There’ll be a memorial for Jerry Fuchs, drumming prodigy and marvelous human who died early Sunday morning in a freak accident, this Thursday evening from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Enid’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Enid’s was one of Jerry’s old haunts and will be an appropriate spot to say goodbye. Below the jump, a roundup of Jerry-related awesomeness from yesterday.

A piece from Access Atlanta that mentions that Jerry was named “Friendliest” at Walton High in Marietta, Ga.

Some icky but necessary nitty-gritty on his death from the Daily News.

Way too many great photos his friends posted on Facebook through the day. Here are a couple of my faves.

Somewhere in Europe with the Juan MacLean, I think. From Starrett Zenko.

From Treiops Treyfid

It’s really too bad this one’s not bigger (author unclear)

From Jayson Green

Also there was this, from the great Kylie Wright.

I’m writing this for a completely selfish reason; to make it easier to bear the loss of a friend. It’s been a while since I actually set eyes on Jerry in person, and now in a big cosmic nihilistic joke I’ve lost the opportunity to ever do so.

The irony is that a few days ago I stumbled on some youtube videos of Jerry playing, and made my husband watch them too. I was thinking I really ought to call him and see how he’s doing. Note to self: DON”T WAIT ON THESE THINGS OR IT MAY BE TOO LATE.

So all I can do now is recall things about our time together.
I met Jerry when I joined the band Vineland in 1996. He scared me he was so good, but he wasn’t an asshole about it.In fact he’s probably one of the most humble guys I’ve ever met in the rock-legend department. He always tried to find the admirable thing about the other person. He could be really funny and sarcastic but he wasn’t snarky.
I remember that tour that we did with Vineland in 96; while I think we all had some rough times,I also remember feeling on top of the world when I got to play with Jerry, like we were the heaviest, baddest rhythm section of all time. Well, Jerry was the heavy one, I was just along for the ride but what a ride it was.
I remember one evening spent at his family’s house when we were on tour. It was a sweet, suburban break from what had been the usual relentless sleeping on floors, driving and loading equipment, and we were sitting in the living room watching TV. An Adam Sandler movie came on, and Jerry was like “Yeah! I LOVE Adam Sandler!” He was so enthusiastic about what he liked.

He laughed like whatever it was was the funniest moment in history.

He liked crossword puzzles.

I feel bad that I teased him cause he liked Seal. It just seemed so incongruous to me but that was Jerry.

After Vineland kind of combusted, I formed another band with a couple of long time collaborators, and was amazed that Jerry agreed to play with us. He was also playing in at least 2 other bands at the time, but this is another thing about Jerry:he never seemed to feel the need to parcel out his talent. He loved playing, and was happy to do it.

One time we were walking to practice together; our rehearsal space was down near the Williamsburg bridge, only a few blocks from where his life was so cruelly cut short. I was kidding him on being the god of drums, and how he should get a crown. “A cape will do just fine” he countered. It made me laugh to envision him in a cape. With his obligatory waffle long underwear shirt underneath it.

I moved to Astoria,and we didn’t talk as much but he’d still remember to call or email me on my birthday, which touched me. We both had the unfortunate birthday dates right around the new year,and had commiserated on what a lousy birthday time it was. There was always something of the kid in Jerry; I can imagine him thinking how much it sucked to have a birthday right after Xmas and getting re-gifts.

I still have a record he gave me: Rain Forest by Walter Wanderly. I’m playing it right now. It’s a Boss Nova classic, which just goes to show how broad Jerry’s taste was. It’s a happy record. I’m glad to have this little bit of him to hold onto. I miss him dearly, and hope his family is holding up in these dark days. Jerry, you’ll always be in my heart, and my yardstick to measure drummers up to.
XOX
Kylie

Koen VanMechelen loves chickens. Live chickens, stuffed chickens, videos of chickens, paintings made with egg tempera. Saturday night at Conner Contemporary, VanMechelen’s “Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (DC)” opens; it’ll run to Dec. 31. According to the press release, the Belgian artist is “systematically crossing all breeds of chickens to create a world-mongrel chicken.”

