BlackBook Magazine

Last week we featured an interview with MGMT's Andrew VanWyngarden about his August 14 appearance on the Sundance Channel's Live From Abbey Road. In keeping with our insatiable infatuation with the Bealtes' famed studio and those who inhabit it, here's The Kills' guitarist (and Kate Moss paramour) Jamie Hince on what it was like performing in within those hallowed sound-proof walls, the origin of his and singer Alison Mosshart's off-kilter pseudonyms, and the trouble with overexposure.

What last night’s Bubble Q at ICON in the W The Court Hotel lacked in barbecue, it made up for in bubbly. The gathering was small, low-key, and ultra-chic, with champagne, exotic fruit cocktails, and trays of creative morsels on plastic spoons -- the lobster risotto and the tomato puff pastries made me want to kidnap chef Michael Wurster, who I hear is sort of new ‘round these parts, but an extremely welcome addition to the ICON clan. A native New Yorker, Wurster expertly pleases our urban palates while still keepin’ it creative. Sushi tuna on a strawberry slice with “mojito bubbles”, anybody?

Saul Williams couldn’t make it to last night's S.O.B.'s, so he sent Niggy Tardust in his place. Saul’s inventive and controversial character, the basis of his new album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, took the stage clad in sparkly war paint and feathers in front of a large painted backdrop. While the band all wore feathers as well, they maintained distinct personae, with touches like Willy Wonka shades and indescribably sculptured hair. “All I tell the band members," says Saul "is, ‘you know that thing you’ve always wanted to do? Go there.’ We’re on a stage, which is an elevated platform above the audience. They don’t need you to be onstage acting like you fit in with the audience.” And as far as his own costume, he explains, "Before I go onstage I’m looking in the mirror trying to not recognize myself. So I keep adding until I don’t see Saul. And when I no longer see Saul I know Niggy’s present.”

For the past decade bookstores and movie theaters have been Rowling this, Radcliffe that. But a new word sorceress has emerged from the darkness. So now, let there be Twilight. Stephanie Meyer's teenage vampire saga is already a mega-success (the third installment knocked Harry from the number one spot, the final one is released next month), and studio execs are hoping this bloodlust trickles into theaters, when the adaptation hits screens this December. So high is the anticipation, that Entertainment Weekly just featured the film on its cover, officially launching Twilight mania. In a refreshingly candid interview, Michael Welch, one of the film's young stars, reveals how he was cast in the film, why if it tanks it's not his fault, and the big secret behind the acting business.

Shen Shaomin is a brilliant and accomplished artist from China with a resume of solo shows scattered throughout Asia and Australia. His newest show, his first in the New York, debuted last night at the Eli Klein Fine Art Gallery in SoHo, where you can find it until August 21st. His art is coexisting with an exhibit by Zhang Dali, another Chinese contemporary artist and a friend of Shaomin’s. Both men have been called two of the most influential Chinese artists of their generation. When we first meet the strong, canvas hat-and-vest clad man, who makes art from rabbit skulls and bone meal, we are a little intimidated. But his presence is as warm as it is fierce. After marveling at the nearest bonsai wrapped in wires and pulleys, we head to the back room to sit down with the artist and his translator.

Try crowning the fashion capital of the world -- cases can be made for London, Milan, Paris, or New York. But a collaboration between Karl Lagerfeld and a Dubai developer is looking to seal the deal for the burgeoning emirate. With a little help from Lagerfeld, "Isla Moda" will literally serve as the fashion capital of The World. One of the islands in Dubai’s global-replica island chain will feature a collection of 80 “limited edition” homes designed by Lagerfeld. Say hello to haute real estate. “Isla Moda has tremendous potential to be the style icon of the future," says Lagerfeld, "and I intend on driving the island to high style stardom.”

Sundance Channel’s "Live From Abbey Road" series is once again allowing great artists to come together, right now. The show features live performances and interviews taped in the famed recording studio, so we regular-folk can see these artists in their element, performing in the comfort of a professional studio without an audience. Season two, which premiered last week, is off to a strong start; tonight will feature BRIT award winner/indie-pop songstress Kate Nash, jazz pianist and Academy Award winner Herbie Hancock, and six-time ACM winning country trio, Rascal Flatts.

Tori Amos, that schizophrenic sorceress of song, has officially gone independent. Over the past three years, her last three albums were released on Epic, and before that spent nearly a decade with Atlantic. Amos, advises other musicians to “stop being dependent, dependent on any system that has become undependable.” Wait, does this mean she's like, indie?

Rock & Roll is not dead. It’s just been on one really long bender. From surly looking prophet to looking too surely profit, in the past decade or so, Bob Dylan has disheartened us with such horrific stunts as Victoria’s Secret commercials and piano-based tours. Meanwhile, Anthony Kiedis announced after the completion of Stadium Arcadium, that the Chili Peppers were disbanding for at least the next year because of the intensity of basically throwing all their energy into three consecutive albums with no time to breathe along the way. Well, rock & roll fans, you too can breathe a sigh of relief.
Kiedis has signed on to curate American Eagle Outfitters’ two-day New American Union Music Festival in the streets of the working-man-grit-meets-starving-artist capital of the Northeast: Pittsburgh, PA.

The year is 1988. Kate Moss has just been discovered and will soon join the ranks of such supermodels as Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista. Fashion, however neon-and-spandex laden it may be, is represented by uniquely beautiful women trained to strut, smile, and pose their hearts out. Magazine covers, drugstore makeup ads, couture ads, television commercials—the supermodel rules all. They represent and epitomize glamour and chic, and why not? It’s their job, after all.

While these women are not the first supermodels—just ask Janice Dickinson—theirs will later be referred to as “the era of the supermodel,” “the trinity,” “the union.” They are supermodels perfected, following in the stiletto-clad footsteps of Twiggy, Cheryl Tiegs, Beverly Johnson, and before them Lisa Fonssagrives. Moss will become revolutionary in no time, becoming the shortest model to do runway and the face of the heroin-chic movement that will make the 1990s as seedy-glam as any scene out of Warhol’s factory. Over the next two decades she will represent Calvin Klein, Chanel, Rimmel, Burberry, a top-shelf model representing top-shelf designers.