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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Hard to Believe

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on December 8, 2010| 4 Comments »

It’s hard to believe it’s been thirty years since John Lennon was shot outside his home at the Dakota in Manhattan.  Amazing how time has fled and we remember Lennon as a still vibrant artist at age 40 rather than as a 70 year old, as he would be today.   It still seems shocking even after all these years.  I remember hearing of his shooting first from the lips of Howard Cosell as I watched Monday Night Football.  It was before the time of instant information, before the days of the internet and 24/7 news coverage, so you couldn’t simply flip to CNN and catch on the spot information.  All you had was Howard Cosell, who fortunately , being a very astute newsman, understood the gravity of the news he delivered.

Strange days, indeed.

I always carry the memory of John Lennon in his earlier incarnation as a Beatle, when he shared the mic with Paul as frontmen and was the wiseass with a quick comeback in  A Hard Day’s Night, which stands as a very fine film today.  It’s hard to get across to a younger generation  how vast the influence and reach of the Beatles was in the 60’s.  Early on, my sister was a big Beatles fan and had a copy of his book of scrawlings and verse, In His Own Write.  I loved to flip through the pages of this book, taking in his rough drawings and witty little ditties.  I wonder what became of that book?

So thirty years have come and gone since Lennon came and went and we’re left with a treasure trove of music that lives on.  I wanted to show a video and had a lot to choose from.  I first thought of Power to the People, a song which I can still hear in my memory coming from a tinny transistor radio speaker.  Or one of the songs from his final LP, such as Nobody Told Me.  But I settled on Instant Karma.  Maybe it was its chorus of “we all shine on… ”  that attracted me.  Seemed fitting.  Shine on, John.

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At Least Their Sundays Are Free

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , on December 5, 2010| 1 Comment »

I really don’t have much to say about atheists or anyone’s religious beliefs or non-beliefs.  I see it as a strictly personal choice and whatever works for them to get through their days, so long as it doesn’t impinge on my own beliefs or freedoms, is fine with me.  Actually, if you really think about it, there haven’t been that many wars fought or peoples repressed purely in the name of atheism.  That being said,  I’m only using them as a device for showing a clip of a very clever and funny song that I saw on  another well done and interesting  blogsite, Touch2Touch.  The clip is from Steve Martin, the one time stand-up comic who wears many hats as an actor, writer, playwright, banjo player and world class art collector, possessing one of the finest and most celebrated collections of modern art anywhere.  He’s obviously very talented and smart, to boot.

Martin noticed that all the religions of the world have a rich treasure trove of music and art that celebrate their faiths but also noticed that atheism is sadly lacking.  Therefore, he came up with the first atheist hymn.  Here he is, backed by the Steep Canyon Rangers, singing Atheists Don’t Have No Songs.  The cartoon above is from the always smart and  syndicated Speedbump.

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Don’t Forget Me

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , on December 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m on the road today, taking a group of work to the Principle Gallery in Alexandria.  So, I thought I’d play a song that ties together several different elements.  It’s a song that I referenced in yesterday’s post on Harry Nilsson, Don’t Forget Me.  It’s performed by one of my favorites, Neko Case, who has been featured here a number of times.  She covers this song on her most recent album but this is from Elvis Costello’s Spectacle television series.  She also hails from Alexandria.

So, give a listen and, like the songs says in such a wistful way, come on, get happy…

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Who Is Harry Nilsson?

Posted in At the Movies, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , on November 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

There’s a new documentary out (actually a re-edited version of a 2006 film) called Who Is Harry Nilsson? (And Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him) which concerns itself with the life, death and influence of the late American singer/songwriter.  His career was both brilliant and tragic, qualities you can often see in many of his songs. 

 He had a genius for composing beautiful ballads yet often had a bitter edge, throwing in lyrics that catch the listener off guard.  For example, in Don’t Forget Me Nilsson takes a tender song that has a wistful air and suddenly drops a line like “and when we’re older and full of cancer, It doesn’t matter now, Come on, get happy” that disarms you completely.  Neil Diamond perfromed that song on a recent album and changed that lyric, which bothers me in that it alters the whole song.   Or you can choose any of the lines from You’re Breaking My Heart with its happy rhythms and the ultimate punch of its chorus.

I’m hoping that more people will learn more about Nilsson and his talent to keep his music alive.  It has been a staple for film-makers since his Evcerybody’s Talkin’ from Midnight Cowboy  in 1969 captured the essence of  film and its memorable characters.  A personal favorite of mine is Martin Scorsese’s use of Jump Into the Fire from Goodfellas.

