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mcrmadness · 4 years ago

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Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the Bela/Farin: “Widumihei” comic.

A few months ago I posted here this comic:

CLICK HERE for the original post about that comic where you can see it in better and bigger size, and also reblog it ;)

And this post is just a deep dive into how I plan, do and draw my comics.

Let’s start with sketchbook things...

So every comic needs a story, right? My comics usually are born from either some dialogue I imagine in my head or by an impulsive inspiration that happens when I see something or talk with people and a random idea is triggered. I’m very good at coming up with new ideas solely based on just one word or so which is why I often ask people if they have anything they would want to see/read because I suck at coming up ideas on my own. Or I do get ideas, but not as often as I’d want to.

This particular idea was very old and I have tried but I cannot find the piece that was my inspiration but it was in some of my old German books because I remember laughing at it with either my brother or even with the German teacher in 2011 or 2012. I was only able to find my first “sketch” of the story:

This is in the notebook I used for writing down some comic ideas and even had one comic in it, plus it’s also my fanfiction writing notebook. It has no date but I know for sure it was either 2011 or 2012 because that’s when I did my last Bela/Farin comic and pretty much started my (unintentional) 6 year pause from drawing altogether.

I have always been trilingual when I do these plans for my comics, often writing the “narration” in Finnish and the dialog either in English or German because I just cannot imagine them to speaking Finnish. The translation of that text goes as:

COMIC (sarjis = sarjakuva = comic book in Finnish)

1. The phone is ringing. 2. F: “Widumihei?!” B: ? 3. B: “Farin wtf?” 4. Farin walks from another room. 5. B: “Widumihei?” 6. F: “It means, “will you marry me?”“ 7. B: *wtf* REPLAY:

1. Bela is sitting/laying somewhere. 2. The phone is ringing. Reached with his hand? 3. Looks at the phone, “wtf?”, a thought: “von Jan: Widumihei?!” 4. Bela: “Farin?” / “Jan?” 5. F comes from another room, looks in from behind the door frame or something. B: “Widumihei?” 6. F: “Widumihei: “WIllst DU MIch HEiraten”“ 7. B: “WTF”

So when I then started to draw these comics again in 2018, I kept thinking about this one too and still wanted to draw it one day. If you have read the finished comic, you may notice something different in the old plot versus new: I switched Bela’s and Farin’s roles. Back then I didn’t know too much yet but over the years I have learnt much much more about them and I just figured that asking to marry him even as a joke would be too much for Farin and that it would fit Bela’s persona much much better.

***

I had a bit of problems with getting started with this one, mainly because the last times I drew a dä comic was in June 2020, in April 2020 and before those in October 2019. Because of so long time between the comics, I just always forgot about my methods and in which order I do things and what works for me the best. So every time I started to work on a comic, I had to start completely over because all I had was blank paper and I somehow needed to get my thoughts in order and out of my head, into a physical form aka as text and images on the paper, and it’s easier said than done.

So pardon me but from this on the text is going to get a little bit confusing for a little while from now on - but it’s also a very good look over how the life with my suspected ADHD be like sometimes...

I started working on the plot once again to my sketchbook... I think it was somewhere in the beginning of 2020. Because the next idea there is from the summer. This is what the plot looked like at that point - here I had already switched their roles:

Shortly, the texts go: 1. Farin is reading a book. 2. A phone makes a noise. 3. (Farin) looks at it/read the message. / 6. B appears into the doorway. / 11. F spits out the tea.

And underneath it you can see one of the stick figure storyboards I often do in order to kinda see the text in pictures better, and I will write down or draw important aspects like expressions (Farin’s eyebrows) or things like *facepalm’* or *eyeroll* so that I remember to add them.

Next I was struggling with the era. It needed to be an era with the old mobile phones with SMS options but still not too early because I feel that Farin would have not been the first in line to buy a brand new technology object, especially not when it’s a phone. I was even googling when did Germany get their first mobile phone - I remember I got my first phone aka Nokia 5510 in 2000 or 2001 after my mom got a new one and gave her old one to me, so the story shouldn’t happen too many years before the Millenium.

Originally I planned 1997 for that - I needed to think about that based on their styles because shorter hair is harder to draw. Here’s me trying out some hairs and how they’re to draw and which era would suit my needs the best. I actually find the text hilarious altho it’s mine but this is what it’s in English:

Time period -> 1996-1997? 1998 I’ve never drawn 1999 is not that much fun to draw 2000 is already a bit too late? Bela not that much fun to draw. -2001 moustaches are not fun to draw?

I think I was struggling with my thoughts because the next thing in that sketchbook is yet another storyboard:

Or actually I think this was just to see how many sheets I’d need and how many panels I could fit on one sheet.

Anyhow, I then did other things for some time before I got back to this project this year. Including finishing with the sketchbook I had been using since 2010 (and the half of it since 2018!) and I had to get myself a new one. So when I started to think about this comic again, one night I was just thinking about some Bela/Farin scenarios as usual and suddenly I just felt that I NEED to do the comic in the 1998 style!!! So suddenly we jump from the original 1997 idea to the new era, only because of the colors.

So asap I grabbed my sketchbook and started to look for the proper colors for the hairs:

This one I posted here before too as I was struggling a lot and just felt that I didn’t know how to draw, again. Sometimes when I feel like that, I start drawing with my non-dominant aka left hand because it doesn’t have all that in muscle memory so drawing and writing with it feels more free and it feels almost like pressing a refresh button in my brain. Suddenly the right one know again how to draw because left isn’t too well in control. The below part of the image is done completely with the left hand, including the coloring.

And because I had now a new sketchbook, I somehow couldn’t... deal with the plot and plans being in a different sketchbook than everything else so I had write the plot/dialog AGAIN, into this new sketchbook, along with the storyboards and everything:

Translations: kirja = book, puhelin = phone, oviaukossa = in the doorway, teet suusta = tea(s) out of a/the mouth. “Puhelin zoom” just means “close up to the phone screen” in Madness.

You can also see that I found out that I don’t need to do the stick figure storyboards to imitate a sheet when I can just draw this rectangle and smaller rectangles inside of it and write there numbers to match the things in the dialog to make it much easier for me to plan the pages. And here’s also a small easter egg: there’s 13 panels overall in this comic :D I almost did 12 but then felt that no, I really need to do 13 because, you know, the hairs, the era, the album title. And also because I like the number so much lmao.

So from there we get to the second storyboard which is not just stick figures anymore but just me planning how I want the panels to look like. To get the imagery of the rooms and facial expressions etc. out onto the paper so that I can see them in real life instead of my shady imagination that sometimes isn’t as vivid as what I could be.

Also have you ever tried to draw a beach chair? It’s more difficult than you’d think:

I tried to draw the same thing from the same reference photos so many times and still I always felt like I was trying to draw that impossible triangle or some other illusion image. And it just went on and on here:

Originally I also had planned the second panel to be a close up of the phone so that Farin’s face would be left at the background from the frog perspective. That’s what I was trying to with that weird-ass face on the left but turned out that I have never drawn these characters from such angle and I just... couldn’t see it in my head clearly enough to be able to draw it. So I dismissed that idea and that’s why the angle changed from a phone close-up to a side view to the room and at Farin.

As I was in the middle of planning the second page, I suddenly wasn’t happy with my original plot anymore. I wasn’t sure if it would work and needed to think about it one more time. So I wrote two other dialogs here, along with a storyboards for them both. I ended up choosing B from those two options eventually.

I don’t remember anymore if I had already done the first sketch of the comics or not but at some point I just felt that I no longer knew how to draw in my style. Sometimes you just draw and learn wrong things and wrong methods that you get used to and then you have to take a break and actually do a little bit of studying over your own style to find again the way how you want to draw, and get rid of the bad habits and find the good ones again. In my case it was to draw the eyes way way too big when they originally never were THAT big, so I had to learn how to draw them small and normal again. That’s why I did these, as I really needed to pay attention to the faces and remember how to draw them again:

The front-side views were another big readong for this “study” because I have drawn that perspective only once or twice before and I needed to figure out how I want to draw that. Also, I don’t know if it’s just me but for some reason the front-side Farin reminds me of one of the parent characters from this cartoon called The Rugrats which I watched as a kid. It was totally unintentional, but you can google The Rugrats if you don’t know how the charatcers looked like in the cartoon.

