Official site of Chris Strouth

Conversation

Conversation was a television program that I created, produced and hosted to be broadcast on KTCA. The idea was to create an evergreen talk show, something like Dick Cavett or Person to Person. It would literally be a conversation–sometimes the telling of stories, sometimes history or whatever else popped up. In taking this different approach to interviewing, the viewer got to see some very different aspects of the subject.

The show was filmed in B&W, with no zoom lenses, using six cameras (the standard chat show of this budget is two-three). Slightly off beat angles and expressionistic lighting gave it the feel of being from no time in particular. All told around 15 episodes were filmed, with guests ranging to musical legends like Grant Hart to a psychologist that treats sexual deviants by teaching wood carving. Anyone was fair game as a guest as long as they had a good story to tell.

The program is currently in a limbo status after an amicable split with the production organization with which I worked on it. Currently there are talks to bring the existing episodes to light in a web series…

But Just for you here is the pilot episode with Mpls legend Dave Foley.

Twin/Tone Records Group

From 1995 to 2001 I was the Director of Artist and Product for the Twin/Tone Record Group, a label that also oversaw a family of about twelve other labels. Director of A&P is a fancy way of saying that I was ultimately responsible for the artist side of things, and the product side as well. It’s not a title that a lot of folks have had, and the reason is it’s insane. The only part of that job that I didn’t have to deal with was the finance. It was awful and fantastic in terms of business but if ever there was a job that refined me as a person this was it.

As point of reference, Twin/Tone and Twin/Tone Records Group are sort of the same thing but not quite: Twin/Tone proper had their catalog picked up by Restless Records. From that point forward all of the older catalog lived at Restless (the Replacements, Soul Asylum, Ween, etc). TRG was the same people minus a few, same building but a much broader focus then the original.

So to put it into bullet points, I:

•handled day-to-day operations and artist relations,

•oversaw distribution, manufacture, publicity, scheduling, marketing plans, art and branding, including hundreds of ads in print, radio, and television, plus concert series, tours, and video.

•ran point for 12 separate labels, and artists on three continents, several employees, partners and interns with some 200 releases including: Ed Kuepper, Marlee Macleod, Brother Sun Sister Moon, Likehell, The Celibate Rifles, the Beatifics, Lifter Puller, Spare Snare.

We closed down the active part of TRG in 2001. Since we along with Creation Records were the first to go all digital, the focus switched to be only archival. You can visit the on the internet here: Twin/Tone.

M-80

M-80 was a concert that happened in 1979. It was the definitive concert of the No Wave movement, presented by the Walker Art Center. Two days, twenty bands, all filmed for a movie to come out…except it never did…

Shortly after it was shot the film disappeared. Life moved on. Until twenty some years later I heard a rumor that this film existed. It took almost three years to track down the footage, and the rights process for the audio is all finished but took six years. This documentary, which I produced with Rick Fuller, has been screened at the Alamo Draft House, San Francisco’s Noise Pop Fest, Sound Unseen and the Northwest Film Forum. It will come out in spring 2012 on MVD.

Here is a song by Devo, as Dove the Band of Love, that we didn’t use in the film itself but instead let Devo use on a DVD.

Innova/American Composers Forum

Innova is the record label of the American Composers Forum; they are the second largest nonprofit label in the US after Smithsonian Folkways. I started to work officially for them in 2001 after 8 years of on and off consulting for them (I worked a great deal on their ten-year series Sonic Circuits), once again as Director of Artist and Product. The job this time had some different complexities to it, starting with cementing distribution and building a wider based catalog. Innova was primarily a new classical/experimental label that dabbled in jazz. One of my projects was to make them a serious contender in the world of jazz. To that end we became the number one jazz label in Boston with groups like Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, Dead Cat Bounce, Neftule’s Dream, and Beat Circus. For my last two years with the company we dominated the Boston Phoenix Jazz poll.

Innova also had its first Grammy nomination while I was there: a record we did with the Clouds that was nominated for design. I collaborated on this design with the artist himself, Stuart Hyatt; I was also executive producer along with Irwin Chusid (Langley Music Project, Esquivel, Raymond Scott Archives).

During that time I was also able to spearhead an an ACF project that gave studio time to artists. Using the FurSeal studio we were able to channel roughly $150,000 worth of recording time to artists that would have otherwise been unable to afford to get a good recording of their work.

Innova is still up and running and you can visit them here .

Future Perfect

Future Perfect was an experimental sound system I created in the late 90’s. To quote from its bio:

“Future Perfect is a sound system, integrating music, abstract sound, video and light to create an environment. A cross cultural concept mixing classic and popular electronica, tape loops, found sounds and concept music, to create a trance-inducing soundscape, and presenting it in a challenging and interesting environment. DJ’s, musicians, visual artists, and social historians working together to define a new musical frontier, while showing the world in which we live in a different light.

