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weneverlearn · 10 months ago

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Aaron Lange, Peter Laughner, and the Terminal Town of Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland-based artist, Aaron Lange, tackles his first graphic novel, Ain't It Fun -- a deep dive into the oily depths of the Rust Belt's most influential music town, it's most mythological misfit, it's oft-forgotten artistic and political streaks, and beyond...

Aaron Lange and his book, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)

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There’s a recurring line in Aaron Lange’s remarkable new graphic novel, Ain’t It Fun (Stone Church Press, 2023), that states, “Say the words out loud. The River isn’t real.” The river Lange was speaking of is the Cuyahoga, that infamously flammable mass of muck that dumps out into Lake Erie.

Peter Laughner (the ostensible topic of Lange’s book) was an amazing artist who probably could’ve ditched the banks of the Cuyahoga for more amenably artistic areas back in his early 1970s heyday. Aside from his frequent pilgrimages to the burgeoning NYC Lower East Side scene (where he nearly joined Television) and a quickly ditched attempt to live in California though, he mostly stuck around northeast Ohio.

While desperately trying to find his sound and a workable band, Laughner smelted a post-hippie, pre-punk amoebic folk rock, and formed the influential embryonic punk band, Rocket from the Tombs, which later morphed into Pere Ubu. All of which – lumped up with other rust-belted oddballs like electric eels, Mirrors, DEVO, the Numbers Band, Chi-Pig, Tin Huey, Rubber City Rebels, and more – essentially helped formed the “proto-punk” template.

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Laughner was also a rock writer of some regional renown, and contributed numerous amphetamine-fueled articles to regional mags like The Scene and Creem -- mostly concerning where Rock'n'Roll was going, colored as he was by the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, David Bowie, and Roxy Music playing in Cleveland a bunch of times around his formative years.

Sadly, in June 1977, Laughner died of acute pancreatitis at age 24. Aside from the first two seminal Pere Ubu 7-inch singles, the rest of Laughner’s recorded output was just one very limited self-released EP and, posthumously, a great double-LP comp of demo and live tracks, Take the Guitar Player for a Ride (1993, Tim Kerr Records). A surprisingly large batch of unreleased lost demos, radio shows, and live tapes appeared on the beautiful and essential box set, Peter Laughner (Smog Veil Records, 2019), that brought Laughner’s legend just a few blocks outside of Fringeville, as it received universally great reviews….

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The Dead Boys became the most well-known act of that mid-70s Cleveland scene, though that only happened once they high-tailed it to NYC. Aside from DEVO, Chrissie Hynde, and the Waitresses (all of whom did their own versions of high-tailing it), nearly every other act in that fertile Cle-Akron proto-punk vortex soon dissipated, eventually getting the cult treatment at best.

Cleveland is indeed right there with NYC and London as punk ground zero, but Americans tend to equate buyable products as proof of import, so shockingly, the Pagans and The Styrenes just aren’t the household name they should be.

Decades of tape-trading stories, sub-indie label limited releases, and fanzine debates kept the mythology of those acts barely breathing underneath the end of the milennium’s increasingly loud R'n'R death knell. And as that mythology slowly grew, the fans and even the musicians of the scene itself still wonder what it all meant.

Which, as you dig deeper into Ain’t It Fun, becomes the theme not just about the legendary rocker ghost of Peter Laughner, but of Cleveland itself. Ala Greil Marcus’ classic “hidden history” tome, Lipstick Traces, Lange interweaves Laughner’s self-immolating attempts at Beatnik-art-punk transcendence with a very detailed history of Cleveland, with its insane anti-legends and foot-shooting civic development.

Like much of the dank, rusted, and mysterious edges of the one-time “Sixth City,” the Cuyahoga has been cleaned up since, though I still wouldn’t suggest slurping up a swallow if you’re hanging on the banks of the Flats. I grew up in Cleveland and visit as often as I can because it’s an awesome place, no matter what they tell you. Or maybe, because of what they tell you.

If you are keen to swim down through the muck and mire of Cleveland’s charms, you don’t just get used to it, you like it. As for the “Cleveland” that the City Fathers have always tried so vainly to hype, us hopelessly romantic proto-punk fanatics say to those who would erase Cleveland’s fucked-up past and replace it with that weird fake greenspace underneath the Terminal Tower: “The City isn’t real.”

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Give us a quick bio.

Born in Cleveland, 1981. We moved to the west side suburbs when I was six. My parents didn’t listen to much music, and I don’t have older siblings. So I didn’t really listen to music at all until I was in high school, and I didn’t listen to any of the grunge or ‘90s stuff that was popular. I got real into the Beatles when I was in ninth grade, and at some point I got the Velvet Underground’s first album from the library because I saw Andy Warhol’s name on the cover. I didn’t know anything about them, so that was a real shock. I probably first heard Iggy Pop via the Trainspotting soundtrack, and pretty soon after I started getting into punk and generally more obscure stuff. Now I listen to more electronic stuff, ambient stuff. I also like most anything that falls under the broad “post-punk” umbrella. I really hate “rama-lama ding-dong” rock and roll.

