A BIT OF WHATEV

My LA

2011-12-01T00:52:00.000-08:00

I'm showing 10 new paintings of LA
Saturday Dec. 10, 2011
7-9pm
Meridian
5007 1/2 York Blvd.
Highland Park, Ca. 90042

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T15:52:00.001-08:00

porcelain statues from the days of the Soviet space program, circa 1961,

2011-11-12T12:28:00.001-08:00

Howard Johnsons

2011-11-10T23:52:00.001-08:00

Howard Johnsons, originally uploaded by Tommy_GG.

Fireworks by PES

2011-07-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher: The Weinerlogues with Jane Lynch

2011-06-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

RIP Jane Russell

2011-02-28T16:43:00.001-08:00

The Ramones Wanna...

2011-01-26T01:07:00.001-08:00

Shakin all over!!!

2011-01-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

17 years ago today Harry Nilsson left us.

2011-01-15T17:59:00.000-08:00

2011-01-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve 1965-1966 in Times Square

2010-12-31T22:08:00.000-08:00

New Years Eve 1963

2010-12-31T16:27:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everybody!

2010-12-25T00:35:00.000-08:00

The Christmas Tree

2010-12-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

My favorite new christmas tradition!

Don Van Vliet, Rock’s Captain Beefheart, Dies at 69

2010-12-18T00:14:00.001-08:00

Don Van Vliet, an artist of protean creativity who was known as Captain Beefheart during his days as an influential rock musician and who later led a reclusive life as a painter, died Friday. He was 69 and lived in Trinidad, Calif.
The cause was complications of multiple sclerosis, said Gordon VeneKlasen, a partner at the Michael Werner gallery in New York, where Mr. Van Vliet had shown his art, many of them abstract, colorful oils, since 1985. The gallery said he died in a hospital in Northern California. Captain Beefheart’s music career stretched from 1966 to 1982, and from straight rhythm and blues by way of the early Rolling Stones to music that sounded like a strange uncle of post-punk. He is probably best known for “Trout Mask Replica,” a double album from 1969 with his Magic Band.

A bolt-from-the-blue collection of precise, careening, surrealist songs with clashing meters, brightly imagistic poetry and raw blues shouting, “Trout Mask Replica” had particular resonance with the punk and new wave generation to come a decade later, influencing bands like Devo, the Residents, Pere Ubu and the Fall.

Mr. Van Vliet’s life story is caked with half-believable tales, some of which he himself spread in Dadaist, elliptical interviews. He claimed he had never read a book and had never been to school, and answered questions with riddles. “We see the moon, don’t we?” he asked in a 1969 interview. “So it’s our eye. Animals see us, don’t they? So we’re their animals.”

The facts, or those most often stated, are that he was born on Jan. 15, 1941, in Glendale, Calif., as Don Vliet. (He added the “Van” in 1965.) His father, Glen, drove a bakery truck.

Don demonstrated artistic talent before the age of 10, especially in sculpture, and at 13 was offered a scholarship to study sculpture in Europe, but his parents forbade him. Concurrently, they moved to the Mojave Desert town of Lancaster, where one of Don’s high school friends was Frank Zappa.

His adopted vocal style came partly from Howlin’ Wolf: a deep, rough-riding moan turned up into swooped falsettos at the end of lines, pinched and bellowing and sounding as if it caused pain.

“When it comes to capturing the feeling of archaic, Delta-style blues,” Robert Palmer of The New York Times wrote in 1982, “he is the only white performer who really gets it right.”

He enrolled at Antelope Valley Junior College to study art in 1959 but dropped out after one semester. By the early 1960s he had started spending time in Cucamonga, Calif., in Zappa’s studio. The two men worked on what was perhaps the first rock opera (still unperformed and unpublished), “I Was a Teenage Maltshop,” and built sets and wrote some of the script for a film to be titled “Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People.”

The origins of Mr. Van Vliet’s stage name are unclear, but he told interviewers later in life that he used it because he had “a beef in my heart against this society.”

By 1965 a quintet called Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (the “his” was later changed to “the”) was born. By the end of the year the band was playing at teenage fairs and car-club dances around Lancaster and signed by A&M Records to record two singles.

The guitarist Ry Cooder, then a young blues fanatic whose skill was much admired by Mr. Van Vliet, served as pro forma musical director for the next record, “Safe as Milk” (1967), which showed the band working on something different: a rhythmically jerky style, with stuttering melodies. The next album, “Strictly Personal” (1968), went even further in the direction of rhythmic originality.

