The music has a theme this week.
This series of illustrations by Angela Hao is lovely. Many of these are real places, and have Google Street View references alongside the art.
She will teach you how she does it for $160, or sell prints to you for $25.
The Vault of the Atomic Space Age.
Joe Kanno of Tokyo makes small sculptures of neglected automobiles. They sell for $150, plus shipping.
New music: Babawa Orun by Samson Olawale. (Record label or Spotify or YouTube). “Iroko” Olawale, Afrobeat percussionist and “liner-note legend,” has a new record deal and a groovy single.
New music: Backbeat by Haywood. (Instagram or Spotify or YouTube). Australian pop star (circa 2000-2001), occasional background singer, and big time pop songwriter and producer Leah Haywood is out to make a new name for herself, to wit: just “Haywood”.
Modern pop songwriting lesson from a master here: The hook goes up front. If you’ve written a song like this one, where that doesn’t make sense structurally, just shout out the catchiest part of the chorus right away and then go into your first verse.
Old music: Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell (1968). (Spotify or YouTube). By this time, Glen was the kind of artist The Wrecking Crew backed, but just a few years earlier, he was one of them, an elite studio guitarist.
-Thomas