"it took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, nightlife. most of the time is spent moving the box very gradually to the bathroom." -charles mingus
"she had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits
"he had a huge room with nothing in it except this huge vast hammond organ, right next door to the police." -david bowie
"he's got a mind like a sewer, and a heart like a fridge" -elvis costello
"you can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man." -joni mitchell
"lou's jukebox spun for love and many other things, too: beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery" -laurie anderson
"hey there, hey now, well, you can make a pacemaker blink, easy thing, make a man's heart go bibbity boom. -john cale
"i've still got things inside me, sad things, happy things, that people don't know about." -loretta lynn
"to try to maximize the relationship of listening to a record through promotion is like experiencing driving a car by reading about stimulus programs." -bonnie 'prince' billy
"too much cheesecake too soon! old money's better than new" -roxy music
"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson
"i could even find it in my heart to love mike love." -belle & sebastian
"i'm going to boogie my scruples away." -lowell george
"i'm a lunatic, and you are so super cool." - george jones
"i'm good and i'm bad and i'm happy and i'm sad and i'm lazy" -willie nelson
"i drive a rolls-royce, cause it's good for my voice." -t.rex
"i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne
"lyrics choochoo from my mouth like locomotion." - pato banton
"i'm dealing in rock and roll. i'm not a bonafide human being." -phil spector
"phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'leonard, i love you.' i said, 'i hope you do, phil.'" -leonard cohen
"they'd whisper at each other and look at phil and whisper at each other. finally this lady, tanked, comes over to phil and says, 'alright, sonny, what's your problem?' and he said, 'premature ejaculation, what's yours?'" -tom wolfe
"i bite my nails and if that fails i go get myself stoned, but when i do i think of you and head myself back home." -gram parsons
"i would say groucho marx, to name one thing, and willie mays, and the second movement of the jupiter symphony, and louis armstrong's recording of potatohead blues, swedish movies, naturally. sentimental education by flaubert, marlon brando, frank sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by cezanne, the crabs at sam wo's, tracy's face." -woody allen
brian eno songs that will make good book titles for my 10-volume memoir, in order: here he comes, baby's on fire, golden hours, brutal ardour, taking tiger mountain, events in dense fog, through hollow lands, some of them are old, everything merges with the night, dead finks don't talk
ry cooder albums that every man should own: into the purple valley, boomer's story, paradise and lunch
"really, we don't want people twiddling their goatees over our stuff." -radiohead
"i love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. and mother. and god." -johnny cash
"the moon is clear, the sky is bright, i'm happy as the horse's shite." -the pogues
"i hope that you all out there, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin, quick or slow, no matter what kind or color or shape or person you are, if you like to make music, why, go ahead. -pete seeger
"chuck berry isn't merely the greatest of the rock and rollers, or rather, there's nothing mere about it. say rather that unless we can somehow recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports chuck berry as well as it does marcel proust, we might as well trash it." -robert christgau
mashable says about us: "expect the unexpected with this awesome gem. groovy." and 33 1/3: "nice to have someone steer me in a worthwhile direction"
a very special year-end spectacular surprise! the super groovy music video spectacular’s music video of the year, or, an interview with cole kush, or,#1185: jerry paper - grey area (2018)
because the music video that cole kush made for jerry paper’s grey area is the dreamiest music video of the year, because it’s the saddest, because it’s the best animated, because it’s the most memorable, and because it is the most upsetting music video of the year, it is the music video of the year. and because it is the music video of the year i asked cole kush if he’d answer some questions about making it. here’s what he said!
in one of the comments on youtube, somebody called the video’s hero a “cloth goblin.” that’s a good phrase. when i was figuring out the look of the creature i stumbled into some felt puppet textures, which i applied to a sickly humanoid figure, and the result looked truly disgusting. when i showed this to lucas (jerry paper) we both looked at each other, softly nodded, and then smiled.
is that you in the hat? who are the other folks? yes i am in the human in the hat and my wife laura is shaking the soda pop and the rest are some of my friends who were kind enough to take part in the shoot where i live on vancouver island, canada. that was a really fun day.
the song by jerry paper is a beauty. it floats along pretty calmly, but there’s something sad going on in a way i can’t put my finger on. there is usually a sad undercurrent with a lot of lucas’ music, which certainly influenced the visuals. when i make a music video, i usually listen to the song about one hundred times and slowly build the visuals in my head scene-by-scene. from this i have a shot outline which i went through with my friend tom and we worked out every shot in the park before the shoot.
even though the video ends with a half-smile, it seems to me to be about disappointment and loneliness. how do you deal with those feelings yourself? i’m certainly no stranger to negative emotions, but i tend to internalize those feelings and convert them into shame. though i will say i’ve been doing a lot better lately. i think the morning gratitude practice has been helping with that, and just generally trying to let go of things i can not control.
one highlight of my summer was watching the video you made with jay weingarten, dayworld. would you tell me about making it? jay is a wonderful human and good friend that i started talking to online years ago. we both enjoyed each other’s work and noticed similarities between this character dole i was working on and jay’s social media persona, so we came up with a world where both of those characters could live in. around that time i had met tim heidecker (a personal hero) in the green room at a show in l.a.
grey area and dayworld both have a lot of fake laughter. did one video influence the other? insane positivity is a strong theme in jay’s world, and i definitely absorbed it.
