’Violent white apes in a restaurant with red necks had an uprising…’ (‘Snow Apes’ by Don Van Vliet, via Doyle)

You could spend your whole life on Gary Lucas’ Soundcloud page; indeed, the way things are going, you probably should. There’s heaps of Gary Lucas music—Gary plays Fellini and Hitchcock scores; Gary plays Bob Dylan, T.Rex, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and a Miles Davis/Suicide medley; Gary plays with David Johansen, Alan Vega, Nick Cave, the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, and Kevin Coyne—and there’s slabs of poetry and music by Don Van Vliet.

Even the jaded Beefheart aficionado who can play the harmonica part on “Little Scratch,” the prized outtake from The Spotlight Kid, with her toes and a vacuum cleaner may not know such gems as “The Sand Failure,” “Flat Mattress,” “The I Saw Shop,” “The World Crawled over the Razor Blade,” “Let’s Get to the Good and Go,” “Luxury Crunch,” “Skol in a Hole,” “Hearts Aren’t That Casual,” “Pork Chop Blue around the Rind,” and “Away from Survival,” among others. True, some of these tracks appeared on Rhino Handmade’s Riding Some Kind of Unusual Skull Sleigh (which is hopelessly out of print and retails for about a grand), but some, as far as I can tell, have not appeared anywhere other than in Gary Lucas’ monster sound hoard.

Much of this Beefheart stuff is spoken, but there are fragments of melodies and lyrical ideas, too, and some actual songs. As on “Pork Chop Blue around the Rind” and its second part, “Skol in a Hole,” both recorded in Lucas’ West Village apartment in 1983, Van Vliet has some kind of percussion accompaniment on “Seaweed Beard Foam Bone Tree,” but whether it’s thumbs drumming on a dinner table, tape artifacts or the endogenous thudding of a reel-to-reel I cannot say. 
 

 
And here’s Gary Lucas playing “Evening Bell” and talking about his time in the Magic Band at the Captain Beefheart Symposium in Copenhagen in 2011:
 

 
All My Kin is the first—and probably only—release by the mysterious outsider music group known as Beanpole. Not exactly a concept album, but very much a concept album, All My Kin tells warped and demented tales of animal-human hybrids, onion-loving farmers, eating, cousins and other fun stuff.

Most of the music originated from between 1984 and the early 90s and it was Les Claypool, he of Primus, who originally wanted to release a decades’ worth of Beanpole’s output on his Prawn Song imprint sometime in the mid 90s, precipitating, it is said, a break with parent record label Mammoth who just didn’t get it and pulled the plug.

For two decades poor Beanole was forgotten.

Fast forward: Les Claypool is touring with Sean Lennon as The Claypool Lennon Delirium in 2017. On the tour bus Claypool played Beanpole for Lennon, who decided that he wanted to release them on his own Chimera record label.

One of the members of the Beanpole, er, collective (?) is Adam Gates, a graphic designer long employed by the Pixar animation studio and formerly of the Spent Poets. Longtime readers of this blog will know him as “ifthenwhy” in the comments section. He sent me the Beanpole CD and a note telling me “You’ll HATE this,” but I LOVED IT. I mean no less of an authority than Rolling Stone said that Beanpole “sound like the Residents guest-appearing on Hee Haw” which is not only quite correct, but also just about the nicest thing you could ever say about any group, if you ask me.

I asked Adam Gates a few questions about Beanpole over email.

How did Beanpole come to be and who is involved?

Beanpole was started by principal songwriter, and my lifelong music cohort, Derek Greenberg (Derek would eventually play bass in my band The Spent Poets). Initially “the band” was a loosely knit recording project which began somewhere in 1984 and ended in 1995. The recordings were primitive bedroom creations (many of the album tracks were recorded on Tascam 4 Track cassette machines) that eventually graduated to, still primitive, home studios. While Derek has always remained the chief songwriter, a fairly tight circle of friends greatly informed the sound. This includes Derek, myself, Thomas Muer, Geoff Marx, Darin Wilson, Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde.