Dave Smalley is the most Advanced man to come out of the ’80s hardcore scene.

A beacon of Boston straight edge with DYS, he was later singer for D.C.’s Dag Nasty, then All, then…I kinda drifted away from his career after that(God, I’m a moron; how could I forget Down by Law?). Until 2004, when Smalley emerged as a leading voice (OK, one of the only voices) of “conservative punk,” which was really just libertarianism I’m fairly certain. ANYWAY, Smalley is now a newspaper editor in Fredericksburg, Va., and occasionally still does music, such as the single by Pocket that hit YouTube this week.

In it, you can see Smalley wearing sunglasses indoors as well as a cowboy hat. There is an American flag on the wall. Plus flames. All these things point to Advancement, but none so much as the fact that this is electronic music. For Smalley to go the Propellerheads route in 2009 is not only Advanced, it’s museum-worthy. For the song to be good—well, that’s just lagniappe!

I got in touch with Smalley about this; he can’t do an interview till next week. But I am not gonna let this story die!

Ann Powers, meet Ann Powers.

Ann Powers, you were the subject of a good profile by Ylan Q. Mui in the Oct. 11 Washington Post Magazine. Your real name is Jayne Lytel, and you chose your blogger handle by mashing together your middle name and your grandmother’s maiden name.

Ann Powers, you are the rock critic for the Los Angeles Times, a writer so prized by your employer that you have kept your job despite having recently relocated to Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Ann Powers the rock critic, who I soooorta know—I have met her and used to work with her husband at Spin—wasn’t jazzed about the existence of Ann Powers the blogger. “I know Ann Powers is a fairly common name,” she writes in an e-mail, “and apparently the blogger in question has a legitimate claim to it…but still…..it seems like an odd choice.”

Or maybe not, Ann Powers the rock critic continues, “given the possible Google hits for someone using a name — mine — that’s already all over the Internet and which is associated with often-searched subject like Michael Jackson and ‘American Idol’ and other things pop.”

I’ve called and e-mailed Ann Powers the blogger for comment but she hasn’t replied. I’ll update when/if she does!“I’d never heard of her before,” says Lytel of the Times‘ Powers. “I was just so excited to have a name that meant something to me.”

In an e-mail, Mui says she came across Ann Powers the rock critic’s name when first researching Lytel’s blog, and that she’s surprised the rock critic “even read it! But not sure why it would be relevant to list the coincidence. It doesn’t strike me as a very uncommon or unlikely name.”

For some writers, the odds of someone with the same byline popping up are roughly the same as Michael Pollan joining the board of Monsanto. The Washington Post’s J. Freedom du Lac is known as Josh du Lac to his friends (a group that includes this writer, who is confident his own byline is safe from blogger incursion). The fancy byline, du Lac says in an IM, came because an assistant sports editor at the Sacramento Bee, where he was an intern in 1993, “knew my middle name was Freedom – kept calling me that – kept telling me to use it in my byline….Eventually, after I got hired on, I decided to just change it.”

Mui, who has a rather excellent byline as well, says she uses a middle initial not to distinguish herself from another Ylan Mui—even among other people of Vietnamese descent, she says, her name is”pretty unusual”—but because “my name means something all together, so I don’t want to drop any part of it! But sometimes editors or whoever forget to stick it in. I’m not too fussy about it but do prefer it!”

But even if your name is statistically more probable than “J. Freedom du Lac” (”Ann Powers,” for instance), you may have a claim against someone operating in the same field, says Alice Neff Lucan, an expert in media law whose name is also marvelous. She points to Chapter 1, Section 106a of the Copyright Law of the United States, which says the author of a work of visual art “shall have the right…to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work of visual art which he or she did not create.” “Visual art” does not include an “electronic publication,” however, a definition Lucan says she doesn’t trust.