The things below are just me testing something. The red Farins were just to test how the colored pencils work on each other and how the fineliners work with the colored pencils, and which way is the better way to do the shading. And the red colored pencil was the only one available at the time so that had to do.

A little bit about the heads btw: You might notice some difference between the left and right faces. It’s because I have always, always struggled with drawing anything that is looking at right. Most of the animal portraits and all I have drawn so that they look at left because I just find it so much easier to draw. I think with comics it’s because I always start with the eye (and the eyebrows if I don’t forget it) and then do the forehead, nose, mouth and chin, and after that I either continue from the hair (from the front) or do the ear first. But when I am drawing them to look at right, I have to basically draw the mirror image and starting from the hair is not the key because it can easily mess up with the perspectives. I still usually draw everything in the same order but it really is difficult because I’m doing a mirror image and my own hand is on the way, too. Basically I’m drawing from right to left instead of left to right! (I think I should try drawing those with my left hand, then...)

And from here we get to the first sketch of the comic. From here on the images are from my phone’s camera so they are sometimes illegally bad but no can do, I again didn’t think I’d post these to anywhere:

Here you can see I was mainly just focusing on the shapes and the space inside those panels. Just trying to see the perspective and how everything is. The only thing that I drew more precisely was the third panel, with the hand and phone. I had quite a nice memory of old phones in my head but I still googled for some reference photos of Nokia 5110 phones as that was my first phone (as I mentioned earlier), and I also happened to have some of my other old phones on the table nearby so I took my own hand reference photos too:

They always say there’s a little bit of the artist in their art and this one literally has that - “Farin’s” hand is actually my hand! :D And I think the size is kinda on point too because this phone was like 2-3 times smaller than Nokia 5110 and I have small hands, and I believe Farin must have much bigger hands, so the 5110 probably would have looked about the same size in his hand.

After the first sketch, the next step was then - the second sketch:

I also wanted to add more action to the panels so that it’s interesting to look at and not just basically the same panel over and over again with just different speech bubbles, so I came up with the idea of Farin spitting out his tea not being as cartoony as it could be and that he would have to actually clean it up instead of just leaving it there just because in cartoons/comics everything is possible. That way I got more depth into the panels and it was also interesting for me to draw because I drew lots of new postures I have never drawn before, and I’m surprised how well it went despite me not even looking for any kind of reference photos! The only things I used reference photos for were the beach chair, and the phone in a hand. (I have actually always been quite good at drawing 3D objects and spaces, especially if they are rectangular.)

So yeah, this is the phase where everything is then finished with pencil and what follows next is drawing the lines with fineliners - I use Sakura Pigma Micron fineliners for everything else, and black Promarker for doing the lines for the panels (and also if I need bigger pitch black areas done).

Here are the panel lines done but I only had a photo of this first sheet.

And here are both sheets with the finelining done and all pencil marks etc. erased. I really like this part because it looks so clean when all those sketch marks are gone. It’s also crazy to think I literally spend hours drawing something in pencil only to erase it all away later :D

And here’s one photo of the coloring process, the first one has only the base colors done but none of the shadows yet (apart from the shirts), and the second one has some of the shadows done but not everything yet.

Usually after coloring, I will then go through everything with the fineliners one more time to make sure all the lines are dark enough as it just gives everything the finished yet a bit “sketchy” look that what I really like with my comics. The actual last detail is always adding my signature along with the date or year.

And here’s the finished comic one more time for comparison:

Don’t forget to check and reblog the actual post about this comic if you read this post all the way here. I’d appreaciate that a lot since art and artist on Tumblr are not really that much appreciated.

#mcrmadness draws #mcrmadness draws: behind the scenes #my comics #dä fanart #die ärzte

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aliandrasrhoyne · 5 years ago

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The Women Who Walked The Desert

Whenever we think about GoT the first thing that comes to mind is dragons, ice zombies and the disaster that was the final season. But only readers know that it has been inaccurate since they decided to write a storyline without its main pov. And yes, I’m talking about Dorne and Arianne Martell.

But despite its many failures, there was only one thing pretty accurate, the location. They chose the Real Alcázar in Seville, one of the many monuments erected during the 800-year period in which arabs dominated the peninsula and multiculturalism was appreciated in the bib-ramblas as 3 different cultures coexisted in the same caliphate.

Today we’re going to take a look at The Queenmaker and analyze her caricature as that of her family relationship and love affairs with that of other relevant figure in the culture of Al-Andalus for being the most important poetess.

Wallada bint al-Mustakfi

Her father rose from his chair to kiss her on both cheeks. "The fate of Dorne goes with you, daughter," he said. [...] She did not shed a tear. Arianne Martell was a princess of Dorne, and Dornishmen did not waste water lightly.

Like Arianne, Wallada was a princess and the daughter of Muhammad III of Córdoba, one of the last Umayyad Cordoban caliphs.

"You know me, captain," Arianne had said, as the leagues rolled past. "You have known me since I was little. You always kept me safe, as you kept my lady mother safe when you came with her from Great Norvos to be her shield in a strange land.”

Wallada’s mother, Amin'am, was brought from the distant lands of Hungary. But if we look closely, Norvos has a lot of similarities with Budapest;

Situated among the hills of Norvos, on a tributary of the Rhoyne, a major river on the continent of Essos. / Budapest sits on the eastern edge of Transdanubia (a hilly region extending from the Danube to the Alps).

Gateway for caravans travelling on the ancient Valyrian roads. / Budapest being situated at the crossroads of international trade routes from Eurasia.

Norvos is a city is split in two, the High City which is on a hill and the Low City on the river. / Budapest is split in two. Buda sits on the hills on the western size of the river while Pest sits on the plain to the east of the river.

Norvos is surrounded by small walled villages supporting the main city. / King Bela IV ordered the construction of stone walls around villages after the Mongol invasion.

Home of the bearded priests. / Order of the Dragon & Order of Saint George

There were Myrish carpets on the floor, red wine to drink, books to read. In one corner stood an ornate cyvasse table with pieces carved of ivory and onyx, though she had no one to play with even if she had been so inclined. She had a featherbed to sleep in, and a privy with a marble seat, sweetened by a basketful of herbs. [...] She found a cedar chest full of her clothes at the foot of her bed, so she stripped out of the travel-stained garb she had slept in and donned the most revealing garments she could find, wisps of silk.

Dorne's economy was able to keep them independent from House Targaryen for so long, but how is that possible when they don't have gold mines like the Lannisters or agriculture like the Tyrells? Very simple, the use of water to plant unique fruits that need a warm climate like citrus or olives and the trade relations they have with Essos. Being descendants of the Rhoynar, they have a closer contact with the Archon of Tyrosh or the merchants of Qarth. That’s how Doran met Mellario in the first place.

In Al-Andalus, an irrigation system was also created that went through the subsoil of the Caliphate and thanks to arranged marriages, they won ivory and silk brought from distant China. This is the case of Wallada's mother, being the daughter of a merchant who offered his services in exchange for his daughter rising to a better social position by marrying the caliph.

The decline of the caliphate would begin with the Ottoman-Hungarian wars (1366) that blocked many trade routes and the caliphate soon began to weaken as it was surrounded by enemies (Christian kingdoms in the north and Berbers in the south), which would later generate a disintegration until they were reduced in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1230-1492).

However, Prince Doran did not mean for her to wed a Dornishman. [...] When Arianne reached the age of marriage, Doran presented her with several suitors, all of whom were elderly lords (including Ben Beesbury, Walder Frey, Gyles Rosby, Eldon Estermont, and Hugh Grandison), while rejecting an offer from Lord Hoster Tully, who had invited Arianne to travel to Riverrun and meet his heir Edmure. Arianne refused all of the elderly suitors.

Wallada’s father, Muhámmad III, came to power on January 11, 1024 by assassinating the previous caliph Abderramán V. This generated a turbulent reign, since many didn’t agree that he governed without having been elected before.

