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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Posted in Biographical, Video, tagged , on November 10, 2010| 4 Comments »

Today is the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the huge freighter that went down in a storm on Lake Superior in 1975, taking all 29 crew members with it to the bottom.  It’s a tragedy that would’ve faded into obscurity except for Gordon Lightfoot’s hit song that came out in 1976, forever searing the name Edmund Fitzgerald in our collective memory.  Most of us can’t think of the name of another freighter wreck  or freighter, for that matter.  It even turns up on an episode of Seinfeld.

The song always strikes a chord with me and brings back memories of going up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the early 70’s where my sister’s husband was stationed at  Kincheloe Air Force Base, which closed its gates in 1977.   We visited the locks at Sault Saint Marie where the great freighters passed between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, and spent some time looking down on the huge bare decks of the ships as they slowly passed.  For all I know, the Edmund Fitzgerald may have been one of them.

I mention this today for no reason other than the memory of those big boats back then and the song that memorialized it and its 29 crewmen as they went down in the big lake they call Gitche Gumee…

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Show Day/ Black Slacks

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , on November 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Well, tonight is the opening at the Kada Gallery, beginning at 6 PM.  I head out later this morning, getting into Erie a few hours before the show.  I usually stop in at the gallery and preview the show, getting a sense of how the work is laid out.  It makes maneuvering the space easier when I’m asked about specific pieces later.  Then I normally go to my hotel for a while to relax a bit until showtime.

Simple.

So my post today is short as I get ready to hit the road.  I thought I ‘d leave you with a bit of upbeat music from the Sparkletones, a late 50’s rock n’ roll band who achieved mild fame with band members who were all under 18 years old.  Their success was shortlived and had faded before I knew of them but they had a small rebirth in the early 1980’s with the release of a compilation that brought them to my attention with their trademark song, Black Slacks.

Light fare, yes.  But loads of energy and lots of fun.  I hope this keeps me humming until Lake Erie appears, looming high on the horizon.

Enjoy!

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I Was a Teenage Werewolf

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged on October 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Another Halloween rolls around and I’m on the road today, delivering my show to the Kada Gallery in Erie in advance of my show that opens there next Saturday.  I thought I’d throw out some scary music but there isn’t a great selection of monster themed music.  Oh, there’s the Monster Mash but that gets played to death this time of the year, like Grandma Got Ran Over By a Reindeer at Christmas.  And the Addams Family or Munsters themes are memorable but not what I’m looking for.

But there are the Cramps.

The Cramps emerged out of the NY punk scene of the 70’s with a distinct sound  that influeneced by rockabilly and the B-Horror movies of the 50’s.  Two guitars and a small drum kit- no bassist- and a leader called Lux Interior and a girl guitarist/femme fatale named Poison Ivy, the Cramps’ music was often called psychobilly.  Many of their songs paid direct homage to old horror flicks, like Human Fly and the one I’m highlighting here, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which starred  a very young Michael Landon in a pretty kitschy story.  But the Cramps created some high energy creeptastic stuff out of some hokey films.  Below I Was a Teenage Werewolf is a performance by them  from 1981 at NYC’s Mudd Club.  The first is The Natives Are Restless and the second is their macabre TV Set.  It’s a neat slice from an interesting time.

Have a very spooky Halloween!

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Twistin’ the Night Away

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sam Cooke

We were in the car the other day and I flipped on the radio.  It was on a goofy local channel that plays an odd hodgepodge of music–oldies, big band, 70’s pop and so on.  I flip it on periodically and call out a song beforehand to see if I can guess what might be on at that moment.  This started years ago when I was humming a tune and decided to turn on the radio and there was the same song playing.  So I keep trying to match that coincidence.  I get close sometimes but haven’t hit again.

Anyway, on this day Sam Cooke‘s Twisting the Night Away came on.  It’s one of those wakeup moments when something you haven’t thought of for a long time reappears .  At tha point  you realize how wonderful it was and wonder how it had slid from your attention over the years.  That’s how I felt after hearing this old Sam Cooke song. 

I always loved his voice and the smooth coolness of his music.  You Send Me.  Bring It on Home to Me.  Chain Gang.  Another Saturday Night. Wonderful World and more.  Growing up, we had a copy of his version of Frankie and Johnnie that I played over and over, trying to catch all the little nuances in his voice as the song’s tempo and emotion built.  It remains my favorite version of that song.

