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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Train de Vie

Posted in At the Movies, Video, tagged , , on January 23, 2011| 1 Comment »

I was looking online for some music to feature today and my ear turned toward klezmer music, the traditional music of the Jews of eastern Europe.  Think of  Fiddler on the Roof, with lively music that features the fiddle and clarinet.  As I was looking I came across a clip from a film I had not seen or heard of,  for that matter.  The clip featured a group of eastern European Jews playing their klezmer versus a group of Gypsies playing their similar, but slightly coarser, music in a sort of musical face-off.

The film was a French film from 1998 from Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu called Train de Vie which translates to Train of Life.  The story takes place in a small Jewish village in eatern Europe that has a local resident return from a neighboring village where the Nazis have entered and taken over, sending the residents away on trains to the camps.  He describes the horrors but nobody takes him seriously for he is , unfortunately, the village idiot.  But the rabbi sees that he is telling the truth and a plot is formed where they would procure a train and have local residents pose as Nazis to herd the townspeople on to the trains.  The trains would not go to the concentration camps, however.  They would head for Palestine.

It has the feel, from what I read, of a Life is Beautiful, the Roberto Benigni film about the Holocaust that had comic elements concerning a tragic event in history.  A delicate line to tread.

Whatever the case, it looks interesting.  I’ll have to try to find this film soon.

Here’s the clip with the klezmer and  gypsy players–

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Growing a Painting

Posted in Painting, Technique/History, Video, tagged on January 21, 2011| 5 Comments »

Above is the tentatively finished version of the painting I started earlier this week, a 24″ by 48″ canvas that I am considering calling Escape Route. I showed the first few steps of the painting process on this blog two days ago, ending with the sky being near finished and the composition blocked in.  I’m not going to go into all the steps and decisions that went into completing this piece.  Instead, I put together a short film that shows the painting evolving to the finished product.

I will say that the final version is much different in many ways than I first envisioned with the first strokes of red oxide that went on the canvas.  Each subsequent bit of color, each line that appeared, altered the vision in my head just a bit, evolving the piece constantly until the very end of the process.  Even the last part, where I inserted the treeline that appears on the farthest ridge, was not seen in my mind until just before the decision to proceed with them was made.  I decided to go with this treeline to create a final barrier for the road to break past on its way upward toward the sky.  A final moment of escape.

This painting has given me a great sense of satisfaction after finishing it.  I spent much of the late afternoon yesterday just looking at it and taking it in.  I don’t know if it will translate as well on the computer screen but this piece has substantial size at 24″ by 48″ which gives great weight to the blocks of color from the buildings and the light from the sky.  There is a sense of completeness here that I could  only struggle to explain, but as I said, brings me great satisfaction.  I feel as though the evolved painting has exceeded what I imagined when I first started this piece.   While I can’t fully explain that, it is all I can hope for from my work.

I will spend some more time over the next several weeks looking at this painting, determining if anything should be tweaked or altered.  A highlight added here, a line crispened there.  But as it stands, I think it has taken on its own life and I will probably leave it alone as it is.

Here is the short film, Growing a Painting:

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The Same But Different

Posted in Video, tagged , , , , on January 15, 2011| 4 Comments »

A number of years back, I saw an exhibit at a NYC gallery that consisted of many, many versions of The Last Supper by Leoanrdo Da Vinci, all painted by painters of differing skill levels and styles.  Some were well executed, professional, and some were crude and amateurish.  But they all, especially in the context of the exhibit, had a vibrancy that came from the original composition.  It was a very interesting show and I carry strong memories of some of those versions of DaVinci’s masterpiece.

I was reminded of this when I came across this version of the rock classic Whole Lotta Love from Led Zeppelin.  It’s from the San Francisco based band The Waybacks (featuring guest vocalist John Cowan from New Grass  Revival) and is from a performance at Merlefest in 2008.  Merlefest is an annual festival of  folk and Americana music that takes place in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.  It was started by the great Doc Watson in 1988 to honor his son and guitar playing stage partner, Merle, who had died a few years earlier in a tractor accident. 

I thought of The Last Supper show from this because it’s often interesting to see how a composition works in different genres and styles. This version from The Waybacks is based on acoustic instruments but  still maintains the  potency of the original, while forming a slightly difefrent feel and translation.  I’ve talked about this in this post before when I painted a series of gray and black pieces based on my typical landscapes.  They were the same but had a different  feel with the differing treatment.

That’s how this feels– the same but different.

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Hey Joe

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , on January 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

Saturday and I’m not in the studio today.  Thought I’d have a little music that feels right for driving.  It’s the  seminal rock song, Hey Joe, recorded by many artists over the decades, most notably by Jimi Hendrix. 

This is not the Hendrix version.

It’s a version featuring one of my favorites, Tim O’Brien, performing a bluegrass tinged version of the song with the great Jerry Douglas, the master of the dobro.  I saw O’Brien perform several years ago at a local historic church, one that the previously mentioned Mark Twain used to attend.  It was a great acoustic show in a great space, something out of the norm for this area.  I was a fan before the show and his musicianship that evening only made me like his work more.

Anyway, enjoy the song and your Saturday…

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Didn’t It Rain?

Posted in Video, tagged , , , on December 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here we are at the end of the first decade of this millenium and I find myself a bit under the weather.  I was going to write about resolutions and new beginnings, all the typical New Year’s folderol, but don’t really feel up to it this morning.  Maybe tomorrow.  The New Year will no doubt bring everything into clear focus.

