Thepunkguy

Check this out. Anyone else down?

Chris Milk, is one of the newest hottest music video directors in the industry these days. He is the one who did the first two Kanye West videos and our favorite Modest Mouse video. Fortunately, for me, we have been friends since Art School. I traded emails with him back and forth from Paris while he was finishing up Gnarls Barkley’s new video. We talked about music, my future career and skin abrasions. Check out CHRIS MILK:

milk
What is your name?
Chris Milk

Where do you live and work?
Live in LA, work everywhere. Right now I’m in Paris doing Gnarls Barkley. I’ve been on the road for 5 months working. New Zealand, Australia, New York, Arizona, Buenos Aries, Patagonia Argentina, France, London. I want to go home.

Who are some of the musicians you have worked with?
It’s a short list as I’ve only been doing it for 3 years, only do one project at a time, and spend a long time on each. Kanye, Chemical Brothers, Courtney Love, Modest Mouse, Audioslave, John Mellencamp, Jet, Natasha Beddingfield, Gnarls Barkley.

What is your creative process?
Bang my head against a wall until I either get an idea or knock myself unconscious.

I know you do a bit of photography, which is your favorite? still or moving?
Stills are like a Haiku of a narrative. I love that. I love being able to do a whole shoot with the simplicity of just me and a camera. Moving images with sound and music though provide a much larger canvas to put your ideas forth. Unfortunately it’s infinitely more complicated and costly to do so.

I know you are into music quite a bit, what have you been listening to most?
Space mtn, Cure, TV on the radio, The Knife, Fingathing, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Thom York, live U2 bootlegs

Does it effect your creative process?
Not particularly. The creative inspiration for a video come out of the tonality of that particular song, rather than the other stuff I’m listening to at the time.

Who would be a dream artist to work for?
U2, Cure, Tori Amos. (do I really need to put links here?)

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far?
Really just getting the chance to keep making videos for me is the biggest thing. This is a hard business to break into and I got very lucky with the artists I worked with early on. Without the Chemical Brothers and Kanye giving me the freedom to do what I wanted, even though I had virtually nothing on my video reel, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

You have worked with Kanye three times, he seems to have a very specific vision, would you say that applies to music and not his videos?
He has a very specific vision for both. For videos he knows what he likes and what he doesn’t. Sometimes we will go back and forth for months before we settle on something. Sometimes I don’t like his idea, sometimes he doesn’t like mine. Every so often our tastes line up.
On Touch the Sky we talked about it from the day he was recording it to when we shot it a year later. At the last min I actually decided I didn’t like the idea I had sold him on. That was a bit awkward. “Yeah, so that idea I pitched you, that you really like, and are now trying to give me the money to shoot, I don’t like it anymore”. It was all good though cause I went back to the drawing board and came up with a better idea with the Evil Kanyevil thing.

We went to school together, how did film school help you?
Hmmm, that’s tough. I often wonder if I had just jumped right in instead of going to school if I would have been better off. We certainly spent a lot in time just fucking around. I think the biggest thing was finding your place in the social dynamic of the film world. You discover that there really is no sure recipe for making it this business, or for that matter, making anything good. You can’t work your way up the food chain to be an Oscar winning director. There is no sure fire system or magic ritual. If you want to do it, sometimes you just have to throw yourself into the mouth of the volcano and see what happens.

Do you aspire to do feature length films?
yes

Do you think growing up in New York has effected your work? How?
I think growing up in NY has effected me as a person, and I suppose my work comes out of that, so I guess it’s plausible. NY will always be my home, but I vacation in LA eleven months of the year. I can’t deal with NY weather anymore.

Internet? do you embrace it or reject it?
It’s a fad. I give it another year.

Do you plan on hiring me one day as your music supervisor when you do a feature?
Provided it’s centered around the Swedish hardcore movement, you’re my guy hommie. (Editor’s Note: Jerk!)