But over the years, many of songs are well remembered but his presence has faded, probably due to fact of his early death at age 33 in 1964 in a bizarre  shooting in an L.A. motel.  One of his greatest songs, A Change is Gonna Come, was released after his death and what other great music may have emerged from him will always be merely but a question. 

Here’s a great piece of film of him from the Jerry Lewis Show in 1963.  I love the opening of the show with the emcee annoucing the guests.  Senor Wences (if you’re old enough, you’ll laugh at the mere mention of the name), the Marquis Chimps and a special appearance by Cassius Clay.  Now, that is a variety show of the sort you will not see today.  But Sam Cooke was  terrific, as he always was and will always be.

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Bits and Pieces

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 16, 2010| 4 Comments »

It’s Saturday morning and I’m a bit tired and still a little wired from the Yankees’ comeback win last night so I think I’ll just put up a song so I can get to work. 

 I came across a nice video of The Dave Clark Five and was reminded of their impressive string of hits in the mid-1960’s.  Bits and Pieces,  Glad All Over,  Catch Us If You Can, I Like It Like That and several more.  They were always put up as rivals to the early Beatles, being the second of the British Invasion bands to play Ed Sullivan.   Fan magazines always pitted them against one another on their covers.  To me, they were always a bit too squeaky clean and fratboy-like when compared to the other British  bands suchs as the Beatles or the Stones or the Kinks but they had a great sound for their time and occupy a distinct moment in evolution of pop music. 

DC5, as they were called, never really evolved beyond their initial burst and disbanded in 1970 and so, like a movie star that dies young, they are preserved in the pop culture collective memory as they were in their matching outfits and well-coiffed hair.  But they had  a great sound and catchy tunes. They remain a guilty pleasure for me.

I remember the above album cover well. My sister had this record and it was well played in our house.  I have her copy now and it shows the wear of kids holding and looking at it as the songs played on the hi-fi.  A bit worn like memory.

Here’s Bits and Pieces.  Have a great Saturday.

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You Are Not Alone

Posted in Influences, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on October 11, 2010| 1 Comment »

Sometimes there is a coming together of influence and the end product in creating a painting.  Such is the case with this painting, a new piece that is an 18″ by 18″ canvas, that will be going to my next show, Toward Possibility, at the Kada Gallery in Erie, which opens November 6.

I watched a segment on The Colbert Report featuring a song, You Are Not Alone,  from Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy written for Mavis Staples, the legendary R & B/ gospel singer.  The two performed the song and I’ve had it in my head ever since.  During the next few days, as I was working on this canvas, the sound of that song and Mavis Staples’ voice constantly seemed to be pushing this piece along.  It affected how I viewed it as I was painting it and affected the determination of its endpoint, its completion.  It was pretty evident to me that this piece was destined to be called You Are Not Alone.

I like the ambiguity in the title.  It could represent not being alone in the obvious spiritual sense but in the human sense as well.  We all share commonalities in our travels through this life although it often feels as though we are going absolutely alone down our chosen paths.  It’s an important reminder that while our paths might be unique, the feelings that we experience are often the same as others on other journeys.  We react as humans.

This is a very simple painting but there is a lot going on within it, as far as color and texture, that give it the needed depth to carry the mood.  The feeling I carried from the song led me to keeping the composition sparse, with no distant landscape in the background and the Red Tree being the sole focus of the canvas.  I wanted that pure focus in this piece and everything in it pushes the eye to that central figure, creating an atmospheric feel that carries the weight of the painting.

Okay, I’ve said enough.  Here’s an acoustic version of the song with Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy.  Hope you’ll see what I heard…

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Darkness on the Edge of Town

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged on October 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

Watched the new documentary on HBO called The Promise.  It concerns itself with Bruce Springsteem and the making of his album Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1977-78.  It gives a real inside look at the creative process behind the album, highlighting the immense amount of work and effort that went into its creation.

I was intrigued by several things that were said in the film and was able to easily identify with the process that Springsteen employed in making his album.  They talked about wanting to create a cinematic feel and sweep with the music, one that evoke a visual image with the sound.  Sound pictures, they said.  I immediately understood what they meant in that I have always viewed my paintings in the reverse of this, as being visual music.  As though the message or feel he (and I) wants to get across is caught somewhere in between the two mediums.