So, if you get a chance, take in this documentary or least find a Nilsson song and give it a listen.  I guarantee you will find something in there to like.  Here’s the trailer:

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Hallelujah Mobs

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , on November 28, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’m a little intrigued by the concept of flash mobs, where in public settings throngs of seemingly random people break into spontaneous (and well choreographed) acts such as singing and dancing.  They’ve been around for a while now and, for the most part, are relatively harmless.  Some are really great to see when they are meant to entertain.   I saw a short clip of this one the other day on CNN.  It takes place at a mall food court in Welland, Ontario, just outside Niagara Falls.  The diners there, one by one , begin to sing Handel’s  Hallelujah Chorus and by the end there appears to be more singers than listeners.  The looks on the unsuspecting and surprised diners are wonderful.

Handel’s piece is not an original choice.  You can find other versions online from all over including one at Macy’s in Philadelphia that had 650 choristers singing as they mingled among the regular shoppers.  But this version is a bit more intimate in setting and sound.  There have been some that complaints about the religious nature of the selection but I think that’s ridiculous.  The beauty and power of the music is evident to anyone regardless of their religious views.

So let the hum-buggers crow and give a look and a listen.

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Ragin’ Cajun

Posted in Early Paintings, Video, tagged , on November 26, 2010| 2 Comments »

I was looking for an old piece as past of a project I’m mulling for the near future and I came across this little piece from about 10 years back.  It’s one that I remember very well.  The movement of the fiddler reminds me of seeing Doug Kershaw as a child on many TV variety shows during a period where he was very visible to the greater public.  The Ragin’ Cajun, as he was known, was unlike most other performers that you saw at the time.  He was this gaunt, bony creature with dark eyes and big sideburns that had an energy that seemed to always be seething below the surface.  He played his fiddle with abandon, cradling it low against his skinny bicep and sometimes flailing at it with his tattered bow.

He seemed pretty cool compared to the Steve Lawrences and that sort that often populated the variety shows of that time.  I see the Cajun in this little piece and am thankful for YouTube because I can reference someone like Doug Kersahw and know I can find something to illustrate my point.  Here’s a little bit of him from the period, doing Johnny Horton’s Battle of New Orleans. 

Have a great  Friday.

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Eyvind Earle

Posted in Influences, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , on November 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

I  was asked by artist and teacher Dave Higgins to sit in on one of his classes at the local community college last week, to critique an assignment he had given his students.  It was a class that focused on creating digital graphics and animations using primarily Photoshop.  The assignment was to make a graphic based upon one of two subjects.  One choice was to select any sign of the zodiac and the other was based on the term red tree.  For red tree, he gave the students no indication of my work , just the phrase.

This was an entry level course but the work was wonderfully creative.  Of course, being a class of mainly 18 and 19 year-olds, there was a fair amount of angst and morbidity expressed in images of death and plenty of blood.  But the work was great.  I could find something of value in each student’s work, something that showed a real spark of imagination and inspiration.  One of the students who has chose red tree had a simple composition of a weeping willow (that weeped blood!) set on a mound.  Very simple but well done.

The color of the mound set against the silhouette of the willow immediately reminded me of the work of Eyvind Earle.  Earle was an artist/illustrator who died in 2000 at age 84.  He was a child prodigy and had his first one man show at age 14 .  He exhibited his work in shows for many years but gained fame through his stylized Christmas cards throught the years and with his time spent working with Walt Disney in the 50’s and 60’s as a background artist.  He was responsible for the look of many of the animated films of that time from Disney, including the classic Sleeping Beauty.  Shown here is some of Earle’s work from that film.

 I came across his work about the time of his death, seeing ads in framing magazines for prints of his highly stylized paintings.  There was something  very familiar and attractive in the work and upon reading his bio I saw the connection between this recognition and his work from having absorbed it in as the settings and backgrounds for many Disney animations I had seen as a kid.  It was very attractive work, very much of the graphic rather than painterly variety.  Strong colors and great and unusual juxtapositions of compositional elements.  Tree limbs extending into the picture like an arm reaching into the center of the image.  Very evocative as well.  It was easy to see how it was so successful in setting the tone for the action that ran across it in the Disney films and how something like it could have subliminally influenced a young student, or me, over the years.

Here’s a short animation that highlights more of Earle’s work.  I believe this is Russian-made so excuse the error in the title as they switched the names around making him Earle Eyvind instead.  I think you’ll feel that same familarity even though you may never had heard the name Eyvind Earle.