Or not.

So, iinstead I’ll show a neat clip from a BBC broadcast from 1964 that showed a concert from the Blues and Gospel Train, a  tour that stormed through Britain  featuring American blues and gospel greats such as Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Rev. Gary Davis.  The special had a huge broadcast audience and was a big influence on the young there. 

The clip I’m showing is from Sister Rosetta Tharpe who was a giant in the gospel world but also kept a foot in the world of secular blues.  She was big woman with a big voice and personality who is quite a sight wielding her white electric guitar.  Very powerful.  I thought this song, Didn’t It Rain? , was appropriate for the day as it’s about making it through the storm and heading into the new day, something I think we can equate to the past decade going into the next.

The venue here is a disused railway station in Chorlton that they dressed up a bit to resemble an old rail station from the American deep south.  It makes a pretty good backdrop for the Sister’s wailing and playing.  Anyway, enjoy and have a wonderful New Year’s Eve…

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Cherry Cherry

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on December 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s nearing the end of the year and I’ve exceeded my quota for inane words written so I’m just going to show a video from The Music Machine.  They were a mid-60’s band from LA that played a garage-punk brand of music that characterized their biggest hit, the Top 20 Talk Talk.  They were definitely products of the era with their helmeted hairstyles and their funky all black garb, complete with one single glove worn on the right hand of each band member, predating Michael Jackson by decades.  They didn’t make it out of the 60’s,  going through a couple of incarnations in the 4 or 5 years of their existence.

I was going to feature Talk Talk but I came across this little gem, their cover of Neil Diamond’s classic Cherry Cherry.  It’s a surprisingly cool and restrained version.  It’s got a little bit of everything.  Jazzy flute solos.  Go-go dancers in groovy threads doing some kind of  swaying low-impact calisthenics.  Neat 60’s backdrop.

Oh, it’s a happening.

But it somehow works.

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Christmas Eve

Posted in Video, tagged on December 24, 2010| 5 Comments »

It’s Christmas Eve and like many I have things to do so I’ll leave you for today and tomorrow with my simple best wishes for a happy holiday.  Hope you can all find good moments to hold on to.

Here’s a  lovely version of one of my childhood Christmas favorites, Little Drummer Boy, from Tori Amos.

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Blue Christmas

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on December 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I was looking earlier online for a video of the song Blue Christmas to accompany this little painting that I have used as a Christmas card in the past.  I wanted something other than Elvis’ version, which is the standard by which all other versions are judged.  I was amazed at how many different people have covered the song.  There are rock versions , big band and country versions from dozens and dozens of various artists from every segment of the musical spectrum that all seem to pay homage to Elvis’ particular take on the song.  There are different instrumental versions including a charming version on the harp played by a teen who is lamenting the loss of her homeschool teacher, versions from various handbell groups (I particularly liked the one from the Trinity University) and one on the ukulele from one of my favorites, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britiain.

It is an amzing array of sounds and styles that cover this beloved holiday song.  But I found one video entitled Blue Christmas that is another song altogether.  It’s features the trumpet of Miles Davis and the sax of Wayne Shorter and is even bluer in tone than the songs above.  Maybe it’s the odd little animation that accompanies it that gives it even a glummer feel for the holiday.  But it swings.

Take a look-

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Getting Ready For Christmas

Posted in Neat Stuff, Television, Video, tagged , , , on December 17, 2010| 7 Comments »

Last night on The Colbert Report, Paul Simon appeared and played a new Christmas  song called Getting Ready For Christmas.  Before singing he explained that it was based on a sermon from December of 1941, in the weeks after Pearl Harbor.  The preacher was the Reverend J.M. Gates, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist from Atlanta who was famous for recordings of his sermons in the years before his death in 1945.  I don’t know much about him.  Actually, I had never heard the name before last night.

But the song Simon played was pretty good and there were samples of Gates’ recordings in the background at certain points in the performance that intrigued me.  I don’t know exactly which sermon Simon sampled but there are several examples of Gates’ work online.  One, Death’s Black Train Is Coming, was his bestseller and is a great example.  My favorite however is Hitler and Hell which plays very well in the video off the sound of the footsteps of the jackbooted figure that goes through the darkness in it.  I’m thinking that one of the recordings in the advertisement shown here might be the one used in Simon’s song.  Will Your Coffin Be Your Santa Claus! sounds like it might be the one.  Funny, that with such a catchy title it never caught on like Jingle Bell Rock or  Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer.

Anyway, gives a listen to the Rev. Gates, if you are so inclined and here’s Paul Simon’s new song, Getting Ready For Christmas.  It’s a very watchable video.

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Wayfarin’ Stranger

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on December 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always been a big fan of Tennessee Ernie Ford, who died in 1991.  I saw him quite a bit on the television of the 1960’s and in reruns from the 50’s.  He was always extremely funny in the persona he adopted onstage as a hillbilly caricature and it was always startling when he would shift from that higher pitched bumpus voice into his singing voice was as smooth and deep and rich as one can imagine. I picked up a box set of his music several years ago and find myself listening to it for long periods of time.  It may not be hip.  It may not be cool.  But there’s something incredibly authentic in his voice and the personality he projected that I really am drawn to.

Here’s a nice version of one of my favorite songs, Wayfarin’ Stranger, which is also the title of the painting shown here, one from around 2004 in the Red Roof series.  Enjoy and have a good Sunday.

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