That is why, just having a daughter as an heir, he thought, like Doran, to betroth her to eldery Christian dukes and counts of the north to preserve his lineage and annex certain lands, but this only generated more tension and ended up being murdered with poison in Uclés.

Days came and went, one after the other, so many that Arianne lost count of how long she had been imprisoned. She found herself spending more and more time abed, until she reached the point where she did not rise at all except to use her privy. The meals the servants brought grew cold, untouched. Arianne slept and woke and slept again, and still felt too weary to rise. Fresh meals replaced the old ones, but she did not eat them either. Once, when she felt especially strong, she carried all the food to the window and flung it out into the yard, so it would not tempt her. The effort exhausted her, so afterward she crawled back into bed and slept for half a day.

After her father’s death, Wallada was taken away from the capital to a summer residence used by the royal family called "Medina Azahara" and left isolated for a month. During that time they were debating what to do with her as she was the last of the Umayyad dynasty, one of the 4 lineages that dated back to the time of Muhammad.

Unlike Arianne who was confined in a tower, Wallada could go out to the gardens as long as she did not go outside the permitted perimeter. During that time she wrote poetry that resemble Arianne's charisma and way of being;

I am fit for high positions by Allah and am going my way with pride. I allow my lover to touch my cheek and bestow my kiss on him who craves it.

Wallada was lucky that her father's death coincided with the splendor of the political career of Abu ‘l Hazm of the Banu Jawahr. He established a republic with a council of ministers (called wazirs) to advise him. It was for this reason that after being confined, they gave Wallada her father's fortune in exchange for distancing herself from royalty.

Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydun was, like Wallada, a member of the noble classes. Like Gerold Dayne being famously known as “The Sword of The Night”, he was called “The Scribe of The Night” for being the stage of the day where he had more inspiration to write his poems.

The two wrote poems back and forth, and the entire court was soon buzzing with gossip about the affair between the dashing young wazir and the beautiful princess. And then, it all began to go sour. Wallada caught him with another man and betrayed her trust, like Gerold did with Arianne after trying to kill Myrcella.

You were for me nothing but a sweetmeat that I took a bite of and then tossed away the crust, leaving it to be gnawed on by a rat.

Poison, thought Arianne. Yes. Pretty poison, though. That was how he'd fooled her. [...] Pretty boys had ever been her weakness, particularly the ones who were dark and dangerous as well.

Anyway, thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun looking into this and pulling some comparisons out. Arab culture is so underrated so I hope curiosity has awakened them some of the people that crossed with this post. Keep calm waiting for twow and Unbow, Unbent, Unbroken!

#asoiaf #asoiafmeta #arianne martell #house martell #al-andalus #princess #dorne #freecities #sunspear #watergardens #doran martell #darkstar

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sinceileftyoublog · 6 years ago

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Big Ears Festival 2019: 3/21-3/24

BY JORDAN MAINZER

While it’s easy every year to spot patterns among the Big Ears Festival lineup, the fest is one equally unconcerned with trends/scenes or purism and instead fascinated with rediscovering and redefining canon. Across the worlds of experimental/ambient music, jazz, and folk, the curators aim to spotlight both those with impressive CVs and ones taking advantage of their newly acquired musical platform. As I wrote last year, you can become as much of a festival curator, too, something that wouldn’t be possible if all of the performing artists didn’t have an equal seat at the table.

But it’s not just that the festival is diverse in terms of genre, gender, and race. It’s that the sets--diverse within themselves--are born of organic collaboration. You could camp out to see various performances celebrating 50 years of ECM Records, about as established in the world of music as you can get; minutes away, you could catch someone like Lonnie Holley (who has been releasing music only for this decade) perform a one-time collaborative set with half of Fugazi. Perhaps a Big Ears Festival isn’t what it is for you without witnessing the artistic marvels of seemingly perennial participants like folk heroes Rhiannon Giddens, Abigail Washburn, Bela Fleck, and Rachel Grimes, or Knoxville music organization Nief-Norf. If that’s the case for you, they’re thankfully hard to avoid, unless for some reason you’re averse to simultaneously seeing them play with legends like Richard Thompson, Bill Frisell, and Harold Budd or contemporary genre defying masters like Mary Lattimore.

Rhiannon Giddens and friends busk in Market Square

As for this year, most sets had some elements of drone, if not deep listening, some more explicit than others. Alvin Lucier performed twice throughout the fest, joined both times by Stephen O’Malley and Oren Ambarchi and once by Joan La Barbara. Budd was featured three times--I caught his set with Nief-Norf and Lattimore, which started with minutes of ambient gong playing and eventually seeped its way into the crevices of the cathedral. Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, who just released an album together called The Transitory Poems, dueled on piano in the dark Tennessee Theatre, fast-paced, anxious, and monotone with some occasional typical flowery playing from Iyer. Rafiq Bhatia’s performance of his Broken English album combined his drone guitar picking with rolling drums and bass/synth and visuals, its peaks and valleys exuding the most exciting elements of post rock. This Is Not This Heat perhaps provided the most exhausting, exhilarating performance of the entire weekend. Multiple drummers, three-part chanted, breathy harmonies, woodwind shoved right into the microphone--it was the type of set that transformed you physically as much as mentally, probably the most at the festival since Swans in 2015.

Rafiq Bhatia performs Broken English

Charles Hayward of This Is Not This Heat

Experimental elements delved into even the ECM sets. Frisell and upright bassist Thomas Morgan toed the line between minimal and sterile, succeeding most when their songs felt like short sonic experiments. (The two have a great album out on ECM next month, Epistrophy, recorded at the Village Vanguard in NYC.) One of the surprise standouts of the entire weekend was the Mathias Eick Quintet. The Norwegian trumpeter created tones that were soft, somber, evocative, and weepy, a refuge from the rest of the band’s noise, and his rarely used singing voice was truly haunting, especially when harmonizing with violin. (It didn’t hurt that Eick was beaming on stage, grateful to be there and follow up Frisell, one of his idols.)

Mathias Eick Quintet

Mercury Rev

Normally, this experimental spirit pervades the entire lineup, so I was a bit surprised to see that two of the festivals headliners were full-on rock bands, even if ones pushing the boundaries of pop with their grand ambitions. You can’t deny that Mercury Rev and Spiritualized are gloriously uncool and maybe even a little corny, but their strict adherence to their artistic visions made their sets highlights of the weekend. To call Mercury Rev singer Jonathan Donahue “theatrical” is the understatement of the century; his Wayne Coyne-meets-Daniel Rossen coo is bested only by his miming of conducting an orchestra. The band provides instrumental fodder--half Wonka-esque chamber pop, half psychedelic glory--for Donahue’s sense of wonderment. Of course, the set was heavy on Deserter’s Songs, their opus that permanently shifted their aesthetic for the dreamier, and probably a good thing considering their more Big Ears-y album was their underwhelming latest, a Bobbie Gentry covers record.

Jason Pierce of Spiritualized

As for Spiritualized, they’re touring off of a great new record, And Nothing Hurt, and they presented it in full during the latter half of the set. Jason Pierce sat perched on a chair for the entire set, donning sunglasses and reading off of a lyrics sheet. The hope that pervades the new record was actually bested by the song choices for the set’s older songs: “Hold On”, the glorious “Come Together”, early 90′s gem “Shine A Light”, the yearning “Stay With Me”, “Soul on Fire”, and the happiest version of Ladies and Gentlemen weeper “Broken Heart” you’ve ever heard, saddled with doo wop harmonies from the backup singers. Sure, the band delved into some noisy interludes and a strobe freakout during “On the Sunshine”, but for the most part, this was the new Spiritualized, pleasant slumbers and all.