What came first – music or drawing interest?

Drawing. I was always drawing… I’ve been a semi-regular contributor to Mineshaft for many years, which is a small zine/journal that features a lot of underground comix related stuff, but also has a beatnik vibe and includes poetry and writing. I’ve done the odd thing here and there for other zines, but I don’t really fit in anywhere.

Don’t really fit it – I feel that phrase describes a lot of the best / more influential Ohio musicians / bands. Did you feel that kind of feeling about Peter as you researched and wrote the book?

Peter was well liked, and he knew a vast array of people. If anything, he fit in in too many situations. He was spread thin.

When you lived in Philly, did you get a sense of any kind of similar proto-punk scene / era in that town? I sometimes, perhaps jingoistically, think this particular kind of music is almost exclusively confined to the Rust Belt.

I lived in Philly for nearly 11 years. As far as the old scene there, they had Pure Hell. But back then, anybody who really wanted to do something like that would just move to NYC.

So, is there a moment in time that started you on a path towards wanting to dig into Cleveland’s proto-punk past like this?

It was just something I had a vague interest in, going back to when I first heard Pere Ubu. And then later learning about the electric eels, and starting to get a feeling that Cleveland had a lot more to offer than just the Dead Boys. The Rocket from the Tombs reunion got things going, and that’s when I first started to hear Laughner’s name. A few years later, a friend sent me a burned CD of the Take the Guitar Player for a Ride collection, and I started to get more interested in Peter specifically.

Despite any first wave punk fan’s excitement about a Laughner bio, this book is moreso a history of Cleveland, and trying to connect those odd underground, counterculture, or mythological connections that the Chamber of Commerce tends to ignor as the town’s import. Was there a moment where you realized this book needed to go a little wider than only telling the tales of Laughner and the bands of that era? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Very early on I realized that none of this would make sense or have any true meaning without the appropriate context. The activities of the early Cle punk scene need to be viewed in relation to what was going on in the city. I think this is just as true with NYC or London – these were very specific contexts, all tangled up in politics, crime, rent, television, and also the specifics of the more hippie-ish local countercultures that preceded each region. You’ve got Bowie and Warhol and all that, but in Cleveland you’ve also got Ghoulardi and d.a. levy. Mix that up with deindustrialization and a picture starts to form.

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So when did you decide on doing this book? You’ve mentioned this was your first attempt at doing a full graphic novel – and boy, you went epic on it!

I did a short version of Peter’s story back when I was living in Philadelphia. But upon completing that version – which I now think of as a sketch – it became clear that there was a lot more to say and to investigate. I spent about a year just thinking about it, forming contacts with some people, and tracking down various reference materials like records, zines, books, etc. Then my wife got a new job at Cleveland State University, so we left Philly. Once I landed back in Cleveland I started working on the book in earnest.

Page from Ain't It Fun -- all book images courtesy of the author.

By any chance was Greil Marcus’ book, Lipstick Traces (1989), an inspiration, as far as the “hidden history” factor, the trying to connect seemingly unconnected and lost historical footnotes into a path towards the culture’s future?

Yes. I read Lipstick Traces when I was around 19 or 20, and I’d never seen anything like it before. It really blew my mind, all the stuff about the Situationists and Dadaists and all that. Later on, I read Nick Tosches’ Dean Martin biography, Dino, and that was another mind blower. Another major influence is Iain Sinclair.

Ah Dino, another Ohio native. So, Laughner’s one-time partner, Charlotte Pressler’s book is mentioned, and I’ve seen it referenced and talked about for years – any inside word on if/when she might have that published?

Charlotte never wrote a book, though she did co-edit a book that collected the work of local poets. As far as her own writing, she’s done all manner of essays and poetry, and probably some academic writing that I’m not familiar with. As far as her completing “Those Were Different Times”— which was intended as a total of three essays— I’ve got some thoughts on that, but it’s not really my place to comment on it.

Pressler sounds like a very serious person in your book, as you say, she was kind of older than her years. But how was she to talk to?

Charlotte is serious, but she’s not dour. She’s got a sense of humor and she’s very curious about the world, always looking to learn new things. She’s an intellectual, and has a wide array of interests. We get along, we’re friends.

The fact that the town’s namesake, Moses Cleveland, left soon after his “discovery” and never came back – that’s like a template for how people envision a town like Cleveland: nice place to grow up, but you want to get out as soon as you’re legal. Even the musicians of the area might’ve agreed with that sentiment, even if many never left. Do you think that has changed?

I’m glad I left Cleveland, but I’m also glad I came back. First off, my family is here. Second, the cost of living is still reasonable. I don’t know how people live in New York. I never have any money. I’d make more money if I had a full-time job at McDonald’s. That’s not a joke, or me being self-deprecating. How do artists live in New York? How do they afford rent and 20 dollar packs of cigarettes? I’m just totally confused by the basic mechanics of this. So yeah, I’m in Cleveland. It’s not great, but what are my options? I can’t just go to Paris and fuck around like a bohemian. I would if I could.