It sounds so much like Renaldo and the Loaf, that I’m gonna guess that it was rather heavily Residents inspired? What were y’all trying to accomplish?

That’s a huge compliment. Thanks.

Derek has always had a “healthy” fixation on two things, The Beatles and Disneyland, and while The Residents were certainly a major influence on all of our high school brains, we never tried to overtly sound like any of our heroes. While we were not good enough to hide our influences we also couldn’t come close to replicating them (although the bass line to “His Name Is Beanpole” is pure McCartney). Rather, we played the songs as best as we could (lots of them are not that easy), usually limiting the recordings to a few takes. The only thing that mattered was that we satisfied ourselves. Nothing was labored over, nothing was precious. The final track just had to sound like “Beanpole,” which was more of a sensibility than anything intellectual. We didn’t care. No one would ever hear it. No one would like it if they did.

I typically loathe “funny” music and while I totally understand why some people are dismissive of Beanpole as a some kind of lesser Ween pastiche, none of us ever thought that we were making music to make people laugh (Why do people find The Residents funny?). The lyrics are often sad and disconcerting: a grandma abducted -  a starving family contemplating eating one of their own - inbreeding - buried children - a bullied embryo - a farmer who loves an onion and then cheats on it.

It’s a dark, if tragic, world.
 

 
What is the backstory of the release? Was it cursed?

I played the tracks for Les Claypool and he fell in love with them, and has championed the band for years. It was his intent to release the album on his Prawn Song label, and an album (that’s very similar to the final 2018 release) was mastered in 1993. We brought in all the tracks on old cassettes, in a shoe box, to the mastering session. The music was then digitized and mastered using the shit tech of the early 90s. Thankfully Stephen Marcussen, who is a truly amazing world class mastering engineer, remastered the album for the Chimera release. We LOVE how it sounds.

Apparently “Beanpole” was the final straw for his label’s distributor and the album (and his label) were subsequently shelved.

After that, we all forgot about poor Beanpole. He was like a distant cousin. Not dead, but not really alive either.

The music became a bit of a cult item with dedicated Primus and Spent Poets fans, but every musician likes to think of his unreleased stuff as a cult item, doesn’t he? We were no Daniel Johnson, but tapes were passed around for years.

How did Sean Lennon get behind the Beanpole vision?

That’s all Les. He played it for Sean in the back of a tour bus during their “Claypool / Lennon Delirium” tour. Apparently dear old Beanpole spoke to him. I remember when Les called to tell me that Sean wanted to release it that I was utterly skeptical, as people say lots of things in the back of tour buses. And I know for a fact that Beanpole is pretty good when one is high on weed, but Sean was serious. Next thing we know his Chimera label was asking for art and masters. .

Now, as far as Derek and I were concerned, we were now members of The Beatles. Let’s just say our Beatles obsession is “biblical” and the fact that Sean (lineage aside, he’s a musician who I greatly esteem) wanted to actually release Beanpole, convinced me that something occult and out of our control was afoot. Some other weird stuff has happened that makes me believe in the Beanpole occult connection. I’m telling you that someone masturbated over a sigil somewhere. It’s the only thing that adds up!

How does it feel to have something from your “youth” come back to haunt you like this?

Weird. Again, no one was ever supposed to hear this music.

It’s funny, I created the illustrations and design for the album and I found myself actually reverting to my high school art style, something I rarely do these days. Hell, I didn’t know that I could do it. So I suppose that’s a sort of haunting? But truth be told, I don’t think any of the principals behind this this music have “evolved” much. We are still the same people, and the music still perfectly represents our loves and obsessions. Larry LaLonde’s tracks (all the albums instrumentals sans “Dinner Time” are his) still fills me with the exact same idiot glee today as they did 20 years ago. Derek was, and is, a musical genius. Over the last five years he’s recorded over 200 remarkable songs that he quietly puts online. No one hears them. No one knows. He doesn’t care.

Personally, I am very satisfied knowing that while my high school peers were listening to Rush and Huey Lewis, we were huddled around a 4-track, in a tiny suburban bedroom, recording a song called “Chicken Boy”.