Sons of Kemet

But to call Big Ears a festival for the mind and for the sheer listener is reductive; mobile music reigned supreme just as much as still vibrations. Perhaps this was perplexing to a crowd that tends to be older and very, very patient. A jazz fan I spoke to was perplexed by the currently thriving South London jazz scene, two of its brightest, Shabaka Hutchings-containing stars, Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, providing two of the most stimulating sets of the festival. The former’s combination of saxophone, tuba, and drums times two yielded a set that slows down only when the audience--not even the band--physically needed to do so, their latest album Your Queen Is A Reptile one of the most vital jazz records in recent memory. Yes, it’s also that neither Kemet nor Comet are jazz purists (more like rock-adjacent and jazz-inspired) that might have otherwise overwhelmed the ECM crowd, but by the end of both sets, even casual onlookers were hooked. The latter’s combination of King Shabaka’s saxophone, sort of hype man Dan Leavers (Danalogue) on Roland keyboards, and Max Hallett (Betamax) on drums was more primal despite their sound more electronic and space-themed, incorporating aspects of ambient techno into their funk jazz. Their latest record Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery has established them and especially Hutchings as major players in the global scene, if they weren’t already.

Junius Paul (left) plays bass for Makaya McCraven’s (right) set

The Chicago area brought a couple scene-specific acts to the festival, though one was certainly more niche: Jlin’s pseudo-footwork was an admirable retrospective of her now untouchable three-album discography (though I’d love to see Big Ears book a collection of footwork producers). And Makaya McCraven, whose Universal Beings was a relatively global album (despite what he says) offered a blissful, nimble set of slow-burning grooves from that record and Highly Rare, with a band that included bassist Junius Paul and guitarist Jeff Parker of Tortoise.

Overall, what made Big Ears Festival special this year is what makes it special every year: that any one person can come away with an experience 180 degrees from another person. But that’s increasingly happening because the festival refuses to be pigeonholed into one realm of experimental music, sometimes acknowledging that you don’t have to be experimental at all.

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50thirdand3rd · 6 years ago

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Writer, producer, Poptone drummer, and co-founding member of Tones On Tail and Love And Rockets takes us back to his Bauhaus roots with The Bela Session EP and his new coffee table book, Bauhaus Undead and teases a few hints at what he has in store for 2019!

Bauhaus – photo by Graham Trott

Kevin Haskins, the elusive Bauhaus drummer is quietly powerful behind his placid, penetrating expression. The jazz trained boyish younger Haskins brother who drew more inspiration from Stephen Morris than Gene Krupa paid his dues in bands with older brother, David J. before forming what would eventually become Bauhaus with friend and fellow art student, Daniel Ash and Daniel’s friend, Peter Murphy. The band’s chemistry was instant and Bauhaus began playing shows wherever they could and on January 26, 1979, the band recorded their iconic debut single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” at Beck Studios in Wellingborough a mere six weeks after forming the group.”Bela” was just the beginning and soon Bauhaus found fame and an early fan in the late John Peel who kept the band in heavy rotation on his legendary Radio 1 program. By 1980, the band released their groundbreaking debut LP In The Flat Field to mixed reviews further solidifying their status as post-punk icons with their dark fusion of glam, punk, jazz, dub, and disco and gained a rabid cult following among the cool kids in black on both sides of the pond.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0bLCILyVRk%5B/embedyt%5D

Shortly after Bauhaus called it quits in 1983, Kevin and Daniel continued a fruitful collaboration in the short-lived and lightyears ahead of its time, Tones On Tail with bassist and former Bauhaus roadie, Glenn Campling. TOT scored a dancefloor hit in the US with their 1984 “Lions” b-side “Go!”.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TJC48BRBn8%5B/embedyt%5D

Two years later, Kevin and Daniel reunited with David J. to form Love And Rockets, who found success with early singles “Ball of Confusion” and “No New Tale To Tell” before scoring a breakout hit with their ubiquitous 1989 single “So Alive” which spent 20 weeks at #3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L41MhFPU9s%5B/embedyt%5D

After 40 years of forward motion with not one but two highly influential post-Bauhaus bands, Kevin takes us back to his Bauhaus roots with his new coffee table book, Bauhaus – Undead “The Visual History and Legacy of Bauhaus” and The Bela Session EP which features four previously unreleased tracks along with the iconic 9:37 opus that started it all.

Photo: Jenna Putnam

50thirdand3rd: So, can we talk about Bauhaus Undead?

Kevin Haskins: A good friend of mine who works at Cleopatra, Matt Green, suggested the idea. He knew that I had this big container full of memorabilia. I was the guy who collected everything, kept everything. So, he says, “Why don’t you make a coffee table book?” “Matt, that’s a great idea.” And then he made me an offer to put it out on Cleopatra and I just felt that I would like to self-publish it. So he said, “Of course, that’s your decision. Go ahead and good luck. Wish you all the best.” And so, I went off on my merry way and so along into the process, I ran into this guy, Jeff Anderson, at gigs. And it seemed like fate kind of brought us together. On the third meeting, I said, “What do you do?” And he said, “I make box sets and re-releases for bands and so, I went to his house and I saw these amazing box sets from Sigur Rós and Roger Waters and Beck, Nine Inch Nails, The Pixies – beautiful ones! I thought “This was a no-brainer, let’s do the book together!” He was really excited working with me on that. He brought in a great design team and off we went. And I just sat down and started writing stories which I’ve never done, before.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aOk0A4pnN8%5B/embedyt%5D

So, it all took about two years and we designed this huge book with a slipcase and it was this huge, crazy size book! Basically, we really didn’t figure out how much it was gonna cost to make and how much it was gonna cost to ship and Jeff really wanted to use his regular printers in LA. Anyway, a month before, we put on a pre-sale to raise money to have it made. A month before the pre-sale ended, I found out how much it was gonna cost to have it made and it was ridiculous, it was like over $100 to make, in the end! (laughs) I spoke to publishers after the fact, who were very impressed with how many I sold, because it was like $180 or something. But I didn’t raise enough money to get it made, so I had to refund all of the money. Then I went to a bunch of publishers and got a lot of interest from boutique publishers, but they really didn’t have the means to do what I wanted to do, but I did decide to make this book a regular size book, so that we could sell it at a decent price and make it cheap for people.

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And basically, about two years or three years after Matt gave me the idea, I went around his house and he showed me a book that Cleopatra had just put out. I think it was Hanoi Rocks or something and he said it was a great deal for this band it was really great deal and I said, “Oh Matt, could you do the same deal for me, please!” Because I was back at square one, I had nothing, but I did have a book already made, all the layout was all done, all the stories were written, it was proofread. It was just ready to print. So, I was kinda handing him a gift, really, on a plate and he said, “Kevin, I think we can do your good deal.” Which they did and it ended up coming out on Cleopatra, so I did this complete circle, so, now I know everything about printing and shipping and fulfillment companies.

50thirdand3rd: You got a real education on the process.

Kevin Haskins: Yeah, it was a mixture of extreme pain and pleasure. (laughs) I’m really proud of it, it’s over 300 pages and it has some great content. We were all very art inclined so we do a lot of drawings and doodles and I kept all those and I think that’s the stuff that’s very interesting for people. Very personal stuff like that and handwritten lyrics. And when we went to shop “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, Daniel wrote out all the names of all the companies we went to, EMI and Polydor, all the huge companies and what they said. They all rejected us, so he wrote a kind of note to them, it’s very scruffy, very Daniel and all over the place and there’s drawings of Bubble men all over it. It ended up the last piece that went into the book. I was kind of done and he had just come back from England and raided his mum’s attic and said, “Look what I found!” I’m like, “Oh my god, I’ve gotta get that in the book, it’s so cool!” So, it’s got a lot of funny stories and great memorabilia.

50thirdand3rd: Awesome! I understand you did a book signing at Rough Trade in Brooklyn, this past summer, was it? How did that go?

Kevin Haskins: It went great! We were on tour with Poptone and I set up an In-store for my daughter’s band, Automatic, they were supporting us.

50thirdand3rd: And that’s your daughter, Lola’s band, right?

Kevin Haskins: Yes, Lola (Dompé), Izzy (Glaudini), and Halle (Saxon Gaines). And then after they played, I did a signing and it was nice, you know, it was my first time in Brooklyn if you can believe that.

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We’re playing rough trade tn bbs come through

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50thirdand3rd: Wow, how’d you like it?

Kevin Haskins: We loved it. My wife came out and we rented a really nice Airbnb and got to really walk around, check it out.

Photo: Jenna Putnam

50thirdand3rd: Very cool! How’s the response been with the book?