They used the word feel often in describing how the songs came around, how Sprinsteen depended on an intuitive sense of rightness in finishing and assembling his songs.  Again, I immediately understood what they meant, even the terminology they used which surprised me because I often struggle with words to describe the process.  His obsessive-compulsive mania for his work also seemed somewhay familiar.

All in all, I found it pretty interesting and if you have an interest in the creative process or Bruce’s music, it’s well worth a watch.  There’s a lot more I could write but I’ll let the film speak for itself.

Here’s the title track from a show in Passaic, NJ right after the album came out:

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What You Are…

Posted in Influences, Television, Video, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A few weeks ago, at the gallery talk at the Principle Gallery, I was trying to explain my process and how my work comes around to being what it is and why there is often a repetition of form and subject.  It’s a difficult thing to describe and has always evaded the limit of my words.  In doing so that day I used an example of an apt description that I had seen once on televison and had written of in this blog.

It was from a segment on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery series called Wallander: Sidetracked starring Kenneth Branagh as a Swedish police detective involved in solving a series of murders.  There is a point at the end where he is forced to shoot and kill the killer who is a disturbed and abused young man.  Wallander (Branagh) is deeply affected by this and goes to see his father, played by the great British character actor David Warner (I’ll always remember him best as Evil in the film Time Bandits from  Terry Gilliam) who is shown above.  He is a painter of landscapes and is struggling with the onset of Alzheimer’s.

While trying to find a way to comfort his distraught son, the father reminds him of the times when Wallander as a child would ask why he painted what he did, why they were always the same.  He gives an answer that struck me deeply when I first heard it because it was so near to the heart of what I do as a painter.

 I used this example that day and as I describing the scene to the folks there at the talk, I was wishing I could just show them the scene to better illustrate what I had meant.  Anyway, I was able to find the scene which is definitely enhanced by camerawork and background music. I hope it gets the point across as well as I think it does.

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Play Ball

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on October 6, 2010| 7 Comments »

I woke up early this morning, even by my standards, and the first thing in my mind as I laid there in the dark was the thought that there was baseball today.  The first day of the baseball playoffs.  Baseball’s always been a link to childhood for me (and many, many others) but this morning there was the reawakened feelings of childish anticipation on Christmas morning at the prospect of watching baseball in the studio. 

My appreciation of baseball has regrown over the years back to the thrill it provided as a kid.  I had lost interest in it in the 1980’s as I was busy trying to make a living and find my own niche in the world.  But as I began to find who and what I was, I rediscovered the game.  Oh, there’s a lot to be cynical about in the game– ludicrous salaries that make greedy corporate types look like pikers, performance enhancing drugs and such.  Things that have driven away some longtime fans such as my father. 

 But, for me, I look past those  trappings and see only the game and its pace and geometry.  Nuance and history.  The way it raises emotion with a game both simple and complex.  A game where a player is not judged by sheer size or strength or pure physical ability but by skill level and intangibles such as grittiness, hustle and gamesmanship.  A game where losing and failing are built into the game and those who aren’t afraid to fail succeed.  A game that is celebrated with poetry and romance.

So, today is a day for baseball.  A day of childish wonder.  A day of joy here in Mudville.

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The image at the top is a little experiment from when I was first starting to paint.  I call it Casey at the Bat.  It’s hard to explain what I was going for and how close I came to reaching it with this little piece.  I know it doesn’t look like much but it is pretty much what I wanted from it.

In honor of the first day of the playoffs, here’s a 1908 Edison recording of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. 

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Pearl

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 4, 2010| 2 Comments »

I see that Janis Joplin died forty years ago on this date, back in 1970.  Her final album, Pearl, was released several months after her death, in early 1971, and was a transcendent album for me when I first heard it as a 12-year old.

It was a great group of songs.  My favorites at the time were the great Kris Krisofferson song  Me and Bobby McGee and Mercedes Benz but soon Cry Baby and Get It While You Can joined them.  These songs were bluesy and raw but with a certain vulnerability that made the power of the music expand.  Just a great album, one that is a testament to its own time and has a continuing life even today, nearly forty years later.

I should be be highlighting a song from this album today but instead in honor of Janis’ death I will play a wonderful version of her take on the classic Summertime.  It’s from 1969, filmed in Stockholm, Sweden.  It just seems right, now that summer is now in the past and the first inklings of autumn are upon us.

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