They Shut Down the Dock, Thrown our Lives on the Rocks! Skull Orchard Revisited--Jon Langford's Welsh Multimedia Extravaganza!

When I heard some of the detail of Jon Langford's reissue of Skull Orchard, I knew I had to get on board with this. But what exactly is this product?

Is it a mini Coffee table book, the sort of thing you find reviewed in the NY Times book review a few weeks before Christmas?

Or is a CD reissue, with some of the most elaborate liner notes you could ever hope to find?

Though I'm usually not one to equivocate, it's pretty much "all the above" plus a whole lot more, my friends.



For my purposes, first and foremost, it is a reinvention of the original Skull Orchard album from 1997, with the inclusion of the Burlington Welsh Chorus, which I think is a very traditionally Welsh thing to do. Though the music has to do with Wales (Newport most specifically, his hometown), I feel that the songs touch on issues that affect us here in the US and around the world, while name checking Cymru icons like Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey John Cale, places  like Cardiff Bay, Newport's transporter bridge, soccer clubs, pubs, and abandoned coal mines.



"Tom Jones Levitation"


Secondly, its loaded with Art by JL, his sort of take on Folk Art, Populist Art, Insurgent Art. I used to see placards like these in gift shops when I went on vacation when I was a kid. But of course, he has used the form for his own ends--someone unfamiliar with his art might very well view the paintings as something else. And of course, if any of you art aficionados like his work, plenty of his paintings and prints are for sale at Yard Dog.

Thirdly, it is a family affair of sorts. I don't know if this qualifies as scrapbooking. His brother David provides an interesting compendium of Welsh culture and history, plus some choice family anecdotes.

His father Denis supplies photographs also. So, while the Langfords still are a long way from being deemed by media outlets as the Welsh version of our own celebrated, Jackson Family, all of this entertaining, intelligently done, and definitely made me laugh in spots.

Fourthly, it's literature! Jon has included a short story involving Herman Melville's Albino Whale, chopped up in pieces through the book, which I found interesting. And of course, there are the song lyrics, which qualify as poetry.

I know that some of you are thinking of all the elaborate limited edition reissues circulating these days. I think it may have started in rock with that gigantic Stooges reissue, which must have included every single outtake from Fun House. (I sometimes think everything the Stooges ever did must have been put to tape, with all those live releases out there.) But many of these new super deluxe reissues carry such a high price tag! And I doubt many of them are half as wildly idiosyncratic as Skull Orchard reissues. The price for this multi-media mini event is quite affordable in comparison. And what you get is well thought out, not merely fan fodder. This, I say, is a product for the discerning musicophile. I mean, who creates things like this? Certainly not to get rich....

I guess I'm reminded a little of the super elaborate children's album Harmelodia by the Rheostatics, where they made the artwork, wrote the songs, and put together a narrative designed to get children excited about music. I reviewed that one a while back if anybody is interested....

Techheads might be disappointed that there are no DVDs, holograms, iphone aps, Newport: Transporter Bridge the Video Game,etc., but understand that S.O.R. came out a few years ago. Maybe that will be a part of Skull Orchard 2.0 in 2020.

Of course Jon Langford has just come out with a new one, which has gotten great reviews, Here Be Monsters. He, and his Mekons (Waco Brothers, and of course the mighty 3 Johns) have pretty successfully continued to put out rewarding music over a long period of time, while staying true to their ideals and expressing their views on important issues, without the sort of pandering or self-aggrandizing posturing that many a lucrative career has been based upon.

Skull Orchard revisited, in a nutshell is a pretty amazing little item, somthing that any fan of the arts should appreciate. I don't believe there is anything quite like this, so grab one while you can.


Here's a taste of his latest recording, Here Be Monsters! Support our artists, please.

At Home He's A Tourist, Part 1--Marc Chagall Stained Glass in Pocantico Hills

Well, my niece was in visiting from Arizona, so I thought it might be appropriate to give her a small taste of the Hudson Valley. It might not be a what a 9 year old was excited about doing. Still there are a number of interesting thing to do here that are a short drive away.

One of these things is the Union Church in Pocantico Hills of New York, which is a small community due east of Tarrytown, NY. So we went, some of us more enthusiastic than others. And at least one person doing a little kicking and screaming....

