JB. Magazine

Michael Kevin Geoff — Show at HVW8 in LA (all pics by Simone Rubi)

The Exclusive Correspondent From the West Coast — Simone Rubi
I am very happy to welcome Simone Rubi from Santa Barbara for being the first real guest writer on JB. Magazine. Simone is this very likeable person and a multi-talented artist, supplied by the sun in the Golden State of California while breathing some fresh Pacific air … She sometimes is a graphic designer or a breakfast cook for fun, cuts your hair, is an occasional exquisite food journalist and a band: Rubies, the band for “danceable folk, homemade disco, and lost love laments”. My friend Maschat has been on a Europe tour with them, they always borrow a drummer, and he is the tightest drummer on earth and part of The Whitest Boy Alive.

But here is what she was approaching me with: Simone sent me some pictures of an exhibition opening at HVW8, Los Angeles she attended a couple of weeks ago. The show is hosting some of JB.’s most favourite artists: Michael, Kevin & Geoff. Read her short report of this show, that actually “wasn’t that mind-blowing” as expected …

Simone:”Here are the interesting and kinda crappy shots from my iPhone from the Geoff show in LA a couple weeks ago. It was overall a fun opening with free Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (something we all drank a lot of in high school. The cheap skater party beer…) and the DJ, Danny Holloway, who makes mixes for Dublab, and is an old time producer and music journalist. The show itself wasn’t that mind-blowing, it was more of the fact they went to art school together, so it was a show of three friends hanging some of their new stuff on the walls. Actually it had been the works of Kevin Lyons who made the most fun that night.



This is me and Geoff, I would love to work on a project together in the near future. Something involving moving graphics that is both clever and hilarious. On the left: one of his prints.

It had this super casual vibe and reminded me of the certain style of socializing that used to go down at college skater parties or shows. But not the slacker skaters, the skaters that you knew were art nerds and played in jazz trios and secretly listened to the beach boys and punk, along with dub, reggae, and house. I remember the parties that started happening in Santa barbara during my senior year of high school when someone would get a call at midnight and we ended up at some house near the university that had rad DJ’s from Detroit or LA pumping melodic house music through all the bedrooms of a skater co-op house. These guys are all grown up and making art now and have kids that make you feel like starting over, they’re that cool.



Kevin Lyons



Kevin Lyons



Kevin Lyons all over …



Michael Leon



Geoff McFetridge He also did for example all the stuff for The Whitest Boy Alive and recently the types and different designs for Spike Jonze’s movie Where The Wild Things Are



These are my friends, Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene and actor Cillian Murphy (who just starred in Kevin’s first short film that he directed set to the song by Feist ‘The Water’) – who were with me that night too.“

We hope to hear more from Simone soon as she will be in San Francisco until the end of the year. Just saw a video of her guest singing with Peter, Bjorn & John last weekend. Aloe Blacc, who I once interviewed together with DJ Exile for JB., has also been on stage. This is where it happens …