December 2007 Archives

I was thinking the other day (and as an aside, shouldn't virtually all blog entries really start that way?), that both the Democratic and Republican parties are driven by the strong desire to learn the lessons of the 1930s -- to avoid the catastrophic mistakes that led to World War II. The Republicans are afraid of the U.S. becoming Neville Chamberlain's England -- the infamous appeaser state. Meanwhile, we Democrats are afraid of the U.S. trying really hard to avoid becoming Neville Chamberlain's England and in the process becoming Germany.

So, basically, we're afraid of Republicans.

(And this, by the way, is why I heart Obama. My fondest wish for this election is a leader who doesn't fear or dislike half the country.)

Happy new years to ya,
-Cecil

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Daryl Darko.

Welcome to the second part of this interview with guitarist, singer, and songwriter Adrian Belew. If you haven't already read the first part, you can find it here.

Be sure to also check out the third and final segment, in which Belew talks about the value of setting up obstacles, what excites him in other people's music, and how he recently joined forces with two kids who don't have driver's licenses yet to form the Adrian Belew Power Trio.

Adrian Belew on the Web: Adrian Belew.net, Elephant Blog, Side Four

Cecil Vortex: Do you remember when you first started writing songs?

Adrian Belew: At age sixteen I contracted mononucleosis in high school and was forced to stay at home and be tutored for two months. And the requirement was that you be inactive. I was a drummer, and I could no longer drum. I had always had songs in my mind that would just appear, and I could kind of hear them full on as though a record was playing. So I decided to take those two months and teach myself to play guitar.

I borrowed an acoustic guitar from one of my band members, and by the end of the two months I had written five songs and put them on tape. I do remember little bits of pieces of them, but I couldn't even tell you the melodies or titles.

CV: The tapes are long gone?

AB: I'm afraid so. I wish they weren't. They'd be on my website right now.

CV: Were you surprised at how quickly you picked up the guitar?

St'absinthe.

Welcome! This interview is part of an ongoing series of chats with artists about their creative process. You can find the full set of interviews, including musicians Van Dyke Parks, Dan Wilson, and Jonathan Coulton, memoirist Ianthe Brautigan, and cartoonist Dan Piraro all at about-creativity.com. You can also subscribe to future interviews here. Thanks a lot for dropping by, -Cecil

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Daryl Darko.

Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Adrian Belew is a Grammy-nominated solo artist and a member of both King Crimson and the Bears. Belew's big break came in 1977 when he landed a job in Frank Zappa's band. Over the past thirty years, he's played on records as varied as David Bowie's Lodger, Paul Simon's Graceland, the Talking Heads' Remain in Light, Herbie Hancocks' Magic Windows, Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral, Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak, and William Shatner's Has Been. To date, he's released more than fifteen solo projects, starting with 1982's Lone Rhino. His most recent CD is Side 4, a live recording of The Adrian Belew Power Trio, a new outfit featuring Julie and Eric Slick on bass and drums.

Belew is currently posting a play-by-play of his ongoing recording efforts mixed with memories from years gone by over at his highly recommended Elephant Blog.

This is the first part of a three-part interview. Be sure to check out part two to hear about how Belew taught himself guitar at 16, what it felt like to sign on with Zappa's band, and how he writes and performs complex, multi-rhythmic pieces.

Adrian Belew on the Web: Adrian Belew.net, Elephant Blog, Side Four

CV: With both the Bears and King Crimson, you've developed longstanding creative relationships that have spanned decades. What do you attribute that to?

AB: When you know something works, you should continue it. There's a large part of me that's solo oriented. Like a painter, I think sometimes, "Well, I don't really need anyone's help in this. This is me painting a picture or me painting a song." So as much as I can, I try to do everything myself because that's not only the most fun, it's also the most rewarding.

But it's very healthy to step out of that and share something with someone else where you're not the only one in control and you're not the only one with the ideas. Interesting things happen that way. So I've tried to kind of have a diet of both throughout my career, as a way to continue to be fresh and grow.

CV: How does collaborative songwriting differ from when you're writing solo?

AB: Well, most of my collaborative things have been quietly done -- you know, one or two people sitting down together, perhaps, unamplified, where you're just trying to get a basic outline of something. Then you take those ideas away and refine them and you meet again and show each other your refinements.

If I'm working within, say, King Crimson, with Robert Fripp, that's exactly how it works. It's a quiet process and what you're trying to do really is allow each other the freedom to try things and be a sounding board sometimes, or else be the one who's leading the parade.

CV: So with King Crimson, one person typically takes the lead writing a particular song?

both kids at other
kids' houses two toothbrushes
standing by the sink.

I dreamt last night that I was throwing a party and someone brought Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel-themed Kraft Cheese Lunchables.

Der Wikipedia tells us that Hegel (1770-1831) talked about "a relation between nature and freedom, immanence and transcendence, and the unification of these dualities without eliminating either pole or reducing it to the other."

