Gridlines: Let's Rock

Gridlines is our recurring feature about the world of visual arts, performing arts, media arts, and beyond. We’re talking about the latest and greatest (and less-than-greatest) happenings—what’s grabbing our attention, bringing us joy, piquing our curiosity, and otherwise making us stop and take note. Today’s Gridlines come from Jennifer Wray, Wex marketing & media assistant.

We're going back in time with today's Gridlines. Image: Universal/Everett Collection

I’m a big fan of Movies in Color, a website featuring film stills and their corresponding color palettes. Visit the site to see past Wex movies including 2001: A Space Odyssey, 12 Years a Slave, Bernie, My Own Private Idaho, Princess Mononoke, and The Royal Tenenbaums in a whole new light.

• Somehow I missed Yo La Tengo’s 2009 video for “Nothing to Hide,” shot at Columbus’s own Lost Weekend Records, and featuring members of Times New Viking playing the roles of Ira, Georgia, and James. I’m happy to say the Wex connections run deep—the venerable Yo La Tengo was here in 2012 with filmmaker Sam Green for the “live documentary” The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller. (Green himself returns on November 1 as part of Picture Lock.) For its part, Times New Viking has thrice played our Next@Wex series. (Yes, I said “thrice.”) Most recently, the now-defunct band’s drummer, Adam Elliott, could be found in conversation elsewhere on our blog discussing his creative practice, memorable Wex moments, and his participation in the recent Wex-supported Wild Goose initiative #wildartcolumbus.
• In more “small world” news, an eagle-eyed colleague (and fellow fan of all things Merge Records—which was, incidentally, once home to Times New Viking) noticed that a work by Amy Sillman appearing in our exhibition After Picasso is on loan from Merge co-owner Mac McCaughan and wife Andrea Reusing. McCaughan sang Sillman’s praises in Magnet and used another of her works on the cover of his band Portastatic’s album Some Small History.
• Confession: I first knew Penelope Spheeris as the director of the SNL sketch-spinoff classic Wayne’s World. Little did I know her music-world roots went far beyond Wayne and Garth—Spheeris also directed The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), which looked at the LA punk scene and included live performances by the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X, as well as its subsequent follow-ups, which chronicled at LA’s heavy metal (The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II, The Metal Years) and gutter punk (The Decline of Western Civilization: Part III) scenes. Spheeris visits the Wex Friday to introduce the original Decline film; the rest of the trilogy screens Sunday afternoon. Be sure to check out CD102.5 jock Brian Phillips’s interview with Spheeris and daughter Anna Fox, who teamed up to restore the classic works.
• More music nostalgia: PopSugar on “The Albums Every Alt-Girl Owned in the ‘90s” (including a solid Spotify playlist, per this member of the Class of ’96).
• This weekend, look for the Wex at HighBall, the Short North’s two-day costume party extravaganza, which this year focuses on the King of Pop with a Michael Jackson-themed public costume contest and a performance by the tribute band Who’s Bad.
• Speaking of MJ, check out this cameo (of sorts—a Jackson impersonator performing with his OK) in Back to the Future II's "Cafe '80s."
• Oh, yeah: Happy Back to the Future Day!