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Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Video, tagged , , on March 12, 2017| 3 Comments »

Another Sunday morning which means it’s time for a little music.  I thought that for this week’s choice I would go with something a little further off the beaten track, going all the way up to Regina, Saskatchewan to grab this tune from the group The Dead South.

The song, In Hell I’ll Be In Good Company, is a song that I stumbled across awhile ago.  I thought it was catchy and found the video engaging and fun.  I’ve listened to it several times since and thought it would be a good song for today.

The accompanying painting is titled Confession and is from my Outlaws series.  It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since that group was painted.  It was a relatively small and short lived series but I find myself going back to this group on a regular basis.  Sometimes it’s just to look at the imagery and other times it’s to see how the narrative that I see in the image has changed over time.

There are pieces in the group where the narrative remains constant and others like this piece are a bit more ambiguous and open to new interpretations. This little painting always make me think.

Anyway, take look, give a listen and don’t worry if you think you’re going to Hell– there will be plenty of good company. Have a good day.

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Edward Hopper: Outside

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , on March 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I am really busy today. I am working on a bigger piece that I started late yesterday. There are just a lot of things percolating and I really want to get at it this morning.  I’ve been at this long enough that I know this is a time of which I need to take advantage.

The Muses come in fleeting moments and rarely, if ever, stick around for you if you don’t give them the attention and the time that they demand.

So while I go back to work I thought I would share a nice video of  Edward Hopper landscapes and cityscapes set to music. The maker of the video didn’t credit the music but I was able to discover that it is a solo piano cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here from musician Steven Garreda.  It’s a really nice fit for the contemplative quiet of the Hoppers.

I’m back to work but please enjoy.

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Burchfield and Miles

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , on March 7, 2017| 1 Comment »

It’s a dark, damp day here that seems to sap the color out of the forest around the studio. All grays and browns and pale washed out greens.

It very much feels like the blues. The music, not the color.

I’ve got much to do today so I’m going to share a video that shows many of the works from one of my favorite painters, Charles Burchfield, set to the sound of one of my favorite Miles Davis songs, Blue in Green.

It’s a fitting song for a day like the one outside my studio windows.

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Deacon Blues

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2017| 3 Comments »

GC Myers- The Deacon's New Tie 1995I was thinking about what song to use for this week’s Sunday morning musical interlude and the song I chose brought to mind an old painting of mine, one that lives with me still. It from the early Exiles series from around 1995 and is called The Deacon’s New Tie.

Finished near the end of the series, it is a bit lighter and more whimsical than the other pieces in the earlier post. Outside of going out for an exhibit many years ago, the Deacon has been a constant companion here in the studio.

There’s really no back story to the Deacon. He sort of just emerged from the surface. I had no preconception of what he would be when I started. I remember clearly starting this piece on a blank sheet and making a nose. Slowly, the face formed and when his eyes with their hangdog look came around I knew he was different than my other Exiles characters.

The funny thing about the Deacon is that several months after the piece was done and include in the Exiles show, I came across an article in the newspaper about a 95 year-old man in central Florida who had won a case where he was trying to be forced from the land on which he had lived for nearly 70 years. There was a picture of a bald old man sitting on his veranda, a slight smile on his lips. There was something slightly familiar in that face, something that caused me take a second look. There it was: he was the spitting image of my deacon.

Then, reading the article, it stated that he was a longtime member of a local church and was known to friends and neighbors as the Deacon. Coincidence or maybe just a certain look reserved for those Deacon-like characters.

As you may have already surmised from the title, this week’s song is Deacon Blues from Steely Dan, a group that I often think people have let slip away in the collective memory.  I was a fan and know that I often forget them until I stumble across their music by chance.  Luckily, there’s a local restaurant where we’ve dined for many years and we can’t remember a single visit where a Steely Dan song hasn’t played on their sound system at some point during the meal. The owner must be a Steely Dan fan but I think many people would be surprised at the huge success, both critical and commercial, that this band achieved in the 1970’s.  Solid then and now.

Anyway, this is one of their hits from back in 1977, Deacon Blues. Give a listen and have great Sunday.

