This Monday, the S.C.A. is hosting a listening party of the audition demos for our upcoming album with WSAJ! At the party, we will also be announcing the album art competition which will culminate in a coffeehouse event to decide the winner. Come out to listen to some great tunes and contribute your vision to the music.

The Society of Communication & Aesthetics in 09

This past year, The Society of Communication & Aesthetics was started up to bring about an artistic community in a college lacking an art program. We started up the blog as a simple way to get started. This is what we wrote about:

This year, we have plenty of new members with new ideas. Like these:

And so, as we continue to define ourselves as a group, you can see it all unfold here on the internet or come to one of our many events that we have planned.

Stay tuned and stay classy,

Sam

President of the Society of Communication & Aesthetics

Picasso's Art Stolen

A red notebook of 33 pencil drawings by Pablo Picasso has been stolen from a Paris museum. However, it will be a hard book to sell. Although worth an estimated $11 million, the only market for such a book would be a museum, like, say, the one it was taken from. Private collectors would much rather have more bang for their buck, but it has been speculated that some bizzare Picasso addict may have hired-out to have the book taken.

In August 2007, two Picasso paintings and a drawing worth more than $66 million were recovered after being stolen six months earlier.

To read a full article on the caper, click http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_france_picasso_theft

And lastly, just bask in the glory of Picasso's work:

Thanks,

Sam

Name In Stone-Dead Man's Bones

I love Dead Man's Bones.

They are amazing and I won't even try to put into words how much I love them.


HERE:http://vimeo.com/3996103
Also, in honour of the band, some cool people from the club did a Dead Man's Bones inspired photoshoot a few months back.

Dead Man's Bones

Ryan Gosling started a band.
The band—Gosling, best friend Ryan Shields, and a children’s choir—started when Shields and Gosling wanted to start a theatre show. The theatre idea dissipated, but the music remained, and that’s all I needed to become absolutely obsessed.
Their debut album, Never Let a Lack of Talent Get You Down, on their own label, Werewolf Heart, is coming out this summer. A brilliant and simple video of a performance of “In the Room Where You Sleep” is smeared across YouTube and MySpace, and another song, “Dead Man’s Bones,” can be found IMEEM Music.
Gosling and Shields went at the project not trying to create a perfect package deal. Their MySpace page claims their inspiration to be from the Haunted Mansion at Disney World, which is visible in their video and lyrics.
Except their obsession with death isn’t creepy, it’s down-right perfect. It’s not even of the indie-aesthetic that far too many have become engulfed in after seeing Juno; but that’s a social dialogue I won’t be getting into. However, the sound is frozen in time with Gosling’s dreary and uncompromising vocals. Absolute grit.
In fact, Gosling and Shields held to a set of rules when recording: no click tracks or electric guitars, no more than three takes, and playing all of the instruments themselves. Gosling played cello and piano for the first time; Shields took up the drums. The result is a stripped, accessible indie unit that I just can’t shake.
They hope to go on tour but instead of carting around the kiddies in a macabre Partridge Family bus, Gosling plans to work with different youth choirs in the cities that they tour. When it comes time to make a few bar gigs, the plan is to involve artist friends. Who knows, maybe Joaquin Phoenix will spit on a few tracks?

Japanese Cartoon and The Welcome Wagon

After reading an article about the rumour that Lupe Fiasco is leading a British indie-rock band aside from his 'Superstar' rap career, I had to check out the band's myspace and was very pleased. The band has repeatedly posted blogs denying the rumors, saying that Percival Fats is the band's real front man but that Lupe is financing and producing the project.
Either way, their sound is fresh and exciting, especially with Lupe attached to the production. I would hesitate to say that the band is an indie-rock band, but that is only because of the misconception that rap is not indie. Japanese Cartoon is a mix of rap and indie-rock sounds that come together to form the perfect hybrid.
Another band that has just come to my attention is The Welcome Wagon. The band is comprised of New York pastor Vito Aiuto and his wife (both dear friends of Sufjan Stevens). Their sound is indeed very 'Sufjan' but it's a new breed chalk full of religious imagery.
The 2008 album Welcome to the Welcome Wagon is an album of hope that doesn't try to hide the light of Christ. Aiuto has made faith more accessible to the 'hipster nation' but denies being a hipster himself:

" I read somewhere that the chief marker in knowing whether someone is a hipster
or not is to deny that you are. I deny that I am, so I guess that probably makes
me one. I’m not trying to be obtuse, but I don’t really know what a “hipster”
is. I probably fit some of the definitions. But I know that my church is in
Brooklyn where there’s a lot of young people who are involved in the arts and
have a certain aesthetic inclination. I’d be lying or naive to say that I’m not
aware of those things."