If a blog could be considered a work of art, this possibility is raised, Lucan says (remember, Ann Powers the rock critic is a blogger as well). There’s also “the tort of false light invasion of privacy,” Lucan says. If a court were to find that Ann Powers the blogger’s blog cast Ann Powers the rock critic in an unfavorable light, Ann Powers the rock critic may have a case. “I don’t think that’s a slam-dunk case,” Lucan cautions.

Not that Ann Powers the rock critic is particularly inclined to pursue legal remedy. She says that she thought Girl on the Brink was “close to home,” so she put it to her Facebook friends. Some “thought maybe I should take action, but…most were like, no big deal.”

“I don’t know if it’s a big deal,” she says.

Lytel says that since the profile ran, not much has changed for her professionally. “There’s a lot of guys who’ve come out of the woodwork offering to buy me a drink—or more,” she says. “But I still don’t have a full time job or a book deal.”

But if you got a book deal, I ask her, what name would your book come out under?

Lytel, who says she’s sent her agent a copy of the Post story but hasn’t followed up, says, ” I would lean toward using Ann Powers because I’ve branded the name with Girl On the Brink, and I’d want to extend the brand beyond the blog.”

Her death also helped trigger Salerian’s most recent artistic impulse, the more than 100 paintings he’s done about President Kennedy. That, and the death of Salerian’s friend Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor who was assassinated in early 2007.

“I’m not a painter,” Salerian says in the offices of the Washington Center for Psychiatry, where his paintings adorn most of the public surfaces—the foyer, the reception desk, two reception rooms. There are 38 paintings on view here, and Salerian has plans for an exhibit of his complete JFK oeuvre at a different venue to coincide with the 46th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22. “I do Kennedy research. I began investigating his life, and the discoveries I made profoundly affected me and depressed me,” he says.

Salerian read more than 180 works on Kennedy, says Rebecca McClellan, who helped Salerian organize the exhibition and named many of the paintings.

“I stopped my JFK research, and then magically, I started painting,” Salerian says. “After 35 or 40 of them I vented my soul and felt free.”

Salerian has since published a paper that he says proves that the JFK autopsy was a fake. The official story of Kennedy’s assassination, he says, is “for children. That’s a kids’ story I will not even tell my kids.”

The Zapruder film, Salerian says, is fraudulent, too. Pointing to a painting based on a frame from it, he says that the colors are still really nice in it. A friend has told him he’d hang this one in his house.

Loyalty, another painting from a Zapruder image, shows Jackie Kennedy clambering over the presidential limousine post-shots, gathering pieces of the president’s brains. Salerian, who was a 16-year-old in Istanbul at the time of the assassination, does not like to pick a favorite painting—”They’re all my babies,” he says—but this one is special to him. “That was the first one,” he says.

Several of Salerian’s paintings depict a spiritual connection between Kennedy and President Obama. “Not to be divisive but to integrate and unite,” he says. “That to me is the Kennedy spirit.”

“Did you hear that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?” McClellan asks him.

“They should give it to Kennedy,” Salerian says.

“Magnificent Journey,” the exhibition of Salerian’s Kennedy paintings, is on view Saturdays and Sundays from 1 p.m to 5 p.m., to Oct. 25 at the Washington Center for Psychiatry, 5225 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Free. 202-244-9000, ext. 300.

Image at top: Loyalty, by Alen Salerian, 2008

2) Parks are the very essence of democracy. Somehow.

3) Parks are good for your soul, and our commitment to preserving them makes us way more democratic and special than Europeans.

4) John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt were in love.

Points 1-3 are made about 12 times per hour by people with denim shirts and beards. Point 4 I just kinda read between the lines a little.

For the most part, the requirements for the Corcoran College of Art & Design’s 2009 All-Alumni Exhibition seemed reasonable to Chris Combs. You had to be an alum, obviously, you could submit work from only the last three years, and you had to be a current member of the school’s alumni association. Combs, who graduated in 2006 and like all Corc grads got a free year of membership in the alumni association, e-mailed Shahdeh Ammadi, the school’s alumni relationship officer, to make sure he understood the terms correctly—if he didn’t pay $40 to re-up, he couldn’t have his work juried by guest judge George Hemphill?