Will the band be getting back together for a reunion tour or Coachella appearance?

Beanpole will be playing with The Claypool / Lennon Delirium on New Years Eve at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I’m playing my Fender Bass XI with a pick, just like McCartney on the White Album.

Coachella can’t afford us.
 

‘Untitled’ (1930).
 
Hannah Höch was the only female artist included in the Dada movement that flourished after the First World War. Art was then still considered mainly a man’s game—and women weren’t allowed to share the toys. Dada, however, was supposedly a radical avant garde movement that despised bourgeois conventions and the politics that had led to the carnage of the war. Though the central members of Dada’s Berlin group claimed they supported women’s rights, their words were little more than worthy platitudes as Höch was barely tolerated by some Dadaists (George Grosz and John Heartfield) who were adverse to including her work in the collective’s first exhibition in 1920. Because she was a woman, these also men expected Höch to supply the “beer and sandwiches” while they were busy discussing art and changing the world. This patriarchal sexism was all part of Höch’s long struggle to succeed as an artist.

Hannah Höch was born Anna Therese Johanne Höch into a middle-class family in Gotha, on November 1, 1889. When she first showed an early interest into art as a child, her father told her women were not meant to be artists, but were intended to be mothers and care-givers—“a girl should get married and forget about studying art.” As the eldest of five children, Höch’s role was to look after her younger siblings. When she was fifteen, she was removed from school in order to do this. Her plans for a career as an artist were put on hold until 1912 when she enrolled at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin to study glass and ceramic design. Her studies were interrupted by the First World War. Höch briefly joined the Red Cross but soon returned to Berlin where she studied graphic art at the School of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts. It was here she met the Dadaists Raoul Hausmann, with whom she had a relationship, and Kurt Schwitters, who is said to have added an “H” to her name so it became a palindrome. It was during this time that Höch began making collages. She was inspired after seeing postcards sent by German soldiers to their loved ones in which they had pasted clipped photographs of their faces over the card’s main image of cavaliers or peasants. While developing her ideas with her fellow Dadaists, Höch worked for a variety of magazines writing articles on handicraft and embroidery. This was more than just maintaining her own independence, her lover Hausmann thought Höch should work so she could support him. She described her life with Hausmann in her short story “The Painter” in which a male artist is filled with bitter resentment when his wife asks him “at least four times in four years” to wash dishes.

In 1920, Höch’s work was included in the First International Fair in Berlin. However, Grosz and Heartfield objected to her inclusion as she was a woman. It was only after Hausmann threatened to withdraw his own work if Höch was not included that Grosz and Heartfield relented. Höch disliked the loud, boisterous exhibitionism of her fellow Dadaists. She thought them childish and embarrassing. While their work was primarily intended to shock and cause outrage in response to the war, Höch was more interested in gender, sexism, identity, ethnicity, and society’s poisonous inequalities. She said she used photographs as a painter uses color or a poet words. In 1922, she split from Hausmann and began to move away from the Dada group. She started a lesbian relationship with the poet and writer Til Brugman, which lasted for ten years before she met and married the successful businessman Kurt Matthies in 1938.

With the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, Höch was listed as a “degenerate artist” and a “cultural bolshevik” whose work was work was deemed to have no moral value. She spent the Second World War hidden in plain sight living an almost anonymous life in a small cottage with its overgrown garden where she continued to produce art. In 1944, she divorced from Matthies.

After the war, Höch’s work moved towards abstraction with an interest in nature and the environment. Though her work from this time until her death is less well-known, Höch was still highly prolific and never lost her desire “to show the world today as an ant sees it and tomorrow as the moon sees it.” Höch died in May 31, 1978, at the age of 88.

Höch’s work ranged from the political to the satirical. She considered the artist’s role as questioning accepted values and pushing for a fairer more equal society. Works life “Beautiful Girl” and “Made for a Party” questioned ideas about beauty, identity, and feminism, while “Heads of State” poked fun at male pomposity and the collages “From an Ethnographic Museum” examined ethnicity and racism.
 