Anything that people should know about that we don’t??
Thepunkguy and all his Jersey boys used to live in a house called “The Broderick Manor” back in the day in SF. They had this homeless gutter punk chick sleeping on their couch for a while. They kicked her out though after they found out she had scabies. Scabies, for those of you that don’t know, belong to the spider family. They are these tiny microscopic nightmares that craw under your skin and multiply. They itch like a mother, spread quickly all over your body, ruin your month, and are a bitch to get rid of (you must boil your house). No one felt it necessary to mention to me though when I needed to crash one blurry night after North Beach, that the chick had left the couch the day before. The outcome was less than desirable.

Karma is a bitch though cause 6 months later while traveling with [kristian] in Europe he picked a nasty EU version in a Prague hostel/ex soviet dissident camp.

Any last words?
Even though Bloomfield is only “15 min from Manhattan”, it will still, always and forever, be in New Jersey.

Thanks Milk!

(Editor’s Note # 2: Bloomfield NJ is a lot closer to Manhattan than Glen Cove is, remember that!!)

CHRIS MILK’S SITE.

TV on the Radio - New Health Rock

The Knife - We Share Our Mother’s health (Ratatat Remix)

So once again a strange google search has lead someone to my site..

I can just imagine the story. A man goes to Montreal for work, let’s say he’s into vintage books. He goes up for a big vintage book, pamphlet and comic book convention.

That night after the convention, he goes to a strip club called Heels and Hoes. He goes with some of the convention guys, you know the type, lovely wives at home, a little nerdy and a bit of money. Our hero Abe, who is single, meets a lovely young gold digger named “Tyler”, who brings him into the champagne room, where she gets over 300 dollars of his newly acquired “first edition Hobbit” money with promises of more touching and longer lap dances.

When he gets back to the hotel, he seeks his revenge, starting with a google search “tyler montreal stripper“. Unfortunately all he gets is me. Sorry Abe, can’t help but godspeed.

So as some of you know thepunkguy was down over the weekend due to some bandwidth issues. To try to recitify the situation I have started to delete some of the mp3’s on some of my early posts.

If you see a song ~~that looks like this~~. But you are dying to hear that song. Email me, and I will send it to you.

Thanks again, management.

So I know at least 12 people having birthdays in the next two weeks. Including.. heather, wes, bill/ken, amber, cari, milk and andy. this song’s for you.. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

~~the Sugarcubes - Birthday~~. go to iceland and watch the sugarcubes reunite here.

yeah so sorry the site was down this weekend. I need to make some money on this site or I am going to sell the PORN I WON to keep it going.

Anyway, since I just finished up the ABC’s of HIP HOP, here is a sort of rare Sage Francis spoken word. Highly Recommended.

Sage Francis - Mullet

another post soon.

Looks like I am going to wrap up the alphabet on Part 9. Please check out all of them here. It would be helpful to me if you left some comments on what you guys thought of the posts. Thanks. tpg/.

V: ~~Vast Aire - Posse Slash (Ft. Aesop Rock, Breez Evahfllowin & Poison Pen)~~

W: ~~Wu Tang Clan - Protect ya Neck~~

X: ~~Xzibit - 3 Card Molly (ft. Rass Kass and Saafir)~~

Y: ~~Youngblood Brass Band (ft Talib Kweli) - Y’all Stand up~~
(I know it’s a little bit of cheat but I didn’t want to post a Ying Yang song)

Z: ~~Zion 1 - Boom Bip~~

And now I know my ABC’S….

BUY MOST OF THE RELEASES HERE.

Thanks to Wes from Stand Up, for reminding me about Vast Aire. And keep reading, more to come soon. tpg.

Um, hmmm, Bill O’Reilly has a lot of friends here.

Part 8 out of 10? maybe. If you are enjoying the series, let me know. Maybe ill do the ABC’s of Grunge after…

more R: ~~Raekwon - Incarcerated Scarfaces~~

S: ~~Sage Francis - Message Sent~~
(one of the best new lyricists ever!!)