On The Cusp

I liked the inaugural poet's poem. It was oddly cold on the surface and warm underneath. It looked forward to the possibilities. I'm doing that now. Beck always does that with his music. He's one of those musicians, like Prince, who always sounds fresh. No matter what album you listen to of his it sounds innovative somehow. I love his uniqueness and creativity.

A cool thing about this record, which I bought new at a local record store, is that it came with an access code to download the album recorded at the highest quality possible for an MP3 directly from the vinyl master. So I get the record and the MP3s, which works out since I painted on the record. I did record the record with my iRecord as well.

I've sent the Santana and the Lennon to the gallery, and I'm waiting on the Mariah Carey record. It's certainly a relief to have the details all worked out. Now it's just the time pressure, which the gallery is feeling more than me because they still have to do the reproductions. So I sent the first two before physically receiving the contracts and initial deposit to give them more time. They did send me a scan of the signed check, and they still need the last portrait, so I felt okay about it.

I'll bend over backwards to be able to say "yes" to someone who wants my art. As long as you're on the up and up and I trust you're not trying to take me, I'll try to make it work. All you have to do is ask.

Peace.

Beck 01/28/09

THIS Is My Music, My Culture!

Now, THAT is a record store! I just wished I'd known about it earlier! The ex-manager of one of another local small chain of used music stores who had displayed my art over a year ago had left to open his own store, Revolver Records. I didn't know about it until last month and finally went a couple days ago. Man! I felt like I was back in West L.A. at Record Rover. And to be named after my favorite album of all time!

Stacks of boxes of records, tightly packed bins of new and used vinyl in all possible genres, all crammed into an old house in downtown Phoenix's arts district. I'm glad it's a bit of a drive because I'd be there WAY too much if it weren't. Hopefully though, as they are in the arts district, they'll be able to devote some wall space to my art. TJ wants to if they can.

They have listening stations for both vinyl and the small selection of CDs. Rare and cool looking albums adorn the walls along with framed band t-shirts. I tell you, I felt at home. The prices were so reasonable too! Beatles and the rare Hendrix album with the original cover with all the nudes, all less than $50! Most records were around $10.

So I found the above Arctic Monkeys, a Led Zeppelin III (for a buck!), Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter", a Gil Scott-Heron album, "The Eminem Show", and "Born Again" by B.I.G. There were tons more, including several that I'd've loved to buy for my listening collection, but I didn't want to go TOO crazy.

I already have "Favourite Worst Nightmare" on CD and love it, love it, love it. The Arctic Monkeys are sweet, and put on a great live show. Alex's energy is awesome. This record was in excellent shape even though it'd been opened, so I recorded it with my iRecord. I do think that these new albums being pressed on vinyl that have been digitally recorded or mixed or mastered at some point don't sound "better" on vinyl. How could they, if the recording isn't analog to start with? So I'm not overly conflicted about using them for my art.

In fact, I'm starting to paint more pieces of those musicians I, myself, truly love. I want to build a collection of paintings that really fit my tagline "this is my music, my culture". The Hendrix and Lennon last week started this off. Hopefully I'll eventually get them hung in our dining room to show you how cool these look on the wall. I'll post pics then. Now to decide whether to actually paint on a Nick Drake album.

Peace.

SOLD - Alex Turner 10/16/08

Blues For Thee, Vanilla

Value = you. You'll see
where I'm going, eventually.

Last year I participated in Vinyl Killers 5, a show of artwork using vinyl records as canvas in Portland, Oregon. I sold a James Brown and Bob Dylan. I've got a link to the show's website in my linkroll off to your right. This year I'm sending Afrika Bambaataa, Miles Davis, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and this one of Tom Waits.

I first found out about Tom Waits when I watched him in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, a great movie that also stars John Lurie and Robert Benigni. All 4 of these people are brilliantly creative. If you aren't familiar with their work, I'd urge you to explore.

I'm noticing that all the creative types mentioned in this post are distinctive, strongly individual, unique, and defiant. Types that live on the edge of creativity and culture. Remarkable.