In Ain't It Fun, you reveal that one of the seminal Cleveland scene dives, Pirate's Cove, was once a Rockerfeller warehouse – these kind of enlightening, almost comically perfect metaphors pop up every few pages. Not unlike the mythology that can sometimes arise in musician fandom, I wonder if these are metaphors we can mine, or just an obvious facts that the town drifted down from a center of industry to relative poverty.

“Metaphor” might be at too much of a remove. These facts, these landmarks — they create a complex of semiotics, a map, a framework. The city talks through its symbols and its landscape. If you submit to it and listen, it will tell you secrets. There is nothing metaphorical about this.

Is it a sign of privilege to look on destitution as inspiration? I’m guessing the sick drunks at Pirate’s Cove in 1975 weren’t thinking they were living in a rusty Paris of the ‘30s. Though I will say a thing I really loved about your book was that, for all its yearning and historical weaving, you still stick to facts and don’t seem to over-mythologize or put any gauze on the smog, like “Isn’t that so cool, man.” You capture the quiet and damp desperation of that era and Laughner’s milieu.

Poverty, decline, decay, entropy – these things are real. By aestheticizing them we are able to gain some control over them. And once you have control, you have the power to change things. This is not “slumming.” “Privilege” has nothing to do with it.

Page from Ain't It Fun

Do you know why the Terminal Tower (once the second tallest building in the world when it opened in 1928) was named that? It seems somewhat fatalistic, given the usual futurist positivism of the deco design era.

Terminal as in train terminal. It really pisses me off that there was once a time where you could go there and catch a train to Chicago or New York. It’s infuriating how this country dismantled its rail systems. And the Terminal Tower isn’t deco, but I think it is often confused with that style just by virtue of not being a gigantic rectangle. In that sense it does have more in common with a deco structure like the Chrysler building. Honestly, if you are looking for deco you might find more notable examples in Akron than you would Cleveland.

I notice a kind of – and bear with my lesser abilities to describe illustrative art – swirly style in your work that kind of aligns with art deco curves, maybe some Gustav Klimt…? In general, who were some illustrative inspirations for you early on?

That “swirly” style you describe is art nouveau. Deco came after that, and is more angular and clean. Additionally, a lot of underground comix guys were also poster artists, and there was often a nouveau influence in that psychedelic work – so there’s a bit of a thread there. As far as Klimt, I came to him kinda late, but I love him now.

The music of many northeast Ohio bands of that era has been generally tagged as “industrial” (the pre-dance industrial style, of course), cranky like the machinery of the sputtering factories in the Flats, etc… My guess is maybe the musicians were already finding used R'n'R instruments in thrift stores by that time, which would add a kind of layer of revision, turning old things into new sounds. Did you hear about of any of that? Or were there enough music stores around town? I know DEVO was already taking used instruments and refitting them; or electric eels using sheet metal and such to bang on…

I’m not a musician, so I don’t know anything about gear or stuff like that. I do know that Allen Ravenstine made field recordings in the Flats, and utilized them via his synthesizer. Frankly, I wish more of the Northeast Ohio bands had taken cues from Ubu and early Devo, because an “industrial” subculture definitely could have formed, like it did in England and San Francisco. But that never really happened here.

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That kind of music was pretty popular on college radio and in a few clubs in Cleveland, though not many original bands with that sound arrived, aside from Nine Inch Nails who quickly took his act elsewhere… So in the book you mention local newsman, Dick Fealger. My memories of him are as a curmudgeon whose shtick was getting a little old by the time I was seeing him on the news, or his later opinion columns. Kinda your classic “Hey you kids, get off my lawn” style. You rightly paint him as a somewhat prescient reporter of the odd in his earlier days, though. I once had to go to a friend’s mother’s funeral, and in the next room in the funeral home was Dick Feagler’s funeral. I always regret not sneaking over and taking a peak into it to see who was there.

I like Feagler in the same way that I liked Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. These were people that my grandparents liked. So I suppose my appreciation for Feagler is half nostalgia, half irony. I like cranks, grumps, letter-writers, street prophets. I like black coffee, donuts, diners, and blue plate specials – that’s Feagler’s world, the old newspaper world. Get up at 6 am and put your pants on, that kinda thing.

Yeah, I still found Feagler kinda funny, but like Jane Scott, while respect was always there, by the later ‘80s/’90s, both were set into almost caricatures who were kind of resting on their laurels.

Yeah, I remember seeing Jane at some random Grog Shop show back in the ‘90s, and I was kinda impressed. But no, she was never really cool. Jane was pure Cleveland, her career couldn't have happened anywhere else.

I remember seeing her sit right next to a huge house amp at the old Variety Theater for the entire duration of a Dead Kennedys show, taking notes for her review. Pretty impressive given her age at that point.

