I have a great diversity of music on my iPod and sometimes I will forget some of it until it just pops up when I’m shuffling through. One artist that sometimes shows up with a great blast of horns and that funky Cuban beat is Perez Prado, one of the original Mambo Kings from the 1940’s and 50’s.
It’s not a name many people, especially those of my age and younger, know or remember and the music seems from a time and place far removed from today. It has age on it but whenever it comes on, especially when I’m driving, it raises my heartbeat just a bit and I find myself driving just little faster. Makes me wish I could mambo just a bit and raises memory flashes of being a sixth grader dancing the cha cha in gym class with a shy little girl whose name evades me at the moment, both of us awkward and nervous. Ah, if it had only been the mambo instead of the cha cha.
Here’s a bit of Prado. It’s his Mambo #8. The male dancer here is famed Mexican actor Resortes (Adalberto Martinez) who is primarily known as a comedian and a dancer. He appears in a lot of Prado’s films of his music. Little known factoid: Resortes originated the Moonwalk made famous by Michael Jackson.
Anyway, it’s the last Saturday of summer. Here’s a little bit of heat for you.
I came across this photo on the Facebook page of a band called Goliath in Transit, a name which would be a fitting title for the photo as well. Since seeing this photo yesterday morning, I keep coming back to it in my mind. It’s such an amzing photo, full of odd wonder that makes me imagine different scenarios for this setting. It is, of course, from a fair or circus from the first half of the 20th century and is from an attraction called the Wall of Death. This particular race on the aforementioned wall consisted of a motorcyle, a go-kart (you can just see the exhaust fumes at the bottom of the photo) and a hot rod with a lion in an attached sidecar. I can’t tell what emotions the lion was experiencing on this particular ride but in my mind I see him devouring the driver of the hot rod as soon as it comes to a stop. Justifiable homicide, I would think, but a great photo nonetheless.
One of the aspects of being shown in a gallery for a long time is keeping up with the many people I meet through my work, following the changes that take place in their lives.
Sometimes there is sadness, as when those folks who collected my work as couples separate and divorce. It’s an odd thing because I often don’t know these people very well but I always feel terribly for them, probably more than I do for closer friends and family who have went through the same situations. Perhaps it is because when I meet and get to know them a bit I see and remember them as couples, united when they choose a painting for their life. It often seems like such a strong bond to me that I am shocked and saddened when I find that they have split.
Other times, there is pure tragedy as I found out this past weekend in Alexandria when I discovered that a person who I looked for at every show had died in a small plane crash. She and her husband ( they later split which is part of the sadness talked about above) were some of my earliest collectors in Alexandria and had purchased some of my personal favorites, always seeming to have a knack for picking them from the group. She was a lovely lady that really seemed to bring a spark with her. I last saw her last year and she seemed genuinely excited and proud for how far my work had come, as though she were observing my progress with the eyes of a proud mother. It was hard to not feel great warmth for her. So her death brought a deep groan in my gut and I was saddened that I, nor any others, would never see that joyous face again.
But there is often also good news that lifts my spirits and one of the members of this band is part of that. Mikey Mattice is a prodigious guitar talent who I came to know a bit through the gallery when he would come to events as a young teenager with his dad, also named Mike. Mikey had a striking appearance that begged to be painted, containing an ethereal quality that seemed to keep him apart from everything that surrounded him. A very special aura, I suppose it could be called. His dad asked me to to do a portrait, something normally not in my repertoire, but as I said, he had a look that should be painted. He sent me a group of photos that really captured Mikey’s special presence. I tried and just could not capture what I saw in those photos. I still periodically look at the photos and hope to someday do something that does Mikey justice.
You could always see that Mike’s mind was captive to his music. He’s in his final year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and this band, Goliath in Transit, is one of his many projects. He has a number of videos online showing off his virtuosity ( a favorite of mine that really shows off his chops is his cover of the Maps & Atlases’ song Stories About Ourselves which can be seen here) and seems destined for some pretty big things, given the evident dedication he has. I will be watching with great interest.
Here’s a song called Velvet Skies from the band Goliath in Transit.
I can’t say I’m a fan of Ted Nugent in any way. His music certainly has seldom excited me (Cat Scratch Fever? Gimme a break!) and his act as the ultra-conservative bowhunting badboy dressed in camo is just aggravating. But he has his fans. Over the years I have locally encountered graffiti of his name scrawled on buildings, overpasses and any other sort of public space you can think of. Shown here is a painting by one of my favorites, Dave Higgins, called, of course, Ted Nugent which features the name emblazoned on an old garage. There was a reservoir overflow on the highway near Corning that had the name in huge letters across it for quite some time until it was finally painted over.