But you are remarkable too. Even if you don't have a page on Wikipedia or a cult following, you are perfectly valuable as a human being. Think about the people killed back in 2001 on this day, each with a story, each with value.

Anything that you do or create, any ripples you send off, any effect you have on those around you, is your value, is part of "you". I was sitting listening to this Tom Waits album while my iRecord turned it into a reasonably accurate digital version and started thinking about everybody involved in creating the piece of art I was going to create using the record.

I end up thinking about that a lot, as I realize how we share our value. The people who have a part, any part, in your story have value to you. I mean the people who made the steel that became the machine that pressed the record that got released by the record company, bought, listened to, and sold to the store where I bought it are important to me. And so are all the people along that path. Get it?

So be remarkable as you are. Be you, the best, the most authentic you that you can, even if you are vanilla instead of homemade pumpkin caramel with whipped topping.

And thank you for being part of my journey, for as you read this, you exchange your attention for my creation, mutually sharing value, neither seeking gain.

Peace.

SOLD - Tom Waits 09/11/08

Gene Simmons' Moneybag [EC]

I love that Gene trademarked the moneybag. The thing we love to hate, money is what unites and separates us at the same time. I exchange my value for something you value, with a place-holder in between. As the ultimate means to an end in capitalist society, "money makes the world go 'round".

I used to cringe at the thought of selling my art, as Chris Guillebeau discusses in this post. In college I'd read Marx and sort of understood his concept of the exploitation of the worker, and I didn't want to feel that way with my art.

Then I realized that I WAS the means of production though. I owned myself. And I owned my art. As long as I didn't compromise that, as long as I didn't "sell out", I wouldn't have a problem selling my art. Maintaining control is difficult though. It's required that I decide on certain policies before considering specific situations.

Such a situation has come up. I previously decided, like Seth Godin states in this piece, that I don't want to create any conflicts of interest and take paid advertising. My online presence is meant solely to promote my art and to connect with a community of people passionate about creativity and culture. In promoting my art, yes, I am hoping to find people in that community interested in celebrating their particular passion with a commissioned piece of mine, but money is not an end.

Ramble, ramble. I'm not good at talking about myself like this. Suffice it to say I only say good things about things I think are good, and bad things about things I think are bad. And I won't take money to do the opposite. That's pretty simple. I value your trust and my principles.

Hopefully, that also gives more weight to it when I do say good things. Like with the iRecord. They asked me for a testimonial to put on their website and I obliged. I also had the thought that I could help promote their little white box on my site and blog because I think it is such a great gizmo. They were excited and wondered what kind of compensation I'd want for sales generated by my referrals. I hadn't even thought of that! I told them that I'd rather just keep it informal, providing a link to their site. I have the original iRecord. It does work as easily straight out of the box as it looks like on their site. I've chronicled my use of it in these posts and will continue to do so.

If you do get excited about their product, please tell me! I'll answer questions about my experience with it too. I truly don't care if they link me with your purchase, but I'd like to know what you think. I'm sure they would appreciate feedback from you too.

So, if you've got a collection of audio and video recordings on anything analog, like VHS tapes, records, or even 8-track, and you want to preserve those recordings and make them way more easily portable on an iPod or whatever, check out the iRecord. Consider this my whole-hearted endorsement of the product and the company's customer relations.

Peace.

One Way Or Another (Premier Piece Of The Elliott Collection [EC])

Helping to herald the advent of the 80s era of music, Blondie is "my music, my culture". I grew up in the 80s: Madonna, Michael Jackson, synth pop, and mainstream punk. Fusing elements of disco and German techno with pop subject matter and their punk roots, the group broke into the mainstream with their passion and authenticity.

This portrait is the first in my new exclusive Elliott Collection. This collection will be limited to the largely 80s selection of albums I received in trade. I was fortunate to be entrusted with these albums because she felt I was honoring music as passionately as she felt about the bands with whom she'd grown up.

