context is different but I’m reminded of the lyrics to Softcore by Jawbreaker which accuses “They just want the wrapping, They throw away the prize.” As a collector who values and appreciates the culture and the community, it pains me to know that work is sold to people who don’t care about any of that. I understand why it happens, but I don’t have to like it.

To be clear, I don’t think this is a zero sum topic. You don’t have to care about the artist, or your investment. Someone can care about both the value of their investment and in the artist that created the art, and I’d wager to say most people buying art fit into that category. But a comment like the one above represents a hard far end of a spectrum which I can only sum up as “bad.”

When we’re talking about NFTs, which we often are these days, there is a tendency for investors to lump everything together. They see no difference between something created by hand or something created by an algorithm. This illustrates their deep misunderstanding of both art and NFTs. I think this is actually a dangerous mindset which can actually harm artists and communities, and would recommend steering clear of buyers with this approach. This is a brand new world and the collectors who love the art and want to build the community are still showing up every day. Let’s embrace the people who want to build something together with us. We don’t need to make sacrifices to make people who don’t care about us rich.

Monthly Mystery Subscription

It’s been about 10 years now since I started dabbling with photography, getting pretty serious about in a year or two in. In that time I’ve had exhibitions in galleries and published a photobook which continues to sell to this day. I’ve also sold prints to a number of people whose support has meant the world to me. Anyone who has been following me for a while knows I’ve also experimented with several different physical “subscriptions” where I pick things (be they stuff or coffee or music) and mail them out on some regular basis to people who have the blind faith to give me money without having a completely concrete idea of what they are getting in return. There’s a bit of mystery and excitement there which I like, creating that anticipation and surprise.

I spent some time towards the end of 2020 revamping my photography website and and while I was doing that I thought it might be fun to play around again. I quietly announced a Monthly Mystery Subscription at the beginning of December and a few people signed up right away. The idea being, for a relatively small fee I’ll send each subscriber a photo (or 3, depending on subscription level) in the mail. These will be miniprints on instant film and part of a very small limited edition, signed and numbered. I’m sending out the first batch of prints this week and wanted to share a little more about it because it was a lot of fun to put together.

This is a little bit of a give away because the point is that people don’t know what they are getting until they open the package, but I’d leaked images of the prints before anyway so I don’t think it’s too much of a surprise blown. Going forward, the secret will be kept much better. Right now I’m doing editions of 10 photos only, that doesn’t mean that only 10 people can subscribe, it means that if 20 people subscribe half of them get one photo and half get another. This keeps the edition low and the value high, I hope. Speaking of that, I’m leaving the introductory pricing live for a few more days as there are a few spots left to fill out that initial 10 people. For the moment 1 print a month costs $10 and 3 prints a month is $25. Free shipping in Canada, $10 extra for anywhere else in the world. This is basically a brake even price because I think this is a fun thing to do, but realistically I’ll need to up those prices pretty soon, probably double. If you want to get in before I do that the discounted price will maintain as long as you keep subscribing. If the surprise isn’t your thing but you like the idea of the prints, I am making a few available individually in my shop.

As always, thanks for the support!

Step On It – Books About Pedals

Over the years I’ve written about stuff, actual physical stuff that you can hold in your hand and appreciate. I’m guilty of fetishizing all manor of objects. So it should be no surprise that objects that fetishize other objects scratch a very special itch for me which is why my bookshelves are exploding with what I just refer to as art books though I accept that many people wouldn’t consider the subject of many of them to be art at all. An example of that would be guitar pedals. Most people wouldn’t consider them art, even though some people obsessively collect them like art. Musicians are artists, and music is art, so it’s really not much of a stretch to think of the tools artists use in an artistic fashion. I was recently gifted a beautiful book on the subject which made me realize that I now have several books on the subject and though maybe some others might be interested in hearing a little about them.

I bought Level & Attack – The Untold Story of The Tone Bender Fuzz in early 2018 admittedly without knowing much of what it was about. Some friends were very excited about it and I saw a few photos from it and was curious enough to jump through the needed hoops to get one shipped to me in Japan. I was not disappointed. Substantial barely begins to describe this massive book which is too big to fit vertically on my bookshelf. Authors Anthony and Steve Macari dive deep into the history of a single pedal (the Tone Bender) with almost pornographic close up photos of hand wired circuit boards and the most painstaking documentation of variations from one model to the next. This is supplemented by anecdotes by massive name musicians gushing about how much they love it. As an effect, “fuzz” wasn’t something I really paid much attention to before getting this book but there’s no way to take in the passion and love poured into this book and not get infected by curiosity at the very least. I can’t imagine how expensive this book was to make, and they only made 500 copies which sold out right away so getting one these days is no easy task, but if you have the chance to pick one up and flip though it I assure you it will be worth your time. I say that assuming that, like me, you enjoy seeing the most knowledgable people on a super niche subject just spill all of the goods in unrestrained detail.

