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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Trumbo Then and Now

Posted in Current Events, Influences, Video, tagged , , , , on September 6, 2009| 2 Comments »

I Am SpartacusI am Spartacus.

If you’re familiar with that classic line or the movie Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck or Steve McQueen’s gritty performance in Papillon, you already know the work of Dalton Trumbo, the great screenwriter/novelist who died in 1976.  I was lucky to have found him in a high school class where we read his anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun, a book that still haunts me.

I was finally able to catch an episode of American Masters on PBS that focused on Trumbo and his involvement in the Communist witch hunts of the late 40’s and 50’s here in the US.  Without rehashing all the hideous events of that time, Trumbo and a number of others, called the Hollywood Ten, were called before Sen. Joe McCarthy’s now infamous senate committee, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to testify as to their Communist leanings.

It was an ugly spectacle, a black mark on our history.  Trumbo and others refused to cooperate and many were imprisoned, Trumbo for eleven months.  Some that called cooperated and named names, destroying the lives of many.  A blacklist existed throughout the 50’s that kept many people in many different fields from working, although the blacklisted Hollywood writers and actors are the best known.  Trumbo was able to keep working somewhat under fake names and behind fronts, people who would put their name to his work.  There was an incident where Trumbo’s script for The Brave One won the Academy Award in 1957 but was never claimed as it was under another name.  He finally received it in 1975.

It was truly a terrible time in our country, a time of fear-mongering and ignorance.  The reason I bring it up today is that in it, watching those grainy films of the bloated bullies of the HUAC acting like the Spanish Inquisition, I cannot fail to see huge parallels between the behavior of those enemies of free speech and the behavior of those who oppose all change today, awash in stupidity and fear.  And as much as their actions then and now seem, it is the actions of those enable them that most disappoint.  Once you kowtow to the demands of the rabidly fearful and ignorant, all hope is lost.  In the 50’s those participated in blacklisting citizens enabled the hatred of the accusers.  Today, when we allow lies and mistruths to go unchallenged, we do the same.

We cannot let the fearful and the ignorant choose our path.

Okay, I know this is probably not as coherent as it might be.  I highly recommend that anyone interested try to watch this episode of American Masters.  Perhaps you’ll see what I’m flailing to say…

Here is a small bit from the end of the episode, featuring a piece of Trumbo’s writing where he defended his experience as an American to those who questioned his love and loyalty for this land-

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September Song/ Django

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , , on September 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

djangoWalking down to grab the paper this morning and everything was shrouded in fog.  It was very early, before 6, and the morning light was still trying to gather,  giving the scene a haunting, ghostly appearance.  Chill in the air.

September.

It really made me think of one of my favorite songs, September Song, the beautiful old Kurt Weill song that has been performed by hundreds of artists over the last seventy years, from Sinatra to Willie Nelson, who does a lovely, delicate version.  On this cool, misty morning I am reminded of one of my favorite versions, that being the one from Django Reinhardt, the jazz guitarist from the middle of the last century whose distinctive gypsy-tinged plucking, the result of basically playing with only two fingers on his left hand as a result of an injury received in a fire in his youth, has influenced artists long after he passed away.

Here’s Django’s September Song.  Hope you’ll enjoy…

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Chinese Translation

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged on August 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

M-Ward-Chinese-TranslationSaturday morning and it’s gray and damp here in my part of the world.  Still August but the fingers of autumn are insinuating themselves in more and more each day, which is fine with me.  I like the damp and cool.

Like being in the cool cover of a forest in the mountains, maybe a bamboo forest in China.  A light chilly breeze rushes over the skin and shakes the leaves gently, making a quiet whirr of sound then it calms and there is silence.

Cool, precious silence.

On this cool, precious Saturday here is a song/video from M. Ward, an artist that my nephew pointed out to me a few years back.  It’s called Chinese Translation and has a pretty nice video to accompany the song.  Enjoy…

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Poor Old Dirt Farmer

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged , , , on August 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Let Us Now Praise...Strange confluences.

I was going through some old work and came across this piece just as a random track came up on my iPod.  It was a Levon Helm song, the sort of title track from his latest CD, Dirt Farmer.

It really went together beautifully and the rhythm of Levon’s music kind of captured how I saw this fellow looking at his land, the beauty and sorrow of it.

