Roberto Carlos Lange

Roberto Carlos Lange
20" x 17.75"
oil on wood, 2010

In keeping up painting for the Top 100, I worked all last week on the Roberto Carlos Lange painting whose track Amazonian Pacific currently resides at #3. The image is a still from a video my wife made during the sound-check for a performance at Country Club in Cincinnati. We met Roberto there and talked for a while. A lovely time indeed. I wanted to buy one of his records for sale there and asked him which one to get. "What are you looking for", he asked. I said "I liked the rawness of a Helado Negro (one of his bands) tune I saw on a video". He recommended the Intonations LP that contains this Amazonian Pacific. I like it a lot but not because of any rawness on it. His music is not about rawness but I never asked him what it would be about instead. A question like that I find a little rude. People hardly ever ask me that question but my paintings are obvious true representations of musicians. When they do ask I have sort of a standard answer that always involves the words fan, archive, and obsession. I then explain that the concept works because I didn't think it up: It started as a boy's hobby and it evolved organically over 28 years without ever changing the main concept. I'm sure Roberto also would have a standard paragraph to answer the question. His music is pretty abstract and thus harder to pin down. What do I think his music is about? Well, first of all about atmosphere in a formal sense. Then I think it is about spiritual concepts concerning community, humanity (love and such) in a broader sense and, in an even broader sense; cosmology. That's all good and well but what really matters, on a night like that Saturday in Cincinnati, is how the keyboard stand is set up on stage. If you look at the painting the keyboard is a bit high: he would not have been able to comfortably perform his music this way. I just noticed it, and once you see it you see nothing but. So I have to fix it in the painting. A weeks worth of painting (not precisely 40 hours; I have a job so it's 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there). Two hours on Sunday, a half hour Tuesday, another half hour Wednesday, a full hour on Saturday. And now, the next Sunday, it's done but then I notice that big mistake. Thank God it's a three day weekend.

Vampyre Corpse

Naughtus Maximus (Vampyre Corpse)
11" x 8.5"
Pen, pencil, ink on paper, 2010

You may have noticed in the second to last blog the name Vampyre Corpse at #1 in the Top 100 so far. You probably haven't heard of Vampyre Corpse, and if you don't follow this blog, or are a subscriber to a magazine called Zero Tolerance, you most likely never will. I am proud to say that when you google the band, right after their own MySpace site this very blog comes up as second. They are from England, two of the band members you may have heard of: Kane and Abel, they may be twins (both still alive), they may not be. The one I made a drawing of, depicted here, is neither Kane nor Abel but their bass player Naughtus Maximus, the fourth band member calls himself (or herself –not likely, but you never know) Memnoch. The style, according to the band on their MySpace site, is Black Metal, Death Metal, and/or Big Beat. Their sound pushes the extreme of metal yet further, it's wild and raw, out of bounds, violent, inhuman almost (subhuman?). The song Dogs of War lasts about two minutes but it is two minutes that makes a lot of music that came before now obsolete. They surpassed all songs that contained feline sounds in their vocals, as well as songs dealing with werewolves, and the general heavyness of sound is unsurpassed too. The drawing I did may seem as uncontrolled, wild and heavy as the music but I swear it was well planned out. I did several before this one, and I also swear I was sober when I drew it. I swear I was sober!

Ome Tini

Tien Burgers
7.75" x 6.75"
oil on wood, 2010

A little break from music now as I painted a portrait of man who has nothing to do with the Top 100 of 2010 but if I were to make a top 100 of my all time favorite people this person would sure score high. Tien Burgers is his name, or ome Tini, as I would call him. Last month my uncle Tini passed away after a short but intense battle with cancer. He was my favorite uncle, my godfather, and next door neighbor for a good part of my life. I will always remember him dearly. Rest peaceful dear uncle. My condolences to his family to whom I will send this painting. I wish them all the strength to carry on.

Beira-Baixa (Portugal)

Woman from Beira-Baixa with Donkey (large detail)
32" x 20"
oil on wood, 2010

This is a larger version of an image I've painted before in 2005. I took six photos of the painting upon finishing and the one shown here I took without a flash, not enough daylight, a hand not sturdy enough. I like the fuzzy 'motion' quality of the bad photo, I may go back into the painting and apply some motion filters manually with the brush while the paint is still wet. I may not. First photography and now Photoshop have revolutionized painting! In a few weeks I will post a sharp version of this painting along with images of paintings that I already posted before but retouched. I tend to do this all the way up to the time I exhibit the Top 100. I went back into the Joseph Spence painting because I felt proportions could be more natural and now it's a better painting than the one below from the previous post. The Cat Power painting I retouched just to add some refinement. I liked that painting from the very beginning.

