Life In A Bungalo

Playlist:

The’ Legendary Shackshakers “South Electric Eyes”
Turbo A.C.s “Knife Fight”
The Quakes “USA Psychos”
Nekromantix “Cave Canem”
I Walk The Line “Just Like The Rest”
Bad Religion “Punk Rock Song (German)”
NoFX “Lori Meyers”
Pennywise “Perfect People”
Turbonegro “Prince of the Rodeo”
Sick of it All “Just Look Around”
Rancid “Sound System”
Joey Cape & Tony Sly “Wind in your Sails”
Dropkick Murphys “Dirty Glass”
Clutch “Regulator”
Social Distortion “Down on the World”

 

 Radio Bungalo #33: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hardly five days after our feature article with UNKL guru Derek Welch, the company releases its latest crop of cute, non-blinded mini-figures (and a couple biggies too). Series 3 sport a space theme, while series 4 scream bad ass. Look for these to appear (and disappear) from shelves in the near future. They are also available on the UNKL Web site as we speak.

Lori Earley is taking over New York City one gallery at a time. Her latest show, “Anima Sola,” features ten gigantic paintings, ranging in price from $50,000 to $90,000 (and all sold out) on display at the Opera Gallery in Soho. Earley has this innate ability to paint female portraits that look so real, they could be photos. Her use of oil paints is uncanny. Look as hard as you can, and you won’t be able to find a brush stroke or a flaw. The skin is pale as a bar of dove soap, and every girl sports a set of Earley’s trademark piercing eyes. You can’t help but fall in love with every single painting. One of the coolest things about this show is that it’s not at one of the local galleries that traditionally deal in pop surrealism. Opera is know for selling works by the masters, and it’s fabulous that Earley can now hold court in the same venue as Gauguin and Dali. At the opening preview night, Earley was swarmed by fans and interested buyers, Ron English stopped by to take photos and chat up the locals, and art critics young and old commented positively about the new star in the contemporary art scene. The show will run from April 28 through May 19, 2007, with an opening reception this Saturday, April 28 from 6 to 9pm. Read more »

I’ll admit it, I’m a late bloomer. The first time I heard of UNKL was at this year’s New York Toy Fair. Hiding between rows of uber-crappy kids’ stuff stood a small booth overflowing with some of the coolest figures I’ve ever seen. Little green robots with gas masks, monstrous giants with little white heads, and cute round-headed creatures, the UNKL booth was a vinyl toy wonderland. So I began chatting up the cute booth girl that UNKL clearly paid to hawk their goods. Turns out she wasn’t a show girl, but a PR person. They breed PR people a lot nicer in Oregon.

Anyway, UNKL was founded by designers Derek Welch and Jason Bacon as a means to further their own creativity without the constraints of a boss. The duo’s first creation, HazmaPo, was an instant success, selling out at vinyl toy stores around the country. UNKL began cranking out new characters with stories as elaborate as their designs. Seven years later, UNKL is an unstoppable force in the urban vinyl industry. The company has a ton of licensed collaborations under its belt, and many cool toys in development, including a series of figures based on indie-rock gods Wilco. Welch took a few minutes to chat with Life In A Bungalo about what it takes to build a vinyl toy company from the ground up.

What separates UNKL from the other toy production companies?
I think being designers and artists and doing design for more than 15 years as a business, allowed us the ability to do some creative exploration on our own. A few of the characters that we created as figures are from ideas that we’ve had as sketches way before we did anything with them. A good part of our lives had been spent being creative for other people, so we figured it was time to make our own stuff, the way we want to make them. Read more »

The new indie rock-doc “Rebel Beat: The Story of LA Rockabilly“ screens in Hollywood on May 5, Cinco de Mayo, as part of the Silver Lake Film Festival. The 9pm Barnsdall Art Park screening follows the festival’s awards ceremony honoring the music videos of “Little Miss Sunshine” directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Everyone attending the screening receives a goodie bag and the chance to win the “Rebel Beat Rockin’ Prize Box” of DVDs and CDs from LA’s underground rockabilly community. A prescreening party will be held May 1 at the monthly Ronnie Mack Barn Dance at El Cid on Sunset Boulevard. Read more »

Wavedog supersized his uber-colorful mecha custom Munnys with the unveiling of what looks like a pint-sized weapon of mass destruction. Sporting Wavedog’s traditional tribal markings and saturated colors, this massive chunk of vinyl is equipped with a handmade plasma rifle protruding from its head. Also, the Animazing Gallery (461 Broome Street, NY) will be featuring Wavedog’s work in the front window of the gallery. The show opening is June 9, from 1-6pm, and runs through July.

Nekromantix
“Life Is A Grave & I Dig It”
Hellcat

Shits about to get interesting. Kim Nekroman has returned from the grave, backed by a new crop of Nekroheads—Troy Destroy (guitar) and Andrew Martinez (drums)—and he dragged a new record with him that sounds like it was dredged from the lakes of hell. “Life Is A Grave” is the tightest Nekromantix record to date, sporting bass-soaked gems that are way more danceable than your run-of-the-mill punkabilly CD.

First off, Nekroman has come into his own as a lyricist. The writing on this record is catchy and none of the songs sound like they were written by a fifth grader (a curse that has plagued the band on the last few record). Rather than use horror themes as a crutch or just name call old B-movies, Nekroman spins his own yarns about demonic cats, evil high schools, bats and ghouls.

I know what you’re thinking. What does the music sound like? Old school fans have been calling “sellout” since the band signed to Epitaph a few years back, and those fans are still going to be grumpy. “Life Is A Grave” is smooth, cool, and poppy—It’s also really fucking good. The band slow tunes down for impact, and ramp the beat up when it’s time to rock. Some tracks lean more to rockabilly, even treading into country for a spell. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. While all the modern psychobilly bands bite off a sound Nekromantix spawned 10 years ago, Kim and company are rocking to their own beat, and biting the heads off of everyone that thinks they’ve gone soft.

Doesn’t Rock l Kinda Rocks l Rocks l Really Rocks

When Andrew Bell, mastermind behind Creatures In My Head, created the Zlik the last thing he wanted was to make it a platform toy. But here we are, less than a year after the a launch of these worm-alien-creatures, and Bell is curating a show featuring a slew of up and coming pop-brow artists offering their take on Bell’s googly-eyed creature. Everyone in the show clearly put their heart into these 19-inch Zliks. The Zlik doesn’t look like the easiest platform to be creative with—Hell, it looks like a worm (not that that’s a bad thing). So I was very curious to see how each artist adapted his or her style to the mammoth blank Zlik. No one failed to impress.

Squidboy ditched his stickers and turned his Zlik into a dreamy world of fluffy clouds amidst an orange sky with his signature otherworldly landscape. Scott Radke proved once again that creepy can definitely be cool. Too bad his Zlik wasn’t tethered to strings like his marionettes. Kathie Olivas plastered a one of her Misery Children onto the chest and into the soul of her Zlik. Others simply covered the eyes and turned the torso into a canvas, portraying monsters, birds, or children. The highlight of the show belonged to the king of all steam punks—Dok A, who turned his Zlik into a metal contraption, aged to perfection, and sporting its own mini-Zlik. Read more »