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Red Army Blues

Posted in Current Events, Music, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , , , , on February 26, 2017| 6 Comments »

leningrad-gas-mask-drill-1937This old photo I recently came across fascinates me.  From 1937, it depicts a gas mask drill and the participants are the Pioneers of Leningrad.  The Pioneers were a Soviet youth organization similar to the Boy Scout movement of the west.  They learned skills related to civic and social cooperation with social gatherings and summer camps in order to create good, loyal Soviet citizens.

Beyond the obvious weirdness of the image, the photo carries the haunting thought that just four short years later many of these young people would most likely perish in the Siege of Leningrad.

For 900 days, the Nazis held Leningrad, which it had been unable to take by force, in siege attempting to starve the city into submission. Over a third of the city’s population- over 800,00 people– died during the Siege.  Most died from the depths of starvation that found the citizens eating anything at their disposal– sawdust, wallpaper, and any and all pets.

It’s a horror that is hard for us, so far removed from that place and that war, to fathom yet it happened just a little over 70 years back.  Some of those children in the photo, if they were fortunate to survive the war and the siege, could easily be alive today. I am sure when the photo was taken they felt strong and prepared to face whatever adversity lay ahead. They had no idea what the future truly held.

For today’s Sunday morning music I am using a song that relates in a way to the photo. It’s Red Army Blues from the Irish band The Waterboys‘ 1985 album, A Pagan Place.

The song tells the story of a Soviet soldier in WWII who somehow survives the war and comes in contact with American troops.  Joseph Stalin felt that troops who were taken prisoner were weak and traitors to the Soviet state and that troops who came in contact with Allied troops were in danger of being Westernized. So after the war, many Red Army troops who had been held as POWs or had much contact with western troops were considered a threat to the state and were sent directly to the gulags where many would die while working and starving in forced labor camps. We’re talking in the millions here.

I bring up this dark page in history because of our current head of state’s recent warming up to Russia where Vladimir Putin has began reintroducing Stalin era thinking to that country. Time and fading memories have made the horrors that Stalin inflicted on his people somehow palatable. The gulags, the purges, and the artificial famines that killed millions of Soviets seem to be a distant memory now and there is actually a bit of nostalgia for Stalin. Hence, Putin’s rise.

But the memory of these things, these atrocities against his own people and humanity, should never be relinquished.  If forgotten they are only a moment from becoming the present.

This is a pretty interesting video of Red Army Blues with a lot of great Soviet footage of that time which means that some of it is grisly and disturbing. Unfortunately, that is what much of our  history entails. It’s worth a listen and a view.

Have a great day

 

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You Ain’t Alone

Posted in Biographical, Music, Video, tagged on February 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Observers (with frame)

I normally don’t replay past entries from the blog on Sundays but I thought this week I’d make an exception. I very much like this entry, written a few years back after the opening of one of my shows, and share it with a small alteration to the original post by changing the music from the original Hold On from the Alabama Shakes to their song You Ain’t Alone. Both songs are great and fit with the painting above, at least in my mind.

Sunday morning and I think I’m much more decompressed than yesterday morning after the show.  All back to normal, whatever that is.  This show has made me think on a wide variety of subjects, about purpose and meaning beyond what I see in the work as well the potential for legacy in these paintings– would they endure into the future?

A good friend stopped in the studio yesterday and we talked for a moment about the subject of legacy.  I pointed out that legacy is a big if for any artist and that I can only do what I do — where it ends up in the future is something that is far beyond my own control.  It could be in enduring collections or it could be in garage sales and dumpsters– you never know what the vagaries and tastes of the future hold.  I witness this all of the time when I go through the  records from the auction houses and see painters who were celebrated in their time who are now basically unknown.  Their work sells for a pittance, far below what one might expect from reading about their fame when alive.

As an artist, you can only hope that your work has a transcendent quality that allows it to live out of the time of its creator and be of the time in which it is viewed.  I don’t know how you do that outside of maintaining consistency in your own vision and hoping that it is one that somehow speaks to those in the future.  But there is always the question  that if your work does move ahead, does maintain life and attracts future collectors, what would your legacy work be?

