Hasta La Ideas

Painting, jazz and poetry in a trialogue between David Breskin, Nels Cline and Ed Ruscha

“Dirty Baby,” a music project joining guitarist and composer Nels Cline (of Wilco fame) and poet David Breskin, “recontextualizes” American artist Ed Ruscha’s “censor strips” (artworks that depict the black marks used to censor documents). The resulting album and art book represents an aural and visual conversation between the three men and a load of talented musicians.

Dirty Baby the album drops 12 October 2010, but people in L.A. will be treated to a spectacular release party on 7 October 2010 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as part of the Angel City Jazz Festival. Cline will perform, Breskin will recite poems Ruscha will project images, and after the concert all three will sign the beautifully-packaged “Dirty Baby” CD and
art book of the same name (published by Prestel).

The book, the size and shape of an LP, pairs gorgeous reproductions of Ruscha’s images with Breskin’s ghazals (a tightly-structured, ancient Arabic form) and includes the four-CD set, two of which are the slow, twangy Jazz improvisations by Cline. (You can order the book from
Amazon or Prestel.)

The L.A. show will be held at LACMA’s Bing Theater, and while admission to the event is free it’s highly recommended to RSVP to info [at] angelcityjazz [dot] com.

Images copyright Ed Ruscha 2010