-Sam

Marky Mark at Churchy Church

The show Entourage has been causing its producer--Mark Wahlberg- some distractions on Sundays. Not because of the flash of camera bulbs but because people have been approaching him in church with story lines and requests to be on the. Wahlberg’s church attendance has become a business meeting and he'd like others to leave him alone when he's worshiping.
He says, " The stuff that I did with my entourage back in the day is stuff that I'm not proud of and I'm asking forgiveness for; I don't want things brought up in church, but, if you go to church in Beverly Hills, those kind of things happen."
Wahlberg has been around for the glory of HBO and M. Night’s first “R” rated movie, back in the day he was recording as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, earning a hit with "Good Vibrations" from the album Music for the People. Maybe fellow church-goers just want to see Marky Mark back in action, can anyone say comeback album?
-Sam

Avalon Exchange

This past Thursday, Sarah and I took some time out of our schedules to visit Pittsburgh. We checked out our favorite vintage clothing store, Avalon Exchange, in Squirrel Hill and found plenty of gems among the racks.
I found too much and luckily had limited myself, that’s new for me, lolz. I bought a nice button down shirt and some Italian leather dress shoes that I have been wearing quite a bit recently.
Sarah of course found limitless amounts of hipster threads but of course we had to go to more than one store!
We also stopped at a Jerry's Record Store in Squirrel Hill that was absolutely epic. Rows and rows of vinyl gave me a tunnel vision that had me grabbing albums and wanting to spend the rest of my college savings.
There were plenty of deals there, but I settled on buying just one album, U2’s The Unforgettable Fire. (Yes, Bono will never lose his influence on my life)
Speaking of which, U2 is currently in the studio with a video blog giving us snippets of the boys with their partner in crime, Brian Eno. These vids can be seen on U2.com, and I’m sure youtube has got it all as well.
Eno, who is producing U2’s new album, was busy working with Coldplay…hence Viva La Vida sounding like all the work Eno has done with U2. He has worked with them on a number of their albums, and is truly innovative with sound and composition.
I’m not trying to knock Coldplay, they do what they do well, I’m just saying that Viva La Vida sounds like the love child of Sigur Ros and The Joshua Tree.
…and you thought we were talking about my new clothes...

Sam, in his new Avalon Exchange purchases.

-Sam

Music News

Actor Kevin Costner is going country. He is about to release his first album after 20 years of off-screen music making with a number of bands.
His first album, “Untold Truths” is a collection of 12 songs all written or co-written by Costner and his band, Kevin Costner and Modern West.
The band plans to tour later this year and in 2009 to support the album before his next movie “The New Daughter” comes out in March. It seems he will probably go the route of actor “slash” singer, due to his dying movie career.
Perhaps Costner should be going off to school before the big tour, like Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea who is going to study music at the University of Southern California.
Michael “Flea” Balzary, founder of Los Angeles' Silverlake Conservatory of Music, wants to add to his classical knowledge. His main goal is to learn more about the "mathematics of composition.”
Flea recently stated, "Music is made up out of these building blocks. I like studying how these blocks go together and what they consist of and the math of how it works”
Hey, someone’s gotta do it, and why not Flea? Another bandmate making a splash in the music world is Anthony Kiedis.
Over the summer, Kiedis curated the New American Music Union, a two-day summer music festival in Pittsburgh. He assembled a lineup of musicians including Bob Dylan, Gnarls Barkely, The Roots, and a second stage featuring college bands. All of this was for American Eagle Outfitters, whose headquarters are in the culturally and artistically rich community of the South Side of Pittsburgh.

Rashomon

The 1950 film Rashomon is being remade.
Although there is not a script or director or cast, it's definitely happening, in what is sure to be an awful awful idea.
The remake will take place in modern America, and put the characters' fates into the hand of a court charged with deciding a case involving a woman's rape and her husband's murder.
The original is set in Japan and is a movie that tackled a different kind of story telling with an overarching theme of ethics.
To remake this movie seems silly, as does Beverly Hills Ninja 2 (Hasselhoff appearance), but we are in the age of the remake. The name of the remake will be Rashomon 2010.
The problem with the title is that the only people that will understand its significance don't want the project to happen. It would have been much wiser to create a story inspired or similar to Rashomon, but called something completly different.
I'm just hoping people will see the original before the unveiling of Rashomon 2010.
-Sam

Holler!

Hello and welcome to G.C. Scene.
We are a group of college students enamored by many mediums of communication.
Most of us are interested in film, while others still enjoy exploring photography, writing, music, fashion, art, and pop culture.
This blog will serve as an avenue for us to share not only with each other and our college community, but with the entire blogosphere.
Different people will be posting (hopefully daily) about cool events, celebrity trainwrecks, and goings on in the art forms we love so dearly.
Enjoy and tell your friends.

-Sam