100 Records Sonny Smith show + R. Stevie

(covers top-left to bottom-right by: Kyle Field (Little Wings), Chris Johanson, Scott Hewicker, Kyle Ranson)

Arvel sent me an email about this amazing show in San Francisco Endless Nest dubbed 'The most ambitious show of all time' from Sonny Smith of Sunny and he Sunsets. Sonny asked 100 artists to illustrate 100 7" covers and Sonny came up with persona's for each band and recorded A and B Sides for each one. Amazing.
There's mysterious mention of all of these being released at some point and you can check out some of the covers on Turn up Records blog. It's a great idea, but the scale is insane...I wonder how long he's been working on this project, and I hopefully can't wait to hear these eventually. Are some going to actually be pressed as singles? This would be an entire discography of a decades worth of material for a label....massive. I hope they press a massive catalog with the covers and a box set of CD's, or maybe just put codes in there for the downloads at least.

Then I caught this email yesterday morning about a live remote show WFMU is doing at the gallery, so I'll be listening to this later today.

Live Remote from San Francisco Gallery 16's "100 Records"
Friday, May 7th, 3pm - 6pm on Put the Needle On the Record with Billy Jam
Musician/ artist/ curator Sonny Smith has a unique exhibit at San Francisco's Gallery 16 entitled "100 Records” featuring the cover art for one hundred records by 100 bands/artists that never existed but were dreamt up by Smith who commissioned a hundred artists to create cover art for these singles. The remote broadcast’s in the middle of the exhibit where Smith will be among the many guests along with Gallery 16's Griff Williams, Live Human, DnZ, Z-Man, B-Cause, and more.

But in the meantime I thought I'd post some R. Stevie Moore at Mercury Lounge opening for Ariel this week. The show was epic, Ariel and the Haunted Grafitti, contrary to everything I'd read about his infamous live show, were great. Really amazing...but then to catch Stevie opening for him? It was too much. I've just barely scratched the surface of his insane catalog and live he was completely in his own world. The in between song banter is the best...I don't know when songs ended or started, it was a medley of rehearsed, improv material with random spoken word moments about Lindsey Lohan? After each song he would crumple up a piece of paper and throw it into the audience...once after eating it.

Download here, it's about 20min.