“Future Perfect was curated, organized and orchestrated by Chris Strouth but it is the combination of lots of different people and energies working in concert to create something beyond any one individual, using any of the tools of media at hand from the web to vintage TV equipment. FP was formed in December of 1996, starting at First Avenue and eventually doing multiple shows at the Walker Art Center and a multi-year residency at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum. Future Perfect even did a big production at Orchestra Hall. Two records were released: “Music for Listening” was released in October of ’97; “The Nature of Time” was released in 2001.” You can delve into the history of Future Perfect much more in depth at its own site: Futureperfect.org

Paris 1919

Paris1919 has been my primary focus for the past two years. It is a combination of extremely self driven work along with large collaborations for live events. In this case most of the recordings are just me, or one or two collaborators. On the live events side, the Czeslaw’s Loop project involved over forty musicians. The idea is to use the right group for the right job.

Currently there are three records set be released in 2012, and you can find a lot more detailed information on the Paris1919 website (www.paris-1919.com)

A few of the videos

Holiday in Dirt

My Beloved Movie Star (directed by Rick Fuller)

Holiday in Dirt was my first big multimedia project. The idea was to take great film and videomakers and let them each pick a song off of the Stan Ridgway album “Holiday in Dirt” (a compilation I produced and released through NewWest records and RED… I also did all the art). The filmmakers could do anything they wanted within a set of parameters, but with a budget of only five hundred dollars. (Or less than the price of a day’s catering on the kind of sets that all these folks were working on.) The result: some amazing people made some truly stunning work. The who’s who of directors include digital pioneer Jim Ludtke; the guy who invented the music video, Chuck Statler; Phil Harder, Carlos Grasso, and Rick Fuller, who co-produced the DVD with me. Available on Netflix.

UnConvention: a Mix-Tape from Saint Paul

“Unconvention, a Mixtape from St. Paul” is a feature length documentary I produced about the 2008 Republican Convention.

Political party conventions are not known for being memorable, except of course when they are. 1968 ring a bell? For four days in September of 2008 the Republicans took over the sleepy city of Saint Paul and it became, in a very real sense, a battleground. Smoke bombs, percussion grenades, pepper spray and journalist arrests bid for attention with policy, Palin and McCain.

It was a convention unlike any other: The party of the least popular sitting president since Hoover, a hurricane, and a lot of protesters. Another new addition: an army of independent journalists to cover it.

Unconvention is a film about all of this, told through the eyes of the media. Ultra-conservative, ultra-liberal and everything in between, this is an abstract portrait of a very concrete process, remixed into a new linear whole.

The film uses a collective process to tell a collective story, using found footage from dozens of journalists, citizen journalists and just plain citizens. A mash-up of modern media, from HD to cell phone cameras telling the lost story of police, protestors and civil liberties.

Mark Mallman Marathon III

Mark Mallman is musician, composer, and rock star, and on October 10, 2010 he finished a marathon: he played one song for seventy eight hours. It was watched online by more than twenty five thousand people from all over the world, plus a few thousand in real time. The Mark Mallman Marathon involved one hundred and ten musicians, 576 pages of lyrics, and a crew of about twenty five. It’s become one of those defining moments of midwest rock and roll history.

I did the production on it.

IPR

The Institute of Production and Recording is a two year college offering associates degrees in Audio Production & Engineering and Entertainment Business. I joined their faculty in 2003, teaching their introductory course. Eventually I co-authored their entertainment business curriculum, which led to authoring most of the promotional materials and staff bios, and redefining and cementing in place the IPR brand, the majority of which is still in use.

My role can be described best as a creative problem solver, and one for any and all aspects of school issues: advertising, marketing, recruitment, retention, big picture visioning on curriculum, and advertising and promotional material including web redesign. I also worked on a major campus expansion, including the design of the Entertainment Business wing.

One of the many things I did for the IPR promotions department was start a series of podcasts. “Listen” was a series hosted by St. Paul Peterson (the Family); in this case the guest is Master Engineer Steve Hodge (Flyte Tyme). This was the first time that I produced a program where I wasn’t involved as on-air talent.