I know that this a fool’s game– no one has the ability to predict that future for their own work.  You can’t be objective when you are so close to it, can’t discern your own personal feelings for it from how it reads to the outer world.  But there are pieces that I see that nag at me, that have a weight that tells me that they may be vital pieces in a potential legacy.  Pieces that I could see easily living in the future.  There are a number in the current show, including the piece above, Observers.

These pieces have an intangible quality that I wish I could more fully understand so that I could better describe it.  Or capture in a way  so that it would be in all of my work.  There is just something that seems beyond me, something that is beyond this time.

Could I be wrong?  Of course.  I have been wrong many times in the past and will no doubt be wrong in the future.  But for my work I can hope that in this instance I am correct and that they hold on.

Actually, this was all just an elaborate lead in for a little Sunday  morning music , some soul stirring from the Alabama Shakes and lead singer Brittany Howard.  It is a song titled, of course, You Ain’t Alone.

Have a great Sunday!

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First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Posted in Music, Photography, tagged , , , , , on February 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »

 

brassai_1899_1984__-paris-11I thought for this Sunday’s music I’d do something with a Valentine’s Day theme.  I also wanted to use the Brassai photo shown here, one of his famed Paris photos that I used in a post from a few years back. I decided to incorporate a post from a few years back about the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

Most people immediately think of Roberta Flack when they think of the song  and for good reason.  Her 1972 version was  truly beautiful and deserved every bit of the acclaim it earned.  But the song didn’t originate with her and has had many, many versions through the years, including one of my favorites from Johnny Cash, which you can see below along with the Roberta Flack version.

The song’s history began in 1957.  It was written by Ewan MacColl,  a British folk singer who is a very interesting character in his own right.  He was a married man who fell in love with the much younger Peggy Seeger, the half-sister of folk icon Pete Seeger.  He later married Seeger.  MacColl wrote the song about her and for her to perform.  She needed a song for a play she was appearing in here in the USA so MacColl wrote the song and taught it to her via the telephone as he was barred from entering the States because of his Communist ties.  As I said, he was an interesting character.

Her original version has much different phrasing than the better known Flack version and while it is not my favorite, it is nonetheless lovely. It is said that MacColl despised all the later versions of the song, preferring his wife’s.  Hey, it was written for her, after all.

Cash’s version is much more ponderous, closer in tone to the Flack version.  It is from his American series near the end of his life.  His voice was weaker and even rawer than in his younger days but Cash used it in an incredibly expressive way, giving the song  the feeling of a dirge as he looked back from a point near the end of his and his wife’s life, to an earlier time in his life and the fresh discovery of love.  It is both beautiful and sad– much like life and love.

Just a great song. Have a good Sunday…


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I Don’t Fear the Dark

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , on January 29, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Dr. Seuss Slaying "America First" 1941

Dr. Seuss Slaying “America First” 1941

I don’t fear the dark.

I don’t fear the forest or the city.

I don’t fear being alone.

I don’t fear losing everything or being without.

I do not fear the rain or snow or wind.

I do not fear god.

And I don’t fear terrorists.

And I don’t fear criminals.

And I don’t fear missiles raining down from the sky.

And I don’t fear foreign nations invading this country.

And I sure as hell don’t fear any child or mother or father who flees to this nation to escape war and death.

But what I do fear is your fear.

I fear your cowardice and indifference.

I fear your apathy and distraction.

I fear your tiny attention span and your short-sightedness.

I fear your willingness to accept an evil done in your name.

I fear your preference for dividing people into us and them.

I fear your lack of empathy and compassion.

I fear how you mask your prejudices.

I fear the cruelty of your greed.

I fear your ignorance of your civic responsibilities.

I fear your sense of entitlement.

I fear your indifference to education, history or knowledge.

I fear the blatant stupidity and gullibility you proudly display like a new tattoo.

Don’t mistake this as attack on others– I am as much the you in this as anyone else.

And that is to my great shame.

Our great shame.

Enough is Enough.