You also make a point of carving out an important space for The Damnation of Adam Blessing, a band that seems to get forgotten when discussing Cleveland’s pre-punk band gaggle. I find that interesting because in a way, they are the template for the way many Ohio bands don’t fit into any exact genre, and so often people don’t “get” them, or they’re forgotten later.

Damnation worked as a good local example for that whole psychedelic thing. They were very ‘60s. While the James Gang on the other hand, was more ‘70s— the cracks were starting to show with the ‘70s bands, they were harder and less utopian. Damnation feels more “Woodstock,” so they were useful to me in that regard.

I must add – for years I thought it was pronounced Laugh-ner, as in to laugh, ha ha, not knowing the Gaelic roots. Once I learned I was pronouncing it wrong, I still wanted to pronounce it like laughing, as it seemed to fit so darkly correct with how his life went, and Cleveland musicians’ love of bad puns and cheap comedians and such… Of course when I learned that it was an “ethnic” name, it made it that much more Cleveland.

Yeah, everybody says his name wrong. I used to too, and had to really force myself to start saying it as Lochner. But everybody says Pere Ubu wrong as well – it’s Pear Ubu.

I hate any desecration of any artwork, but I always loved the blowing up The Thinker statue story, as it seemed such a powerful metaphor of the strength of art, and Cleveland itself – the fact that The Thinker himself still sits there, right on top of the sliced-up and sweeping shards from the blast. It’s still there, right? And isn’t it true that there are like three more “official” Thinker statues in the world?

Yeah, I don’t condone what happened, but it is kinda cool. As a kid, the mutilated Thinker had a strong effect on me — I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, but I think it gave me a sense of the weight of history. It’s almost like a post-war artifact in Europe, something that is scarred. And yes, it’s still there outside the museum. And it’s a cast. I think there might be five official ones, but I’d have to look that up. If you are ever in Philadelphia, swing by the Rodin museum and check out The Gates of Hell.

I have only become a bigger fan of Laughner’s as the years pass. But there is something to the critique that perhaps he never really found his singular sound; that he was copping bits from Lou Reed and Dylan, and couldn’t keep a band together to save his life. And there was supposedly a feeling among some in the NYC scene that he was a bit of a carpetbagger.

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Everybody has their influences, so Peter wasn’t in any way unique in that sense. I know he has a reputation for doing a lot of cover songs — which is true — but he also wrote a lot of originals, and there are some damn good ones which are still unreleased. “Under the Volcano” is just one such unheard song which I mention in my book, but there are others. As far as finding his own singular sound, he probably came closest to that with Friction. That group borrowed heavily from Television and Richard Hell, but also drew upon Richard Thompson and Fairport Convention. And when you think about it, those were really unlikely influences to juxtapose, and it created something original. Frustratingly though, Friction never achieved their full potential, as Peter was already losing it.

Yeah, Friction is kind of way up there with the “What if” bands… It’s interesting that for all his legend as a proto-punk figure, perhaps Laughner’s signature songs – Sylvia Plath” and “Baudelaire” – were gorgeous acoustic numbers. Though of course those early Pere Ubu songs were proto-punk and post-punk templates, somehow...

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I honestly don’t know what happened with Ubu, as it is pretty distinct from Peter’s other work. Thomas isn’t really a musician, so we can only give him so much credit with how that sound developed. I honestly don’t know. There just must have been some sort of alchemy between the various players, and Thomas understood it and was able to encourage and guide it in the projects that followed over the years.

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You also didn’t really detail Pere Ubu’s initial breakup – was there just not much to say?

Yeah, I think I mentioned it, but no, I didn’t really get into it. Pere Ubu is kind of a story unto themselves. But it might be worth mentioning here that Home and Garden was an interesting project that came out of that Ubu breakup. And Thomas also did some solo albums, but I’m not as familiar with those.

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Yeah, I saw Home and Garden a few times way back, good stuff. You’ve mentioned to me that there were some people that didn’t want to talk to you for the book; and that people were very protective of Peter’s legacy and/or their friendship with him. To what do you attribute that?

It has everything to do with Peter’s early death. Some people are very protective of how Peter is remembered. And I think some people weren’t exposed to Peter’s dark side, so when they hear those descriptions of him it strikes them as untrue. I think Peter showed different sides of himself to different people.

I kind of felt as I was reading that you might say more about Harvey Pekar, as not only is he an interesting figure, but the most famous graphic novelist from Ohio, and I assume an inspiration of your’s.

Pekar’s great. Especially the magazine-size issues he was doing in the late ‘70s up through the ‘80s. It was important to me to include him in the book. But Pekar was a jazz guy, and that’s a whole other story, a whole other tangled web.

So, Balloonfest! Hilarious. I almost forgot about that. But I do remember Ted Stepien owning the short-lived Cleveland professional softball team; and for a promotion, they dropped softballs off the Terminal Tower, and if you caught one you won $1,000 or something. Do you recall that? It’s one of my favorite fucked-up Cleveland stories. Balls smashed car roofs, and cops immediately told people to run away.