I may have displayed this piece before.  It’s called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men… and was part of my first solo exhibit some 13 years ago, a show called Exiles that was hung at a lovely art center, the Gmeiner, in Wellsboro, PA.  This piece has always resonated with me, having sorts of indicators that I only see.  Little cues that remind me of the time in which this piece was done, giving me a sense of how I felt at the time and how I was viewing the world.  Things that only make the piece special for me.

That’s a pretty common thing.  Cheri has a piece of mine in our home that I painter several years back.  A nice piece but not a great one.  But when I see it I remember all that went into this particular piece and the struggle to pull something from what appeared to be a mess at the time.  I see the effort and determination that recovered the painting from the scrap heap and made it work.  I see it as a turning point in my confidence in my own abilities.

But those are only for  my eyes, probably not evident to the outside world.  Kind of like the dirt farmer above.  Who knows what his eyes behold?

Here’s Poor Old Dirt Farmer from Levon Helm:

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Love Power

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , , , , on August 19, 2009| 4 Comments »

The Producers 1968There are different scenes in different movies that I’ve come to know when they fall in the film’s timeline, so much so that I will tune in at just the moment the scene I enjoy most appears.

One of my favorites is a scene from Mel Brooks’ The Producers, the 1968 original, not the newer and far inferior remake.  The original is a great piece of comedy with great performances from Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars (all shown in the photo above) as well as the rest of the cast.

dick shawn as LSDBut the scene I tune in for, even if I don’t have time to watch the whole film, is the one where they are auditioning actors for the cast of their ill-fated Springtime For Hitler and Dick Shawn appears onstage as Lorenzo St. DuBois – LSD.

In his audition he does a great song, a very period piece, called Love Power backed by a female band reminiscent of Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love.  Shawn’s delivery, costume and dance make me laugh every time I see it.

See if it does the same for you…

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Ripping Yarns

Posted in Favorite Things, Television, Video, tagged , , , , on August 1, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Tomkinsons SchooldaysA few weeks back I came across the old film, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the one from 1939 with Robert Donat, not the later awful musical version with Peter O’Toole.  It’s a very sweet chronicle of a schoolmaster’s life at a British upper crust boarding school, the type of film that would never be made today.  Watching it, however, reminded me of another such story.

In the 1970’s Michael Palin, in his post-Monty Python days, did a short series for the BBC that consisted of half hour episodes, each a different story with him as the main character in each.  It was called Ripping Yarns.  Seeing Mr. Chips reminded of one such episode called Tomkinson’s Schooldays which tells of a young student’s trials and tribulations in such a school.  

I remember seeing it 30 years ago or so and laughing very hard and still use references from it.  I have been wanting to revisit it all these many years and I always look for it but it never seems to resurface.  But of course, I hadn’t checked Youtube.  With a few clicks, there it was, in several parts.  

It was as funny as I remembered.  Here is the first part of Tomkinson’s Schooldays and for those of you who enjoy Python-like humor, you can see the rest on Youtube. 

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Early Bruce

Posted in Biographical, Video, tagged on July 30, 2009| 2 Comments »

Bruce Springsteen 1975I’m on the road today so I’ll fill with a little story.

When I was seventeen years old I left high school early, in January.  I guess I graduated.  I had enough credits, had fulfilled all the requirements.  Never went to a ceremony, never received a diploma.  I had had enough school at that point.  I was adrift in my life.  No real goals to speak of.  Oh, I had desires and dreams but no direction, no guidance.

At some point, I decided i would move to Syracuse and work for my brother, putting in above-ground swimming pools, but that wouldn’t start until April so I had several months to kill.  Free time.  I spent most of my time reading or watching TV or just driving around.  One day in February, I stopped in at the local OTB (that’s off-track betting, by the way) and bet my last eight dollars on the ponies at Aqueduct.

Good fortune was with me that day and I won, hitting the daily double and walking away with something like $ 130.  I called Cheri, my girlfriend (and now my wife) and asked if she would be interested in going out.  There was a guy playing tonight at the Arena in Binghamton who I had heard a little about.  I had his first two LPs and they were alright.  Might be interesting and I had money burning a hole in my pocket.  His name was Bruce Springstone, Springstein- something like that.

So we went to Binghamton.  We got there about an hour before the show and it seemed so different than other shows we’d been to at that time, the mid-70’s.  It was so quiet.  People were lined up but it was almost silent, like there was this heavy air of anticipation.  We still needed tickets so we headed to the box office.  I asked the lady behind the glass for the best seats she had and after a moment she slid me two tickets.  I looked at them then asked if she had anything better.  She laughed and said no, these were pretty good.  They were third row, just left of centerstage. 