where are you from, how did you became an animator and filmmaker with such a distinct style? any distinct style i have comes from the fact that i don’t have any actual training in animation. my background is in science and health care. i grew up in a small town in northern alberta, canada and went to school to study biology & psychology, eventually finishing a graduate program in clinical prosthetics. i worked for a few years treating patients with artificial limbs, which is where i first started learning 3d software on a research project using 3d printers to make prosthetic sockets… i’ve been stuck in the 3d world ever since.
how did you make the creature? on my rig, filling up the full 11gb of vram on my geforce gtx 1080ti, powered by an intel™ i7-6850k cpu chipset laying firmly atop an x99 ftwk motherboard surrounded by 64gb of ddr4 2400 mt/s ram. rarely did i worry about overheating with my hyper 212 evo cpu cooler and thermaltake core x9 stock fans and extra thermaltake led radiator fans.
is there something you’ve been reading or watching or listening to that you love? you know i spend so much “time” staring at a screen animating that i don’t really ingest too much content outside of work. i try to spend most of my free time hanging out, cooking, swimming. lately i’ve been playing this super fun game called pickleball with senior citizens near my house. i do always have music playing though, mostly old classics like neil young, will nelson, haruomi hosono, the beach boys, g. harrison…
most importantly, what is your favorite music video of all time? the one where lenny kravitz does a cool guitar solo then accidentally ripped open his trousers and spilled his penis onto audience!!
ah, winter, the coldest of the seasons! these days of sad sleepiness and snowy starkness! sanguine silence and other soft sibilants! and let’s be frank, because we’re all friends here–it’s mostly horrible. unless you’re in the late-60s beach boys and things are falling apart and you’re in a hotel in germany and you make a music video about your room service and walking around in the snow in a hat and things like that. that’s nice.
i know that people often squabble over which great music video out of all of history’s great music videos features the longest white dinner jackets paired with the least effortful lip-syncing combined with the deadest eyes, but that’s an even more pointless fight than the famous ahhs argument.
the best oohs in pop music is a toss-up, but anyone who bickers over which song has the finest, cleanest, happiest ahhs is either argumentative or imbecilic. let’s not fight–let’s be friends.
the beach boys’ vegetables is a better and sweeter song, and it has paul mccartney chewing celery in the background, but as far as highly vulgar late-60s vegan-approvable rock songs go, poke salad annie gets extra points for crossing a certain invisible line of innuendo. it’s hard to put your finger on, but elvis presley said it well when he offered, “everybody calls it poke salad. and that’s poke! salad! poke! hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, hut, hut, two, three, four, yeah, ang, ang, ang, mom, mom, pop, pop, huh, huh, huh, bop, two, three, four, hut, hut, hut, two, three, four.” wonderful.
this might be all the rich lipton tea i’ve had this afternoon talking, but my favorite beach boys song wasn’t written by brian wilson (although good vibrationsis the most terrific pop hit of the century, and sloop john b is a maritime classic, and surfer girl is awfully tender). it wasn’t even written by al jardine or that grinch mike love, though they did don’t go near the water. it’s disney girls, written by backup singer bruce johnston of peoria, illinois, and it’s so unimaginably dark and lonely that it looks feathery and light and cute. the bridge is about late-50s television and will make you cry. if it doesn’t, try brian wilson and van dyke parks’ take on similar subject matter.
brian wilson always gets his due, because he writes songs that are pure and sweet and true and perfect. and just look at the way he holds his bass! but it’s important to remember his underappreciated band mates. “i love my carl, i love my brian, my dennis, and my al,” belle and sebastian once said, “i could even find it in my heart to love mike love.”
#582: brian wilson and van dyke parks - orange crate art (1995)
and the works progress administration poster archives also have a section of fruit crate labels, which is not only a splendid thing in and of itself, but it also happens to be on the same exact subject as brian wilson’s sweetest song. so it’s a win-win.
update: van dyke parks is coming to brooklyn! v.d.p. in bk.!
#444: the beach boys - don’t go near the water (1971)
the other night i dreamed i met van dyke parks at a black-tie gala. i corned him by a red staircase and told him how much i worshiped discover america, and his album with joanna newsom, and especially his chewy, loony, post-pop (i’m not sure if that’s a real phrase, but still) music with the beach boys, especially surfs up, which begins with this song and ends eponymously. he was sort of awkward but really appreciative! and then i dreamed that i could grow a beard like early-70s mike love, not just the wispy whiskers of a bar mitzvah boy. so this is the song of my dreams.
this isn’t the world’s peppiest performance of good vibrations, but what the band lacks in pep they make up for here in uber-gonzo visuals that are really far out, man. the white suites are nice, too! this must be what spiders see when spiders watch late-60s drug-addled californian pop.
#415: the shivvers - teen line (live on wmtv, wisconsin) (1980)
from now on i’m only listening to milwaukee’s early-80s power pop, where the pianos bopped and the guitarists tried not to smile and the wouldn’t it be nice-referencinglyrics were sung by women with teased-hair who chewed chiclets tiny size flavor-coated gum and knew what it was like to be lovestruck and 14 years old.
(even though this tv clip is nearly perfect, download the supreme version here.)
#355: brian wilson - that lucky old sun and california girls (2008)
when someone asks what kind of music you like, saying “everything but a capella” is pretty much acceptable (people who say “everything but country” are liars or silly and should be made to bow at doc’s feet and porter’s grave). yet because of this clip you now have to say, “i like everything but a capella–though there’s this one terrifyingly, emetically good video where brian wilson is in the back of a cab messing around with his bandmates, and after their main performance they do a minute of a beach boys song mostly a capella and it’s like sitting in a car with jesus while he whistles his favorite beatles ditties and the car starts levitating.”
