"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!!
#1179: willie nelson - darkness on the face of the earth (live aid, 1998)
i’ve got good news and bad news. the bad news is that i’m still exclusively listening to heartwrenching breakup songs. the good is that i’ve graduated to ones that are weird and almost jolly, or at least have two drummers and daniel lanois playing bass in a purple sequined cowboy hat next to willie nelson, who can’t remember all the names of his band members.
“i’ve forgotten” he says. “aaron!” screams someone. “harry,” he says. “yeah, i’m sorry.”
then the song starts. it’s from his 1962 debut, released three and a half decades before this late-90s concert for farmers. the band starts playing, but willie has a question. “what key?” he asks. “e,” says lanois in his cowboy hat. and willie starts singing about being left by his darling, and getting laughed at, and stumbling through darkness. “the stars fell out of heaven,” he sings, “and the moon could not be found.” it’s cosmic.
#1107: willie nelson - i gotta get drunk (on waylon jennings’ door is always open, 1985)
please see the brand new businessweekfor a big, boozy, tragic story i wrote about the life and death of trump vodka. it’s got kardashians, lawsuits and money trouble (and visits to china, russia and mexico). the billionaire-branded drink was put out by a company that also made the bourbon affiliated with willie nelson, who wrote the world’s finest song about hooch – which he plays here in a room of guffawing country stars. trump’s alcohol feelings are different than willie nelson’s: “i’m not a proponent of drinking,” trump said when trump vodka came out. “i know it’s like tobacco companies making cigarettes and then advertising ‘don’t smoke.’” trump vodka’s motto was success distilled. it did not succeed.
#1057: the sir douglas quintet - at the crossroads (live in austin, 1975)
writing a country song called at the crossroads after robert johnson lived and died is like deciding today to name your new poem j. alfred prufrock or starting a yankees baseball team. but you can’t live in texas if you don’t have a lot of soul. doug sahm had soul.
he gave the aristocratic english name sir douglas quintet to the band he started with san antonio childhood friend augie meyers to trick mid-60s british invasion fans into buying their sleepy, beery, heartfelt texas music. thank the big and bright stars that it worked. even with a fake name, the quintet was as real as anything else i can think of. as real as willie nelson’s tax problems, as real as emmylou harris’ smile, as real as tammy wynette waking up at 1 am to find george jones gone and getting into the car, driving to the nearest bar, and seeing he’d driven their lawnmower there. “well fellas here she is now, my little wife,” he said. “i told you she’d come after me.”
doug sahm sang sad songs about drinkers and movers towns and love, and this is my favorite one of them all.
#1025: willie nelson - she’s not for you (porter wagoner show) (1965)
“…you ain’t kidding! willie, how about doing us a fine song? you’ve had some great records, of course, with the rca victor folks, and we’ll talk about some of the songs you’ve written a little later. do us a pretty song…”
#1014: neil young - comes a time (dutch top pop, 1978)
there comes a time in every person’s life for the slow mid-90s version of neil young’s comes a time, which begins with willie nelson’s ponytail, and there's a time for the more beautiful rust never sleeps version, filmed somewhere called the cow palace.
both of those are solo, so then there’s the time for his version from the year i was born with a band named the international harvesters. they didn’t include national hero emmylou harris, like jonathan demme‘s heart of gold, where she sang the late nicolette larson's harmony on that line about tall trees, which makes my knees go weak and will make yours go weak too, unless you’re stronger or colder.
less frequently, there comes a time for an unrelated grateful dead song with the same name. and rarest of all is when you need to watch the version of comes a time from a late-1970s dutch tv show that featured a troop of interpretive dancers spinning to lyrics about spins. i think top pop was a continental step-brother to the statelier english top of the pops. the time doesn’t come for it very often, but when it comes it really comes.
barbara walters’ blue dress billows, old dependable willie nelson’s red bandana sits tight on his distinctly unwashed head, the green trees on what was then his 750-acre estate rustle cinematically in the early-80s texas wind, and all’s well with the world.
then mr. nelson says: “i came home, again, very drunk, and came right to bed and right to sleep. so i guess martha, that’s my first wife’s name, she decided she had had enough of that. so while i was laying there passed out, she took the sheet, wrapped it up around me–i can envision her doing it–and then very methodically sowed me up. it must have taken her 45 minutes or an hour to do it. and then she took a broom stick, and the next thing i know there’s this white stuff coming at me, the sheet is banging me in the head. and then once i woke up she split.”
if you need me i’ll just be over here in this corner listening to eight hours of early- and mid-70s willie nelson. is there anything finer? rumor has it that even when freshly showered he smells like an old book. if the old testament had been a heavy smoker it would have sounded exactly like him, you know what i mean?
if you don’t, here he is singing leon russell’s song in front of leon russell, who hangs his head for no one, and is literally hanging his sweet silvery head the entire performance.
#601: willie nelson, emmylou harris, and daniel lanois - the maker (1998)
after daniel lanois was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident this week, he called up a pal and said calmly, “look, i got a lot of broken bones.” god bless that man. for me, what makes the music daniel lanois produces so special is that it’s sooty, smoky, crunched and chewed, and yet every note is perfect and clean. it’s easy to light songs on fire, but not easy to make them smell like charcoal, which is what he does on bob dylan’s time out of mind, brian eno’s apollo atmospheres & soundtracks, u2’s joshua tree, emmylou harris’ wrecking ball (her best album, if you ask me), and willie nelson’s teatro, which the above is from.
besides producing, he also happens to have written songs that are as good as anything those bands have done. the maker is one of them! it’s a religious song that’s heavenly because it’s black and blue. speaking of angels, wim wenders directed the video, and this one, too.
the fact that all five of last night’s grammy rock nominees are older than 50, and that their average age, according to my calculations, is 61.4 years, would lead a reasonable viewer to conclude that young people were not interested in (or good at) making superlative rock music last year. that is wrong.
so in january 2011, instead of nominating bob dylan, john fogerty, bruce springsteen, eric clapton, steve winwood, jeff beck, stevie wonder, booker t. jones, david byrne, elvis costello, levon helm, rambin’ jack elliott, loudon wainwright iii, willie nelson and (of course) neil young for grammys again, the academy should spend some of the ceremony showing clips of these glorious veterans in their prime (see above), take a few minutes to bring everyone up to speed on what they’ve been up to lately, and then dedicate the rest of the broadcast to serious quality time with the gloriously gaga and grizzly youth of today.
#304: willie nelson, emmylou harris, and daniel lanois - my own peculiar way (1998, dir. wim wenders)
one day ron rosenbaum or someone good will write an entire book on what happens when emmylou harris sings duets. here you have willie nelson’s gray-haired voice, full of bark and bird’s nests and topsoil, but then she drops in and his song turns into a botanical garden. it’s like adding thick-cut blood orange marmalade to toast that’s been burned very lovingly by daniel lanois.