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Yeah, I’m aware of that baseball stunt. I generally try and stay away from anything even remotely related to professional sports teams — it gets talked about more than enough elsewhere. Oddly, I am interested in athletes who work alone, like Olympic skiers. I’m attracted to that solitary focus, where the athlete isn’t competing against other teams or players, but more competing with the limits of the human body, competing with what the physical world will allow and permit, that whole Herzog trip. I’m also interested in the Olympic Village, as this artificial space that mutates and moves across time and across continents.

As far as Balloonfest, I still watch that footage all the time. I use it as a meditation device. I’ll put it on along with Metal Machine Music and go into a trance.

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A few years ago, as I am sure you are well aware, noted British punk historian Jon Savage put together a Soul Jazz Records comp of Cleveland proto-punk called Extermination Nights in the Sixth City. I grew up in Cleveland, lived in Columbus for awhile, and I never heard it called “the Sixth City.” Have you? If so, what does it refer to?

Nobody calls it that anymore. It’s an old nickname back from when Cleveland was literally the sixth largest city in the country.

I’d guess Ain’t It Fun was a tiring feat to accomplish. But do you have another book in the works? And if someone wanted to option Peter’s story for a movie, would you sign on? I personally dread rock biopics. They’re almost universally bad.

Yeah, I’ve got an idea for another book, but it’s too early to talk about that. As far as biopics, they are almost always bad, rock or otherwise. Rock documentaries are often pretty lousy too. A recent and major exception would be Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary, which is just goddamn brilliant. A film about Peter in that vein would be great— but there’s just no footage to work from. He didn’t have Warhol or Factory people following him around with a camera. So unless somebody like Jim Jarmusch comes calling, I won’t be signing off on movie rights any time soon.

Unless there is more you’d like to say, thanks, and good luck with the book and future ventures!

Stone Church Press has a lot of projects planned for 2024 and beyond, and I encourage anyone reading this to support small publishers. There is a lot of very exciting stuff going on, but you have to work a little to find it. Amazon, algorithms, big corporate publishers — they’re like this endless blanket of concrete that smothers and suffocates. But flowers have a way of popping up between the cracks.

Aaron Lange, 2023 (Photo by Jake Kelly)

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horrorchops · 8 months ago

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Band that has horror vibes:

Band: The Cramps

Year: 1976

Some history:

The Cramps were an American punk rock band, formed in 1976 and active until 2009. The band split after the death of lead singer Lux Interior. Their line-up rotated much over their existence. Occasional bass guitarist Poison Ivy the only permanent members.

They were part of the early CBGB punk rock movement that had emerged in New York. The Cramps are noted as influencing a number of musical styles: not only were they one of the first garage punk bands, they are also widely recognized as one of the prime innovators of psychobilly. (Wiki, Contributors to Punk. “The Cramps.” Punk Wiki. Accessed April 25, 2024. https://punk.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cramps.)

1972 - Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Marlana Wallace) met in Sacramento, California in. In light of their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps.

1975 - They moved to Akron, Ohio, and then to New York. soon entering into CBGB's early punk scene with other emerging acts like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, and Mink DeVille. The lineup.

1978 - They gave a landmark free concert for patients at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa, recorded on a Sony Portapak video camera by the San Francisco collective Target Video and later released as Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.

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1980 - The Cramps relocated to Los Angeles in and hired guitarist Kid Congo Powers of The Gun Club. While recording their second LP, Psychedelic Jungle, the band and Miles Copeland began to dispute royalties and creative rights.

1982 - The band appears in the film Urgh! A Music War.

1983 - When they recorded Smell of Female live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; Kid Congo Powers subsequently departed. Mike Metoff of The Pagans (cousin of Nick Knox) was the final second guitarist – albeit only live – of the Cramps' pre-bass era.

1985 - The Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie The Return of the Living Dead called "Surfin' Dead", on which Ivy played bass as well as guitar.

1986 - With the release A Date With Elvis, the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist.

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1991 - Knox left the band. The Cramps hit the Top 40 in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song.

1994 - The Cramps made their national US television debut on Late Night with Conan O'Brien performing "Ultra Twist".

1995 - The Cramps appeared on the TV-series Beverly Hills, 90210 in the Halloween episode "Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas." They played two songs in show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love." Lux Interior started the song by saying "Hey boys and ghouls, are you ready to raise the dead?".

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2001 - On January 10 Bryan Gregory died at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center of complications following a heart attack. He was 46.

2002 - The Cramps released their final album, Fiends of Dope Island, on their own label, Vengeance Records.

2006 - They played their final shows in Europe in the summer and their very last live show was 4 November at the Marquee Theater in Tempe, Arizona.

2009 - On February 4 Lux Interior died at the Glendale Memorial Hospital after suffering an aortic dissection which, contrary to initial reports about a pre-existing condition, was "sudden, shocking and unexpected".

All this information comes from

What are your thoughts on the cramps? Let my knew below ⬇️

See you on the other side friend

-Horrorchops 🖤

P.S. My other post with the purple moon gif explains what’s happening next week on Tuesday and Thursday.