Kevin Haskins: Really good. Yeah, it’s been great, people love it! I don’t wanna boast but I’m very proud of it and people respond really well to it. There’s a lot of good content in it and I was really happy with the quality and the printing and everything.

50thirdand3rd: It sounds awesome and you had some of the other Bauhaus historians kind of help out, too, with the timeline, did I read that right?

Kevin Haskins: Oh yeah, a guy called Andrew Brooksbank and also I should mention Vincent Forrest and they were very helpful. Andrew is kind of the Bauhaus historian and when our old label, Beggars Banquet, put out re-releases, he always writes the sleeve notes. He’s an extremely organized guy and he’s a good writer and he created this timeline of every show and every radio, like interviews, TV appearances, that type of thing. So, that was really so valuable to me because I can’t remember what I was doing.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5UFgXuz1Gc%5B/embedyt%5D

50thirdand3rd: Right, because you were like in the center of the storm.

Kevin Haskins: Yeah, I was. And he was a great resource and I think he gave me a few items. A few scans of this and that and also helped out in that way. So, it was nice to have fans included, there were people whose names, sorry, I can’t remember, right now, who sent me some great pieces to put in, so it was nice to include people, as well, like that.

50thirdand3rd: That’s really exciting! Seeing it all together in the context of a timeline, how was that? I imagine that would have to be a little awe-inspiring, like “Wow, I did all this!” Like, looking back on it?

Kevin Haskins: Yeah, I’m surprised at how many shows we played because I didn’t think we played that many, but, we did. We really worked! We started from nowhere and the only really then to get known was to play, you know, to get the ball rolling. So, there was a two year period where we were just slogging away. Just trying to get shows when we started, we played in the weirdest places. (laughs) Like, I got a gig, there’s a little village called Ilchester and it was a Sunday lunchtime community center and it was bright sunshine. It was in a modern kind of bland hall with big glass windows, very bright, and there were kids running around playing, parents just eating, and Bauhaus were playing to these people. It was completely ridiculous! And then Peter got us a similar thing but in a working men’s club on a lunchtime.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5DUQuY1mf4%5B/embedyt%5D

50thirdand3rd: Oh, wow! How was that?

Kevin Haskins: After our first number, this old character, this old guy who worked there came up to us and he said, “What are you trying to do? Blow the bloody roof off? Play something that people know! You know, something we can tap our foot to!” (Laughs)

50thirdand3rd: Character building, I imagine!

Kevin Haskins: Yeah, blow the bloody roof off! So, we would play anywhere we could. Actually, and I wrote about this in the book. Really, our first show, I think went kind of undocumented. Daniel got us this rehearsal room at a teacher training college in Northampton and we were in a kind of portacabin, this kind of a prefabricated classroom, you know, it was kind of like a trailer.

50thirdand3rd: Oh, okay.

Kevin Haskins: It was outside the main building, just adjacent. And it was adjacent to the student union room where they would have bands play and they had a bar. It was winter and it was snowing, I remember, and The Pretenders were playing that night. So, we were rehearsing late afternoon and we kind of finished and we were like, “Is anybody going to see The Pretenders?” “Yeah, I am.” Kinda fancied that and then one of us had this idea that why don’t we just follow them? “What do you mean?” So, the next minute, we open the door, dragging up our gear up this, it was like an incline, covered in snow, dragging all our gear, and there was the French door, like this big glass door that opened up and we just opened the door and we just set up really fast in the corner of the room and by this time it was like 7:00. People were just coming in and The Pretenders had just done their soundcheck and we just set up and started playing. So, a crowd appeared around us, and we got about two or three songs out of the way, we didn’t have many songs, we had just started, and the student union came up and he was like, “Wait a minute, stop, what are you guys doing?” We’re like, “Oh, we’re the support band.” And he’s like, “Really?” And we’re like, “Yeah, we’re the support band.” And he was like scratching his head and like looking at us very suspiciously and he turned away and he walked away and he was kind of looking over his shoulder. And we sold it and then we’re like, “Get into the next song!” And we managed to get two more songs done and then he brought everyone from the student union and they shut us down. They said, “Hey, you’re not the support band!” So, we supported The Pretenders, punk rock Guerrilla style. (Laughs)

50thirdand3rd: That’s awesome!

Kevin Haskins: I’m sure Chrissie Hynde would’ve appreciated that. I don’t know if she heard that we did that.

50thirdand3rd: I hope she finds out!

Kevin Haskins: We were dying to play, all we wanted to do was play.

50thirdand3rd: That’s really cool! So, The Bela Session EP you recently put out, could we talk a little bit about that? I understand it was the first time you guys worked with Derek Tompkins. Like, he was really important to like Bauhaus and he produced Love And Rockets, too, right? Like he was Engineer/Producer at Beck Studios for you guys, can you tell me a little bit about that?

Kevin Haskins: Sure, we’ll start with Derek. I think we went to Beck before Bauhaus, we were in other bands, like The Craze, Jack Plug and The Sockettes, these kinds of new wave bands, but it was Peter’s first time in the studio when we went with Bauhaus. And Derek was this amazing character. I always kind of viewed Derek as our George Martin. Mainly because he was older than us and he really didn’t know anything about fads or fashions which was good because he just approached it from what sounds exciting and what sounds good. He just instinctively knew how to produce bands and also he was a bit of a rogue, he was a really funny guy, very smart, very opinionated, a bit of a rebel. And he had a great stutter, he stuttered and just consumed endless cups of coffee and cigarettes. Like really unhealthy, but he kind of like built the desk. He built of a lot of the equipment in the studios.

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So, anyway, The Bela Session was the idea of Andrew Brooksbank. He emailed me one day and he said, “What do you think about this idea? Why don’t you release the entire recording from the day you recorded ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’?” Three of the songs had never been released and I just said, “This is a brilliant idea! I can’t believe no one had thought about it, before!” And he said, “Yeah, it would be the holy grail of the band’s fans.” And I said, “Marvelous idea!” And for some reason, he had the original 1/4” tape and box. I don’t know how these guys get hold of these things, you know, I know they’re in good hands. And so, his idea was to use a scan of the tape box and it’s to the cover and I later thought, it would be great for the inner sleeve. So, that’s what the inner sleeve is and you can actually see the front and back of the original tape box. It’s marvelous, it’s got the aged patina and the picks, crossing things out and notes, so it’s a wonderful thing just to view.

50thirdand3rd: That’s really cool!

Kevin Haskins: Yeah, and just for the cover we came up with the idea of just doing a negative of the original cover, so, it’s white on black and yeah, so it has three unreleased songs and they’re interesting to hear because, you know, some of them, one of them, in particular, I think “Some Faces” doesn’t sound like Bauhaus, at all. It’s kind of a chirpy, bright sort of a new wave song, but it’s interesting to listen because you can kind of see a bit of an evolution. Right, like this is us. We had only formed about six weeks before, I think. So, it captures the band in a period of its formative period.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV772Ht1Sys%5B/embedyt%5D

And we ended up going with Leaving Records which are an imprint of Stones Throw and they did a marvelous job, I think. They really chose a great kind of engineer and they’ve really been wonderful, I’m so happy with the product and also Bela hasn’t been available on vinyl for, I don’t know, twenty years or something crazy. It’s really nice to have it in record racks, again. And I just remembered another story from that day. So, “Bela” is about nine minutes long, but we actually laid down eleven or twelve minutes.

50thirdand3rd: Oh wow!

Kevin Haskins: And we kind of listened back and we thought, “This is a little bit too long.” And we could kind of imagine if we cut three minutes out of this, we’d probably be good. And Derek said, “I..I can do that!” And we were kind of naive and it was probably only our second or third time, Peter’s first time in the studio. And he (Derek) disappeared and he came back with a little razor blade and he got the tape and he laid it down and we were like looking at him like, “What’s he doing?” And then he began bringing the blade down towards the tape and we all knew we had recorded something really special and he was gonna cut the tape and we were like, “No! Stop!” “What are you doing?”

50thirdand3rd: Gasp!

Kevin Haskins: Then he like turned around and he’s like saying, “What’s your problem?” And he explained that he’s done this many times, before and not to worry, you know, you can always put it back together, again. And he did a great edit, you can’t hear the edit if you really listen out for it, though. He did a very good job.

