
Rock Music

Like John Lennon and Jim Hendrix, Joanna Stingray has an FBI file. In 1984, the 24-year-old Angeleno accompanied her sister on a state-sanctioned tour to Leningrad and secretly met Boris Grebenshchikov, a star in the Soviet music underground.

“There might be more passion in amateurism than with much of the known, famous stuff. Those are the kinds of energies in music I’ve always found attractive, regardless of quality, expertise, or skill.”

Ghost stories, paganism, the blues, and silent cinema are just some of the fixations of two authors known for novels steeped in history.

Reissued several times with different track listings and sequencing since its initial release, Third has finally been given the deluxe box-set treatment it has long deserved in the three-disc Complete Third, which gathers all known demos, rough and final mixes, and outtakes into one lovingly produced package.

“I still seek for eternity, which maybe is like a rainbow-colored butterfly flying away, suddenly in front of your face.”

Kembra Pfahler is a downtown legend: a punk rocker, screen goddess, curator, and performance artist who moved from Los Angeles to the East Village in the early 1980s. Over the course of her time in New York, she’s modeled for Calvin Klein, sang lead in the death punk metal band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and founded a performance art movement known as “Availabilism.”

“When it came to music, I always saw myself playing a punching bag. That’s just what I do on the guitar.”

“When I’m home, I’m completely alone. I get the creative bug, and if I’m sitting here long enough not working on music, it drives me insane.”

Thanks to his son, Harrod Blank, the filmmaker’s forty-year-old documentary on musician Leon Russell is finally released.
