Menright.com Homepage

Note: On any other page of this site, a click on the high-school graduation picture in the header above will get you back to this page.

Welcome to menright.com. Here's an annotated table of contents:

The Tunes When the site first went up about six or seven years ago, the Tunes were its raison d'Ítre. Since the web is not just a vanity press but also a vanity record label, here are songs from The Ed Davis Band (including their 1978 single, "Keith Richards' Dead"); songs from Desi, Desi and Desi (including the A-side of their never-released single, the vocal version of "Telstar"); selections from As We Sow (Jan Weber's 2004 documentary, including the unreleased alternate title track); and a couple CDs worth of solo tunes from the Menright studio in both its 4-track and ProTools incarnations.

Along with the music are extensive supplementary materials: liner notes, photos, posters, links, and videos, including rare video material like the PortaPack footage of The Ed Davis Band in their last performance at a Cincinnati loft party, and concert footage of Desi, Desi and Desi from the rarely-photographed, never-videotaped interior of the legendary A7 Club.

Solo Digital | Solo 4-Track | Desi Desi Desi | The Ed Davis Band

The Carolyn Story Originally posted as a one-page sidelight to some solo Menright stuff, this material documenting the Belle of Downtown Beirut soon eclipsed the hit count for all other sections of the site put together. Included are pages about all three of her East Village hardcore outfits: Killer Instinct, X.K.I., and The Bad Tuna Experience. G.G. Alin, a figure who looms larger on the web than he did in life, covered BTE's "Beer Picnic" and his legion of web-surfing fans click the play button dozens of times a day on the music-vid posted at the top of this page. (Thank you for coming, by the way!) As in the menright Tunes section, there are lots of mp3s, posters, photos, and liner notes.

Killer Instinct | X.K.I. | The Bad Tuna Experience

The Photos The first gallery, Photos From Digital Sources, presents images captured with a Nikon D-80 and a Sony MiniDV cam, all taken in the last couple of years. The best of the recent stuff will all be found here. The second, Photos From Film, features selections from twenty-five years of 35mm negatives shot primarily with an ancient Honeywell Pentax SLR and a 28mm Zeiss lens. The third gallery, Photos From India, is a selection of images taken on a recent trip to the world's most fascinating sub-continent. I shot about 1,400 pictures but only my dinner guests have to sit through all of those. And yes, there are lots of Harriet pictures. What can I say? She's the best model I ever worked with.

From Digital Sources | From Film | From India

We're Just Like You In the early days of video and performance art (when the PortaPack ruled) a half-dozen Cincinnati restaurant employees put together a "media artists collective" called We're Just Like You — and put on a show! They produced hours of reel-to-reel black-and-white videos, 16mm films, thousands of Polaroids, elaborate performance pieces, an in-house band, and the best loft parties Cincinnati ever witnessed. Click here for the WJLY story, including the 21st Century Premier of Spamwalk.

Bollywood Hearing more and more about Bollywood these days, aren't we? If you wonder whatever happened to plot, it moved to Mumbai — and it took along the Arthur Freed musical unit from MGM, too! When I start talking Bollywood I get two questions: "How did you get into this stuff?" and "What are some good movies?" I've been asked these questions so many times I finally decided to write something about it and post the information here. "How did you get into this stuff?" is answered in the Introduction; "What are some good movies?" has been answered in the List. In addition I've posted three pages of playlists culled from the great musical sequences of the last fifty years of Hindi cinema, along with links to their parent-film entries on the IMdb. A great place to get started!

An Introduction | The List | Amitabh | Playlists

The Obsessionist These columns first appeared at Time.com, Time Magazine's website. The links below will take you to their original locations. (Unfortunately, the audio and video links that were initially included with the articles are no longer supported on the Time.com site.)

Phil Spector and the Ecstatic Moment | Monkey On My Back: My Life With The King (Kong, That Is) | Pal Joey: Remembering The "Nice" Ramone

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