“Hello Chris,” Ammadi replied. “The exhibition is open to all alumni, meaning all mediums. The alumni association membership is a stipulation this year. The membership fee is $40 and includes a package of wonderful benefits.”

Wonderful? That’s too modest! Those benefits include:

• Free admission to the Corcoran Gallery of Art (not too shabby: it’s $10 to get in otherwise)
• Half off continuing education classes
• Reciprocal admission at museums around the country
• Through a partnership with the Cendant Corporation, the opportunity for traveling grads to stay in “fully-equipped 2-bedroom resort condos for as little as $349 a week.”

Combs, who works as a photo editor for National Geographic’s Web site, was not convinced, and not just because the last time he’d gone to the museum, to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit, he found out his alumni membership didn’t cover his girlfriend’s admission (grads get a plus-one only for the permanent collection, not special exhibits). “I would say that one of the Corcoran College’s unique charms is its ability to both educate people and totally disillusion them,” he says, noting that his tuition for four years came to about $130,000 excluding room and board.

In a wide-ranging Washington City Paper article (“Painting by Blunders,” 10/19/2007), Kriston Capps chronicled the institution’s struggles—staff churn, declining attendance, boardroom struggles, abandonment of a planned Frank Gehry–designed addition due to fundraising woes. Was the Corcoran hoping to patch up its fundraising by taxing its grads?

“At the end of the day,” says Ammadi, sitting in the museum’s atrium this past Friday morning, “I can assure you that the alumni fees” raised from the show “won’t even cover the reception.”

Ammadi is surprised there’s grumbling about the fee. It was her idea, she says, and she lives for alumni. She says she spends her nights and weekends keeping up with grads. She’s organized events at Art Basel Miami Beach and in New York. She just got back from Los Angeles, where she met with grads about the possibility of doing events there. She spent Easter with alums and her mom. Before she took the alumni-relations gig, Ammadi was the school’s career-services coordinator. She became obsessed with the Corcoran’s lousy grasp on where its grads were.

“We have a database of 2,500 alums from 1978 to 2009,” she says. “Out of that 2,500 people—I’ve been doing my homework on this for years—we have 250 e-mail addresses.” And about 100 of those bounce.

Ammadi decided that beefing up the alumni association was Job No. 1. The fee, she feels, is a buy-in, because people are “a little more invested” in things they’ve written a check for. “We just want people’s contact info,” she says. “And this is basically a systematic way.”

So why charge at all?

“The reason I’m surprised this is an issue is you have people who graduated in 1981 and to this day they haven’t paid a penny to their alma mater,” she says. “If you look at any school, when you do establish an alumni program, you don’t go in for money. You go in to connect with people who’ve attended your institution. You don’t go looking at it as a way to make someone a donor.”

Ben Tolman, who has a piece in this year’s alumni exhibition, paid the fee. “I thought that was fucked up that you had to join (and pay the almost $50) to be in the exhibition, but I did pay it and I am in the exhibition,” he writes in an e-mail. “I wouldn’t have but I was going to take a printmaking continuing education class, and to get the half priced tuition I would have to join anyway. I didn’t end up taking the class. The exhibition seems a little half-hearted, like they just needed something to fill the space for family weekend. There is no announcement of it as far as I can tell. Also, there is no opening reception, just a closing one to line up with family weekend. These exhibitions, along with the senior shows used to take place in the museum (My class was the last to exhibit in the museum) but now are in the ‘Gallery 31′ space that used to be the school offices. There is no chance of it being seen by the public unless they are coming specifically for that, and know where to go.”