I'm trying to find the connection my subconscious was drawing between Hegel and Kraft Cheese Lunchables. The best I've come up with so far is that Kraft Cheese Lunchables are free from nature. Transcendentally free from nature.

Immanence.

the last thing I'm
gonna do is check my email.

You know -- blinding chest pain,
hit refresh.

Hit refresh again. Pull down some spam.
Reboot
this mortal coil.

So I have this new idea for a movie. It's the most completely original idea I've ever come up with. And tonight I'm giving it to the world because that's how much I love the world.

The movie's called "Gnome Alone." And the idea is, I've gone away for Christmas vacation and I've accidentally left my gnome home, all by himself. Two bungling crooks try to rob the place, but my gnome fights them off with a series of slapstick Rube Goldberg-style defensive maneuvers. And then he stabs them in the heart.

I'm proud to say, this idea is entirely fiction. (I don't even have a gnome!)

It's sort of a send up of all those gnome movies from back in the late '50s. "The Third Gnome." "Gnome on a Hot Tin Roof." Remember those? "12 Angry Gnomes"? What was up with that?

Update: My family reminded me that Meg Ryan also had those pair of gnome movies in the '80s and '90s: "When Gnome Met Sally" and then a few years later, "You've Got Gnome."

This hurts my brain:

disclosure: I work for the publisher that distributes No Starch Press' Forbidden Lego.
more disclosure: Somebody should get the Nobel Book Titling prize for calling a book "Forbidden Lego."

When I first put my real name up here on the site about three weeks ago, I thought to myself (largely in the second person) "Not to worry, So-Called 'Cecil.' It'll be years before you feel the urge to post something that in substance or by way of word choice might leave you later thinking, 'Perhaps this isn't the sort thing I'd necessarily want associated with my name for the rest of my life.'"

Turns out I was off by roughly X, where X = [years minus three weeks].

Here's the latest addition to the Virtual LP. You've been warned. Therefore you can't say, really, that I didn't warn you.

time: 1:08 seconds; specs: 1.6 MB
Press Play to play.

Snow lights
the heavens you
sparkle at me cold

soft indentations
that last a week or so
the footprints crushed

the heavens sparkle 
at me cold
  you
  snow.

I've been thinking a lot about toast and how everyone takes it for granted. I mean, how many foods taste great uncooked and taste even greater after you've heated them up? 10? Maybe? Maybe 12? It's not a lot.

So I've started working on some new slogans that I hope will help turn things around. See if you can incorporate these into your daily conversations. You know, virally.

• "Toast: Like bread, only naughtier."
• "Suddenly everyone's talking -- about toast!"
• "If you combined 'toad' with 'roast,' you'd get 'toast.' Who's hungry?"
• "Toast!" (this one's not really a slogan, just a fresh way of saying the word toast -- with extra emphasis.)

OK. Enough jibber jabber. Let's get this toast party rolling!

Image created for Tiffany & Co. by Tobie Giddio, reproduced courtesy of the artist.

Tobie Giddio grew up on the New Jersey Shore where she fell in love with fashion and art from the books and magazines in her basement makeshift studio. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she began illustrating advertisements for Bergdorf Goodman that ran weekly in the New York Times. Other work during this period included editorials for Interview Magazine and elaborately illustrated forecasting books and editorial work for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Since 2000, her work has been commissioned by clients ranging from Seibu Department Stores of Japan, to Apple, Inc., and Tiffany & Co.

Recent projects have included a series of classic charcoal and pen and ink drawings for Amy Sedaris's book, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence and a series of drawings for Infiniti Cars, as well as animated projects with Dovetail Studios, a collaboration between Giddio and her fiancé, motion/graphic designer Peter Belsky.

Tobie Giddio on the Web: Tobie Giddio.com, Dovetail Studios

Cecil Vortex: Can you describe your background?

Tobie Giddio: Well, I started out in fashion illustration. I studied with a number of teachers at F.I.T. [the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York - ed.]. And one of my main mentors was a teacher who was very rooted in fine art, so I was getting taught both principles at the same time. I was learning about drawing, and drawing the figure, and drawing the fashion figure, and then at the same time I was learning how to abstract the figure and learning about color and fine art and especially the modern art folks. To this day, I work in the fashion industry, and I spend a lot of time abstracting fashion and beauty and nature.

CV: How does fashion illustration work -- when you're working on an ad, for example, what are you working from?

Devastating!

(fortunately, thanks to the power of the google machine, I found out this morning that the wicked were punished.)

Once again it's been a while since my last track on the virtual lp. I've started playing piano again of late. Not sure what's triggered it, but it's fun. Here's a mimosa toast to piano, on this Saturday morn.

Specifically, my daughter brought home a great Disney songbook, which led to this here mini-cover of "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat" from Disney's immortal Aristocats. (Not to be confused with more recent and slightly more mortal flick entitled The Aristocrats, particularly on family movie night.)

Thanks for listening.....
-Cecil

time: 1:35 seconds; specs: 2.1 MB
Press Play to play.

note: updated from Saturday's initial version.