She wanted me to paint on them. I feel a twinge of guilt using these records, though, as they are still playable. So I'm going to preserve them with my iRecord before creating my artwork. I was just asked to provide a testimonial by the support staff of my little "magic white box". I hope they use what I wrote, and maybe take me up on my offer to promote their product more officially. In the meantime, I'll keep saying I love the thing!

So, what is so exclusive about these other than the fact that I'm "ruining a bunch of perfectly good 'bad 80s' records"?

Giving. I'm going to give $100 of the $175 to your favorite charity in your name. No fine print, no fancy footwork, just straight-forward donation.

But these are it. I'll post each one here on my blog with an [EC] in the title. If you want, you can subscribe to my blog through an RSS feed or email with the links in the sidebar to your right (my left, wait, no, my right too). Please contact me by phone or email, both listed at the top of the page.

If there's more than one ravenous Debbie Harry, Steven Tyler, Tommy Lee, or Dave Gahan fan out there, then I'll offer the piece to the person with the best story of why they want the painting. I'll give each piece a little time "on the market" if there's interest in it. The reason can be related to the band, your past, or the charity. Show me your passion!

Peace.

Man, I Sure Do Love Music

A friend said that to me when we were discussing the idea for my contest. It says how I feel pretty succinctly.

After my dad introduced me to The Beatles and to vinyl in general, I spent a LOT of time in used record stores in the West L.A. area. Moby Disc, Record Surplus, Rhino Records, Record Rover, and Penny Lane became regular haunts.

This was during the transition from cassette to CD, so I was resisting buying CDs at the time. I listened to tapes in my car and records at home. So my vinyl collection grew. I discovered the existence of Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab and virgin vinyl, half-speed mastered audiophile quality pressings. I've talked about the copy of "Revolver" I recorded with my iRecord.

Yesterday, still thinking about Michael and how much we loved sharing our passion for music, I decided to record the 2 albums involved in this amazing phenomenon. I have a decent copy of MFSL 1-017, Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side Of The Moon", and a mint condition copy of MFSL 1-100, The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Such incredible musical creations.

These are albums that I like to listen to straight through. Having grown up listening to records, I've gotten used to hearing complete sides as units. I also listened to the radio and watched MTV a lot, so there are songs that I only know by themselves and don't know the rest of the band's music. Mostly though, if I heard a band on the radio with a song I liked, I'd find the album and listen to the whole thing, and even try to collect a group's entire recordings.

So, I recorded these albums and joined together all the songs using Audacity into one MP3 for each side. These are concept albums anyway, so like Dark Side's second side recorded as one track automatically. That's one thing I never understood with CDs is how they decided where track breaks were between songs with no real break.

In any event, this ramble, which I tend to do when talking about myself instead of my art, is to get you to remember how you listened to music growing up. How did the media, whether it be 8-track or MP3, you listened to impact your appreciation and love for music?

Peace.

This Is Your Music, Our Culture (Or Why The X-Files' Original Tagline Will Doom Us All)

Why do we like the music we do?

How do we find out about new music?

In my experience growing up, the musicians and albums pivotal in shaping my musical taste were usually recommendations from trusted individuals. I think we're rarely bold enough to try totally new things without someone suggesting (sometimes insisting) we do it.

We like change to be slow.

I recorded the above three albums with my iRecord today, and I was thinking about how we as individuals assimilate new pieces of our collective culture.

-----

"Amorica" (Come and Save Me)

The Black Crowes' album is my wife's favorite album by her favorite band as a teenager. I got this copy from the lady who traded me for a painting of Van Halen. It's on white vinyl. Very cool.

Before my wife had me listen to the Crowes, I only knew the songs like "Remedy" that were played on the radio. I didn't know they played such kickass southern blues rock. I loved The Allman Brothers, and The Outlaws' "Green Grass & High Tides" was one of my favorite rock jams, but my musical collection had never veered into the 90's bands' take on southern rock. It was out of my element, especially as I had gotten more into jazz, industrial metal, and ambient electronica (read: intellectual music).

I certainly wouldn't have thought to listen to their albums on my own, but my wife had already done the research, as it were, and I opened up to a whole new group of music. She could tell me this was her favorite and I trusted her judgement.

