Eddie Campbell

This is for four year old hayley campbell. it's a little bit late.

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I was playing the version by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats (1940) during dinner tonight, but I can't find that one online. Milton Brown and the Brownies is near enough.

Brown actually turns out to be very interesting. he is credited with founding that uptempo and frantic style of music known as 'Western Swing', circa 1930, heard in its full glory above:

After leaving the Light Crust Doughboys, Brown formed the world's first Western swing band in Fort Worth, Texas, the Musical Brownies. The first incarnation of the Brownies featured Brown, guitarist Derwood Brown, bassist Wanna Coffman, Ocie Stockard on tenor banjo, and fiddle player Jesse Ashlock. Shortly afterward, pianist Fred "Papa" Calhoun and fiddle player Cecil Brower (who replaced Ashlock) joined the group. Like the Light Crust Doughboys, the Musical Brownies played a mixture of country, pop, and jazz, but the Brownies had a harder dance edge than their predecessors. Almost immediately, Brown and His Musical Brownies were a huge success. The group had a regular spot on the radio station KTAT and drew large crowds to various Texas and Oklahoma dance halls. Their home venue, Crystal Springs Dance Hall in Fort Worth, was sold out nearly every Saturday night from 1933 to 1936. Brown and Wills remained friends; and Wills' Waco, Texas-based band, the Playboys, was modeled after the Musical Brownies.
In April 1934, the band recorded eight songs for Bluebird; and then another ten recordings for the label in August. Brown and his talented group of musicians were responsible for numerous innovations, notably in late 1934, the Brownies added the true pioneer of the world’s first electrically amplified steel guitar—Bob Dunn. Dunn was a jazz guitarist who first heard electric steel guitar played by a down and out blues performer on the Coney Island boardwalk—Dunn's innovative steel guitar solo riffs singlehandedly created country & western's most recognized solo instrumental sound. His upbeat "Taking Off" instrumental is an excellent example of his Jack Teagarden-inspired solos; a towering inspiration to many Western swing, country and even rock guitarists in the years to follow. (more, Wikipedia)

Brown died in a car crash at age 32 in 1936.
Ps- I added all this background info after Hayley appeared in the comments

Labels: music2

I linked to this a few days ago, but let's post it here. It's from Gotye's album, Making Mirrors. It's at number three here this week after landing in the charts at no 1 last week. These are beautifully crafted little songs. And this one has a lovely piece of animation too.

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Labels: music2

I've been easing back to normal after the weekend at the Sydney opera House. I'd say this year's Graphic was even better than last year's. I didn't think that was possible as there are not too many people in the comics biz with enough charisma to fill up a 2000-seat concert hall. This year Jordan Verzar went in the other direction. He signed up rising music star Gotye (Wally de Backer) and had animations created to accompany all the tracks form his brand new album, which was coordinated for a release on Friday last. By Monday Gotye was number ONE in the singles charts here with Somebody that I Used to Know. Now, You can't predict stuff like that coming to pass, but It sure as hell takes some special kind of insight. That part of the show was balanced on the Sunday by a preceding set of silent comics, by Woodring, Crumb, Kuper, Hunt Emerson (his moving and classic 'Buster Keaton and the city mouths' - i confess to a tear in my eye when I saw it come up), Nathan Jurevicius' amazing Scarygirl and more, set to specially composed music by Gotye, Fourplay, Plaid, Captain Matchbox and others. Included in the prodeedings was a screening of Shaun Tan's Oscar winning animated short The Lost Thing (With Live musical accompaniment!). A Great night out!

Faster-louder has a good review of the night with 25 great photos.


Here's Gotye's official video for the single. The gorgeous Kimbra appears with him in this duet. She stepped up for this number at the opera house. My pal Breach was down by the stage and held her cardigan.

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And here is Kimbra's own single. I hear she's coming up for the Brisbane festival in September.

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Jim Woodring, Scott McCloud and Peter Kuper all gave excellent presentations. I emptied out my camera when I got home but all I seem to have is a load of shots of fancy bathroom taps for future picture reference. It's a good job Breach had a passer-by take this one of me and him otherwise there would be no evidence that I was ever there.


Except for this shot by Karen Beilharz, in which I am just about to start my blatherings, a comedy routine based around stuff from my next book and other sources.


A bloody great event, and the absolute best there currently is in the whole comics-related field. The thing about other shows is that they are all about selling stuff, whether that's old comics, or the next tv show or movie coming down the pike. Graphic is about celebration, on-the-spot live entertainment, art and music, and going home with a grand and glorious feeling. I'd say they have established it well and truly as a permanent event. Mark it in your calendar.

And if anybody else has pictures, send us your links.

Labels: Graphic, music2

Birds show off their dance moves

"Some birds have a remarkable talent for dancing, two studies published in Current Biology suggest.
Footage revealed that some parrots have a near-perfect sense of rhythm; swaying their bodies, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet in time to a beat.
One bird, Snowball, a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleanora ), came to the researchers' attention after YouTube footage suggested he might have a certain prowess for dance - especially when listening to Everybody by the Backstreet Boys."Labels: music2

In condemnation of CDs of old music that do not include N O T E S.