I did say that I was seventeen, right?

Inside, it was so quiet still as we took out seats.  There weren’t the screams of drunk kids nor the pungent clouds of pot smoke.  Just that heavy air of anticipation.  The people around us kept nervously looking at the stage, waiting.  We had no idea what to expect but our interest was being piqued.  Finally, the roadies cleared the stage and the arena went black.  The first Bruuuces filled the air.

The lights came up and there they were, only feet away.  Bruce was in a white collarless shirt buttoned at the neck and a vest with a woolen sport jacket.  Miami Steve ( Silvio for those of you who know him from the Sopranos) was dressed in a hot pink suit with a white fedora. And directly in front of us, resplendent in a white suit that seemed to glow in the lights was the Big Man himself, Clarence Clemons, his sax glinting gold.

It was overwhelming for someone not knowing what to expect.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen to that time.  It was pure sonic nirvana with the thump of Mighty Max’s bass drum rattling my sternum and the Big Man’s soaring sax lines.  But more than that was the sheer effort that was put out by Springsteen.  It was the first time I had seen someone so committed to what they did.  It really mattered to him.  It seemed that all that mattered at that moment for him was to get across that space to the people in that arena.  He dove across the stage.  He clambered onto speakers.  He gave everything.  By the end of the show, some three and a half hours later, he appeared to have been dragged from a river.  He was soaked from the top of his boots to the top of head and when he played his Telecaster, his hand on the neck of the guitar would fill with a pool of  sweat.  

Several years later I ran into a person who had been at that show and when I told him my luck at getting such great seats he greened with envy.  We then both agreed that our favorite moment was when they did a cover of the Animals’ It’s My Life.  We didn’t really know one another but we both gushed about how that song had moved us, had changed our lives in some small way.  I still carry that image and when I hear that song I am suddenly 17 years old again.  And ten feet tall with the world at my feet because it was my life and I’d do what I want…

That’s my first Bruce story.

Here’s Backstreets from just a few months earlier than the show I was at.  Enjoy.

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Sunday Quiet

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on July 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Calm SummoningSunday morning.  Quiet.  

There’s always a certain stillness on Sunday mornings.  Very little traffic as I walk down our long driveway to get the paper.  Hardly anything stirring.

I always enjoy these mornings, always feel as though I have the world to myself.   Like the quiet is all mine.

Big quiet.

Here’s an older song from Chris Isaak.  Same feel.  This is from the Tonight Show from 1992 so it looks a little dated.  Enjoy…

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The Dark Blue Above

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , on July 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Dark Blue Above This is a new piece that’s titled The Dark Blue Above.  It’s very much about atmosphere and feel, very much about the weight of the sky and the potency of color and texture that give it a certain presence.  I think the simplicity of the overall composition enhances this feeling.

Makes me think again of my own smallness, my own insignificance in this world and this universe.  It’s a catalyst and sets me thinking on the nature of all things.  How? Why?

I guess that’s all I can ask out of a piece of work.  

This piece is past of Dispatches, my solo show at the West End Gallery that opens July 24.

On this Sunday morning here’s a song from Johnny Cash that sort of fits the feeling of the painting…

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Reinvention

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , on July 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Recalling Reinvention.

What I was is not what I am and what I am is not necessarily what I will be.

We’re fortunate to have such an opportunity, to be able to change and evolve over our lives.  To be able to show the world other and new facets in our prisms.  The only question is why do some people take this opportunity to reinvent themselves and other do not?

I thought about this the other day when I was in the studio, prepping work for my next show. I was listening to Van Lear Rose, an album from a couple of years back from Loretta Lynn, the Queen of Country Music.   It’s a great album with Jack White of  White Stripes fame  producing and playing.  The songs have Loretta’s unmistakeable signature voice and songwriting but have a new feel.  A little more edge and a little less twang.  A new side to Loretta.  She took the opportunity, when it presented itself,  to step forward and change.

But what about those who don’t?  Why don’t they continue to evolve?   Are they simply satisfied with where they are?  In music this is pretty common, guys playing the Oldies circuit, performing the same songs that they made popular when they were 18 years old.  Perhaps the opportunity to change never showed up.  Maybe they felt safe in staying in their tried and true routine of rehashing the past.   No risk there.

Who know?  I surely don’t but I do know that this chance to change our skin, chameleon-like, is an opportunity  that the truly creative should not simply push aside because for them to remain static is death.  Take the risk.

Here’s  a little Loretta from Van Lear Rose:

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