Art As A Journey Of Personal Discovery Continued

Sometimes a work of art is like a Rorschach test in that people see in it what they want to see. My brother in law asked me to design a flier for his wife’s birthday party. It was a psychedelic Sixties theme party so I made the invitations look like little psychedelic rock concert posters. I took a photo of his lovely wife Ann taken at her daughter’s recent wedding and combined it with a black and white snapshot of her as a five year old child. I put the image of her as a kid in her hands so that she appears to be holding a doll of herself.

I titled the flier, Anniepoloosa, A Celebration Of All Things Annie and the idea was Ann was a big star who was photographed at a fan convention holding a doll of herself made from when she was a child star. But when my brother in law’s brother saw the poster he said, “It’s Ann holding onto her youth.”

I never thought of that and that’s just as good a description of the piece than my original intent, maybe even better. That kind of audience interpretation is fine, maybe even desirable, but other times it can be annoying.

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Japanese Animation Timing Compared To American Animation Timing

With The Secret World of Arrietty, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli’s latest feature to be release by Disney in America, Japanese animation is again in the spotlight. Japanese animation seems to be the last bastion of traditional hand drawn animation and for that I appreciate it. But there is something about Japanese animation that makes it hard for me to watch.

I don’t necessarily like the big eyed character design of most Japanese anime but design differs from film to film and I can get around that, but as a professional animation timing director I find the timing of the action in Japanese films distracting.

As an animation timer I timed everything from a scene’s length to the duration of an eye blink, a head turn or a walk cycle and on everything from blockbuster motion pictures such as The Rugrats Movie to hit TV series like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I know animation timing but I could never understand why Japanese animation, almost all of it, always looked so stiff and jerky.

One day I asked a director at a studio where I was working and who was a fan of Japanese animation why the Japanese didn’t shoot their animation on twos like we did. Animation is photographed by shooting two frames of film per drawing at a rate of 24 frames per second to achieve the smooth motion of American animation. It seemed to me the Japanese were filming their animation at a rate of three or four frames per drawing in order to save money on the drawings which would account for the jerky quality of the action. But I was told that they do shoot on twos, like we do, but unlike us they don’t slow in and out of their actions. What that means is that each action has more drawings at the beginning and end which makes the action slowly start to speed up at the start and then slow down to a stop rather than just start and stop abruptly.

If the Japanese animators shoot on twos and simply don’t animate slow ins and slow outs it doesn’t explain why even their run and walk cycles look jerky. The drawings in a cycle is usually animated evenly spaced yet there is still a strobing quality to Japanese animation walk cycles. This is the danger of working as a professional in an art in which you are a fan, it ruins the pure experience of loving the art form. You no longer see the story and the characters but rather the hitches, the paint pops and the jumpy cycles, the technical stuff.

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The Rock And Roll Rehab Movie Is Coming!

Indie filmmaker Bill Ohanesian came to the Rock & Roll Rehab show last week and again this week. He’s interested in making the film version of the show. Bill is an award winning independent filmmaker who has a rock and roll background in that he’s made a film that starred John Densmore of the Doors and the great rockumentary, The Last Days Of BLaM featuring The Tooners’ drummer, Patrick Meehan, John Bugbee and the legendary David Nigel Lloyd.

I’m not sure exactly what Bill has in mind for a Rock & Roll Rehab movie as the show is a multimedia rock concert with not much of a story arc and he seems to prefer dramas but whatever he comes up I’m sure will be very interesting and highly professional. He has told us that having a ‘name’ musician promising to appear in a cameo in the film will help attract investors so anyone out there who may know someone who may know someone who may know someone who knows a Classic Rock era rockstar who has a good enough sense of humor to help us out and spend a few hours shooting a cameo for our film please ask them to ask him or her and let us know.