#horror #horror fan #bands #punk band #punk rock #horror bands #music #the cramps #SoundCloud

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curatingworship · 9 months ago

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NEW WORK ACCEPTED INTO ARTISTS OF RUBBER CITY JURIED EXHIBITION - inspired by If These Trees Could Talk's "Trail of Whispering Giants" and Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive"

I have a brand-new painting that will be on display at Summit Artspace in downtown Akron, Ohio from April 5 – June 15. The piece was accepted into this year’s Artists of Rubber City Juried Art Exhibition and it is entitled:

It’s There that We Found More Than was Lost (Faintly Like a Whisper, Familiar Like Her Ungloved Hand)

This painting has a special meaning to me as it gave me an opportunity to create an artwork that was highly influenced by some of my favorite creative people (musicians/artists who also happen to have ties to Northeast Ohio). Our geographical connection was highlighted by the fact that this juried art show is curated by Akron’s own Artists of Rubber City collective.

As I gathered ideas and research for this piece, two key inspirations really stood out: a brand-new song I’ve been crushing called “Trail of Whispering Giants,” by an amazing band named If These Trees Could Talk, and a hauntingly beautiful film I adore called “Only Lovers Left Alive,” by an amazing film maker named Jim Jarmusch. So, the process of creating this painting held a lot of significance for me as it allowed me to spend a lot of time with one of my favorite bands and with my favorite film maker and my all-time favorite film.

If These Trees Could Talk is an amazing post-rock band whose music resonates deeply with me.

When I heard their new song, I instantly knew that I was going to create an artwork inspired by it at some point in my life. I’ve written about that sense before, because sometimes the right song (or movie) hits you and you just know that you must create an artwork in response to it.

One of the band members, Zach, said in an interview that their music could be described as a “non-lyrical exploration of emotion.” I like that. I think that abstract expressionist painting is very similar in that the artist can use color and texture and the elements of art to attempt to explore emotional concepts in an abstract and non-lyrical way. And while my work happens to also focus specifically on using words and language as art, the core of every painting I make is rooted in my non-lyrical abstract expressionist style.

So, for this project, I put “Trail of Whispering Giants,” on a loop and listened to it while I did most of the major work on this painting. The song informed and shaped a large portion of what the viewer experiences on the canvas. I got to see If These Trees Could Talk play this song live at Musica in downtown Akron during the time I was working on this piece. That more intimate experience of “Trail of Whispering Giants,” added a further dimension to my connection with the song and the way I was able to interpret it in my artwork.

I have a whole page in my art journal where I broke “Trail of Whispering Giants down into what I heard and felt were the different voices, themes, emotions, and movements discovered within the 8 minute duration of the work. The band employs 3 guitars, bass and drums, so there is a lot of complexity and nuanced layering of ideas at work in this song. I tried to capture those ideas in my painting, and as such, the viewer should discover a variety of ideas including wrestling with the dissonant tension of liminal spaces, the crushing weight of despair, the faint voice of hope, the loneliness of absence (or near silence), and what I felt was an overwhelming call to keep pushing forward through it all.

The second main inspiration for this painting is my all-time favorite film, “Only Lovers Left Alive."

A few years ago, I created a short film called “Only the Dead Survive Winter in Providence (High Places are Getting Harder to Find)” that was highly influenced by Jim Jarmusch’s vampire film, and I couldn’t help but explore his work one more time here in this painting.

I focused specifically on one scene from the movie (which happens to be my favorite scene in a movie), where the two main characters have a very intimate moment that revolves around a wooden bullet, an old 45” record, and dancing. It’s a scene that reveals so many raw and honest ideas about juxtaposed themes like suffering/despair/loss and hope/perseverance/love. And it does this in a way that just connected with me in a deep way and spoke into my own decades long struggle with chronic physical pain and the reality that my body is quite broken.

I wrote down a key moment of dialogue from this scene and revisited it often as I painted. Eve says to Adam:

“How can you have lived for so long and still not get it? This self-obsession, it’s a waste of living…that could be spent on…surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship…And dancing. (a long beat) You have been pretty lucky in love though, if I may say so.”

I also kind of kept coming back to this one interview I found where Jarmusch said that Adam and Eve’s vampiric state can serve as “a metaphor for the fragility of humans.” I thought that was powerful and an accurate portrayal of how I felt about the film and perhaps why it’s so important to me as an artist, but also just as a person trying to find beauty and hope amidst the painful parts of my life.

I loved the color palette in the film and especially in this scene. As such, I used some still frames from the scene to inform the color palette of my painting – the stencil graffiti I created of the two flowers represents Eve and Adam and reflects the colors they wore in that scene (Adam had teal-ish hospital scrubs, and Eve wore a robe that had warm reds and golds in it). The core color of the painting kind of was taken from the sofa in the room.

The first part of the title of my painting comes from a line in an E.E. Cummings poem named “When Faces Called Flowers Float Out of the Ground.” The second part of the title is my nod to the song and the film that inspired my painting.