IPR ‘s Listen episode 1 w/ Steve Hodge, 60 MiN [audio:http://chrisstrouth.talesoftheidiot.com/audio/Ipr_listen-Hodge_Episode1.mp3]

IPR ‘s Listen episode 2 w/ Steve Hodge, 51 MiN [audio:http://chrisstrouth.talesoftheidiot.com/audio/ipr_listen-Hodge_Episode2.mp3]

An example of this period of time is the following program, which became a “giant killer” program for the school: an introduction to ProTools class that was previously $1000. The offer became a powerful gateway to getting new students in, allowing IPR to become the go-to place in the Twin Cities to get certified in ProTools. It also was a very nice revenue source, since the class only cost IPR $50 per student. This is an ad from City Pages:

Writing

I started writing essays on a professional level in 1996 when I was asked to do a column for America Online’s Digital City. Entitled “Dig the New Breed”, it started its life as a music column telling you all the cool new bands and at the same time talking about my life as a toiler in the sweatshop of show biz. To my and everyone else’s surprise it became a hit, becoming the most read feature for Digital City Twin Cities and one of the highest nationally. The column also became less about music and more just about my life; taking my cat to the vet, or the courtship of the woman that would become my wife. The numbers led to a second feature, “Ask a Slacker”, an advice column from the Gen X perspective. “Dig the New Breed” found its way into print in Bosnian newspapers as well… yes, you did read that right. For whatever reason people in strife-ridden Bosnia got to read my ramblings, mostly in a smaller independent weekly that for the life of me I don’t know the name of, but saw my editor once a month translate it all into Croatian.

This led to more writing: a regular column in Pulse (a TC weekly) called “Our Friend Electric”; work for Request, Revue and others, a large essay in City Pages, and other bits here and there.

I have also done a fair amount of ghost writing, written three plays (“Tales of the Enchanted Tiki Room”, “Teen Age Makeout Party” and “Click”) and the text for numerous of my own performances.

A few pieces for your consideration:

Foetus in Fridley- from City Pages

It’s Raining in Warroad– from Future Perfect The American Way

Hwy 61 Revisited– from AOL

Letter from Kurt- an excerpt from Teenage Makeout Party

How Social Media Saved My Life

Design

I started doing design work in 1987 when I was sophomore in college working for a place called T-Shirt Inc. They did a combination of almost every rock and roll t-shirt in the US, and a ton of the retail t-shirt printing for K-Mart. I started off cutting rubylith and doing letraset. I started learning Photoshop with version 2 and it’s kept me busy ever since.

Design started for me mostly as a way to save money: if I did it, I didn’t have to pay someone else to. Eventually people started asking me to do work for them, and another aspect of me was born. I have done graphics for everything from Sony Digital, to the 90’s era “Phat Laces” packaging, to the somewhat ubiquitous gothy “MPLS” buttons that run rampant over my hometown of Minneapolis. Around the year 2000 I was asked to look at a company’s process of making rugs. I developed a process that changed the way they made files, creating a much cleaner and crisper image–which at 6 dots per centimeter, and 8 spot colors is not an easy prospect. For about the next four years I did all of their digital transfers, mostly wildlife images by Terry Redlin. These rugs were sold in hardware stores, feed outlets, and other such places. Through this company I also did a number of my own textile designs aimed at the youth market, a few of which you can see below.

I have art directed hundreds of projects and helped develop websites (like Innova’s for example) but rather than show that work this gallery gives you some personal favorites.

AlliedChemical.Com

AlliedChemical started as a joke, a funny way to answer the telephone. But it took on a life of its own as my work led me into the internet. In 1996 I was working at Twin/Tone and consulting for Liquid Audio when we were putting together the idea of what a download store would look like. I started rambling about my fake chemical company; within an hour I had permission to peruse it. The best way to understand this site is just to go to it: www.alliedchemical.com Please know that the site hasn’t been touched since 2000, so it’s a bit of a time capsule. That said, it still gets around 2000 visitors a day. The idea was to make a parody site that was scarily dead on, that drew people to the music downloads. At the time downloads were a very novel idea and not a lot of people had interest so humor helped to bring them in. I was the designer and co-writer of the Allied Chemical site.

The site got a big following and was written up in magazines all over the US and Europe. It was even called “one of the funniest sites on the Internet” by Yahoo Internet Life magazine. The site also caused chaos with people looking for an actual Allied Chemical; we fooled people like Norad, NASA, the Government of Taiwan, some very stupid would-be terrorists, and several Dunn & Bradstreeet analysts. Most surprisingly, it got me sued for twenty five million dollars. Not by an Allied Chemical company, but rather someone who was suing because of munitions work done during World War II. Seriously. I really did get sued; you’d think the fact that our Allied Chemical’s number one product was a kosher hamspread would sort of make it obvious that it was a joke…

Miyagi

Miyagi is a hair salon that my wife Mo Murphy and I opened in 2008. The shop is different in a number of ways the idea is to break the shell of a typical Aveda salon. For my part I concentrated on inital planning, finance, design (the logo itself was designed by Kii Arens) and branding.