vklynne

[vklynne]

The Spider Accomplice - Oil Meets Rain 

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(via https://open.spotify.com/artist/4Ty1YR1n1tN81XVI2gDVFG)

[vklynne]

New song from The Spider Accomplice 

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The Spider Accomplice, sponsored by Coldcock Whiskey, releases part 2 of their trilogy entitled Los Angeles: The Abduction. 

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Calico Concrete by The Spider Accomplice

[vklynne]

[vklynne]

Singer, scribe, alternative model, and occasional actor, VK has some balls in the air.

[vklynne]

#ThrowbackThursday- Fly Your (Black) Flag

Fly Your (Black) Flag.

We all have those things that we just dig in an idiosyncratic way, that delight us and cause us to bounce and clap like a toddler at Christmas.

I unapologetically feel this way about late M*A*S*H episodes (the ones that Alan Alda directed when Hawkeye got so evocatively existential you wanted the Korean War to last forever), early Marillion (no disrespect to Mr. Hogarth, but FISH- come on!), Russian novels (Nabokov makes my synapses tingle in an I-may-go-insane-from-this-book-but-what-a-way-to-go kind of way), pumpkin bread (NUTMEG DRIZZLE- that's all I'm saying), pinatas (filled with the good candy...read-chocolate) and Henry Rollins.

What I love about Henry is what I loved about my ex-fiance (wow, that lands like a bomb, doesn't it?). He has a FUCKING OPINION. Sometimes he's dead wrong, but at least he has the balls to put it out there, without diplomacy, and HAVE it.

(Unfortunately for my former boyfriend, one of his opinions was that his girlfriend shouldn't have a BRAIN in her head, but merely be an ornament. He was vexed to find otherwise.

  Aw.

  So I changed his name to Ex.

  This displeased him as well.

  Sniff.)

Regardless of his new moniker, I always did respect the hell out of Ex's nearly Ted Nugent-like capacity to maintain an unpopular stance in the face of MASSIVE disagreement.

Henry not only does that...but he backs it up with a healthy dose of intellect- and not a small dollop of passion.

It's something we are losing in this world of social-networking-gang-mentality where unsanctioned ideas that conflict with the group view are quickly squashed...along with the renegade thinker.

Agree with us?  We will smother you in a suffusion of cyber-love, 'Likes', 'RT's' and coveted '#FF's'.

Disagree with us? You will be maligned, bullied, stalked, blocked, blighted from the Face of the Book unable able to make another Tweet.

(I couldn't resist...Relax- it's all in good pun.)

Many have lost sight of the 'social' in 'social networking'. By definition, it indicates that more than one person will be voicing his or her ideas, and ostensibly, you signed on because you'd like to hear them. If you don't want to hear a particular voice- well, much like the television, change the channel. But if you only want to hear your OWN voice...then there's a bigger issue.

Suddenly, a survival of the fittest, strongest, loudest or meanest climate turns what began as a forum for healthy debate into a junior high school bathroom.

Replace Henry Rollins with @NamelessDude34, and ascribe to him some of the things the Black Flag prophet has said...? He wouldn't last a day online.

We may feel victorious when we silence a voice, an opinion, a person who we felt was "wrong". But what if WE were wrong? And when we realize that, what if we have nothing left but...

...Silence?

[vklynne]

<3 TY! 

Womens In Metal.

1.Tarja 

2. Clémentine Delauney (Serenity, Visions of Atlantis)

3. VK Lynne

4. Sharon Den Adel (Whitin Temptation)

5. Marcela Bovio (Stream Of Passion)

6. Sanna Salou (Dimlight)

7. Charlotte Wessels (Delain)

8. Mariangela Demurtas (Tristania)

9. Laura Vargas (Sacramento)

10. Ailyn Gimenez (Sirenia)

[vklynne]

Visionary Villains:

Over the last week or so since U2 injected our iTunes with their new musical effort, there’s been all sorts of strident indignation bandied about the internet about privacy, piracy, pomp and circumstance.

Some of it is not without merit; it is disconcerting that we now can have content ‘gifted’ to us compulsorily, but, if we are honest, we’ve most likely already given up greater securities than that every time we’ve hit ‘agree’ to the terms and conditions of most of our apps.

However, the most ludicrous argument that I’ve heard for the public lynching of Paul Hewson is that “U2 has devalued music.”  They most decidedly have not.

Now I know it might be hard to hear me all the way back there in 1986, so I’ll speak loudly. ILLEGAL FILESHARING DEVALUED MUSIC. Early Napster, and those of its ilk, forcibly took a very real measure of music’s monetary value from artists. And we’ve been trying to get it back ever since.

You may remember a little band back in 2007 that gave away its ‘In Rainbows’. Or a symbolically named musician who tucked 2 million copies of his newest effort into the Sunday paper.  The concept of giving away music is NOT NEW.  (The difference this time was that rather than the music being offered, it was foisted. And this, YES, is a legitimate complaint. But that’s another article.)

So to indicate that U2 has devalued music by simply following a model that’s been in effect for at least the LAST 7 YEARS is simply wrong-headed and ill-informed.