One of my favorite quotes Jarmusch said (and I print it and put it on all my art journals) is:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, conversations…Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.’” - Jim Jarmusch

I also wrote down some responses that Tilda Swinton offered in a few interviews she did promoting Only Lovers Left Alive, and this kind of matches up nicely with Jarmusch’s words:

“All artists certainly need each other…this film is about wearing your heroes on your sleeve.” - Tilda Swinton

All that to say, this painting was influenced by two of my creative heroes and I’m proud of this piece and I cherish the process of creating it, because it allowed me to spend a lot of time with them. This is my interpretation of their work—exploring what it means to me, but also how the song and the movie can reflect off my story and then echo back to others in a way that might help them find meaningful moments in their own stories too.

I always try and create little nods to the people that influenced or inspired my work, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes a little more hidden (My films “Coffee with Ruth” and “Only the Dead Survive Winter in Providence” celebrate the fact that Jarmusch has shaped so much of my sense as a film maker).

I wrote this in my last post, but it seems worth repeating here as well…I pushed all of my reference material through my personal struggle with chronic pain (which has for better or worse been well documented in my artwork and my writing over these long years).

Pain has made her home with me, and I’m trying to find ways to make our relationship meaningful.

Below you can read my official details for the upcoming Artists of Rubber City Juried Art Exhibition (opening Friday, April 5th in downtown Akron), including my Artist Statement about the painting.

Artists of Rubber City Juried Exhibition

Forum Gallery - Summit Artspace, Akron, Ohio

Juror: Adriana Caso, Director and Founder of Door 2 Art Studio in Hudson, Ohio.

Artist Statement:

It’s There that We Found More Than was Lost (Faintly Like a Whisper, Familiar Like Her Ungloved Hand) is an abstract expressionist work with particular focus on using words and language as art.

My work is heavily influenced and inspired by music and If These Trees Could Talk’s new song, “Trail of Whispering Giants” served as my primary inspiration and source material for the overall emotional quality of this painting. The song is a complex and beautiful 8-minute instrumental work that, provokes feelings of despair, hope, and especially the discomforting tension of waiting in liminal spaces.

This painting is also inspired by my favorite scene in my favorite movie, “Only Lovers Left Alive.” Jim Jarmusch describes the vampiric state of the two main characters in his film as a metaphor for the fragility of humans. The specific scene I explored is one of the darkest and brightest moments in the film, where the heavy weight of despair a character carries is countered with the brief light of hope that the other character offers/symbolizes. Many of the color choices in this painting reflect the color palette of that scene.

The song and the film scene were pushed through my own long endless struggle with chronic physical pain, and my own search for buoyant hope amidst a sea of relentless heartache.

The title comes from a poem by E.E. Cummings and a nod to the song and film that inspired my painting.

This work also contains lyrical thoughts by the band mewithoutYou.

Artwork Title: It’s There that We Found More Than was Lost (Faintly Like a Whisper, Familiar Like Her Ungloved Hand)

Medium: Acrylic, Crayon, and Hand-cut Stencil Graffiti on Canvas

Dimensions: 30” x 40”

Thanks to Juror, Adriana Caso, for selecting my work to be included in this show. It is an honor.

Thanks to If These Trees Could Talk and Jim Jarmusch (and Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston) for making art and music that is authentic and that carries a special significance in my life and my own journey as a creative.

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jonfarreporter · 11 months ago

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Chris Felver's ‘Whole Shebang’ with Douglas Sandberg, Photos, Films, and Paintings

On the heels of the recent Figurative Art exhibit that highlighted the Figurative Art Movement of the Bay Area, comes the varied work of Chris Felver, opening at the Sausalito Center for The Arts (SCA) on March 20.

Felver took some some time to speak about his work and his life. “I want this exhibit to show what’s up-to-date about my work, he said, a canvassing which includes my films.”

Spanning decades, Felver’s work is more than just one thing. Describing himself as “an artist,” “I go with that over anything else like photographer, filmmaker, painter, the title of ‘artist’ is much easier,” he said.

And, that’s how he sees it, but also perhaps because that’s how he has experienced the journey of his remarkable career.

Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Felver initially followed the basic path. If he had remained in Akron, (in a conventional way) he would have eventually gotten a job in the tire industry or something similar.

But he knew instinctively that staying in an industrial town known as the ‘rubber capital’ wouldn’t make for an interesting life. So he acquired Akron’s other most cherished thing of golf and took off for the University of Miami in Florida, joining the golf team.

Playing for the university’s team along with other pursuits while at University of Miami he sensed there was more on the horizon. He then joined the U.S. Army.

After his time in the military, he ventured to Arlo Guthrie’s song-famous, Alice’s Restaurant or rather ‘The Back Room’ as was actually called in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was the 1960s and the conservatism of the 1950’s was buckling under the wave of change.

Eager for new ideas, sights and sounds, Felver went off to Europe and was busking, singing and playing guitar in London. While there he found himself at film school and then at the London College of Painting.