"The Dreaming" (I Love Life)

Kate Bush was discovered by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and also sang backing vocals on Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up". I hadn't heard of her until I was in high school and my friend Michael played this album for me.

I was very picky about my music then, focussing on the prog rock I knew like Genesis and Pink Floyd, and the psychedelic and classic rock I was discovering gradually on my own by spending hours in used record stores. I also hesitated to listen to female vocalists at the time. Yet, Michael was the guy who'd figured out the second album to play over "The Wizard of Oz". And he'd introduced me to Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing at Baxter's", my favorite album to this day.

So I listened. It was weird, but I gave it a chance because of who was playing it. I wouldn't have even listened to it at all if I'd seen it at a used record store, much less gave it enough time to grow on me. She's amazing though, very unique voice and musical sensibility.

Again, my friend had done the hard part of finding and realizing that, hey, this music was worth a listen. I trusted that Michael wouldn't play me crap, especially because he credits me for introducing him to Genesis, Peter Gabriel and all of prog rock in the first place.

"Penderecki: Utrenja, The Entombment of Christ" (I will praise thy passion)

In high school, I was a geek, proudly. Physics was my favorite subject. I even went during lunch to learn stuff Mr. Layton didn't teach in class. He had the most awesome sound system in his room with huge speakers up against the ceiling in racks he'd built. One lunch he told the group of us geeks that he wanted to play us some music.

Polish avant-garde classical composer, Krysztof Penderecki, wrote the music that would later be used as the soundtrack to "The Shining". Yeah, that music. This was similar: a wall of atonal sounds produced by an orchestra, chorus, and operatic vocalists. If you weren't specifically listening to it, you'd force whoever was to turn it off. It's an assault of sound. Beautiful painful passion.

I rarely ventured into the classical section, but this one album got me into all things modern classical. Just incredible piece of work. It vastly broadened my musical horizons. All because I trusted my teacher.

-----

Trust seems to be the uniting factor. I was open to it and I personally trusted the individuals sharing the new music with me. They knew, so while it was new to me I wasn't scared.

"Trust No One" will lead to the breakdown of society. Trust is the key to keeping humanity afloat and culture intact.

I know because it's a prerequisite to love. Agreed?

Peace.

Nothing Is Real

NEMS BUD 280 recorded by iRecord. This fan club release follows the development of the song "Strawberry Fields Forever" from Take one to the "heavy" version to the second version to the famous final version combining the two. So I listened to the song in various forms 6 times. Great song, and cool to hear the differences. Good music to kind of zone out to also. Escape.

I'm trying to stay firmly in denial, or at least emotionally so, right now. After last week, I need to not deal with reality for a bit. I got to thinking about balance again and how anything in moderation is usually ok, but when it becomes a habit or a means to avoid real life, it becomes a problem. What is real life anyways, though? I mean here's a list:

reading, sports, school, art class, piano lessons, shopping, work, travel, recreation, organizing, cleaning, eating, sex

All reasonable activities, yes? Yet all can become escapes, I know. There've been moments in my life when I've used all as a way to not deal with reality for a bit. It's difficult to draw the line. I guess it's all about intention. Like I've discussed before, we are defined by our actions, but those actions always have intentions motivating them. It's up to the human being doing the being human to have good intentions, to have control over why they are doing what they're doing. Otherwise it can quickly become an identifiable disorder or addiction characterized by the action controlling the actor. Not good. So it's important to be self-reflective, to honestly assess our motivations.

Like right now I'm doing projects and activities that, while I'll be glad I did them later as I've wanted to do them, are currently motivated by my desire to turn my brain off and to let my emotional stress come down a bit. Escape. It isn't real.

So I keep telling myself.