I'm listening to a cd on the Prix Calin label from 2003 which I picked up in a three-for-the-price-of-one sale in Singapore in 2005 en route to Angouleme. I had terrible trouble getting out of the shop because I only wanted one for the price of one and had no interest in any of the rest though I wound up throwing in a late Isaac Hayes album just to help them clear some space and departed hastily. The disc I'm listening to is a round up of Charlie Christian cuts among which I saw a few I didn't recognise as being already in my collection. There are no notes. I mean just who, where and when kind of notes, not florid descriptions of what I'm hearing.
The poor kid died age 25, after a brief three year recording career, so it's not the dates that are a problem, but there are quite few undocumented live tracks here. And Christian is one of those artists that if there is a bit of tape somewhere of him tuning up his guitar, it will have been put on a cd long before now. (wikipedia: "Although Christian never recorded professionally as a leader, compilations have been released of his sessions as a sideman where he is a featured soloist, of practice and warm-up recordings for these sessions, and some lower-quality recordings of Christian's own groups performing in nightclubs, by amateur technicians.") Elsewhere I have another cd of his rare taped moments at Minton's with Clarke and Monk. It has a photo of him on the front of a card which is blank on the back. I had to write my own notes on it. And as for the 1947 radio session during which Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie do an entirely improbable rendition of Tiger Rag, I've never seen that on a cd at all, so I'm holding onto my old 1983 LP double album on a French label. At least it's got the times dates and who was in the band, though I added a few extra notes of my own in tippex on the fold-out surface of the black laminated card. You'd be impressed. Or horrified, if you're the sort of person who buys second hand stuff and gets livid on finding that some jackass has written all over it.


I wrote a post on another blog a couple of years ago titled 'Charlie Parker's cabbages' and I just discovered I still have the drawing.


First to claim it in comments can have it in the mail.

Labels: music2

i was asked last night why I've been giving poor innocent Andre Rieu a beating "when he is doing the good of bringing classical music to folk who wouldn't other wise experience it." I sought and found and read Roger Scruton's excellent 1999 essay, Kitsch and the Modern Predicament, from which these are a few choice morsels. Do read the whole thing.

It is in America that kitsch reached its apogee, not as a form of life but as a way of death. In Forest Lawn Memorial Park, death becomes a rite of passage into Disneyland. The American funerary culture, so cruelly satirized by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One, attempts to prove that this event, too—the end of man's life and his entry into judgment—is in the last analysis unreal. This thing that cannot be faked becomes a fake. The world of kitsch is a world of make-believe, of permanent childhood, in which every day is Christmas. In such a world, death does not really happen. The "loved one" is therefore reprocessed, endowed with a sham immortality; he only pretends to die, and we only pretend to mourn him.

...This experience provided another kind of insight into kitsch. Ketelbey's music is trying to do what music cannot do and should not attempt to do —it is telling me what it means, while meaning nothing. Here is heavenly peace, it says; just fit your mood to these easy contours, and peace will be yours. But the disparity between the emotion claimed by the music and the technique used to suggest it shows the self-advertisement to be a lie. Religious peace is a rare gift, which comes about only through spiritual discipline. The easy harmonic progressions and platitudinous tune take us there too easily, so that we know we have not arrived. The music is faking an emotion, by means that could never express it.

Kitsch art is pretending to express something, and you, in accepting it, are pretending to feel.

...work of the imagination is not possible for everyone; and in an age of mass communication, people learn to dispense with it. And that is how kitsch arises—when people who are avoiding the cost of the higher life are nevertheless pressured by the surrounding culture into pretending that they possess it. Kitsch is an attempt to have the life of the spirit on the cheap.

Labels: music2

i've been enjoying the old reruns of Maverick on Foxtel, and I seem to have gotten in early enough to catch some of season 1 from 1957. I was two when these things first aired. I loved the cowboy shows as a kid, but managed to miss this one except in an occasional repeat. It would have been my favourite, though probably would have a bit over my head for a few years. Anyway, Callum is passing through the room, catches a glimpse of James Garner as Bret Maverick and says "Hey! Wouldn't he make a good Spirit!". (Cal is currently working his way through Will Eisner's complete run of the Spirit.) Coincidentally, Eisner himself thought Garner would have been perfect in the role. He originally, in the '40s, had Cary Grant in mind, but by the '60s Grant would have been too old, so the 30 year old Garner he saw as perfect.
Of course it's all academic now as Garner is himself too old, but discussing the issue would at least leave an impression of just what the character should be like on screen, relevant as Farnk Miller's version will be coming to our screens very soon. Thus In 2002 at the Will Eisner symposium on the graphic novel in Florida, at which I was a guest, I was having breakfast with Will himself and he confirmed his liking for Garner as a theoretical Spirit. In 2006 I was having a beer with Frank Miller in San Diego and I brought the subject up. I may be wrong but I got the impression that Frank was dismissive of the choice.
Garner has great presence and has to be watched on screen, but here are a couple of stills of him as Bret Maverick




