Omar Waqar, the CEO of Such Records, asked me to use one of my photos for artwork on the cd 12 Angry Snowmen by Evil Art Form. You can listen to it online here. The CD just arrived at their office and you can see the people at Such Records holding it in a video here. Soon it will be for sale at Amazon or you can order it from Such Records for a ten spot. Here's what they say about the album on their site.
Evil Art Form's Very first release from back in 2001. These compositions were salvaged from a mangled hard drive and then re-arranged for string quartet and Roland TR-808 drum machine. This album was produced in an abandoned theater after conducting a séance. The mixture of damaged memory, forgotten spaces, dead musicians and classic drum machine sounds is hauntingly beautiful.
I enjoyed the music. I'm not into bands so much any more and this was more like a movie score. Not everyone is going to get crazy about this but you can test it out at the link above.
I was looking for something else over at YouTube and I found some versions of Elvis Costello's Radio, Radio. Here's one from 2003 that has a nice comment from a fan about the Elvis appearance on Saturday Night Live. They start one song, stop and bust into Radio, Radio. The guy commenting said it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen. I certainly saw it and thought the same thing. Elvis got banned from the show for 12 years but by then I had long since finished watching that show. I bought the first 5 years of SNL on dvd when they turned up at Target so cheap. The Elvis Radio, Radio appearance is in there and it was fun to watch all over again. Here's a version from 1982. I'm not liking the organ in this version as much. Here's a version from Detroit in 1978. I wonder if anyone I know saw that show? Here's one from 1979. Here's Elvis breaking in on The Beastie Boys to do Radio, Radio back in 2002. Here's a nice version of Everyday I Write The Book, just for a change of pace. What's So Funny About Peace Love And Understanding? I quit following Elvis's career ages ago but still enjoy many of his songs from the 1970's and 1980's.
Sperhauk sent me a link to a video over on YouTube. It's by some computer guy who's taken the ships and sets from the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson TV show Fireball XL5, created CGI models of them, and then added some music to create a tribute to the original show. The video is in color and it's rather cool. Fun to watch. I like the headquarter building, all tall with wings, like a totem pole.
The 1962 show was in black and white and puppets were the actors. Not an attractive bunch let me tell you. And the eyebrows, man, they are something. I used to watch this show. I can't remember a thing about it. There were 39 episodes and you can buy them on dvd. The series was about a ship, the Fireball XL5, which was commanded by Colonel Steve Zodiac of World Space Patrol. That's their head quarters below with the XL5 ready to blast off to some adventure on a different planet each week.
The Anderson's did a lot of that sort of show under the Supermarionation brand. Thunderbirds, SuperCar, Joe 90 and later UFO with real people. I watched most of them when they were new to the world and haven't really wanted to go back and see them again even though I have become somewhat nostalgic about TV from the 50's and 60's.
For some reason Disney hasn't had a nice dvd release of Song Of The South yet so the bootleggers will have to do if you want to see this 1946 film. You can find copies all over the place. Most seem to be from the Japanese Laserdisc or the British DVD. Someone gave me a copy of what I think is the British DVD. You can find a copy here, here's a place that has it for $7.99. Perhaps someday Disney will do up a nice disc and we can buy that too. It's a tough one, people are unhappy no matter what you do. I'm prefectly happy to watch the one I have right now, but I'd sure like a nice Platinium Edition 2 - dvd set that had lots of production art and the like on it. It could happen. I know it's a hot potato, but once you explain how to handle them, they aren't so dangerous.
It's post Civil War and Johnny and his Mom go to live with his Grandmother who lives on a nice plantation in the south. Lots of black people live on the plantation, working as share croppers. Johnny takes a likin' to Uncle Remus and his stories but mom thinks the elderly man is a bad influence on her son. It gets worse and worse and Johnny is knocked down by a bull. It's sad but he'll be ok. Uncle Remus can fix it with a dose of Brer Rabbit. Johnny makes friends with two local children, both of them poor, one black and one white. You can read a more detailed synopsis of the movie at Christian Willis's site. There's a puppy in there too. It's sentimental melodrama, and I got a tear at the end. It's pretty to look at and the animation is some of the companies best. I even like the songs by Johnny Mercer.
That's Uncle Remus in his cabin with the three kids, then it's Johnny, Toby and Ginny. They're all pretty cute. Uncle Remus tells the Brer Rabbit stories to illustrate a moral lesson. The kids learn. There's some conflict with Johnny's mom and just about everyone else. She'll get over that eventually, fixed by singin' and story tellin'. I like stories.
I really developed an affection for the Brer Rabbit that Paul Murry drew in Walt Disney Comics and Stories. Murry drew a ton of art for Western, all kinds of characters and stories. Western Publishing was the company that made Disney Comics from the 1930's to the 1970's. Disney tried doing comics back in the 1990's but it was a failure. I'm mostly interested in the old books. That's Dell Four Color 129 from December 1946. That's pretty old. It adapts some of the animated parts of the Song of the South. You can read the rest of the tar baby story plus another whole story here. The inking is by Carl Buettner. I really have a great respect for both Murry and Buettner. They created some very entertaining stories and some really nice artwork in their comic stories. For me Paul Murry is right up there with Carl Barks as a comic creator.
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Andrew posted this 2 part YouTube video and I took a look. I used to listen to that song a lot back in the 70's. It's enjoyable and there's a good melody and chorus. Andrew has illustrated the song with a shit load of black and white drawings. They are pretty enjoyable too, a nice compliment to the song. It's a long song, over 18 minutes, and there are a lot of drawings. Took him a month. I'm getting tired thinking about it. I see Arlo revisited his song 30 years later. I'm kind'a missing the hat. Great job, AC. Have a crime free Thanksgiving everyone.
That's the opening picture to Crimso Giger's Space Oddity MOC for the MocOlympics. I really like the yellow truck for some reason and that blue building is pretty cool too. Crimso and Chad have blasted up the ladder to round 5. The boys are working in the Play It Again, Sam catagory. It's illustrating a song. Crimso picked a classic by David Bowie and I think he really knocked it out of the park. He's got some tough competition in Chas, who picked White and Nerdy by Weird Al.
That shot of the rocket and the tin can Major Tom is floating in are just a couple of the great pictures Crimso has created in his MOC. Hope you enjoy the rest of the song if you stop over at MOCpages.
Chas has even more pictures than Crimso for his illustrated version of Weird Al's White and Nerdy and some of them are fun to look at. I always like those little dragons and that red and blue wall just buzzes. Or maybe that's the residual cold that I still have. I might need to go to bed soon.
I like that orange chair and the Segway. Both of the guys are at the top of their game and the judges are going to have a tough time picking a winner.
