Kurt and Courtney’s Daughter Honors Gay Pioneer With Tattoo

Does this mean that Frances Bean Cobain will be stepping into the spotlight? We would all be tuned in, don’t deny it.

via Advocate

A new photo shoot with Frances Bean Cobain, the daughter of late rock icon Kurt Cobain and musician-actress-personality Courtney Love, reveals the progeny has a tattoo of Quentin Crisp on her back.

Bean is the subject of a moody black-and-white photo shoot by Hedi Slimane. In the photos the 19-year-old shows off a number of tattoos, including one of the late queer activist on her back beneath her right shoulder next to a French quote, “L’art est la solution au Chaos,” which translates as “Art is the solution of chaos.”

The British-born Crisp, who died in 1999, is still celebrated by many as a queer pioneer. His 1968 memoir The Naked Civil Servant detailed his life and the persecution he often experienced due to his refusal to hide being gay.

“Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind” Book

via Selectism

NPR’s All Songs points our attention to a new book by Jacob McMurray that looks to dissect the rise and commercial success of the grunge movement and a look into the history of punk from the perspective of the Pacific Northwest. Taking Punk to the Masses looks to open with a discussion of The Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie.”

Taking Punk to the Masses: From Nowhere to Nevermind visually documents the explosion of Grunge, the Seattle Sound, within the context of the underground punk subculture that was developing throughout the u.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s. The book serves as a companion and contextual backdrop to the Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses exhibition, which opens at Seattle’s Experience Music Project in 2011. This decade-and-a-half musical journey will be represented entirely through the lens of EMP’s oral history and permanent object collection, an invaluable and rich cultural archive of over 800 interviews and 140,000 objects — instruments, costumes, posters, records and other ephemera dedicated to the pursuit of rock ’n’ roll.

The book is out now on the excellent Fantagraphics imprint and includes a companion DVD. Amazon has it.

Related articles

• Fantagraphics exhibit celebrates Charles Peterson’s photos (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• ‘Nirvana: Taking Punk To The Masses’ Sneak Peek: A Record Deal, Smashed Nevermind Guitar (newsroom.mtv.com)

Q & A with Nick Burns Co-author of The Bearded Gentleman: The Style Guide to Shaving

I have never had such an informative, enjoyable and dare I say smart conversation about facial hair. My usual conversations goes something like this, ” Uhh, you got something in your beard.”… ” Thanks!” Nick Burns co-author of The Bearded Gentlemen: The Style Guide to Shaving is loaded with helpful information to care for and tame that overgrown bush on your face or perhaps just your upper lip. His extensive back round as a journalist,  has covered skin care, fashion, and health for leading magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Details, Elle Accessories, Out, and Zink, and he pens the popular men’s style blog, HommeGrooming.com., makes him over qualified for me to ask him about how to best trim my unruly nose hairs (But I ask anyhow). Nick’s writing is witty and sharp as well as his answers to my questions I brainstormed for him.

Q & A:

Interview by Mike Enders

Accidental Bear:  How is it that you and Allan Peterkin came together to produce this much needed book together?

Nick Burns: Allan wrote a book called 1000 Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair and I interviewed him for a piece I wrote for the New York Times about the return of the mustache–a bunch of hipsters in Williamsburg started sprouting whiskers above their lips in 2008. We worked together on a few other articles after that and when his publisher asked him to write the follow up to 1000 Beards, he asked me to help out.

A B:  I would love to call you King of whiskers. What has been the fire under you that make you want to write about the topic?

Nick: I think “King of Whiskers” is too lofty of a title for little old me. Maybe Prince of Whiskers? Well, when your name contains “Nick” and “Burns”, writing about shaving is kind of like your birthright… sort of like being born into the royal family.