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Western Stars

Posted in Early Paintings, Video, tagged on November 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I just want to be quiet this morning, let things just settle in.  Think just a little but more or less just be.  I think the piece shown here, Blue Speculation from 2003, pretty much sums it up.  Just sit back and ponder, just a bit.  The emerging daylight of a Sunday morning has washed away the stars that hung in a cold November night sky but the memory of them remains.

So, I sit quietly and think on stars this morning.

Here’s a little music from KD Lang to fill out the mood.  It’s Western Stars…

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Other Worlds

Posted in Video, tagged on November 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve struggled here for an hour, looking at this blank page and wanting to say something of value.  There are many things , many issues, I wanted to address today but it seems best to continue yesterday’s theme.  Council of silence.  Just sit and wonder, contemplate the imponderables.  There are things, events,  we will never be able to fully understand yet we struggle to put them into a form that we can at least tolerate, a form that gives us some rationale for their occurrence.  We need to do that in order to make our our own world somehow make sense in going ahead.

But it’s a difficult thing.  There are things that will never make sense, that will never fit neatly into the rationale we form in our own mind because we all live in our own internal worlds and no one outside that world can ever know exactly what goes on there.  No one can truly know the depth of another’s pain or despair in their own world.

Yet we try to understand. 

So,  I sit here this morning in my council of silence and try to comprehend other worlds I will never know.

Here’s a song from Steve Earle.  I think I’ve played it here before but it seems a good fit today.

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The American Four Seasons

Posted in Favorite Things, Opinion, Video, tagged , , , , on November 13, 2010| 4 Comments »

In the town that I call home there is the local theatre and center for the performing arts, the Clemens Center, that underwent a remarkable renovation a few years back and emerged as a spectacular and beautiful showcase.  It has real presence as you sit and take in the restored mural above the stage or admire the intricate carvings that form a frame  around stage opening.

Just a beautiful facility.  A gem.

Unfortunately, it is not always as well attended as one might hope, especially for events that are quite remarkable.   Seeing so few people come out makes me wonder if we deserve such a beautiful theatre or if our area will soon lose the ability to attract world-class musicians.

Last night, there was a performance by world-renowned and Grammy nominated violinist Robert McDuffie accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra.  They were performing The Seasons Project which featured, in the first half of the show, Vivaldi’s  Four Seasons and, in the second half, modern composer Phillip Glass’ composition The American Four Seasons.  This new piece was written specifically for McDuffie and is inspirationally derived from Vivaldi’s seminal work. 

Let me point out that I know little of classical music and cannot speak with any degree of specificity about any piece of music.  I can only tell you what I like.  Like art, all you need to know is your reaction to it.

The Vivaldi was wonderful.  The sound of McDuffie and the 18 musicians of the Venice Baroque Orchestra played the well known work with passion and grace.  There is something quite amazing in the power of an acoustic orchestra and I found myself wondering what it must feel like to be one of those violinists when they are fully immersed in such a piece, with the sound of the other instruments all around them in unison.  Or how this piece  must have stunned audiences in 1725. Truly powerful.

I really didn’t know what to expect for the second half.  I had heard Glass’s work before and had found it always interesting, though not always pleasing to my ear.  I can’t fully describe the piece but I will say that as it grew I began to realize I was witnessing something quite remarkable, both in the compostion and in McDuffie’s performance.  His emotional rendering propelled the piece forward and as it climaxed all the pieces of the composition seemed to suddenly come together as a whole, giving the whole thing an impact that I hadn’t seen coming.  I know that is  hardly descriptive in musical terms but I can do no better.

It was breathtaking to see an original piece played with such passion. 

And for a theatre that was perhaps filled to one third its capacity. 

The elation of the show was tempered for me by the size of the crowd and thr realization that soon such shows would no longer be brought to our area for lack of an audience.  As I looked over the audience last night, I saw a tremendous amount of gray and white  hair.  I was among the younger set there and I am no longer young.  We, as an area, do not have a large number of young professionals that might take in such a show in larger metropolitan areas.  Over the years, we have lost many of our brightest and best to larger cities due the limited prospects caused by the financial hardship that seems to have a permanent home in this area.  The recession that swept the country over the last few years has been in these parts for about thirty years.

I guess that’s just the way things go.  For now, I am pleased to have witnessed something special and will put aside the fact that it may not be a possibility here soon.  If McDuffie is coming to a city near you with this tour, take advantage of the opportunity.

Here’s a small taste of the music…

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