Recently back from touring Europe, the Shivas stomped and swayed in the Star bar in Portland. They played an old gem about Jack the Ripper for Halloween
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The opening act was Go! Zilla from Italy.
I drew the Shivas many years ago, here is the drawing.
A few years ago I was in Toronto for nxne and someone told me they were looking forward to seeing Shannon and the clams. The name stuck in my head and I looked them up and dug their sound. They were playing a post haloween show in Portland. The show was very fun, and they bring their sound of their records very accurately to their live show.
Here is my warm up drawing.
Whoops, forgot one of the ns. Better draw them over again. Form where I was standing, the drummer was hard to see.
Beautiful music! Very surf garage! I love the 60s style organ sounds and the gritty rock vocals.
Here are some photos.
Maybe you are watching creepy movies as a part of your Haloween traditions. Here is a video I made in tribute to Peter Lorre.
If you enjoyed this, I made more
for Bette Davis, Cary Crant, and Toshiro Mifune.
I started one for Humphry Bogart, Norma Shearer, Marcello Mastroianni, Fred MacMurray, Audrey Hepburn, Samuel L Jackson, Javier Bardem, Jean Harlow and Clara Bow and but never finished them. I suppose I ought to get around to that sometime.
Eugene’s funk pioneers Eleven Eyes tore it up at the hi fi music hall. Andy plays in Bustin Jeiber and the Cherry Poppin Daddies. He subbed in on sax and kicked all the asses!
Is it a weird coincidence that there is an anime named “11 Eyes?”
I have drawn them before check it out.
Killy Dwyer is on tour and passed through Eugene after Portland and before California. Of course she asked me to open. I had a great time and performed my comics, ” you don’t need money to have fun” and had audience members draw on my white suit, and played ” the anthropic principle lullaby” and handed out clave and the audience jammed with me.
Killy did a great set and showed us much variety of moods. Looping her voice and singing unapologetically about cancer, death, orgasms and other topics that make audiences squirm! She plays accordion, guitar, a tiny Casio sk-1 and she improvised with stuffed animals and other objects she found in the bookstore.
This is the flyer I made for the show.
And of course, We got a few shots of the two of us on stage together. Follow her on Twitter, on Patreon and wherever!
At Mecca here in Eugene, we have kid’s art workshop on Saturdays. Today we made these puppets. The trick to them is to have a character on two distinct poses. The puppets are double sided. Traditionally, the performers dress in black and have black gloves covering their skin. The character can flip and change its pose. This is the simplest form of animation: two frames! Dynamic!
The dowel or Popsicle stick is painted black and glued between two pieces of black matte board.
This young artist made a pumpkin character with glasses.
This young man made a colorful bird with teeth!
Here I am with a little troll and a skeleton.
It’s Jacqueline Black the witch! (She’s friends with Janice the Jester and Nate the Knight)
I eecially like the gag of a cute ghost who becomes fat by eating too much candy and the pop tart who is concerned that he is missing his corner.
El Ten Eleven play complicated, shimmering, beautiful guitar based music. Using electronic drums the drummer can act as a bass player and add electronic noises. Using looping pedals and several guitars, some of whom have two necks, the guitarist can add layer upon layer of baroque melodies and embellishments. To say this band is deep would be an understatement. It’s best to say they are musician’s musicians.
If you know anything about double neck guitars, you’ll see that my illustration is inaccurate. Actually his bass is the bottom neck, and bass necks are longer. Also, he doesn’t have a fretless guitar neck on his double necked guitar- but I don’t care! I drew it! Notice I drew several hands to try and capture something about they way he composes and performs.
Maybe I’ll finish inking and coloring it someday. Here is a cool interview with Kristian Dunn and Tim Fogarty.
And here is their website.
People have lumped them into the same post rock genre as Battles and Tortoise. But they say they don’t listen to post rock! I think they sound sometimes like Ratatat. Great live show. It’s amazing that the guitarist has such control over timing and his pedals.
The Boreal is a fun all ages venue in eugene with local art and zines and anarchist books for sale. It isn’t lit well, but I suppose that’s part of the charm.
This is Chris from Paleons. He plays a modular synthesizer. The kind with a dozen cables to connect the modules. The band has been going through changes and now includes a lap steel player.
The Long Hallways play beautiful shimmering Post Rock.Their bass player plays bass like its a lead instrument. Through strumming, tapping and virtuosic abundance of notes, he clearly is not content to have the bass stay in the background and establish the root of the chord. Hell, they could add a second bass player to do that, but their songs are fine just the way they are,
Then we heard the droney shoe gaze songs of The Union Trade. Keyboards are a nice addition.
Finally, a fourth post rock band played, Coastlands. This one had some loops of hip hop drums and ethereal noise samples. I think they play ebow guitar drones into a loop pedal. Their drummer was very tight. They eschew having a bass player at all and just bring on the full sonic assault if three guitars.
I tried out putting shadows behind their heads. I think their album art is beautiful and very fitting for their sound.
I took these photos of my drawings at the venue and just gave the drawings away. The bands were very pleased/ flattered. A member of coastlands saw me drawings long hallways and specifically asked me to draw them. I thought I probably wouldn’t have the energy or time to take them home and color them. My photography sucks of course, the room was poorly lit.
I went to see David Huntsburger perform at Sam Bonds. His humor was very personal. I enjoyed his stories of his grandmother passing away. He wasn’t afraid to have long awkward pauses and really spend time on a subject even if there were long passages without any joke that produced laughter. Look him up online here.
Tanya Kornilovich is a Russian immigrant comic and takes fun of her family, Russian stereotypes and religion. She is one of the most enthusiastic comics I have ever seen.
Isaac and the Awkward Situations 