It’s the battle cry of the crochety that arises every time an artist or band takes this tack. Apparently, the only acceptable way for musicians to handle the shift in the current musical climate is to stamp their feet, bitch and moan about the unfairness of it all, and attack everyone who doesn’t agree. In fact, label executives are counting on our impotent anger and ultimate inertia.

Meanwhile, savvy survivalists realize that you either change with the times or you get left behind. It’s no coincidence that the artists who’ve employed these measures have had long careers, during which they’ve evolved as entertainers and marketers.

Because make no mistake- to be a successful musician today, you must be a successful marketer.  Hiding from social media, sticking your head in the sand, and waiting for a return to the days of a big label coming along to make you a “star, baby” is the quickest way to get nowhere.

The artist today has two choices in the battle against piracy. Offensive or defensive.

Nearly every working musician knows the frustration of recording a CD, planning the release, and then having a zillion bitorrent links to it pop up seconds before it’s released. 

As soon as that happens, you become a victim. The defensive choice is prevalent: Spend time sending takedown notices, encouraging fans to buy from approved sites, and whining on Facebook to other sympathetic musicians and fans about how “the industry sucks” now.

You can see how that is an exercise in futility and negativity. Trying to ‘stop’ bitorrent sites is like playing whack-a-mole, and it eats up time when you should be MAKING MUSIC.  And spending all your time complaining about the state of the world only makes you sulky, bitter and unpleasant to be around.

When you KNOW what the outcome will be, continue in the same fashion anyway, and are shocked at the predictable results…? Well, some might say that’s a paraphrase of the definition of lunacy.

The artists who so many decry are taking the OFFENSIVE choice. They aren’t going to sit back passively and let something be DONE TO THEM. They know the same old song, and so they’re changing the tune. Are their rewrites always hits? No. But they’re at least attempts at moving forward instead of wallowing and stagnating in the past. 

Anyone can bang on about problems. A visionary finds solutions. And any road to success will be fraught with side streets of failure. That’s not a reason to stay home.

So if you want to hate U2, Radiohead, Prince or Metallica, there are certainly arguable reasons to do so. But ‘devaluing music’ isn’t one of them. They are simply trying to take back for the artist what’s been stolen. Do they know exactly how to do that yet? No.

But dammit, isn’t it worth it to keep trying?

[vklynne]

Green?

Many of you know that I also do 'alternative modeling'. What is that? Well, it's less "saunter down a catwalk in 5 inch heels" and more "Hey, let's get an air brush machine and paint you green!" :P

First image from one such shoot by Hannah Verbeuren Photography:

#DontMakeMeAngry #AndYourLittleDogToo

[vklynne]

Saideth: Tail of A Star

[vklynne]

Steps

My blood is dirty.

I drag out.

Past my anger and apprehension,

2 steps.

To the neighbor’s house with a bottle of Manischewitz,

Sorry for the noise.

He smiles. 

12 steps.

Past the razor wire and the liquor store,

Head down, dial the phone,

“Mom, I ate today.”

25 steps.

The front door.

My hippie church, slip in.

A place where pink hair can go unnoticed.

Listen. Breath.

  My blood is busy.

I step back out.

Past the past. It’s a present.

2 steps.

Facebook says, “VK is alive.”

Yes, Lord.

  Headphones, I smile.

13 steps.

Back past the razor wire and the jacaranda tree.

Inbox, “They want to be in your skin”.

Fuck my skin, here’s my veins.

  Back home.

Bleed out.

  The beat goes on.

[vklynne]

#FlashbackFriendFriday-

Listening to Tarja & Sharon’s duet on Hydra last night, I was reminded of how fortunate I was to sing with some of my favorite female voices in metal on the Vita Nova record. Not simply contemporaries, these women were and are Eve’s Apple sisters and friends. On every single track (save one- the aptly titled ‘Alone’) I had the privilege of sharing songspace with someone whom distance might have separated from me, but music united.

Kerstin Bischof, Gogo Melone, Grace Meridan, Helen Vogt, Iliana Tsakiraki and Maxi Nil

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/vita-nova/id726324230

[vklynne]

My Horizon

It is key to understanding this entrapment- this sentence within the fleshy jail of mortality- to realize that we cannot change the bars or the walls, or the height from the floor of the small, solitary window in the corner. We cannot choose whether it is placed on the east or the west side, and so some of us are condemned to continually and gloomily watch the sun set, while others seem to be perpetually and cheerily greeting the morning.

My twilight view is reflected in the colors of my fancies: purple, blue, pink; dusky tones that evoke nostalgia, reflection, melancholy. My western window provides the backdrop for my solitary musings that overflow into these lines.

I have attempted to see the sunrise.  Awoken at preternatural hours within my soul to strain my eyes from the farthest angle of the cold sill, only to cause peripheral ache and weary darkness to send me, frustrated, back to bed.

And so acceptance comes. I decorate my cell with wildly drawn aspects; I deck the unbending casement with blousy linen, and I drink in the spectacle of the sinking solar sphere with greater and greater attention to its details.  I learn what its waning radiance has to teach, that I may perhaps mold the lessons into scraps of wisdom that offer comforts, however rudimentary, to the other inmates along my horizontal plane, and education to our neighbors on the eastern wing.

Sunset on this day’s dream. That I may dream a new one tomorrow.

(Photo image by Drake Mefessta)