‘Cut with the Kitchen Knife Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany’ (1919).
 

‘The Beautiful Girl’ (1919).
 
More of Hannah Höch’s work, after the jump…
 

 
Monopoly recently released a new version of its board game called the “Cheaters Edition.” It’s exactly what you think it is. Instead of moving around the board purchasing property like society has educated us to do, players are now encouraged to LIE and CHEAT their way to commodity and wealth. Because life isn’t supposed to be fair. This realistic portrayal of the business world rewards those who can stealthily commit white-collar crimes, such as steal money, swipe properties, and basically, fuck over everyone else out there trying to make an honest living. If you get caught in the act, however, you will be forced to wear a stupid plastic handcuff that is chained to the game board. So we’ll see if it was all worth it, RIGHT DONALD TRUMP?
 

 
According to Hasbro, Monopoly: Cheater’s Edition was created after a product survey revealed that nearly half of its players cheat at the game. So, they made a version that encourages that sort of behavior. It’s no surprise then, why video games like Grand Theft Auto are so popular. We like to be bad without facing the consequences (except for maybe a plastic handcuff). I don’t have the patience for fucking Monopoly, either.
 
Let’s take a moment to pay respect to a real OG in the underground board-gaming world. This one’s called SCAM: The Game of International Dope Smuggling. Released by Berkeley’s Brown Bag Enterprises in 1971, the year Nixon declared a federal “War on Drugs,” SCAM is all about slinging dope and getting paid. Players move around a colorful, hand-drawn board collecting “Connections” and “Paranoia” cards, which will either help or hinder as one navigates the underground and strikes drug deals. Along the way, you will travel to exotic locations of criminal activity and drug trafficking, such as New York, Afganistan, Mexico, South America, Uranus (!), and maybe even jail. The game, which came rolled up in a tube designed to look like a big doobie, was popular among the hippies and trippers of counterculture and, as many have described it, was particularly advanced given its illicit subject matter.
 

 
Someone was able to scan the official game rules, an excerpt of it can be read below:
 

Generally, SCAM goes like this: you begin on the drop out of College square and keep moving around the AVE until you have enough money and CONNECTIONS to get off the AVE. You then work the COUNTY and NEW YORK until you get enough money to put together a smuggling SCAM. This involves FLYING to MEXICO, AFGANISTAN or SOUTH AMERICA, buying dope, smuggling back to the States and selling in NEW YORK (where there’s more money) or in THE COUNTY (where there’s less PARANOIA). To win the game, you have to make ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

If any of the following rules seem vague, unclear or stupid, feel free to change them to suit yourself.

 
Every so often, an original SCAM board game pops up for sale online. Prices usually range between $150-$350, but Triple Beam Games has a ripped-off bootleg version available on Amazon for $25, titled TRAFFIC: The game of INT’L dope smuggling. Add that to the growing list of drug dealing board games from over the years, including Dealer McDope, Beat the Border, and Gilbert Shelton’s Feds ’N’ Heads. Smack not included.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
It turns out leaving your house still pays sometimes: if I hadn’t stepped into a bookstore last weekend, I would be unaware of Alex Cox’s latest volume, I Am (Not) A Number: Decoding the Prisoner. Kamera Books published it in the UK last December to mark the series’ 50th anniversary, and the book came out in the US this May.

Like his introductions to cult movies on Moviedrome—like his interpretation of his own Repo Man, for that matter, a movie Cox insists is really about nuclear war—the director’s reading of The Prisoner is idiosyncratic and ingenious. Even though I don’t buy them yet, the solutions he proposes to the series’ riddles are brilliant and original; I won’t spoil them here, but it’s safe to say you’re unlikely to have come up with them yourself.
 

 
The 17 episodes of The Prisoner were broadcast in a different order in the UK and the US, and their correct sequence has never been settled. The Wikipedia page on the subject compares the production order (“not an intended viewing order,” the alt.tv.prisoner FAQ of blessed memory asserts) with four plausible running orders advanced or defended by fans over the years, based on the original broadcast or on different kinds of internal evidence in the shows: dates mentioned, logical sequence of plot developments, etc.