Going 'Round In Circles

So this time I ended up testing my iRecord with an album with too much silence. Where with the last one I had to split the tracks manually, here I had to piece together the tracks. This album, "Nothing But Aging" again by The Beatles, has a couple overdub tracks and demo versions. Overdubs are tracks recorded to overlay previously recorded tracks, adding new vocals or instrumentation, so they often have stretches of silence where no new material is being recorded. The iRecord interpreted those bits of silence as track breaks. The demo versions are several different early recordings of the same song strung together, but again with silence between, so the iRecord split them into pieces. Audacity was a champ again, though, rejoining all the parts of this album, one of the gems in my collection.

It's very meditative watching a beautiful marbled record playing the Beatles and Donovan singing Hare Krishna with the Maharishi. Lets one remove oneself from the normal flow of time, the record's going 'round seemingly replacing the clock's. Nice on a Friday of a week so emotionally trying and psychologically bizarre. Relaxed my stomach for a little bit anyways.

Peace.

The Observer And The Observed

Part of the Uncertainty Principle in Physics (yes, I hear "blah, blah, blah..." after the word Physics now too, even after 6 years of UCLA science courses, but stay with me) says that whenever a subject observes an object, the act of observing changes the object, making the observation always slightly different than the reality a moment before. In a way, listening to vinyl is like that: each time an album is played, the record is worn a bit. I know it's very slight, but sometimes I hesitate to play albums because of it. That's one reason why I'm so thrilled to be able to archive my records with the iRecord.

Some of my records were recorded from "reference discs", not master recordings, so they already bear the artifacts of repeated play. That was the case with the third album I recorded, "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles, another fan club release. It's got some great rare stuff on it, but the recording noise and extremely short track breaks led to both sides being recorded as one long track each. Oh well, so I got to try out Audacity, a free audio file editting program, to split the tracks. It worked like it was supposed to, even though it took awhile to load in the original uncut file. So, I think I can use the iRecord succesfully for all my records! I could've tried increasing the silence sensitivity setting to split the tracks, but I didn't want to have to play the whole record again. There already was a small skip from when I bought it. So, woohoo!

Oh, yeah, art...

I painted Stevie Ray Vaughan for Wild About Music in addition to the Dylan in my previous post. Today I'm going to frame, box and send those. Next I'm painting The Flaming Lips. The record is a dark, clear, red vinyl. This is the first time I'm using colored and clear vinyl. I'll see how it looks. I might end up spraying the backside with black to make the portraits show up more if the album cover is too distracting behind it. Or I could just create a backing out of black construction paper... I'll show ya both ways before deciding.

Peace.

It Seems Backwards To Me

For my second iRecording, I threw it a curve with "Return To Abbey Road" again by The Beatles. It's a fan club issue with shorter pauses between tracks and a pieced together medley on side 2. My little new friend still picked up the actual song breaks, leaving the medley intact as one long file. Before CDs came out, I never dropped a needle in the middle of a medley. I pretty much always listened to whole sides of albums, especially bands that did concept albums, like Pink Floyd. I'm actually going to prefer the way the iRecord does it. I'd rather the whole medley stay in one piece, never understanding why they broke them up on CDs.

So I'm really happy with the white box of magic. I might even give it a name...

You can probably tell I'm a bit distracted from painting at the moment. I'll get back to it tomorrow... maybe.

I'd better because the Florida Music Festival wants 7 by the end of April and I need to replenish Wild About Music's supply as well as Primitive Kool's. I did sell one online sort of indirectly through P.Kool. A payment transaction showed up on PayPal for a Miles Davis. I contacted the buyer who said she'd seen the one listed as "SOLD" on P.Kool's site. Based on the buyer's address, I think she had gone to the gallery, seen my other pieces, found their site, got my name, found my site, and, because I have the PayPal buttons, just paid that way. Even if that's not exactly how it went down, I'd told Paul at P.Kool that I would always ask where people found out about me and give him kind of a referral fee. This is the first time it's happened, so I'm going to send him just about what he would normally make selling my pieces himself. I'll feel better anyways.

Peace.

Preserving, Reaffirming Passion, i.e. Rock On!