50thirdand3rd: That’s awesome! So, if I can nerd out on you, for a sec, I know John Peel was like one of the first people to really play “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” on his show. Could you tell me a little bit about getting to go to John Peel’s studio?

Kevin Haskins: Sure, yeah. I actually devoted a story to John in my book. I cannot stress how important he was to bands such as us and I guess, after us. I mean, the airwaves were really, this was pre-internet, of course. The airwaves were really controlled just by the BBC. There were a couple of pirate stations, Radio Powerline and Radio Luxembourg that you could tune into and that was free radio but the BBC really controlled everything. They had John Peel on at 10 o’clock at night and they probably weren’t really listening to what he was doing. (Laughs) And his taste was just remarkable and I remembered he kept devoting his two-hour show to punk rock and in ’76, I think “New Rose” by The Damned had just come out and you know, there weren’t many punk records, back then, right at the beginning. So, he did this whole show and put bands that like influenced this new movement. So, there’s The Stooges and the MC5, bands like that and then he played every punk single that was out and it was a wonderful show. And he got a lot of hate mail, apparently, from hippies of the old guard saying, “How can you be playing this rubbish?” But he went on undeterred, he wouldn’t listen to anybody, he just played what he liked. So, he was invaluable to getting bands known. And it really helped us and a load of other bands.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMuB2PjjRic%5B/embedyt%5D

So, anyway, we heard “Bela Lugosi” and I think we just drove down to London, which I think was like an hour and a half’s drive and we went to the BBC Studio building and went to reception and we said, ”We want to see John Peel” and the receptionist looked at us like, “Who…Are you kidding me?” And she said, “Oh, well, I’ll call up.” And she did and his producer said, “Oh, show them up. It’s fine” which was remarkable, really. He was in the middle of a show, so, they let us come up and to us, we were in awe. It was amazing, we were actually in his studio with John and he offered us some red wine and we had a little red wine in BBC paper cups and gave him the record and he kind of sent us on our way pretty fast. He told us he’d play it and I remember, you know, when he played it for the first time, we knew that this night was gonna do it! We all lived in this house 37 Adams Avenue, it was like a little terraced house in town and you know, we would cook these awful meals with like vegetables because we were on the dole and we didn’t have much money. And it was freezing cold in this place and it was kind of haunted, it was kind of in a slum (laughs) but we were kids, it didn’t matter. But I remember we were all huddled around this transistor radio, listening to the show when he played our song. That moment is just imprinted in my mind because it was just remarkable to hear your music coming out of a radio, you know, it was just so exciting and it was like a benchmark moment. So, now, I remember that really clearly and yeah, I paid homage to him in my book and wrote a nice piece about him.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMLNwT4v5Rc%5B/embedyt%5D

50thirdand3rd: So, I’ve gotten really hooked on Poptone, recently and I was watching the tour livestreams you guys were doing on Facebook from last year. It looks like you guys were having fun, especially with the fans. Can you tell me a little more about how those tours have been going?

Kevin Haskins: Well, it was great but we kind of wrapped it up, over the summer. Basically, we kind of exhausted where everywhere people wanted us to play. It was great, it was so much fun! You know, Daniel’s still a very close friend of mine and we always have a laugh hanging out, we got on really well and then I was so glad to have my daughter involved (Diva Dompé). She plays bass and keyboards and backup vocals and she was amazing, she really brought so much to that project, I felt.

Photo: Paul Rae

50thirdand3rd: Yeah, she’s rad!

Kevin Haskins: She had big shoes to fill, she was playing my brother’s bass lines, Glenn Campling’s amazing bass lines, I mean I can’t say enough great things about Glenn’s playing in terms of what he brought to Tones On Tail. Like, those bass lines are just remarkable, there’s just so simple but so powerful, you know, kind of like riffs and so it was it was a great pleasure to play that music. Yeah, I knew that would be an attractive thing for fans just because we only played one little tour over a year and that was in the UK, so you know, it was fun for us to play those songs, again.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwYq2FfsBKo%5B/embedyt%5D

And I think people really love to hear them, we had a great crew, just like a small family, and we had a marvelous time. I was really taken aback in a marvelous way with the audiences who came out to see us. They were so appreciative and towards the end, I would out after the show to the merch table and sell my book, Bauhaus Undead by Kevin Haskins, *plug*. And then I’d get to meet all these wonderful people and they were so happy and appreciative that we were doing it, so it was like a whole celebration.

It was marvelous but it’s kind of on the back burner, now. I mean it is something that we could pick up, again. We did record an album, you know, it was kind of a retrospective project, just for people who were unaware, we were playing the music from Bauhaus, Love And Rockets, and Tones On Tail and we recorded an album. We did it as a Part-Time Punks session, Part-Time Punks radio station (KXLU) in LA and then Michael Stock he also puts a club night on and he’s a wonderful guy. So, we just kind of played pretty much live and put the songs down and that’s been released out on Cleopatra Records and so, you can go to Bandcamp and buy that or listen to it.

Poptone poster by Paul Rae

50thirdand3rd: Can we talk a little about the FOXES TV show you’ve got coming up and how you got involved in that?

Kevin Haskins: Sure, yeah! So, I met Tina and Julian (de la Celle), they are the creators of the show. I met them at one of their events. They put on events around Los Angeles, they get local musicians, they’ve done kind of thematic events where they portrayed Andy Warhol’s Factory, they had a bunch of young bands get together and play Velvet Underground songs. They did the same with CBGB’s and the Bat Cave, they’re really nice people, they love music and fashion, it’s such a strong passion for them. They have a magazine called FOXES and it’s a beautiful magazine, comes out twice a year, and they get really great photographers to shoot for them and they do interviews, so, I did an interview about my book, Bauhaus Undead, my coffee table book, plug! plug!

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50thirdand3rd: Right, yeah!

Kevin Haskins: There’s a singer from the New York Dolls who goes under the name, Buster Poindexter, now, and does kind of a lounge act, he was in the issue. I think Duff from Guns ’n’ Roses and they have these great fashion spreads. It’s shot very beautifully, kind of cinematic and stylish, stylized. So, they decide to turn the magazine into a TV show because there’s nothing really to watch like that, you know. So, anyway, they approached me around September time, last year and asked me if I wanted to be a producer and music supervise and I thought it was an exciting new challenge. So, we just kind of went on from there and the three of us kind of learned how to navigate the industry and what you have to do to get a TV show made. So, it’s taken us this long to really figure that and so we made like a great concept sizzle reel where we’ve taken slotage from other shows like The Tube and fashion show footage and just still photography and it really sort of represents the aesthetic of the show. And then we worked together a treatment which is kind of PDF, you do a similar thing, just for people who don’t know what treatments are, you explain what you’re going to do, you’ll explain what the episode will look like, and the sequence of events during that episode. You put bios from everyone who’s attached to the project. Your dream hosts, presenters, so there you go! So, when Richard submitted that to the network to my agency and we’re now waiting to hear back.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cd1LlXP_pk%5B/embedyt%5D

50thirdand3rd: This sounds really cool! Can you tell me a little bit about what views can expect to hear and maybe see?

Kevin Haskins: Well, the original feel for the show is very rock and roll. Basically, Tina, Julian, and I, we love glam, punk, post-punk rock and roll, you know, that area of things. But what we’d really like to do is we’d really like to broaden it more, now. Hmm, I don’t know who would be on the first show, I know Tina loves Duran Duran, so our dream show would include them, maybe for an interview or performance. And the project has to depend on who’s available for the team.

50thirdand3rd: Of course.

Kevin Haskins: And we want to give space for unheard of bands that we really like. Actually, we did shoot my daughter’s band, Automatic.

50thirdand3rd: Oh, cool!

Kevin Haskins: They’re worth checking out. Also, there’s a band called POW! I would definitely have them on. Other LA bands, Froth, Numb.er, and then, I’d love to get Nick Cave on, for instance. You know, it’s really wide open but they’re the artists that come to mind, right now.

Photo: Jenna Putnam

50thirdand3rd: Cool, I can’t wait to check that out! So, do you have any other music projects coming up for this year?