************************

No more to say.  For this Sunday morning music I am carrying the tone of the above right into the song.  It’s some late Johnny Cash, from his American Recordings period when his scarred voice carried his age and emotion so eloquently.  It’s his cover of I See a Darkness from Bonnie “Prince” Billy  aka Will Oldham with the following as part of its chorus:

Oh, no, I see a darkness.
Did you know how much I love you?
Is a hope that somehow you,
Can save me from this darkness.

Have a day.

 

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Stand Up

Posted in Music, tagged , on January 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »

gc-myers-fausts-guitar-smI was thinking this would be a good morning to share some music. A bit of a getaway. While bouncing around randomly on YouTube, I stumbled across an artist and song I had not heard before even though it is obviously a well known song, given its 27 million views on YouTube. I liked it and thought it might be a nice pick for this morning as I look out at the wet and heavy snow that’s falling outside my studio window.

The song is Stand Up and it is from Hindi Zahra, a French-Moroccan singer.  It has a lovely simplicity and a sound that I very much like. Plus the message in it to stand up is always good advice.

Enjoy and have a good day…

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The Unwelcome Guest

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , , on January 22, 2017| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- The Unwelcome Guest 2017Well, wasn’t that a day yesterday?

Unpresidented.

Actually, every day forward is unpresidented. And yes, I know the difference between the two homophones.

I believe I am using the correct one in this case.

In what may have been the worst first day for any presidency, the Faux One spoke at the CIA where he bragged about his victory, said that we may get another chance to take the Iraqi’s oil and trashed the press for showing photos and figure from his inauguration that didn’t jibe with the alternate reality spinning around in that bigly orange dome.

He then sent his press secretary Sean Spicer out for his first press briefing at the White House.  Spicer kind of looks like the Frank Burns character from the classic M.A.S.H. television series and has what appears to be about the same pettiness, intellect and temperament.  He is thin lipped and thin-skinned.

Spicer came out and attacked the press for its reporting on the size of the inauguration, angrily stating the obvious untruth, “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”  He gave some misleading and simply wrong figures from the Washington Metro to prove his case.

He personally estimated the crowd at the inauguration to be between 1 and 1.5 million.  I am guessing he wouldn’t be able to get a job guessing weights at the carnival with those keen observation skills. You can read a good article on the known facts of the inauguration in this article from The Atlantic.

Taking no questions, he huffed off the podium.  Again, think Frank Burns stomping out of the Swamp.

Beginning your tenure in that position with provable falsehoods is not an auspicious start.  And there was not a mention from the Faux One or Spicer on the large and peaceful demonstrations against his stated policies taking place within a stone’s throw of the White House as well as across the country and around the world.  Instead of acknowledging the protest and trying to reach out, they instead chose to whine and lie about something so inconsequential as the crowd size for the inauguration in their first day on the job.

Whine and Lie– it’s the new modus operandi.  Either get used to it or support and encourage a free and open press. Yell down every lie ( that’s apparently going to be a full-time job!) and stay engaged.  The unity, good will and energy from yesterday’s demonstrations is worth nothing if it is not continued forward day by day, week by week and month by month until change is truly at hand.

Okay, this week’s Sunday morning musical selection is from one of my favorite albums, Mermaid Avenue. It consists of the unrecorded lyrics of Woody Guthrie as translated though the music of Wilco and Billy Bragg.  This particular song is titled The Unwelcome Guest.  For me, that title could refer to the Faux One taking his place in the Oval Office.  But in the song it refers to a Robin Hood sort of character who travels the world on horseback stealing from the rich to give to the poor.  The rich refer to him as the the Unwelcome Guest and he knows that they will kill him one day.  But he knows that there are many other brave folks willing to take up his mantle and continue his quest.

Yes, they’ll catch me napping one day
and they’ll kill me
And then I’ll be gone but that won´t be my end
For my guns and my saddle will always be filled
By unwelcome travellers and other brave men

And they’ll take the money and spread it out equal
Just like the Bible and the prophets suggest
But the man that go riding to help these poor workers
The rich will cut down like an unwelcome guest

Have a good day. Stay engaged, be vigilant and speak up when faced with lies or hatred.

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