His infatuation with Europe then got overtaken by an even greater interest, which he got a taste of in Stockbridge.

As mentioned, the world after World War II was changing and there was an excitement about it that was referred to as ‘The Beat Generation.’

“I was fascinated by them,” said Felver. “Their poetry, their non-conformist nature, I identified with them.” Even as the 1960’s marked a distinct period somewhat separate from the Beats, the Beat Generation is what opened the door and paved the way for the civil and social revolutions that were approaching.

“It all began right there and I just kept on going,” he said. Felver made his way back to the United States and was in Los Angeles for a while. “Hollywood is hardly the place (even then to hang out for artists),” he noted.

So, he went with the flow and made his way to the San Francisco Bay Area. “As soon as I got here, I just knew that this is it. Can’t miss it! I’ve been here ever since.”

North Beach in San Francisco was a special place, “All the luminaries were still there when I arrived,” said Felver. His ongoing interaction and friendship with the’Beat Generation,’ would eventually lead to several books. And this includes a film about City Lights Bookstore founder and prominent Beat writer/poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Looking back on those days, Felver said. “That level of cultural sophistication doesn’t exist anymore. North Beach is a different scene now, my friends are gone,” he added.

“What stands out to me about the Beat Generation said Sausalito Plein air artist Kay Carlson, is that they portray the human condition with non-conformity, and celebrate spontaneous creativity in many genres.”

She refers to the Beat Generation as “luminaries,” Carlson points to their unique cultural significance. “They are a thread that has persisted since the 1950's, she said, when the literary subculture including Kerouac and Ginsberg and Hunke on the East Coast influenced the visual arts, music, cultural and attitudes.”

Carlson understands why Felver was and has been continuously inspired by the Beat Generation.

“They reject the standard narrative of values, including materialism and make spiritual quests,” she said.

Pointing out the reasons for the Bay Area’s ability to attract this significant movement at pivotal time in America history, Carlson said.

“Sausalito and the waterfront has long been home to this Beat Generation movement.”

Citing the many accomplishments of Felver, Carlson noted. “Chris is a cultural documentarian. His distinctive visual signature is a lasting contribution to the legacy of our national cultural community.”

In addition to his photography and paintings, 10 of his films will be featured.

“The little film fest at SCA will be a sidebar to the exhibit,” said Felver.

His documentaries have captured the spirit and creativity of many international artists and include The Spirit of Golf (2020); Anthony Cragg: Inside/Outside (2020); Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder (2013); Cecil Taylor: All the Notes (2005); Donald Judd’s Marfa Texas (1998); The Coney Island of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1996); Tony Cragg: In Celebration of Sculpture (1993); John Cage Talks About Cows (1991); Taken by the Romans (1990); West Coast: Beat & Beyond (1984); and California Clay in the Rockies (1983).

Felver’s films & photographs reads like a roster of American mid-century avant-garde.

Aside from his extensive photography portraits, Mr. Felver has also produced another body of work entitled: Ordered World.

About this body of work, curator, James Crump writes, “Mr. Felver celebrates the elemental essences manmade and natural objects that tend to elude observation. Working in a manner not unlike sculptor & photographer, Karl Blossfeldt, Albert Renger-Patzsch and the New Objectivity artists of 1920s and ’30s Germany.”

“Felver, says Crump, asserts his own contemporary vision here. His pictures are informed by Minimalism and the keen, reﬁned observation of a poet unwilling to discard the mundane or topical content that surrounds us but, nevertheless, is overlooked in the quickened pace of our technologically frenzied age.”

Noting further Crump said. “The series, while concerned with monumentalizing and focusing our attention on the ordered and structured surfaces of objects, resists any historical referencing to the hardened gaze of the twentieth century. It asks the viewer to ruminate on the overlooked beauty which surrounds us, the wonderment that unfolds, with careful and reﬁned examination.”

Even though Felver’s work is extensive and can fill the entire SCA space and then some, he wanted to share the spotlight with fellow photographer/filmmaker/artist, Douglas Sandberg.

“I am honored to have my work shown,” said Sandberg. “But really Chris’ work deserves recognition because I agree with Kay Carlson, Chris is among those ‘new luminaires’ because he’s carrying on the legacy of the Beat Generation.”

Mentioning how much the Beat Generation influenced her work, Carlson sees Felver and Sandberg both as “New Luminaries.”

She explains a bit more, “I call them (Felver and Sandberg) ‘New Luminaries’ because they bring to light with their artwork to this style of reinforcing creativity.”

“There is a large recent resurgence of this type of spontaneous painting using life experiences,” Carlson said.

“We want to celebrate Chris and Doug as longtime residents of our town, she added. And, give the community the opportunity to know and appreciate them with their amazing history.

“For these two artists have both been

influential on the West Coast, New York, and Internationally,” said Carlson.

Chris Felver's Whole Shebang with Douglas Sandberg,

Photos, Films, and Paintings, will be on display at the Sausalito Center for The Arts, from March 20 to April 14.

For details visit the SCA website.