Kevin Haskins: Well, I’ve actually been invited to kind of produce, also, I’ve been kind of involved in writing on another tv show and I can’t say much about it for obvious reasons, but it’s a comedy set in Los Angeles. One of my close friends has created it and helped me write it, now, which is something I’ve never ever done, before and it was challenging and it was fun, so, I’m excited about that. I feel that it could really work out well, so, a completely new thing, once again, like the FOXES TV thing. And I have a new musical project that I’m very excited about. I don’t know if I can say much about that, but, I’ll give you some cryptic hints. There’s primarily three of us and we’re looking for a vocalist, right now. We’ve put word out to who we really want. We’re going to be recreating music from the bands we were in and also creating new music, but the instrumentation is very particular and different from what you might expect. (Laughs) And I think I’m going to leave it at that, but it’s a teaser and you’re really the first person I’ve told about.

50thirdand3rd: Thank you very much! An Exclusive!

Kevin Haskins: And the way things are going, we’ve got quite a ways to go, there. We’re just starting out and we haven’t got a full band, yet, so it might be the fall until we play or release something but we are going to work on a release and I’m really excited about it. It’s got great potential.

50thirdand3rd: Very cool!

Pick up a copy of Kevin Haskins’ Bauhaus Undead from Cleopatra, Rough Trade, and Amazon. Pick up Poptone’s self-titled LP and follow Kevin Haskins Official Facebook and Instagram for the latest on FOXES TV, updates on his next series, and more on his upcoming music project —You read it first, here at 50thirdand3rd!

Follow Kevin Haskins:

https://twitter.com/kevinmhaskins

https://www.instagram.com/bauhausundeadbook/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNKf_DvhGkidQFDmnoxyO3g

http://poptone.bandcamp.com

Follow Foxes Magazine:

https://www.facebook.com/FoxesMagazine

https://twitter.com/FOXES_Magazine

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAC2rwsSytKP6kf-olCZ4Lw/videos

https://www.instagram.com/foxes_magazine

http://foxesmagazine.tumblr.com

50THIRDAND3RD INTERVIEW: Kevin Haskins Writer, producer, Poptone drummer, and co-founding member of Tones On Tail and Love And Rockets takes us back to his Bauhaus roots with…

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tonedefsound · 4 years ago

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Bass? Meh. Is that your reaction when your friend is all riled up talking about his newfound religi…. I mean band and you ask what instrument he plays? It’s true though, bass is a pretty boring instrument for the unintelligent, surface musicians who only follow the mainstream. Let me introduce you to some quality bassists you’ve never heard of that aren’t afraid to stand in front of their lazy guitarists onstage:

Victor Wooten – Bela Fleck Les Claypool – Primus Flea – Red Hot Chills Paul McCartney – The Beatles.

Never heard of ‘em? Look ‘em up. Now let me propose to you uninitiated, dumb dumbs another contender among the bestest bassist list.

Ming Nichols. Not only is the South Carolinian a prolific, dirrrty south kinda songwriter but he’s been a part of some of the most renowned projects in East Asia for the past decade. One of which is his Jared Leto loving, bass and drum, dath-rock (math + death) duo Death to Giants. As openers of the Japandroids Shanghai show, not only was the crowd lapping up every drop of sweat from Master Ming’s chin but the headliners themselves bowed down and worshipped at the feet of this magical mathemusician too.

Ming, now residing in turbulent Hong Kong, sets aside a few #instaminutes to chat with us about his newest projects and releases.

So Nichols, what was it like growing up in the drrrtay south and why the multiples moves to Asia?

Most of my childhood I was surrounded by music, fattening food and humidity. I was a goofy, overachieving, overweight band nerd. So, yeah not much has changed. Moved to Shanghai to teach 12 years ago, had a great time, but wanted a change so my wife and I moved to Guatemala. After 3 years, we missed Asia, so we moved to Hong Kong. Teaching is my passport to employment and international moves, but music has always been my passport to making new friends in new places.

How’d you get into bass as opposed to becoming the Asian white rapper we so clearly see as your calling?

I played low brass – baritone, tube, and trombone – in school band but I also played guitar because my dad always had them laying around. The greatest thing my father ever did was instill in me a love of Frank Zappa and just let me screw around on the guitar in front of the TV. As a guitarist, I was into metal, punk, and ska. While in college, I met one of my best friends who was also a drummer who really got me into progressive rock bands like Rush, Yes, Tool, and King Crimson. Together we started jamming as a drum and guitar duo, but soon I felt more

of a calling towards bass as I have always preferred the low end, so my first “rock” band was a prog-rock bass and drum duo. That basically is the foundation of everything else I’ve ever done.

The projects you’ve been a part of are quite eclectic, from the fantasy-progressive rock band Rainbow Danger Club to the heavy hitting double bass group John Travoltron to a collab with Mongolian throat singing traditional band Guren and errythang in between. Give us some of the highlights of your many projects.

Creatively, my biggest highlights are producing the RDC albums Where Maps End and Souvenirs. When it comes to performing, my biggest highlights are in the many shows and collaborations I did with Death to Giants. Ivan and I had that connection, a very unique energy and rhythm section ESP that isn’t easy to find. My bassists and drummers out there would understand. But overall, the best highlights are the memories and friendships that have been forged through music. Touring with your friends and playing your music to strangers who dig it is the best.

How are you staying connected with the downtrodden people of Hong Kong whilst fulfilling that crave to continue music-making in this troubling time?

It’s a tough time for everyone in HK and while its inconvenient for me, it’s an existential crisis for venues, promoters, and professional musicians. Tons of shows have been cancelled since October due to political protests and covid19. But this hasn’t stopped the local scene to try new things like streaming shows. All my current projects have released and will continue to release music and videos online despite having tons of shows cancelled. John Travoltron has released two “zoom-style” music videos, M.E.A.T.S. is about to release a new EP, and Streets of Rage who still hasn’t had a debut gig – we’ve had SEVEN cancel! – has released two in-studio performances, a lyric video, and a debut EP.

A few friends of mine including Adam from John Travoltron and Art and Gabe from Bastardon are doing stuff under a new collective name called PigRat (representing the year of the pig and the year of the rat – two very difficult years for HKers). We just released a compilation highlighting HK artists and want to release many more! The point of it all is to highlight the local scene. Even post-Covid (if that ever happens) It will be a long time before international acts will be able to come to HK, heck it might be a while before any of us can easily leave HK. So it’s a good time to look inward at the talent that exists here and, even better, to encourage growth in talent. This is just our way of putting our little pocket of musicians “out there” and hopefully inspire others to as well. Arts and Entertainment is essential during times of crisis and challenge.

What does Ming de los Nichols foresee in the future regarding your work?

Honestly, I want to improve as a bass player. I am working on a set of Primus covers to perform at the annual Halloween tribute show. It is a personal challenge, wish me luck! Also, my friend

Adam and I (same guy from piglet/johntravoltron) make homemade instruments. We are working together on making a few and performing with them soon.

Other than that, I am going with the flow and always trying my best. I know that I won’t stop creating and will do my very best to perform and encourage others to do the same!

https://deathtogiants.bandcamp.com

https://rainbowdangerclub.bandcamp.com/album/where-maps-end

https://streetsofragehk.bandcamp.com/releases

https://meats.bandcamp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/johntravoltronmusic

https://www.facebook.com/johntravoltronmusic/videos/620281191937981/

http://www.facebook.com/streetsofragehk/

http://www.instagram.com/streetsofragehk/ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Qy5QbqUSW1JMzz1VHHMIg

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 7 years ago

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Five So-Bad-They're-Good Horror Movies to Cure Your Post-Halloween Depression

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Five So-Bad-They're-Good Horror Movies to Cure Your Post-Halloween Depression

It’s that time of year again, folks. Yes, that irrepressible sadness achieved by horror fans once Halloween comes to a close and all of the spooky fun has been had. Parties attended, candy collected, and now it’s time to go back to your boring, non-spooky existence.

Or is it?

Plenty of websites will give you lists of the best movies out there guaranteed to shock and horrify you. This list will not give you any of those. The following is a list of five horror films that might incite a different reaction in you. This list contains the best of the worst, the most unintentionally hilarious ‘horror’ films ever put to the silver screen. There’s always been something fascinating about movies that set out to scare and end up creating joy in their sheer ineptitude, and for some reason horror seems to be a genre full of these types of movies.