But it was “Trout Mask Replica” that earned Mr. Van Vliet his biggest mark. And it was the making of that album that provided some of the most durable myths about Mr. Van Vliet as an imperious, uncompromising artist.

The musicians lived together in a house in Woodland Hills, in the San Fernando Valley; what money there was for food and rent was supplied by Mr. Van Vliet’s mother, Sue, and the parents of Bill Harkleroad, the band’s guitarist (whom Mr. Van Vliet renamed Zoot Horn Rollo). One persistent myth has it that Mr. Van Vliet, who had no formal ability at any instrument, sat at the piano, turned on tapes and spontaneously composed most of the record in a single marathon eight-and-a-half-hour session.

What really happened, according to later accounts, was that his drummer, John French (whose stage name was Drumbo), transcribed and arranged music as Mr. Van Vliet whistled, sang or played it on the piano, and the band learned the wobbly, intricately arranged songs through Mr. French’s transcriptions.

“Trout Mask” offers solo vocal turns that sound like sea shanties; intricately ordered pieces with two guitars playing dissonant lines; and conversations with Zappa, the record’s producer. But its most recognizable feature is its staccato, perpetually disorienting melodic lines.

Band members’ accounts have described Mr. Van Vliet as tyrannical. (Both Mr. French and Mr. Harkleroad have written memoirs with dark details about this period.)

Mr. Van Vliet’s eccentricity and his skepticism about the music industry had much to do with why his music remained mostly a cult obsession. His band was offered a slot at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival in 1967, but Mr. Cooder had quit a week before, and Mr. Van Vliet was too spooked to perform. In the following years, when the band was at its creative peak, it played relatively few concerts.

The Magic Band’s first records after “Trout Mask Replica,” starting with “Lick My Decals Off, Baby,” had a more mature sound, but by “Clear Spot,” in 1973, the band had turned toward blues-rock. It later made a few ill-conceived concessions to commercialism, and in 1974 the band quit en masse after the critically panned “Unconditionally Guaranteed.”

After a long falling-out, Mr. Van Vliet reunited with his old friend Zappa to tour and make the album “Bongo Fury” in 1975, then assembled a new band to record “Bat Chain Puller,” which was never released because of contractual tie-ups. Parts of it were rerecorded in 1978 for an album released by Warner Brothers, “Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).”

When his business affairs cleared in the early 1980s, Mr. Van Vliet made two albums for Virgin, “Doc at the Radar Station” and “Ice Cream for Crow,” with a crew of musicians who had idolized him while growing up. The albums were enthusiastically received.

But “Ice Cream for Crow” was his last record; in 1982 he quit music to focus on his painting and moved to Trinidad, near the Oregon border, with his wife, Jan, who is his only survivor.

In the exhibition catalog to a show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the museum director, John Lane, wrote of Mr. Van Vliet’s work, “His paintings — most frequently indeterminate landscapes populated by forms of abstracted animals — are intended to effect psychological, spiritual and magical force.”

Some of the images were a continuation of his songwriting concerns, especially those involving animals. A lot of his work dwells on the beauty of animals, on animals acting like humans and even on humans turning into animals. In “Wild Life,” he sang, “I’m gonna go up on the mountain and look for bears,” and in “Grow Fins,” an extraordinary blues from the album “The Spotlight Kid” (1972), he threatened a girlfriend that if she didn’t love him better he would turn into a sea creature.

Mr. Van Vliet had rarely been seen since the early 1990s and seldom at his gallery openings.

“I don’t like getting out when I could be painting,” he told The Associated Press in 1991. “And when I’m painting, I don’t want anybody else around.”

2010-12-06T19:31:00.001-08:00

Happy Hanukkah!!

2010-12-03T02:24:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving Day Parade (1935)

2010-11-25T00:38:00.000-08:00

LENNON NYC

2010-11-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

47 years ago today

2010-11-22T21:37:00.001-08:00

2010-11-20T01:15:00.001-08:00

Mexico toy museum tribute to 9/11

2010-11-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

During his trip to Mexico artist Mitch O'Connell went to MUJAM, Museo Del Juguete Antiguo Mexico (in English, the Antique Toy Museum of Mexico) and came across this tribute to 9/11. "The planes and towers are all filled with rubber and plastic heroes to show, well, to show that the creator's heart was in the right place. I'm still amazed!
from boingboing
http://www.toymuseummexico.com/

Happy Halloween!!