I don’t know if it was the same guy in every instance who sprayed the name or if a cult of sorts has formed that inexplicably worship the aging rocker. I found one example of this graffiti online from a site that concerns itself with the canal towpaths of England so perhaps this is not as local as I had thought.
There was one Ted Nugent song that I did like, from his early days with the Detroit based Amboy Dukes when he was barely out of high school in the 60’s. The song is The Journey to the Center of the Mind. With it’s thinly veiled drug references ( Nugent says he never knew what the song was about!) it’s the sort of song that could be used as one of those songs used in a movie to define the timeframe for the scene in which it’s used. I like this video and the lead singer’s British Invasion influenced garb. Give a listen before you go spray Ted Nugent on the side of your local Wegman’s.
I came across a song yesterday, an old surf guitar instrumental from the Ventures called The Creeper, that reminded me of this painting of mine of the same title. I had written about this painting before here a couple of years back but had not mentioned how it was one of the paintings that I regret selling. This was part of the Exiles series that I painted in the mid 90’s, mostly grieving figures painted with segmented features.
It was the first real series I had painted and was the basis for my first solo show. I think I only sold three of those pieces and regret having taken any of them from that group of work. I think because those pieces were so much the product of a specific emotional state at a certain time, I will not be able to capture that exact feel again. I have periodically painted figures in that style over the years since and while they have certain charms, they lack the impact of these earlier pieces.
These few pieces are gone but at least I have images to take a look at when their memories start to creep in, much like that fellow above.
Here’s the song that reminded me of this painting, The Creeper from the Ventures. This piece is very reminiscent of Wipeout ( with maybe a little Peter Gunn thrown in) but is really distinguished by some super organ work from the great Leon Russell in an early appearance in 1964. Give a listen– it’ll rev up your Sunday.
It’s funny how your intent sometimes leads you to some interesting things. Well, maybe not so much interesting as goofy or kitschy. I was thinking this morning about a version of a song, the theme from the classic movie The Third Man (great film!), that I had posted on this blog a few years back. It was from the early ’60’s from an Indonesian guitar band called The Crazy Rockers, a group of which I was totally unaware.
Looking it up this morning, I began to notice all the different versions of this song from many different types of musicians. There were Gypsybands, which seemed in character with the music. Jose Feliciano did a guitar version and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass did a horn version. The Band did a chunky, lumbering version. There were so many versions, so many takes on the same song. I began to think this wouldbe an interesting subject to write on– how one composition can be tranlated in so many various ways.
But as I clicked on several versions of The Third Man theme I noticed something on the side of the YouTube page I was on among the suggested videos. Spacemen with guitars. It looked like they were on some early ’60’s TV set. The Spotnicks. Looking them up quickly, I found that they were a Swedish band that started in 1961 , gaining popularity throughout Europe for their electric guitar sounds. They have sold over 18 million records over the last half century and are still performing together.
That was all interesting but I wondered how they sounded. I clicked on this video and I was sold. It’s their version of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and it’s performed in full Spotnicks spaceman regalia. They seem to be singing the song phonetically which adds to the charm of this wonderful early 60’s period piece. Take a look and behold The Spotnicks!
This is a painting I recently finished, a small piece, only 4″ square on paper. It’s a mix of landscape and very uncomplicated still life with stark but distinct elements throughout. There’s a simplicity that runs through this scene that covers a depth of feeling, a pang from the heart.
I sat this aside for a day or two after finishing it and found myself coming back to it. There was a familiar tone to it that reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite identify until this morning when I walked into the studio. I looked at it as I sat down and instantly said to myself, “Far From Me.”
It was the old John Prine song from his first album which came out forty years back, in 1971. There was something in this piece that filled me the feeling of Prine’s lyrics of gradual loss:
And the sky is black and still now
On the hill where the angels sing
Ain’t it funny how an old broken bottle
Looks just like a diamond ring
But it’s far, far from me
This piece will probably always be that song now for me, a personal avatar for a song buried deep inside and often forgotten. Funny how things work…
Here’s Far From Me done by Jamestown Ferry, a Berlin, Germany based duo who performs Americana music as well as traditional Scotch and Irish music. It’s a lovely and faithful version.
Yesterday I received a copy of the classic children’s book The Giving Tree written by the great Shel Silverstein. It was sent by a friend who had been at the recent gallery talk at the West End Gallery. I had been asked during the talk if I had ever read the short tale and I said that while I had heard of it, I had never chanced across it . I was moved when I found it in my mailbox and even more so after reading the simple story of a boy and a tree and the loving sacrifices made by the tree.
It’s a lovely story and will have a spot of honor on my studio bookshelf.
