FRAMED FINE ART PRINT VERSION HERE!
Greg Piper's "I Wish You'd Love Me" Syncs Up Perfectly To The Wizard Of Oz
"I didn't believe it when I first saw it!"... Greg Piper
I WISH YOU'D LOVE ME
(Syncs up to 'The Wizard Of Oz')
G. PIPER - HEARSEE, BMI
Admit You're A Rockaholic
If you're reading this you probably think the whole premise of Rock & Roll Rehab is a joke. Ha, ha, I get it, it's for people addicted to rock and roll, very funny. People don't get addicted to music. But think about it for a minute. If there was anything available to you out in the world that you spent much more money on than would be considered financially prudent, if it occupied not only an abundant amount of time to consume, physically (listening), but also an almost constant amount of time mentally consuming (thinking about music or humming songs in your head), and if it actually influenced your fashion choices, your health choices (drugs and alcohol) and even your social and political beliefs, wouldn't you worry it was becoming too influential in your life?
Take a typical musician, a typical musician, not a millionaire rock star or even a gigging musician. A typical musician is probably what ninety-nine out of a hundred people who play a musical instrument is and that is someone who makes squat, financially speaking, from playing music. Yet the amount of time, effort, love, desire, dedication and cold hard cash these people spend on their obsession is radically off balance from the gain they receive. If you ask someone why he will get up on a stage at a bar or a bandstand in a public park and perform his heart out for people who don't even bother to listen let alone pay money he'll tell you he does it for the "high". He plays his music for the feeling it gives him to perform in front of people even if the crowd's response would seem to be one that would elicit the feeling opposite than "high". When attaining a "feeling" becomes so important that you'll not only spend time, effort and money to attain it but also will disregard the potential dangers such as getting booed off the stage or becoming subject to ridicule, then my friend, you are technically addicted.
If you've read even this far it means you're so addicted to rock and roll that you're even willing to waste your time reading about it, not even reading about music or a favorite musician, but reading about an asinine concept such as Rock & Roll Rehab, which is obviously just a stupid joke. But you're not laughing, are you? Because you've just proven that you are, indeed, a rockaholic and that Rock & Roll Rehab isn't so stupid after all.
Court Of The Crimson King Competition
In 2007 I painted a series of acrylic paintings illustrating the lyrics to some of my favorite Classic Rock songs. The first one I did was King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King. This painting has been on the Internet for almost ten years. The other day I Googled "In The Court Of The Crimson King Paintings" to see if my painting was still there. It was. All of the other images that came up were based on the iconic album cover, except one. This version was basically like mine and if I had seen this first I probably wouldn't have bothered painting mine. I like this painting but I wonder was the song itself the real inspiration for this painting or was my painting the inspiration? I know that sounds egotistical but consider this:
Here's my version.
Here's what I assume is the newer version since I've never seen this one before and I've been searching for something like this (my version) online for almost a decade. Let me be clear, I like this a lot and I'm not complaining if someone saw my painting and decided he (or she) could do better. Art is largely a matter of taste and there's room for everything. If my painting was the inspiration I'd be flattered. Where each of my illustrated lyric paintings are done in a different style to best get across the feel of the song, this painting is done in a style that the artist uses a lot. There is a sizable collection of paintings in this same style although from what I can tell none of the others are based on song lyrics. What makes me think the artist ever saw my version? Most of the images in this new version are either different such as "the grinding wheel" in this one looks more like a water wheel, and the ones that are very similar are, of course, illustrating the same image described in the song. But there are two images in this painting that seem inspired more by my painting than by the song lyrics.
Here's my version. I used the same pose of the gardener kneeling down in the flowerbed as he plants a sapling but the lyrics state he "tramples" the flower. Wouldn't that suggest he's standing? You trample something by walking or running on it, at least by standing on it. You can squash something from kneeling on it but are you really trampling it? Wouldn't it be better if he was standing with a shovel digging a hole for the tree? Okay, maybe that was just a coincidence but here's another example:
The line here is "On soft, gray mornings widows cry, the wise men share a joke". Because of the biblical Wise Men I made three of them but unlike the biblical wise men I suggested one was Jewish, one Islamic and one Christian. There were no Christians or Muslims during the time of Christ.
Here is the same line. Three wise men, in the same pose and even the same hand gesture and to dispel any doubt that one is Christian, one Islamic and one Jewish, one has a Christian cross above his head, one an Islamic crescent moon above his head and one a Star of David. There is NOTHING in that lyric to suggest these wise men were three in number or represented three different religions or were even religious at all. That was completely my doing. The only difference is that in my painting it's the Jewish guy telling the joke (seems more natural) and in the other painting the Christian is telling the joke which undoubtedly is "A Jew and an Arab walk into a bar...:
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