You can almost smell the solder in Level & Attack

With that groundwork laid and the interest itch piqued, adding 2019’s Pedal Crush to the collection was an absolute no brainer. If you don’t know anything about guitar pedals and want to understand what they are, what they do, how they ended up doing that and who is doing what with them today then Kim Bjørn and Scott Harper (aka Knobs) have published the perfect book to answer all of your questions. While Level & Attack was hyper focused, Pedal Crush zooms out to cover the entire landscape. The history of various effects, what they sound like and how those eventually got squeezed into pedal format, the manufacturers who drove and continue to drive that innovation and generally how one thing led to another, and the who’s who of all corners of the boutique pedal industry.

Tremawhat? Pedal Crush explains it all

Between these two you might think the story has been told, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But any good story has multiple layers and Eilon Paz’s Stompbox really puts the personal stories front and center. That’s not to say the previous books don’t talk about people (they do) or that Stompbox doesn’t cover history (it does) but much more than the others, rather than being about pedals this book is about the people. The subtitle 100 Pedals of the World’s Greatest Guitarists buries the lede because the “greatest guitarists” part is really what makes this book so special. The absolute bulk of this already bulky book is personal stories from musicians you love talking about something that in many cases defines their sound. This is artists talking about the favorite paint on their palette, the brush that they couldn’t have painted a masterpiece without.

J and his Big Muff in Stompbox
Albini on his legendary Percolator

100 musicians, 100 pedals, lifetimes of stories. This isn’t a book you read cover to cover and then put on your shelf to forget, it’s one you can (and will) open to any page at any time and find something wonderful and inspirational. This book is brand new and I haven’t fully read it yet, but that is only due to its size and my need to eat and sleep. However there hasn’t been a page I’ve read in it yet which hasn’t left me wanting to read the next one as well, and I may savor that feeling by limiting myself to reading just one a day. That, as well as a way of self regulating and to prevent myself from blowing a bitcoin on Reverb. Which brings me to a stern word of warning–do not even open these books if you are subject to GAS. They will wreck you and full you with lust. Glorious, beautiful lust.

Death By Audio pedals being spray painted by hand

(Did you enjoy this post? Let me know and stay tuned as I’m considering doing a series or even an ongoing video thing where I explore some of my art books and what I love about them.)

In the streets, in the sheets

It’s been almost 3 years since my photobook “Don’t Go Outside” was released. The book was inspired by my ongoing visits to Japan for business and pleasure. A little over 2 years ago the whole family and I moved from Los Angeles to Tokyo and things that seemed exciting previously became normal. It’s an interesting shift that happens when you go from visitor to resident, and vice versa. Visiting Los Angeles now lets me see the city in ways I never did living there – but that’s a different story for another thing. I’m talking about Tokyo right now.

Not long after moving, Tara and I started talking about an idea, loosely based on our new surroundings and how they were making us feel. I made some new photos to try and convey how that felt. We liked them. We thought we’d like to have the photos on some things around our house, and thought maybe others would as well. We mapped out the idea, bought the URL, spent a few hours on it and then put it on the back burner. More than a year later we kicked each others asses and decided to finish it. So we did. Today we launched Street Sheets.tokyo.

Here’s some of the things we made:

There’s more now, and we’ll keep adding more as we go. I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, and am excited to hear what others think, and see the products out in the wild. Here’s a little more that I wrote about the idea behind the work:

After moving to Tokyo in 2017 we began to realize how the lines on the streets offered more than just direction. The bold, iconic lines served their purpose of helping millions of people to navigate the public space, but they seemed to help navigate interpersonal distance and interactions as well. The orderly placement and repeated patterns were soothing and almost comforting. At the same time, the cracks and decay as the paint aged told the story of how things might look beautiful and perfect at a distance, but upon closer inspection the flaws are revealed. This applies literally to the physical paint, but is also indicative of society as a whole. With this insight the stark black and white imagery becomes suggestive of the duality of humanity at scale – functional but inescapably flawed.

These products can be seen as a followup to the book “Don’t Go Outside” – a collection of street photography by Sean Bonner, a voyeuristic exploration of the public human interaction in Tokyo. This stylistic reinterpretation both forcibly minimizes the imagery by removing the people, the individuals, as well as putting full focus on the intention of the population at large. Stripped of the human subjects, all that’s left is their impact. The intention of bringing this imagery literally from the public streets inside to the intimacy of our own homes, living rooms and bedrooms further plays on this duality of intention.

Snuggle up with the struggle.

There was a time in my life when I was just cranking things out left and right. I’ve been feeling pretty stagnant for the last few years, and moving this from idea to shipped felt really good. I give all credit to Tara for putting her foot down and insisting we finish it and get it out the door. It’s exciting to see it materialize, and a testament to committing to just getting it done. I hope you like it.