FRIDAY FUNNIES 

 

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The Byrds’ Fifth Dimension

 One of the ‘inspirational’ concept painting I did for the Rocktasia Movie of illustrated Classic Rock was for the Byrds’ 1966 song 5D or Fifth Dimension. It was released just in time to miss being banned for having drug references, a fate that would befall their next record, Eight Miles High, just six months later. Ironically, Eight Miles High was about the group's airplane flight to London for their first English tour and not about drugs but I guess their karma caught up to them.

In the liner notes to the 5D album the Byrds claim the title song was their treatise on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Since few people actually understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity and because of the obtuse and surreal nature of the song’s lyrics this explanation was accepted. Only a mere six months later the terms psychedelic and LSD would enter the popular culture and hiding references to drugs would become much more difficult.

I painted the 5D painting as a psychedelic poster circa late 1966 with the young man who what would have been considered at the time as ‘Flower Power’, a stage between Mod and full blown Hippie, floating in space at the center. He is the narrator of the song and as reflected in the lyrics, he is in a state of peace. The blue birds flying down to him represent both his state of mind and the name of the band. He appears to be part of a wave of people and objects being sucked into a vortex at the bottom of the poster. The entire poster itself seems to be pulling into a hole in the wall. The small insect, a silverfish, is revealed to have been hiding behind the poster on the wall.

The items and people below the main character represent those things in his life that were important to him such as his parents, his baby rattle, toys, stuffed animals and pacifier to his friends or siblings, his bike, records, books and guitars to his girlfriends, anonymous sexual conquests (the blond partially hidden behind him), his automobile and drugs (a hookah pipe). The image of Albert Einstein at a chalkboard represents the Theory of Relativity story as well as his teachers and education. There is a line in the song that refers to a ‘great blunder my teachers had made’ which is represented by the equation on the chalkboard; E=MC5. Of course, this is an error and should read E=MC2 but it’s the ‘scientific delirium madness’ referred to in the song, a reference to a popular band at the time and the five of the title.

The items and people who are above the main character and following him down into the hole are the things in his life that he cares about that are to follow. His wife and children with the planets representing more cosmic matters and less material possessions. Within the total image there are five levels; the wall, the red stripes with the green text which if not broken up by the black stripes would show to be very psychedelic lettering that says from the top; E=MC2, The Byrds, 1966, 5D and Neal Warner, my rather elaborate signature. The third level is the black stripes which reveal the stars of the universe in the distance. The fourth level is the people and things floating down to the hole and the fifth dimension is the hole in the wall. The character at the very bottom is the same character at the very top showing that the flow of things is one big continuous cycle.

Posters of 5D are available from the Rock & Roll Rehab merchandise page or fine art prints are available from imagekind.com.

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It’s A Small World Of Rock And Roll

In 1979 I was in a Newwave band with The Tooners’ drummer, Patrick Meehan, and David Nigel Lloyd who is now a renown Celtic Folk artist. The three of us knew each other from high school. Our first professional club gig was at the Mecca of Newwave in L.A. at the time, Madame Wong’s in Chinatown. At that first show was another old friend, classmate and member of another up an coming Newwave band, Greg Piper. Greg, Pat and I would eventually form Womanizer and eventually The Tooners.

Greg is also in the bands, Working Class Hero, The John Lennon Tribute, Revolution, A Tribute To The Beatles, and the John Lennon themed stage show, Just Imagine. For Just Imagine which shares the Hayworth Theater with the Tooners’ show, Rock & Roll Rehab, the Lennon band, fronted by Greg’s brother Tim as John, has augmented their lineup with some seasoned pros. So far so good but here is where the world starts to shrink.

At our first gig back in 1979 at Madame Wong’s we played on a bill with two other bands. One of those bands was called Bugs Tomorrow. Being an important gig in my life and having such an odd name I’ve always remembered Bugs Tomorrow. Recently I was remembering that show and wondered, with the marvel of the Internet and Google, if I could find some information on Bugs Tomorrow. I did and was surprised to learn that Bugs was a guy’s name, that they were a signed band (I thought we were all amateurs at that point) and that their keyboard player was none other than the new keyboard player for Greg and Tim’s show, Just Imagine. Just imagine indeed! What a small world.