You see, in honor of John D Rockefeller, the family commissioned Marc Chagall to design stain glass windows for this Church. Additionally there is the Rose Window, which was designed by Henri Matisse. I had been there once before probably 10 years ago, and being a fan of Chagall's paintings I was fairly stunned by the glass artwork set into the walls of this small, unassuming country church.



This is just one example of the windows. Pretty impressive. You don't have to be religious to appreciate something this beautiful. When I go to museums in New York, I always found myself drawn to his art work, even when I didn't know his paintings on sight. He was a master of color. His artworks are vivid, yet I think that there is subtlety here because of slight color variations that create an almost magical effect.

And you can go visit. Of course there are set hours--you wouldn't want to walk in in the middle of a religious service. Check the website in advance. And no pictures. For people far away and those visitors who would like a memento, you can be a virtual tourist at hudsonvalley.org, where the images of the windows are available for viewing and downloading. And Tarrytown is a Hudson river town just a short drive away, with shops, good restaurants, and a few other historical sites, like Lyndhurst, Kykuit, Sunnyside.

An indelible memory I have is coming home from work in a snowstorm and taking side roads north to avoid commuter logjams. I still have that image of driving through Pocantico Hills that snowy evening, and seeing the Union Hills Church illuminated to my right. It felt a little like one of the Warner Brothers cartoons where Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny jump in and out of paintings in an art gallery.

Only I felt like a jumped into a poem by Robert Frost.

I think in the end I at least got my niece a little curious. She was looking at the stained glass with my mom on the computer.

Erro---Post-Modern Icelandic Artist I Once Stumbled Upon

When I last visited Iceland, which was quite a few years ago, I wanted to visit some museums in Reykjavik. Some people go to museums to see something that they know is there, which is OK of course, but I kind of like to find out new things. And as I didn't know anything about Icelandic art, it was all virgin territory for me.

Most of what I saw in what I think was probably the national museum was nice, but nothing that really blew me away. I saw a lot of 19th century type landscapes.  I don't pretend to be an expert--I fully expect that the art scene over there is every bit as diverse and interesting as the music scene happens to be. But what I saw there that day I felt was quite conservative in style.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I see artworks that are in jarring contrast to what I had seen so far in this museum. They are wild colorful artworks, almost like collages, like 60's pop art, Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol, Dali, maybe with a bit of comic book/cartoon art in the mix. Political, satirical, comedic, erotic.

Art by some guy named Erro.

Years later I brought Erro's name up to an Icelandic artist who I had bought a painting from, a very nice abstract work, created with colors that were evocative of Iceland, even though she had resided in NYC for a long time. She didn't think too much of him. But I explained about how different he seemed to what I was had seen on my trip, and I think she understood what I was saying. I think the word they used to describe him was "provocateur". I think I kind of understood what she was saying also.

Quote for today from E H Gombrich--Austrian Art Historian and Humanist

I first stumbled upon Austrian writer E H Gombrich's (1909-2001) work in a Barnes and Noble outlet, namely his Little History of The World, which is a beautifully written historic overview intended for a young people. His historical view is particularly humanistic. I would highly recommend this book for any young boy or girl as a great introduction to history. It is very readable; I am almost reminded of a grandfather with his grandchildren on his lap telling stories from bygone days. From what I understand, the Nazis were not big fans of Gombrich and I can certainly see why. I recently sent a copy of this book to my 8 year old niece.

Mensch

Only recently did I discover that Gombrich is mainly known as an Art Historian. His book The History of Art, is considered by many people to be the best introductory book on Art ever written. I have just started to read it, but I was struck by something I read in the introduction which I feel the need to share. I feel like we both have a very similar perspective about art. I really like where this guy is coming from. He is definitely an art populist, and in the best of possible ways. He is not trying to "civilize" people, but just feels that art is for everyone, and it is something that anyone can appreciate because in a lot of ways it is already part of everyone's lives. And in a more general sense his opinions apply the world in a more general sense. Here's his quote.