2010-10-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

2010-10-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

Real Time, October 29, 2010 ( Jimmy Carter )

2010-10-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

love Jimmy! He was my first too.

a boy in watermelon

2010-10-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

Tentacle pot pie!

2010-10-22T01:22:00.001-07:00

The Slits - Typical Girls

2010-10-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

RIP Ari-Up. Only 48.

TrustoCorp exhibition in LA, Oct. 23-24, 2010

2010-10-18T18:00:00.001-07:00

1988 Gallery in Los Angeles on Saturday, Oct. 23 and Sunday Oct. 24

Chairmen of the Board - You got me Dangling on a String

2010-10-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

RIP General Johnson

Give Me Just A Little More Time - The Chairman of the Board 1970

2010-10-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

General Johnson and Joey Ramone - Rockaway Beach

2010-10-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

RIP General Johnson. I was lucky to do artwork for this video and two swell guys. sorry for the bad quality. xoxo

I drove behind the wienermobile!!

2010-10-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

2010-10-10T11:46:00.001-07:00

Jeff Bridges - John Lennon 70th Birthday Tribute

2010-10-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Instant Karma - John lennon

2010-10-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

RIP Tony Curtis

2010-09-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Retro Beer at Yankee Stadium. I feel old.

2010-09-29T01:50:00.001-07:00

Max's Kansas City by Anton Perich

2010-09-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Sunny Video 1969

2010-09-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Daddy!!

2010-09-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Sid Caesar a few days late!

2010-09-11T01:51:00.000-07:00

Don Draper

2010-09-07T00:15:00.001-07:00

45 Adapters

2010-08-24T02:08:00.001-07:00

45 Adapters, originally uploaded by Glen Mullaly.

How to slam dance

2010-08-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

2010-08-14T02:04:00.001-07:00

Weinermobile Mold-A-Rama machine

2010-08-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

2010-08-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Question Mark and the Mysterians - 96 Tears Live @ the Jones!!!!

2010-08-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

jantzen sign

2010-07-20T01:21:00.001-07:00

jantzen sign, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

Archie M. Morrison 1963

2010-07-18T01:30:00.001-07:00

Dean Krehbiel 1963

2010-07-18T01:00:00.001-07:00

2010-07-13T00:45:00.001-07:00

Marmot chowing on a biscuit=cutest little furry bastard evaaar

2010-07-10T01:30:00.000-07:00

John Doe Performs at Alex Chilton Tribute Show at SxSW 2010

2010-07-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ladies Walking

2010-07-06T01:14:00.001-07:00

Ladies Walking, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

Malibu Newsstand

2010-07-05T02:40:00.001-07:00

Malibu Newsstand, originally uploaded by hereinmalibu.

Happy July 4th!!

2010-07-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

mermaid decal

2010-07-04T00:32:00.001-07:00

mermaid decal, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

Me in the tub

2010-06-26T14:06:00.001-07:00

I'm coming home with the crabs

2010-06-25T00:49:00.001-07:00

I'm coming home with the crabs, originally uploaded by Frank Synopsis.

Original Pac-Man sketches

2010-06-24T02:10:00.001-07:00

more here

2010-06-21T00:39:00.001-07:00

Hello Kitty motor oil! it's real!!

2010-06-21T00:37:00.001-07:00

coney island 1980 band

2010-06-16T23:38:00.001-07:00

coney 1980 band, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

I Love Andy Cohen on Bravo!

2010-06-13T00:52:00.000-07:00

dad & carmen

2010-06-12T02:41:00.001-07:00

dad & carmen, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

Nancy Sinatra RC Cola Ad

2010-06-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Nancy!!

June Gloom

2010-06-08T12:21:00.001-07:00

another LA day

2010-06-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

drunk pear

2010-06-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

Hey Culligan Man button

2010-06-04T11:24:00.003-07:00

Hey Culligan Man button, originally uploaded by grickily.

Slurpee Buttons

2010-06-04T11:24:00.001-07:00

Slurpee Buttons, originally uploaded by grickily.

