Work Like Hell, Boy!

Happy 2011!

I begin with a courtly bow and a small, excited jig towards Laura Cameron, who, while distracted by Christmas lights and a particularly good day on the advent calendar, agreed to be my wife. She is a fine woman of many exemplary qualities, and an excellent jeweller, so go and buy her stuff, because she has a neurotic bum to support now.

In the spirit of New Year, New Seriousness, I actually sat down and read some advice on how to use your blog - sorry, online presence - more effectively. Give it some direction. The gist of it seemed to be to decide what you want, what the audience want and deliver it - straight line. And don't, I inferred, faff about leaping between photography, anecdote, a comic, three weeks of music videos and then a cartoon cat.

Meh.

I'm entering a comic strip competition - the Eagle Initiative - (and from what I can gather from the internet, who bloody isn't) which has to be submitted at the end of January, and I've written the story, redrafted the script five times and sketched out each page but only just begun drawing the proper finished artwork. Yeek. I wanted two pages done before January began. So I'll be cracking on with it from now on.

It's the first outing of a character I've had rattling around in my head for about two years now, and who I've become very fond of, so it's been a rush and unexpected but fun, too. I was working on something just for my own amusement, a story inspired by a song and the work of Mike Mignola. I thought I can either sit around waiting for that invitation to draw a Hellboy story, or - you know, just in case it doesn't happen - draw one of my own. It's called Downbound Train and once I get this competition entry complete I'll get back to drawing the final page and adding the dialogue. There's a panel of Mignolaesque creatures shovelling bones into a steam train boiler that I particularly like.

This isn't it - I'm saving that...

I found out about the competition through Matt Craig, who was writing a story but was taken rather unwell just before Christmas. All the best to you, Matt, and wishing you a speedy recovery.

So: a competition to be swamped with entries, some seriously intimidating judges and a deadline like an oncoming train. Better try to start the car and get off the crossing...

Music on Monday: White Boy Blues

If I say "what a noise", I mean it entirely positively. 'Bukka' White knocks the hell out of a National Steel guitar playing Aberdeen, Mississippi Blues, one of his signature songs.

He had hands like Rachmaninov, a punishing way with a guitar and a Mississippi accent forty yards deep, which could partially account for the fact that he's been chiselled into history as 'Bukka' White, when his real name was Booker T. Washington White. 'Bukka' was the name a (white) producer put on the label of his first set of recordings in the 1940s, and despite hating it, White was stuck with it.

Legend has it that in 1937 White shot a man in a barroom brawl (in self-defence, it was later determined), fled to Chicago, and was two songs into a recording session when the police came for him. He served time in the notorious Parchman Farm, where he composed the songs that would make his reputation.

Not the least of his legacy is that a White's young cousin (one B.B. King) developed his distinctive finger vibrato trying to mimic White's, not understanding he did it with a slide.

The guitar featured in this video (probably, anyway - I say that to give this low voltage anecdote some narrative cohesion) is the one that wound up in Eric Bibb's hands:

While Bibb has been carrying a torch for his musical ancestors for 40 years or so, it took a chance encounter with a guitar owned by one of Bibb’s heroes, Delta bluesman Booker White, to set it ablaze.
It happened after a concert in the north of England a few years ago. A fan came up and asked him if he’d be interested in playing this old guitar. “I opened the case and there was this wise old instrument - it played like a dream” explains Bibb.

I remember talking to someone from Newcastle who heard that White's guitar was on sale at a music shop in the city. When he went there he found that there was some sort of mini pilgrimage underway and the shop was full of people like him who'd just come to have a look at Booker White's National steel.

Anyway - that guitar (probably) in the substantial mitts of Booker T. Washington White, tough, loud and magnificent.

Merry Christmas, Baby

Merry Christmas Baby, to you all from Otis Redding and Baboonery.

Clip posted by BeachMusic, who are "shaggin' 'round the Christmas tree" apparently.

It beats getting socks and a scarf.

Music on Monday: Champion Jacq DuPre

It's huge, stirring, uplifted and dramatic. But get past Daniel Barenboim's hair and you'll notice that the lady scrapes a good fiddle.











Massive thanks to markvogue who posted these on YouTube.

Spotlight But No Kid.

Don van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, whose music was Howlin' Wolf heard down a lobster telephone, has left the building.

Seasonally Adjusted

Cheviot Foothills, Autumn. Oil on board, 18" x 12".

New painting of the country around the Cheviot foothills, North Northumberland. It has a companion piece (below). I like the idea of returning to a place to observe seasonal changes, so there might be a third, snowy one sometime.*

(You'll also spot that between summer and autumn it's not just light and colour that change but hills, trees, field layouts, horizons ...)

*Might not be, though. Part of me thinks that for all the work I put in on these, especially the autumn one, they're just a bit boring.** Working on a sea/sky painting now. I like these. Sea -wallop. Horizon -wallop. Sky - wallop. Clag it on and scuffle it around.

**You see, it's comments like this that make me think I'm maybe not the best person to be in charge of my own publicity...

Music on Monday: "Those That Have Ears, Hear - Those That Don't..."

From now on, for no real reason other than it's alliterative, Mondays are Music Mondays.

Post one, and on the one, is probably my favourite James Brown song. Talking Loud and Saying Nothing was recorded October 1st 1970 in Macon, Georgia and it's funky as a week-old sock. This is the extended seven minute version: I was overjoyed to discover that there's a complete, unfaded version on the Motherlode compilation that clocks in at a magisterial fourteen minutes.

The band, and this is about nothing if it's not about the band, was the legendary J.B.s:

Clayton "Chicken" Gunnells - trumpet
Darryl "Hassan" Jamison - trumpet
Robert McCollough - tenor saxophone
St. Clair Pinckney - baritone saxophone
Bobby Byrd - organ, vocal
Phelps "Catfish" Collins - guitar
William "Bootsy" Collins - bass
John "Jabo" Starks - drums
Johnny Griggs - congas

The improvised stop/start set up from about 5:00 is the industry standard definition of 'tight.'




He didn't play on Talking Loud... but Clyde Stubblefield was the Funky Drummer. Here he gives an insight into how the Brown band worked. And there's some funky drumming.



And while we're at it, Bootsy and Jabo explain the one. To Lenny Henry.