One never finishes learning about art. There are always new things to discover. Great works of art seem to look different every time one stands before them. They seem to be as inexhaustible and unpredictable as real human beings. It is an exciting world of its own with its own strange laws and its own adventures. Nobody should think he knows all about it, for nobody does. Nothing, perhaps, is more important than just this: that to enjoy these works we must have a fresh mind, one which is ready to catch every hint and to respond to every hidden harmony: a mind, most of all, not cluttered up with long high-sounding word and ready-made phrases. It is infinitely better not to know anything about art than to have the kind of half-knowledge which makes for snobbishness. The danger is very real. There are people, for instance, who have picked up the simple points I have tried to make in this chapter, and who understand that there are great works of art which have none of the obvious qualities of beauty of expression or correct draughtsmanship, but who become so proud of their knowledge that they pretend to like only those works which are neither beautiful nor correctly drawn. They are always haunted by the fear that they might be considered uneducated if they confessed to liking a work which seems too obviously pleasant or moving. They end by being snobs who lose their true enjoyment of art and who call everything "very interesting" which they really find somewhat repulsive. I should hate to be responsible for any similar misunderstanding. I would rather not be believed at all than be believed in such an uncritical way.

I like the way Gombrich thinks. He also mentions that some people go into a museum and check the works of art off of a checklist instead of looking at the art through your own perspective. This sort of behavior would lead an individual to bypass great things that might not appear on someone else's list. He is of the same school as me: keep an open mind, view things with a fresh perspective. And this applies to music also--who knows? Maybe the next Daydream Nation, O.K. Computer, or London Calling might be created by a band from Tallinn, or Jakarta, or Johannesburg. The real question is, will you hear it? Or will you be part of the herd?

Kandinsky Art Exhibit at Burger King....sort of

I was in a foul mood at work a few weeks ago and needed to clear my head a little, so I went out to lunch. Normally, I'm not a big fan of fast food, but once every six months or so I feel the need to eat something greasy and unhealthy. Believe me, I have read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, so I know this urge is irrational, just as all smokers today know that cigarettes do in fact kill.

So I went to a nearby Burger King. Home of the Whopper. We're a nation of Whoppers.

After I ordered and got my meal, I went to find a seat. But something seemed a little odd, and it took me a little bit of time to figure it out.

The whole fast food restaurant was filled with Kandinsky prints! That's one of the artists that really stood out to me when I first visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I had heard the name before, having studied Russian/Soviet history a bit in school. But when I saw his works for the first time, I could see that he was a man who was onto something special, and I feel the same way about Marc Chagall.

At first I was pretty surprised, and then I found it all pretty comforting. It certainly made my day a lot more than a greasy burger and fries. Why these paintings were there and who made the decision to fill a fast food joint with early 20th Century Russian abstract masterpieces remains a mystery to me. But I'm sort of torn. My head tells me to return again soon, but my heart says, hey buddy, watch the cholesterol!

Burn out the Day, Burn out the Night...Willie Cole's Artistic Vision...

I was in the Tate Modern on holiday a few years ago, when I used to take vacations. I thought that the building was an absolutely fantastic vessel to house art, but maybe I missed a lot of things, hit the wrong rooms, because I saw a lot of things that I was not thrilled with. I have to believe that I was in too much of a hurry and missed some significant things there, because for the most part I prefer 20th century modern art to earlier periods. But during my visit I saw an exhibition there that truly impressed me.

I stumbled upon these modernist looking rusty blockish artworks, made of repetitive designs, perhaps somewhat reminiscent of the early twentieth century so called "primitivism" (bad term I think) or Matisse's late period construction paper work. Maybe the best comparison is to Indonesian Batik patterns. But it drew my attention immediately. It took me a while to focus my eyes; then I was able to discern what this was. Apparently, the artist, Willie Cole, originally from Newark, USA, took steam irons and burned the impression into patterns on cloth. And that simply bowled me over, because beyond simply making a beautiful artwork, there is some transcendent thinking involved here, a certain kind of genius at work. That is a stark contrast to one artwork I saw there; a snow shovel stuck in a pile of sand? I just don't get that on any level and it made me feel like I was being Punked (like the Ashton Kutcher show, not in the good Ramones way).

It's always enjoyable for me when I find something that I wasn't expecting to see. Sometimes it can be difficult when you go to a big museum like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, because there is so much there that I get visually overloaded. If I notice something interesting, odds are it will be in the first 90 minutes, otherwise I get burnt out. And I was very pleased to see something this interesting. But I guess some people will find this uncompelling, and find more enjoyment in a bowl of fruit, or maybe the aforementioned snow shovel in a sand dune. But that's why having choices is always a good thing. My hope is that by shining attention on worthy things in this blog that maybe somebody will find out about something they never knew about before.