Ammadi moved to the Corcoran’s development office when she took the alumni-relations gig. She’s also become an artist in her own right: After taking a jewelery-making course for fun (staff members get half off continuing education classes too), she started entering pieces in shows. “That goes to tell you what the Corcoran does to me,” she says. So far, she’s exhibited her Precious Metal Clay–formed pieces in a Smithsonian exhibit and at a Society of North American Goldsmiths show in Philadelphia. Juried shows, she notes, often have a fee.

But alumni shows rarely do, if a sampling of other prominent art schools is any indication. Not at the Rhode Island School of Design, says its media relations director, Jaime Marland. “[E]veryone who is defined as an alum is automatically a member of the alumni association – we don’t have any kind of dues paying system in order to join,” she writes in an e-mail. Not at the Pratt Institute, says Alumni Outreach Officer Leonardo Gomez: “We welcome submissions from all our alumni regardless of their ‘closeness’ to the Institute.” Not at the Savannah College of Art and Design, says its director of media relations, Sunny Nelson: “SCAD does not require its graduates to belong to the university’s alumni association in order to be considered for university-sponsored exhibitions. In fact, we work closely with many of our alumni to host exhibitions of their work at our locations in Savannah, Atlanta and Lacoste.” Not at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan (where alumni is “kind of a loose-knit situation anyway,” says Chris Hintz, the school’s marketing and communications director). And not at the School of the Arts at Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University (this reporter’s alma mater, to which he has never given a dime), according to its director of communications, Dawn Waters, who says this is an imperfect comparison, because VCU doesn’t put on an annual alumni show.

It’s an imperfect comparison for other reasons, too. VCU’s art school is part of a massive and well-funded state university with more than 32,000 students. SCAD enrolls nearly 10,000, and Pratt has about 5,000. The Corcoran College of Art & Design has 350 altogether, and many of those who graduate head out into one of the diciest professions there is. Besides Tim Gunn (’76), there are not a lot of alumni with the means to endow a wing, unless Ian Svenonius has secretly been amassing a fortune trading soy futures (Svenonius did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment).

This year’s show—51 grads submitted work; 25 got in—opened this past Wednesday. It was a soft opening, not even on the college’s Web site, because the Corcoran is saving its promotional firepower for the Oct. 16 closing reception, which coincides with Corcoran Family & Alumni Weekend. There’ll be a reception, a bus trip out to Corcoran Vineyards (no relation) in Loudoun County, and many opportunities for grads to network.

“It always hurts a little to pay to submit work, but any artist that wants to get their work out there should expect to support the institution which puts on the show,” writes artist Rachel England in an e-mail. “It is ridiculous to complain about that. It costs money to put these things together and the Corcoran Alumni Association is avid about supporting their artists as much as possible. Even before I bought the subscription they advertised for my solo show on their website and have contacted me several times about opportunities in which we can participate for free.”

After our chat, Ammadi gave me a tour of the alumni exhibit.

Kristoffer Tripplaar is “one of our superstars,” she says. Melissa Ichiuji is “a very dynamic and interesting person.”

Natalie Cheung, she continues, “is huge in D.C. Huge.” Cheung interned in the office of development this past summer. “How could you not love someone like that?” Ammadi says.

Peter, Paul and Mommy, the group’s first children’s album, was the first album I really loved. My favorite song was the first one, “The Marvelous Toy.” So I thought last night that I would listen to some of its songs.

Big mistake!

How did this little-man-named-Rumplestiltskin style of singing ever capture the boomers’ hearts?

However, on the video below, you can see why Travers’ voice was so important to the group’s sound. She turns an excruciating song choice into very nearly a pleasure.

Major caveat: This clip is freaking weird. PP&M, the Smothers Brothers, and DONOVAN all perform snippets of their songs in the round. I believe this was on network television.

And by buying Thriller off iTunes last week, I am! I so am!

It will be sadder next paycheck when I buy Off the Wall and hope my wife doesn’t notice. But for now, success! Blanket, this one is for you.

Here’s Saxon and the Seeds doing their best-known song, “Pushin’ Too Hard.” He’s on bass and singing.

And here’s how things ended up.