Wolf Eyes

Zeek Sheck/Nate Young

The Top 100 list entry Speach Joe by Zeek Sheck is yet another tune suggested by the facebook group No Wave. I had not heard of Zeek Sheck before but I was familiar with Nate Young as his later band Wolf Eyes was in the Top 100 of 2009. Nate Young plays organ on the 1998 album Zeek Sheck Rules the Cloud People (But Not for Long), Zeek Sheck herself plays drums and is the main vocalist on the album. The video to Speach Joe as well as some other videos of her are quite sensational. Like the music they would be tagged as noise, avant garde, and experimental. The costumes in her videos are fantastic and her face paint is gorgeous. I tried to paint an image with face paint but was not succesfull in capturing her likeness, so I settled for a photo in which the face paint was mostly removed and repainted the portrait. Her eyes are stretched far open in most photos of her.

Wolf Eyes

I figured I'd also show the small painting that I did in 2009 of Wolf Eyes. It appeared in the book Top 100 2009 published by Country Club editions in 2010. The following is the text I wrote for it:

Wolf Eyes – We Multiply

What would you be if you were asked what type of animal you were? I am a chicken Seriously, I shared this with Johnny Cash, he was a chicken too! It's pretty easy to answer this question with musicians because they sing about what they feel like, look like, what they eat, or what they hunt. They even, often, name themselves an animal. And there's no value judgement here; some countries worship beetles, some elephants. So Kleex of PRE [at #100 in the same top 100] when asked the question first replied with "ant" but later decided (after reconvening with the band) they were otters. Iggy Pop is a dog, Paul McCartney a walrus, Cat Power a cat, Zappa a weasel, and so on. Last year [the Top 100 2008] I had a lot of chickens in my top 100 but this year is the year of the wolf. Michael Hurley's alter ego is a wolf, as are, of course, Wolf Eyes and Aids Wolf. Other rock 'n' roll wolves include Howlin' Wolf, Jesse Mae Hemphill, who's alter ego is the she-wolf, and Howlin' Wilf. Peter Wolf is one by default, then there is Peter and the Wolves, radio deejay Wolfman Jack, We Are Wolves, Los Lobos, Steppenwolf. The list goes on. Many adapted the wolf as an alter ego.