I used a Shel Silverstein poem, Smart, a couple of years ago on a Father’s Day post and knew of some of his other books and his song A Boy Named Sue that was a favorite of mine growing up. But I never knew that he wrote so many other well known songs. For example, I didn’t know that he had written The Unicorn that is the signature song of the Irish Rovers or The Cover of the Rolling Stone which became an instant classic for Dr. Hook. He also wrote a couple of lesser known favorites of mine– 25 Minutes To Go for Johnny Cash and Tequila Sheila for Bobby Bare. A great talent.
Silverstein died in 1999. If you’ haven’t read this lovely story, here’s a short film of Shel Silverstein from 1973 reading The Giving Tree with his animated illustrations.
Wednesday morning in the summer. Starting some new work, looking forward to trying some new things and psuhing some other things a bit further. Trying to focus on work and block out the debacle of our current political system, hoping that we somehow emerge from the deep, dark tunnel in which we now find ourselves. Just writing that sentence gets me agitated. Who needs that on a quiet August morning?
Seems like a good time to hear a little Django Reinhardt, the late great Gypsy guitarist whose music I’ve featured hear a few times. There’s something in his distinctive playing that is both sad and happy, with a sort of weariness in even its most joyful passages. Don’t know if that makes sense . Guess it doesn’t matter. His playing simply soothes.
Just give a listen to his Paris Blues and take it easy on this August day wherever you may be.
Here in my part of the world we’re trapped in that same heat bubble that is covering a huge chunk of the country. Yesterday we broke local records with a temperature of 104 degrees and the old thermometer on the side of my garage here at the studio was showing 114 at one point- in the shade. In some places you expecty this heat- the deep south and southwest, for example.
But we’re not used to it here. At least, I’m not. This morning at 5:30 the temps are already over 80 with signs of another scorcher on the way. I will probably spend my day in the basement — my studio is not air-conditioned which under normal circumstances is no problem– where it is cooler, stretching and prepping some large canvasses. At least, I will feel as though the day is somewhat productive. It seems a far cry from when I used to spend my summers working all day in the sun, shovelling and wheelbarrowing in the extreme heat. Or even when I worked as a candy cook at the A&P plant, when the temperatures in our cooking areas would approach 130 degrees in the summer. I don’t think I could do those things for even a short time now and when I think of the roofers and pavers out there, I realize how easy I have it now.
But enough about the weather. Here’s a nice version of Heatwave, the old Martha Reeves and the Vandellas classic. This one is from Joan Osborne from the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown which tells of the great Funk Brothers band, playing on this track, which backed most of those Motown hits that became our soundtrack for the 1960’s and 1970’s. Joan Osborne became famous for her song One of Us (What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Tryin’ to make his way home?) which was played into the ground. I never paid much attention to her until I saw her in a show with the Chieftains at Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day a number of years back and was really impressed by her voice. She does this classic number justice.
I came across this video from a band called Apocalyptica. I had never heard of them before but soon discovered that it was a Finnish group that was formed in 1993 and consisted of four cellists who were all classically trained at the Sibelius Academy. They are fairly popular in Europe and around the world.
And they play heavy metal with their cellos.
Okay.
I’m not a metal head so I wasn’t as intrigued as I had thought but I gave a listen. Some was okay but could have been any metal group that had simply inserted cellos for guitars. Interesting but not my cup of tea.
But a version they did of In the Hall of the Mountain King that Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg had written for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt caught my ear and made me think. I wondered how someone like Grieg, who died in 1907, would react to such a treatment of his music. The more I listened the more that I thought he might have actually enjoyed it, might see that it captured some of the spirit of what he was offering in his original composition. There is a cavelike quality to the arena setting.
Plus, from looking at a few pictures of Grieg I thought he might appreciate the fact that his music was being performed by a hair band. In all the photos, Grieg’s hair seems to be a point of pride with him and I could almost imagine him throwing his head forward like the heayy metal guys do so that their hair flies forward then back in rhythm to the music.
Or maybe not.
Grieg was not all that happy with this composition at the time, saying, “I have also written something for the scene in the hall of the mountain King – something that I literally can’t bear listening to because it absolutely reeks of cow-pies, exaggerated Norwegian nationalism, and trollish self-satisfaction! But I have a hunch that the irony will be discernible.” Maybe this treatment of his music would have pleased him from an ironic standpoint.
Anyway, here’s the Apocalyptica version. It will either have you banging your head or have your head banging.
I have a great diversity of music on my iPod and sometimes I will forget some of it until it just pops up when I’m shuffling through. One artist that sometimes shows up with a great blast of horns and that funky Cuban beat is Perez Prado, one of the original Mambo Kings from the 1940’s and 50’s. 
Redtree Times 