John Cazale iPad drawing animation

2010-06-02T02:54:00.001-07:00

John Cazale movie, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

2010-06-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

cherry tomatoes movie

2010-05-31T14:59:00.001-07:00

2010-05-31T01:29:00.000-07:00

New Bag

2010-05-28T15:16:00.001-07:00

Obama Is Angry

2010-05-27T12:55:00.001-07:00

Obama Is Angry, originally uploaded by julie wilson world.

I got an Ipad and am enjoying drawing on it! Hopefully I will get better.

2010-05-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Keith Richards in EXILE

2010-05-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

Mick Jagger in EXILE

2010-05-18T11:04:00.001-07:00

The United States Of Pizza!

2010-05-03T00:58:00.001-07:00

Star Wars Mexican Loteria cards

2010-05-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

Rolling Stones - Plundered My Soul - Rollingtimes.org

2010-04-24T17:20:00.000-07:00

Brand New 38 year old STONES SONG!!!!!!!!!

Nick Danger 50 ways

2010-04-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Norman... is that you

2010-04-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

Every Painting in the MoMA on 10 April 2010

2010-04-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

2010-04-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Gerbes Supermarket Price Sticker

2010-04-10T00:16:00.001-07:00

Gerbes Supermarket Price Sticker, originally uploaded by Neato Coolville.

My favorite new flickr group!

love him

2010-04-10T00:00:00.001-07:00

Best use of photoshop EVER

2010-04-09T13:38:00.001-07:00

Malcolm Mclaren R.I.P.

2010-04-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

a guide to non-confident living

2010-04-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

Joan Crawford’s hand drawn custom sweatshirt (1930s)

2010-04-06T01:21:00.001-07:00

A documentary about records

2010-04-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

To Have & To Hold - Taster Tape from Jony Lyle on Vimeo.

Matzo Man

2010-03-30T00:39:00.001-07:00

Happy Passover!

NY Times

2010-03-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

March 21, 2010
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Beyond the Box Tops

By PAUL WESTERBERG
Minneapolis

HOW does one react to the death of one’s mentor? My mind instantly slammed down the inner trouble-door that guards against all thought, emotion, sadness. Survival mode. Rock guitar players are all dead men walking. It’s only a matter of time, I tell myself as I finger my calluses. Those who fail to click with the world and society at large find safe haven in music — to sing, write songs, create, perform. Each an active art in itself that offers no promise of success, let alone happiness.

Yet success shone early on Alex Chilton, as the 16-year-old soulful singer of the hit-making Box Tops. Possessing more talent than necessary, he tired as a very young man of playing the game — touring, performing at state fairs, etc. So he returned home to Memphis. Focusing on his pop writing and his rock guitar skills, he formed the group Big Star with Chris Bell. Now he had creative control, and his versatility shone bright. Beautiful melodies, heart-wrenching lyrics: “I’m in Love with a Girl,” “September Gurls.”

On Big Star’s masterpiece third album, Alex sang my favorite song of his, “Nighttime” — a haunting and gorgeous ballad that I will forever associate with my floor-sleeping days in New York. Strangely, the desperation in the line “I hate it here, get me out of here” made me, of all things, happy. He went on to produce more artistic, challenging records. One equipped with the take-it-or-leave-it — no, excuse me, with the take-it-like-I-make-it — title “Like Flies on Sherbert.” The man had a sense of humor, believe me.

It was some years back, the last time I saw Alex Chilton. We miraculously bumped into each other one autumn evening in New York, he in a Memphis Minnie T-shirt, with take-out Thai, en route to his hotel. He invited me along to watch the World Series on TV, and I immediately discarded whatever flimsy obligation I may have had. We watched baseball, talked and laughed, especially about his current residence — he was living in, get this, a tent in Tennessee.

Because we were musicians, our talk inevitably turned toward women, and Al, ever the Southern gentleman, was having a hard time between bites communicating to me the difficulty in ... you see, the difficulty in (me taking my last swig that didn’t end up on the wall, as I boldly supplied the punch line) “... in asking a young lady if she’d like to come back to your tent?” We both darn near died there in a fit of laughter.

Yeah, December boys got it bad, as “September Gurls” notes. The great Alex Chilton is gone — folk troubadour, blues shouter, master singer, songwriter and guitarist. Someone should write a tune about him. Then again, nah, that would be impossible. Or just plain stupid.

Paul Westerberg, a musician, was the lead singer of the Replacements.

WTF Japan Seriously!?

2010-03-20T11:32:00.001-07:00