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Happy Valentine’s Day

    I have been married twenty-six years. I honestly didn’t expect to be married twenty-six months. I married relatively late, thirty-two, and was pretty set in my ways, and my ways were not conducive to long term relationships. But this isn’t the most unexpected aspect of my marriage, that would be that I am still very much in love with my wife. I’ve heard the expression, “I love you but I’m not in love with you,” but I am more, much more, in love with my wife now than when we were married. Obviously, since I didn’t think that was going to last too long at the time.

    We had been married only a few weeks when we returned from our honeymoon to a new house I insisted we buy together in part to keep me from calling it quits too easily. Late one night while we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor as our new bed hadn’t yet arrived, I was too hyped up from the whole realization that I was now married to be able to sleep. So I grabbed my guitar and went into the other room thinking I could use this sudden burst of emotion to write an appropriate song.

    I turned on the television and there on the Late Night Movie was the Franco Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. This was an especially poignant moment for me not just because Romeo and Juliet is such a romantic classic but because back in 1969 I went to see it with my very first girlfriend. We were too young to actually date but her parents dropped her and a friend off at the movie theater and my friend and I met them there.

    I have seen Romeo and Juliet occasionally on TV as I channel surfed but I never watched it as it held predominately bad memories for me. First love often ends badly. But now it seemed to provide closure and complete the circle. Here was a movie, the only film I can remember seeing with my first love, playing in front of me while my last love is asleep in the other room.

    I figured if I’m going to rip off an idea for a song, William Shakespeare is not a bad writer from whom to steal. The scene I just happened to have turned on was the famous balcony scene and the song is based on the scene where Romeo has spent the night with Juliet and is trying to keep her from falling asleep. I especially liked how the characters told the time of day by listening to the bird calls.

LET OTHERS DREAM

How a night so dark could feel so warm.
Sheets are torn and others worn away.
So little time tonight, the moon is paid in full
I fight it’s pull as shadows turn to gray.

Let others dream, let others dream tonight, let others dream
Dream away.

How long will it be till I see you in the light?
Hold me tight, don’t let me slip away.
The nightingale’s accompanied in off-key harmony
In a reveille with the lark who greets the day.

Let others dream, let others dream tonight, let others dream
Dream away.
Dream away on our sleepless night.

And in the morning she’s why I’m late for work
As I grab my keys and I grab a shirt.
Another day goes by. I watch it die.
Glad it’s gone, it took so long.

Let others dream, let others dream tonight, let others dream
Dream away. 

Let Others Dream is from The Tooners' CD Rocktasia and is available from iTunes or CD Baby.

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Sitting On A Park Bench Listening To Jethru Tull’s Aqualung

A while ago I bought the 40th Anniversary Edition Remixed CD of King Crimson’s The Court Of The Crimson King. It’s one of my all time favorite albums and this remixed version is like hearing it for the first time, just great. So I recently purchased the 40th Anniversary edition remastered version of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. Also surprisingly great considering how great the original is, I didn’t expect that big a difference.

One of the great things about this new edition is the inclusion of an album’s worth of bonus tracks. It is especially interesting to learn that some of the little ditties on Aqualung such as Slipstream and Wondering Aloud are actually tiny bits cut from much longer songs.

Maybe it’s because I was listening more carefully to this new mix but the fantastic musicianship which has always been a hallmark of Jethro Tull really jumped out at me. These guys are musicians’ musicians. Even Ian Anderson’s acoustic guitar playing under his singing is extremely intricate and melodic and then add his world class flute playing, Martin Barre’s heavy rock guitar solos and the great piano arrangements to the long, complex yet dynamic song structures and the music approaches operatic. Aqualung is truly a work of art, period.

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