Here is Eisner's Spirit:


And here's the second Maverick photo with a mask drawn on the face:


This remark on the wikipedia page linked above,
"Garner as Bret usually wore a black cowboy hat, often changing its placement on his head from one scene to the next,"
reminds me of the expressive ways that Eisner would use the Spirit's hat, changing it from sombre to resilient to comedic to jaunty, etc. etc. from panel to panel.

update as i just realised the release of the movie is closer than I thought:
Spirit stars at abandoned warehouse (13 hours ago)

The stars of comic book film adaptation The Spirit have appeared at an abandoned warehouse. Rather than a Leicester Square premiere, Samuel L Jackson, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johannson graced the red carpet at the Old Post Office in central London, ahead of the film's world premiere in New York next week.

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Andre Rieu earlier in Melbourne:

Saccharine touches make Rieu mildly nauseating

Alongside "light" classical and popular 19th century Viennese dance music, a Rieu performance typically features staging, costumes and coiffures based on romanticised stereotypes of 19th century Vienna, with saccharine Disney studio touches and kilometres of taffeta thrown in for good effect. Add in sing-along, clap-along, whistle-along audience participation, pantomime jokes, sensory overload (large screens, ice skaters, dancers, horses) and the production values of variety television, and you have The Wiggles for grown-ups.

(thanks to Louise for the link)

Labels: comic books 2, music2, screen2, Spirit

GOD ATTEMPTS TO HALT ANDRE RIEU CONCERT

CITIZENS KEPT OUT PAST THEIR BEDTIMES

Fans at the Brisbane Andre Rieu concert were forced to take refuge inside Suncorp Stadium after the thunderstorm struck, delaying proceedings by one hour.
Damaging winds, large hailstones and severe lightning across South-East Queensland forced Rieu fans standing on the grass and sitting in uncovered sections to take refuge inside the stadium.
The concert, which was scheduled to start at 7pm, did not start until 8pm.
Organisers say they were very close to cancelling the concert as an 8pm starting time meant the concert could go as late as 11.15pm.

"The LORD is slow to anger and great in power and will not at all acquit the wicked; the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet." nahum 1:3
(Note from Dan Best, who knows god better than I)

While "Rieu's popularity has distressed many classical music buffs,... Those who got drenched last night will be relieved to learn their favourite will return in October next year, but he'll be indoors at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre at Boondall."
Also, "There would have been smiles from fans (of local footy team The Broncos) watching the Imperial Ballet of Vienna making their stage entrance from the players tunnel behind the stage."

If Rieu is unknown to you, here he is at Radio City knee deep in syrup playing My Way. I like the way the camera keeps going back to the Italian looking geezer in the audience (is he a famous bloke?) with tears running down his mush. He couldn't find a taker for his 250ドル ticket.

Labels: in my neighbourhood, music2

john Cale was a founding member of the band the Velvet Underground among other claims to musical significance. His autobiography, What's Welsh for Zen? (1999) is one of the great illustrated books of our time. it was Neil Gaiman who brought Cale and Dave McKean together for the project, as Neil explained in his blog last year. Mckean did something more than just set the type on almost every page of the 270 page volume. He even found ways to use his familiar comics approach in a few places. It doesn’t tend to turn up in lists of McKean's work; Wikipedia doesn’t mention it while having a list of all his comic books and DVD covers ( "We’ll fix that when we get home, Bart").

Here are a few random example spreads:




While revisiting the book recently I became fascinated by Cale's brief account of the oddly famous September 9 1963 performance of Erik Satie's Vexations. This musical composition has its own 3,000 word Wikipedia entry. It was organised by American 'avant garde' composer John Cage, described on the Wiki page as being "doubtless instrumental in creating some misconceptions about Erik Satie's work in general". The instructions on the score indicate that it is to be repeated 840 times. It was played the requisite number of times in a public performance by a relay team of players including the 21 year old John Cale. An interesting follow up to the event occurred on the tv show ‘I've got a secret" which teams Cale with Karl Schenzer, the only person in the audience who sat through the whole thing. That sequence from the program is of course is easy to find on Youtube:

Labels: Illustration, music2, old books (2)

musician plays his banjo while having brain surgery. (Two minutes of video of the performance.)

A musician who underwent brain surgery to treat a hand tremor played his banjo throughout to test the success of the procedure.
Eddie Adcock is one of the pillars of Bluegrass Music and realised his tremor could threaten his ability to perform professionally.
Surgeons placed electrodes in Mr Adcock's brain and fitted a pace maker in his chest which delivers a small current which shuts down the region of his brain causing the tremors.

(link thanks to Bob Morales)

Labels: music1, music2