Bear in mind, however, that everyone’s taste is subjective, and what might be considered irredeemably awful to one moviegoer is god-tier cinema to another. None of the movies on this list are meant to offend anybody who likes them, and in fact, I encourage you to seek them out. Sometimes a good, old fashioned spooky laugh can be just what you need to cure the post-Halloween blues.

5. The Wicker Man (2006)

A remake of what was once called “the Citizen Kane of horror films” is already a tough one to get right. No matter how much heart and soul you put into your final product, fans of the original are always going to come at you with their grievances with your remake. Despite this, sometimes you get a remake that not only seems to have been made by people who didn’t care about the original, but seems to have no regard for movies as a concept.

The Wicker Man is based on the 1976 film of the same name, which is most notable for having starred Christopher Lee, who often cited the part as his favorite of all of the roles he’d played. The original is beloved by critics and horror fans everywhere, coming in as number one on quite a few ‘best of’ horror lists. For those who love 70s British horror, its must-see.

It’s intriguing, then, that the remake has somewhat overshadowed the original due to its infamy. It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes this movie so enjoyably terrible. Maybe it’s the fact that Nicolas Cage seems to be constantly shouting; Maybe it’s the weird obsession that the movie seems to have with bees and honey; Maybe it’s the weird matriarchal cult that comes across just a tad bit sexist in hindsight. Whatever the reason, The Wicker Man remains a classic of so-bad-it’s-good horror.

Choice Quote: “How’d it get burned? HOW’D IT GET BURNED?”

4. Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Most who know about this movie know about it due to it’s being spotlighted in 1993 on Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, even without the commentary from the crew of the satellite of love, this movie is still one kicker of a beautifully bad movie.

What do you get when you combine a barely-experienced crew and actors, endless scenes of characters aimlessly driving around, polygamist Satanic cult members, and random insert scenes that have little-to-nothing to do with the plot? Well, you get Manos: The Hands of Fate, a 1966 minimal-budget horror film about a family on a vacation who encounter a cult. That’s really about all there is to it. The editing is poor, the acting is wooden. At one point a random pair of teenagers making out in a car and being caught by a police officer interrupts the plot, as if to say to the audience, “We realize there’s not much else interesting happening here, so here’s some eye candy while you wait for something to actually happen.”

According to Wikipedia, the whole thing started when director, producer, and star Harold P. Warren made a bet with a friend that it would be easy to make a horror movie. From that, we got Manos. Oh, and there are a few random scenes where the wives of the movie’s villain The Master get into catfights, seemingly for no reason other than the director wanted to show some women fighting. Take that as you will.

Choice Quote: “Enough! Enough of this stupid bickering! The child must die! If you persist in this foolishness, your usefulness will come to an end!”

3. Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Ed Wood is an interesting director for many reason. For more information about what an enigma that man was, check out Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic. But Wood’s 1959 science fiction-horror feature Plan 9 From Outer Space was cited by Seinfeld as one of the worst movies ever made, and continues to amuse to this day. In a deceptively simple plot, this early feature of the zombie genre (pre-Night of the Living Dead, even!) follows an alien invasion in which the alien’s main goal seems to be the reanimation of dead bodies. Thus, the deceased rise from their graves to pursue the living, referred to not as zombies, but as ‘ghouls’ by the characters.

One notable feature of the film is the fact that frequent collaborator and friend of Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi, has a part in the film. However, halfway through production, Lugosi tragically died, and in the meanwhile Wood brought in a stand-in to hold Lugosi’s place for the scenes with him that they hadn’t shot yet. This results in Lugosi’s stand-in (Tom Mason, by name) attempting to hide the fact that he was not, in fact, Bela Lugosi, by wearing a rather ridiculous-looking Dracula cape and holding it over half of his face. It’s as silly as it sounds.

In addition, the movie features some truly hilarious special effects, including a shot of a UFO flying over California that’s very obviously a paper plate, and a plot that seems to combine The Day the Earth Stood Still and White Zombie into one hilarious package.

Choice Quote: “And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”

2. Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Birdemic is inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, but upon an initial viewing, the parallels fall flat when compared to the movie’s many technical faults. The atrocious CGI is overshadowed only by the wooden acting and the flat plot. The film follows a software salesman and his Victoria’s Secret model girlfriend who suddenly find their town under attack by killer birds that, get this… spit acid and explode into flames when they touch the ground.

If this doesn’t sound good enough for you, just look at those birds. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. They don’t remotely blend with the background at all. It looks more like they’ve been merely copy-pasted into the frame than animated whatsoever. One has to watch them in motion to truly appreciate how awkward they move. It’s very obvious that they’ve not been rendered properly, and instead of the fluid motion traditionally associated with computer-generated effects, the bird’s wings flap jerkily, and spin around in a strange 360 degree motion. The movie has been compared to good-bad predecessors such as Plan 9 because of it’s strange and awkward tone, and in fact has been called “the best worst film [of] 2010.”

Choice Quote: “And many have died from starvation, due to the difficulty of finding enough food, such as seals.”

1. Troll 2 (1990)

You’ve seen the clip on YouTube. A young man in glasses stares, horrified, while a fly crawls leisurely across his face. “They’re eating her…” he intones, ominously, “and then they’re going to eat me. Oh my GOOOOOOOOD!” But Troll 2 is more than just one viral video of bad acting. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find yourself what I believe to be the best bad horror movie there is.

There’s a lot to dissect here. First of all, the name Troll 2 is misleading. The movie is not actually related in any way to the 1986 fantasy film Troll. The movie was actually an unrelated Italian film called Goblins, but when it was released in America, the studio thought it better to attach the film to a previously released property. Most of the conflict on the set came from most of the crew being Italian and not having a very firm grasp of the English language, and that includes the screenwriter, whose clunky dialogue is a staple of this film’s notoriety. According to many of the American actors in this movie, they offered many times to try to make the dialogue sound more natural and a little less like it’d just gotten run through Google Translate, but the director, Claudio Fragasso, shot that one down.

This movie contains many things, but nowhere among those things are any trolls. Yes, you heard me correctly. The movie called Troll 2 contains no actual trolls. The creatures seen above are referred to as goblins throughout the whole thing. The town they live in is even called Nilbog. (No prizes to those among you who can tell in two seconds what ‘Nilbog’ spells backwards. Seems these goblins learned their disguise tactics from Son of Dracula.)

And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of this mess of a film, which also contains an erotic corn on the cob-eating scene. Yes, really. It must be seen to be believed.

And that concludes the list! Hopefully those of you out there who like a more low-key Halloween got to enjoy some classics of the horror genre, but as a connoisseur of cult cinema, I felt as though it was necessary to spotlight some more unconventional Halloween favorites. So pop one or more of these into your DVD slot or look them up on Netflix, and be prepared to laugh. You might even forget that it’s November.

#birdemic #classic horror #cult cinema #cult films #ed wood #good bad movies #horror #horror-comedy #horrorfiend #horrorpodcast #manos the hands of fate #new horror #nicolas cage #nofs podcast #plan 9 from outer space #so bad it's good #the wicker man #troll #troll 2

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weddquotes · 4 years ago

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How To, +65 Beautiful and Amazing Ideas

New Post has been published on https://weddquotes.com/wedding-decor/how-to-65-beautiful-and-amazing-ideas/

How To, +65 Beautiful and Amazing Ideas

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Remember how much fun it was to come out of a children’s party with a little surprise bag? It’s one of the best little birthday memories!

But when we talk about a birthday party, we don’t just talk about kids. Other celebrations such as a 15th birthday party, graduation and weddings can also use the surprise bag to give a special souvenir to the guests.

Today you can easily find stores that sell ready-made bags, however, if you like to learn new craft techniques, you can learn how to make surprise bags yourself and use your creativity to make beautiful bags!

1. Surprise bag in colorful decoration – Via: Todo Bonito

Buy the products in the picture above:

To help you choose what to put in the surprise bag, how to make one, and give the best tips for you to kick ass at the party souvenir, keep reading!