50 MB of heaven! It works, the iRecord works! It turned The Beatles "Revolver" into 50 MB. The default settings worked too, which made me happy, no tweaking required. It records at 192 kbps and it split the tracks automatically. I know the picture's not that clear, I might need a new camera now, but that lovely white box is magic! It was seriously easy. I just hooked it to one of the outputs from my receiver, played the album like normal and it blinked orange for audio recording. So, for $200 for the iRecord and whatever for a regular USB 2.0 storage device (mine's a PNY Attache 1G, cheap cheap at Staples) you can transfer all your recordings, audio and video, to MP3. The sampling rate can be increased for higher quality and you can even schedule the recording to use it like a DVR. Holy mackerel, how cool!

I started with "Revolver" because it was the album my dad played for me that initially turned me on to The Beatles, vinyl, and music in general, leading to my collection of the 1000s of records that I now want to archive. This copy is MFSL 1-107, an Original Master Recording released by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab that I bought for $40 in December '93 at Record Rover in West L.A. So clean! Now it's daunting to think about all the work it'll be to record everything, but I'll take it slow and really enjoy listening to them too.

My wife's going to be so excited that I can now archive her Black Crowes concert recordings too!

Peace.

Beats Me What To Call This Post

I hope I did it justice, this painting of Thunders and Johansen on an album the guy sent me from Canada. It was the one he played into the ground, so I'm sure it means a lot. It was pretty dang difficult to find a picture good enough to use of both band members from the right time period, blasted punks, ;)

I still feel so scattered, unable to focus on things which require any. Let's see... I got the truck emissions checked, mowed the backyard, weeded, did dishes and laundry... I need to send money so our oldest dog stays legal... oh yeah, that was what I wanted to talk about: we're going to Vegas! We're supposed to do things that would usually make us happy, and, oh boy, The Verve are playing The Pearl at The Palms! They're only playing a few gigs in the U.S. and it looks like this is the smallest venue at 2500. This time we bought tickets with assigned seats, looks like pretty good ones, so we won't be as close as in London but we'll be more comfortable. The acoustics are supposed to be excellent, so it should be a great show. Hopefully they'll play some more new songs from their upcoming album.

Sorry these posts are rambling, my mind isn't working right... but, um, right, the new photo setup. I just got this Tabletop Photo Studio through SkyMall. I'm hoping it'll eliminate the spotlight glare streaking across the records. I'll take a shot of what I'm using now, as well as taking shots of a piece in both setups. I figured it was worth a try. I might even be able to take pictures of them framed too!

Another new toy I got from SkyMall is the iRecord magic white box. So far I've updated the firmware and downloaded the settings program. I was surprised I was able to follow the instructions for the firmware given my current mental state, but I did it without messing it up completely. Next I've got to check the internal settings, and then figure out how to hook it up to record my vinyl. Hope it works. The company supposedly provides good customer support, so they could help me tweak it if there're any hitches. We'll see.

Last thing is the show in Canada had over 100 pieces! It's so cool that people are finding a creative use for records. I hope mine stand out because I paint the recording artist on their own album, but I love seeing the compositions of other artists. I wonder if mine sold?

Gotta go do something... it'll come to me.

SOLD - New York Dolls 03/28/08

Art And Music Together

Whew. Rodrigo received them up in Canada. That's him holding my James Brown. They've gotten some comments already on Flickr, so hopefully they'll get a good response at the show. It's been publicized in Juxtapoz, which I think is a pretty big deal.

I've started on the ones for the Part Art Show in Manhattan's Lower East Side. I'll throw up a couple photos tomorrow. I think I'm going to do 8, including Mick Jagger and Lou Reed.

Another blog has posted an interview with me, pretty cool to be approached for free publicity! Nicely written intro too.

On a different note, I'm looking into a way to transfer my vinyl to MP3 files. In the SkyMall catalog that I perused on the way to Austin I found the iRecord, a little white box that takes the normal RCA inputs for audio/video and outputs to USB storage devices, including iPods. I think it'd be more useful than the USB turntables because we could also use it for audio and video cassettes. Other than CNET I couldn't find much about it online that I'd consider reliable. Has anyone used this magical blinking box?