Thursday, July 29, 2021

Friday, July 23, 2021

Tosh Berman's Liner Notes for Les Sewing Sisters' Album

 


Here is my liner notes for the debut Les Sewing Sisters' album "Les Sewing Sisters." Read it here: Tosh's Liner Notes for Les Sewing Sisters' album

Les Sewing Sisters' New Album "Les Sewing Sisters"

 


The new and the very first album by Les Sewing Sisters is released today. On all of your favorite streaming sites, but also here on Bandcamp. You can purchase and listen to this masterpiece digital album for $10. Buy it here:

Les Sewing Sisters Digital album

Monday, July 19, 2021

SPELLLING: The Turning Wheel (Sacred Bone)

 


Tosh Berman on SPELLLING's "The Turning Wheel" album. A remarkable work.




"BOLERO Sewing Machine" Lun*na Menoh highlights, de-fashion show + Les S...


this Maurice Ravel 's Bolero made by all sewing machine noise sampling. Lun*na Menoh is a Japanese born Renaissance artist who lives in Los Angeles. Her work deals with fashion, clothing and exposing the invisible thread between performance and fabric by making sculpturesque dresses, paintings, and a series of fashion shows with her conceptual but wearable outfits. she started creating music since early 2000. her most recent band is Les Sewing Sisters which is the first sewing machine band in the history.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Les Sewing Sisters's new album "Les Sewing Sisters"

 


Our new album is produced by Adam Lee Miller (ADULT.)!!
will be out July 23rd! @ band camp
About Streaming Live Show on July 30th

Buy "Sparks-Tastic" by Tosh Berman here!

 

In 2008, Tosh Berman—author and publisher of TamTam Books—got on a plane with a single motive: Sparks Spectacular. It had been announced that the band Sparks would perform all twenty-one of their albums in a succession of twenty-one nights in London...a monumental experience for any Sparks fanatic, which Tosh certainly is. Part travel journal, part personal memoir, Berman takes us through the streets of London and Paris, observing each city's history and culture through the eye of an obsessive Sparks fan. Including album-by-album reviews of all twenty-one shows and beyond, Sparks-Tastic defines a place and time in music history that's too defining to be ignored.  

Get the book here: 

Friday, July 16, 2021

Tosh Berman on Shaun Cassidy's "Wasp" (1980, Warner Brothers Records)

 


Tosh Berman on Shaun Cassidy's "Wasp." Made and recorded in 1980. But now reissued in 2021 for Record Store Day. 

Read it here!



The Needle Is Damaged by Les Sewing Sisters


here are no guitars, drums, synths - just voices and the beautiful sounds of the sewing machine fine-tuned via computer. new album- July 23rd @ band camp About Streaming Live Show on July 30th

Thursday, July 15, 2021

Book Musik (No. 50) Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall with guest Dave Ehrlich

 

Book Musik 050 – Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall with guest Dave Ehrlich

Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The FallTosh and Kimley discuss Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall (ed. by Tessa Norton & Bob Stanley) with special guest, number one fan of The Fall, Dave Ehrlich. We are neophytes to the forbidding and frankly overwhelming world of The Fall, so we’ve enlisted Dave to be our Sherpa. Dave’s been a super fan since the 80s and guides us through The Fall’s mysterious landscape. This is not a band for the faint of heart and their prodigious output means there’s some work to be done to explore their universe, but we’ve found that the rewards are more than worth it. We’re quickly becoming super fans as well.



Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Les Sewing Sisters Live from their closet via Moment House Friday July 30 7PM (Pacific Coast Time)

 


Les Sewing Sisters are Lun*na Menoh and Saori Mitome. On their upcoming self-titled debut, you hear noise from sewing machines fine-tuned via computer and the human voice. There are no guitars, drums, synths - just voices and the beautiful sound of the sewing machine.
Lun*na and Saori looked back to the industrial age when the sewing machine came into existence and looked onward to making the ‘now’ sound of Les Sewing Sisters.
Lun*na first started using her sewing machines as an instrument when she did a version of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero performed and premiered at the sold out Valaslavasay Panorama in 2016.
Les Sewing Sisters opened up for the band Sparks in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, they did the Les Sewing Sisters home tour, where they did 22 performances in people’s closet space.
On Friday July 30, you can virtually experience the band LIVE from their closet via Moment House!
Photos by Theo Rasmussen

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Subscribe to The World of Tosh Berman

 


Subscribe either for free, or by a paid subscrition to the World of Tosh Berman on substack. It is here I post my critical as well as fictional writings. And some memoir writings as well. Here: https://tosh.substack.com

Photo still from Anna Biller's film VIVA. Tosh Berman and his wife Lun*na is in this scene.