The song I illustrated with a woman and a donkey is Cançao de Embalar (meaning Rendez-Vous) from a nice cd in a Music and Musicians series. This cd is dedicated to the folk music of Portugal. Several women, all anonymous, perform on this track. The third track on the cd (also from Beira-Baixa) is a song about camomile called Macelada. I was so happy learn this because in last year's writings I dedicated a whole paragraph on the topic of herbal songs for the occasion of a song in that Top 100 about basil from Serbia. Alas, here's that paragraph.

Unlike songs about art, there is no anxiety in songs about herbs. (Quite a category indeed and well worth listing, especially since I like to make lists: She Likes Weeds was a hit for the Tee Set; Scarborough Fair –parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme– for Simon and Garfunkel; African Herbsman by Bob Marley; Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl; and I'm not even getting started on songs about marijuana.) Oj ubuva malo momo deals with basil, Serbian people (used to) carry bits of basil with them to church and also used it in their homes for fragrance.

Let me know if you know of any other songs on the topic.
In the meantime: The 16th Top 10 provided me with more songs to be included in The Top 100 2010. There are now ten song certain of a spot in the list.

1. Vampyre Corpse - Dogs of War
2. Roberto Carlos Lange - Amazonian Pacific
3. Sekouba Traore – Walinyumadon
4. Blooddawn - Nailed Fist
5. Time and Temperature – Havana
   
6. Clarinetes de Linares – El Gallito Giro
   
7. Smodern (?) – Miss Smodern
   
8. Mother of Fire – The Beast and I
   
9. Bob Marley – Put it on
10. Tsjuder – Blasphemy

Joseph Spence

Joseph Spence
45" x 20"
oil on wood, 2010

Haven't bought too many records lately. There's a little bit of a lull in my usual music exploration ways. Of the few I bought in recent weeks, an LP on the Mississippi label called Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long is the best one is. It's the third one I own from that label and all are wonderful. Fight On, Your Time Ain't Long is a collection of obscure blues and gospel, no recording dates, no information on the performers. The Joseph Spence song on the album Won't That Be a Happy Time is not as obscure since I already owned a copy of it. It appeared on the record The Real Bahamas In Music and Song recorded in 1965 by Peter Siegel. The ten points I awarded for the song in my 14th Top 10 of the year brought the total of points for Joseph Spence to 117, enough to enter an ongoing list of the 200 musicians with the most points gathered in the 28 years of list making. The Top 10 of that list is as follows:

1. Bob Dylan
2. Jimi Hendrix
3. The Velvet Underground
4. Captain Beefheart
5. Cat Power
6. Daniel Johnston
7. Frank Zappa
8. Neil Young
9. John Coltrane
10. Miles Davis
    

I did guarantee that the next painting would be big again. This Joseph Spence painting is bigger yet than the last one of Cat Power but even though the size allows me to really 'paint', it bugs me conceptually. It feels too big for what the image is: a commercial photograph of the Bahamian singer/guitarist. I felt like I've just painted a tourist painting that I could sell on the tourist markets in Nassau. (Now I come to think of it, maybe it's not such a bad idea. Who needs a studio when there's palm trees and 85 degrees year round.) Cat Power's image is different in that it is a painter's image. The next one on a larger scale I think should be of anonymous people suitable for a big scale painting. I'm thinking of a Portuguese woman in traditional dress from Beira-Baixa illustrating anonymous traditional music from that area in Portugal that I just awarded ten points in my 15th Top 10.

Cat Power in 2010

Cat Power
36" x 13.5"
oil on wood, 2010

A brand new painting, executed rather quickly, again of an artist not (yet) in the Top 100 for the year. More than six times larger than my average Top 100 painting. Something had to happen, I had to break through this habitual manner of painting I've been doing, it was getting on my nerves. I ask myself what would be a better way to open things up than to make it bigger? I made it bigger and I liked it. Would it mean that I have to paint all hundred that big now? That would be quite a challenge. I need the challenge, be tough on myself, but this seems crazy. I had this three feet plywood board in front of me ready to cut it up into my usual ten inch sizes but then a feeling of defiance came over me: I couldn't cut it up. The next dilemma was to decide who to paint - it could not just be anyone that I would paint bigger than anybody else - I decided it had to be Cat Power - I've painted her more than any other musician - must have painted her thirty times. I'm not sure if I'm up to the challenge to paint all hundred that big, but the next one will be big again, I guarantee.
I'm awaiting Cat Power's new release. All original songs so 'they' promise. It's gonna be good but scary she promises. I've been waiting a long time already but while I wait Sophisticated Lady, an old Duke Ellington song, secured Cat Power's first points in the music year 2010.