Cox has no use for any of these. Along with the series’ call sheets and screenplays, his interpretation is based on watching the episodes in the order of their filming—i.e., the production order most cultists reject as totally unsuitable for viewing. While this sequence is as reasonable as any other, it radically shuffles the narrative. For instance, “Once Upon a Time,” which is the second-to-last episode in every other programming of the series because it seems to lead directly to the finale, is sixth in Cox’s.

I’ve just started rewatching the series as Cox recommends. It’s too early to say whether the production order supports his conclusions, but I’m enjoying the shake-up so far. Below, the director discusses his book in a short promotional video.
 

 
Wow, have you heard the 1973 single credited to a group called Grudge? It’s totally wild! These glamtastic tunes simultaneously recall previous eras and one that hadn’t happened yet. The A-side, “When Christine Comes Around,” at first brings to mind 1960s bubblegum and girl groups, and possesses a tough, chugging rhythm. As the song progresses, the vocal becomes more and more aggressive—turning into a punk-like snarl—with the music eventually switching to ‘50s-style rock ‘n’ roll. Wait, did I tell you about the campy Mae West section? Oh, just listen.
 

 
The B-side is a similar tune, but even more violent and shocking. And what a title! Few songs from the punk era can rival the lyrics on this one.
 

 
While the lyrics to these ditties weren’t meant to be taken seriously, the tracks were executed in earnest, resulting in their release on the little-known Black Label.
 

 
The Grudge 45 was largely the work of one Laurence Marshall, a prolific songwriter, singer, and producer who’s used quite a few different pseudonyms, but mainly goes by the name Laurice. In the early ‘70s, Marshall recorded another odd track, “Flying Saucers Have Landed,” which sounds like a production by ‘60s wunderkind, Joe Meek. It came out in 1972 as the A-side of a single under the name Paul St. John. “Flying Saucers Have Landed,” along with the Grudge numbers, are his most famous songs in the rock world.
 
More after the jump…

 
As an answer to “The Super Bowl Shuffle,” the 1986 Cleveland Browns released this short fantasy film on home video. It co-stars Tiny Tim and a trained bear.

Masters of the Gridiron concerns a beautiful dream Browns center Mike Baab has after sustaining a massive head injury on the field—you know, the kind that causes permanent brain damage in people who play football. After losing consciousness, Baab awakes in an enchanted realm, transformed into a sword and sorcery hero, “the Baabarian,” who must confront Tiny Tim’s evil Lord of the League in the quest for a magic ring. Hometown heroes the Michael Stanley Band provide the soundtrack for the Browns’ LARP battles with the bear and some ninjas, filmed at the local landmark Squire’s Castle.

I’m sure this movie contains a lot of inside jokes for football fans; I don’t understand the rules of football, or why it is played, or how it is watched, though I have a vague sense that the Cleveland Browns must be all right, because Pere Ubu probably roots for them. I just like Masters of the Gridiron because it contains some of Tiny Tim’s best work. He is riveting as the Lord of the League, who issues his challenge in verse.

Talking to USA Today in 2013, Baab said Tiny didn’t work with bears:

He was terrified of the bear and would not come down from the top of the Squire’s Castle until the bear was back in his trailer. He thought the bear wanted to eat him.

If you watch nothing else, skip to Tiny’s first appearance at 7:18. Tell me it isn’t one of the best things you’ve ever seen.
 

 
I’m fascinated by the subculture of tribute bands. The groups that are serious work hard to replicate whatever act they are paying tribute to, and I’m intrigued by all the different reasons why they do it. It’s not just the bands that are interesting, but also the attendees of the shows, some of whom are fanatical. In the early 2000s, a few indie documentaries concerning the subject were released, but they’ve all been pretty much forgotten. Which is too bad, as the two I’ve seen are both worth checking out.