Friday, July 9, 2021

The World of Tosh Berman, Friday, July 9, 2021 (This Is Paradise, part six)

 


Tosh Berman's "This Is Paradise (part six)" and the last episode. Read it here:  

Tosh Berman's "This Is Paradise: part six"

"Terminal Boredom: Stories" by Izumi Suzuki

 


One of the more interesting new authors, at least for me, is Izumi Suzuki. A science-fiction author but also an actor in the Japanese pink film industry and worked with the great Shūji Terayama. She is also a muse of sort for the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. She commited suicide when she was 36-years old. A truly fascinating life. Her book, "Terminal Boredom: Stories (Verso) is a fascinating read.

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

ANNETTE - PRESS CONFERENCE - CANNES 2021 - EV


What can I say?  I love everyone here. 

Les Sewing Sisters - Fashionable Nonsense (Official Video)


The new Les Sewing Sisters video "Fashionable Nonsense" which is off their first album "Les Sewing Sisters." There's great and then there is something beyond great. Les Sewing Sisters rule! https://youtu.be/XZ_BeD2_rQ8

Sheree Rose & Tosh Berman in conversation


Performer and photographer Sheree Rose freaks forth with thoughts on poetic restraints, sadomasochism, love’s lasting impact, and artistic collaboration within the Beyond Baroque scene throughout her life spent with poet and artist Bob Flanagan. This program is part of a series, Beyond Baroque and Beyond, in which Tosh Berman, writer, poet, Los Angeles publisher of the postwar French literati, and beloved host of the 1980s cable talk show Tea With Tosh, returns to the screen to confabulate with figures from the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center’s haunted hallways. Summoned to Berman’s virtual sofa are a host of poetic voices, each of whom have been central to the center’s programs at a point between 1980 and 1996. Not merely interviews, Beyond Baroque and Beyond is equal parts séance, chat show, reunion, literary production, past life regression, tea time. No nostalgia. In conjunction with the exhibition Made in L.A. 2020: a version. This is a recording of a program broadcast live on June 29, 2021.

Friday, July 2, 2021

Playlist for Jack Skelley's "Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson" (Book Musik)

 


Jack Skelley's magnificent little book "Dennis Wilson and Charllie Manson" is the subject matter for the recent episode of BOOK MUSIK, with Jack as a guest. We also put together a playlist of deep (really deep) cuts from Dennis and his Beach Boys, as well as some Charlie/Terry Melcher/Bruce Johnson into the mix. You can hear it here:


Thursday, July 1, 2021

Jack Skelley, David Trinidad & Tosh Berman in conversation


I had a wonderful chat with the poets/publishers David Trinidad and Jack Skelley.  The focus of our talks was on Beyond Baroque during the time when Dennis Cooper and Benjamin Weissman were program directors.  Incredible people such as Ed Smith, Amy Gerstler, Sheree Rose, Bob Flanagan, Jim Krusoe, and others become part of the narration that ook place at Beyond Baroque.  

Tosh Berman on The Specials's "Ghost Town E.P."

 


Tosh Berman on "Ghost Town EP" by The Specials. Read it here: 

Tosh on The Specials's "Ghost Town"

BOOK MUSIK #49 "Dennis Wilson and Charlie Manson" discussion with author Jack Skelley

 


Tosh and Kimley are joined by author Jack Skelley to discuss his new book DENNIS WILSON AND CHARLIE MANSON. How did fun-loving, handsome surfer-dude and famous Beach Boy drummer Dennis Wilson become entangled with the creepy, dark, murderous cult leader Charlie Manson? As we all know, there are two sides to every coin and Skelley takes the real-life intersection of these two men as well as the pop culture of the era and those around them as its jumping off point to explore the high and low, the dark and the light in this stunningly poetic, strikingly illustrated chapbook.

Here:  BOOK MUSIK with Jack Skelley