I first saw Tribute years ago on the Sundance channel, and have watched it a number of times. The film follows five tribute bands, and I found myself mesmerized by their stories. There’s a surprising amount of drama, often reaching Spinal Tap-esque levels of absurdity. In Tribute, we get to know the people who play in these bands, and for many, performing as a member of a famous group in front of an enthusiastic audience is the thing that makes them happiest. A frequent attendee of the gigs put on by Queen tribute act, Sheer Heart Attack, is profiled. His dedication is unwavering because he gets to experience a Queen live show, despite the fact that the Queen he loves no longer exists, and gets to see the band in an up close, personal setting.
 

 
Tributary – A Study of an American Pop Culture Subculture is the work of Russell Forster. The director first made waves with his 1995 documentary about obsessive collectors of 8-track tapes, So Wrong They’re Right. Tributary was his follow-up film. Forster aims for a scholarly approach here, dividing the bands into categories based on what he believes their motivations are. There are way more groups in Tributary—including the high concept and fabulous Ace’s High, a KISS tribute band whose members all dressed up like Ace Frehley—so you get more bang for your buck. At least you get more Aces…
 
Keep reading after the jump…

 
Yesterday was a good day for Van Morrison completists.

Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is one of the most important and most special albums of the 1960s. The album was recorded in New York in September/October 1968 and released a few weeks later. Morrison composed the music in Boston during the summer of 1968, and a series of gigs at a venue called the Catacombs, located at at 1120 Boylston Street in the Fenway, proved pivotal to the process.

One of the gigs during that run at the Catacombs was recorded, but the tapes have never been heard by the public.

Until yesterday, that is.

The Catacombs tapes document a show from August 1968. A Boston musician and writer named Ryan Walsh has spent years trying to find them; for obvious reasons the tapes became known as “the Catacombs tapes.” Peter Wolf told Walsh that he had the Catacombs tapes in his possession but had not listened to them for years. He added that a person would have to “bake the tapes” before they could be played; that is, a specialist Wolf knew in Maine would have to literally bake the tapes in an oven, a process that would enable the tapes to withstand playback without disintegrating or being shredded.

Walsh made the Catacombs tapes a pivotal part of a book on Morrison he released earlier this year called Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. As Walsh pertinently asks in his book, “What did the Astral Weeks songs sound like before producer Lewis Merenstein’s jazz ringers got hold of them?”

Good question.

Yesterday Walsh posted a remarkable series of tweets discussing the decision by Morrison to release the Catacombs tapes on iTunes UK for the likely purpose of retaining copyright to them. Here is that tweetstorm:
 

This is totally bananas.

Today, @vanmorrison unceremoniously released the ‘68 “Catacombs Tapes” as a live album on iTunes UK. This is the legendary recording I spend the whole #AstralWeeks1968 book trying to track down & hear…and, uh, now YOU can too! https://apple.co/2ASrhOL

1) The most sensical interpretation of the terrible cover art & UK-digital-only distribution is that this release is a “copyright dump,” i.e. its main function is to preserve Morrison’s copyright of the recording (otherwise, come January, it would become public domain).

2) Tom and John (the Boston musicians who appear on this recording) let me know they signed releases for Van’s lawyer this fall, so we suspected some kind of release was imminent. I guess we just thought, oh you know, maybe you’d design a nice cover and/or CREDIT Tom & John!

3) To hear this you will need someone in the UK to buy it for you, which is insane, I understand. I’d also imagine these files will be on…all kinds of sites now that they’ve been officially released.

4) This is the exact recording I heard and played for Tom and John except that the audio has been further cleaned and boosted, AND there’s one extra song (“Sit Down Funny Face”), but, yes, this is Peter Wolf’s recording.

5) Tom Kielbania (bass) is over the moon about this release. This is the only audio proof he had anything to do with any of this (and settles the debate about whether he indeed wrote the bassline for ‘Cyprus Avenue’ (and other AW songs) as he has long claimed)...

6)...as well as demonstrating that the Boston trio really did develop the acoustic, pastoral sound of Astral Weeks in the weeks before they were replaced by jazz musicians in New York. You’ll agree when you listen, I’m sure.

7) I still can’t tell you who slid me a copy.

8) The digital liner notes don’t mention the venue name, the other musicians, or even that it was Wolf who recorded it. They left the cool tape-unspooling noises in there instead of fading songs out, which was the right choice.

9) The poster for the concert here, courtesy of the David Bieber Archives (would have made a nice album cover, right?). Here’s Eric Kraft’s review of these concerts for Boston After Dark as well—>
 

 
10) Maybe the ownership of Astral Weeks is set to change-over to Van and he’s planning on a better release of this material as part of a box set package? Or maybe not. This whole thing is VERY Van Morrison.

11) The lone, surviving Astral Weeks studio outtake, “Train” remains unreleased still, of course. This is the song in which Van sings about Cambridge, MA like its the most mystical place you ever did encounter. It’s very cool.

12) “Train” IS on this live bootleg, but gets cut off before the verses about Massachusetts.

13) I truly am so happy you all get to hear this now. I didn’t mind getting pestered about it, but I did start to worry when ppl started asking Marissa about the tapes.

14) Now all we need is a death certificate for Mel Lyman.

 
As Walsh points out, people who do not live in the U.K. will have to wait until they hit “all kinds of sites now that they’ve been officially released.”

This picture, of (L to R) songwriter Jeff Barry, Bang Records founder Bert Berns, Van Morrison, Janet Rigsbee, and Bang Records employee Carmine “Wassel” DeNoia on a boat on the Hudson River in New York City in 1967, which I encountered during research for this article, is rapidly ascending my list of favorite things in the world.
 

 

 
Artist James Kerr was looking for something new to do, so he decided he’d start making GIFs ‘cause he thought that’d be fun. “Somehow,” he tells me, “I figured the best way to learn was to try and make one per day for an entire year, and see where it all went from there. This was back in 2012.”

Kerr shares his work under the name Scorpion Dagger. Over the past six years, he has produced hundreds of GIFs featuring artwork from northern and early Renaissance paintings. He has also produced a book which features some of his best and most popular work. But Kerr didn’t start out as an artist, he was a Political Science graduate who spent his time at university hanging “with lots of art school kids who really inspired me to make art.” I like Kerr’s work—they’re funny and clever and remind me of those brilliant animations Terry Gilliam made for Monty Python. I contacted Kerr to find out more about his work as Scorpion Dagger.

What’s with the name Scorpion Dagger? Where did it come from?

James Kerr: Essentially, it’s all to annoy my friends. It comes from working construction with these guys a long time ago, and us joking around about needing some tough sounding nicknames. I came up with Scorpion Dagger, and they all hated it. Them hating on it made me want to try and make it stick even more, so when it came time to name the GIF project, the choice was obvious.

How do you make your GIFs?

JK: At first, it was all made in Photoshop. I’d hunt around for interesting images, cut them up, and animate all in PS. I’ve slowly started using After Effects more-and-more, but there’s some quality issues that I don’t like with it—it’s too clean! I like a slightly messier aesthetic. But, it does save me tons of time, so now somewhere around I’m 50/50.

What brought you to these specific sets of paintings?

JK: It goes back to making GIFs every day for an entire year - it was a real struggle finding inspiration for what to animate, so I would do these totally random google image searches where I would pull out whatever struck a chord. At some point I noticed that I kept going back to these specific paintings, and noticed that the inspiration got easier. I find the paintings from that era to be quite comical on their own, especially those of the Northern Renaissance, and that they were a perfect muse in helping me say what I wanted to say.

What has the response been?

JK: Pretty amazing. During that first year I figured that I may be able to find a gallery show where I would project them all once it was all done, and that would be that. But, as time went on, I couldn’t see myself ending it. I was having way too much fun. Now, this whole silly project has turned in to a career. Definitely lucked out.

You produced a book out—can you tell me something about it?

JK: Do You Like Relaxing? came out a few years ago, and it is (we think) the first ever (and perhaps only) physical book of animated GIFs. It presents itself much like any old art book, with still images and such, but you can animate a good chunk of them on your device using an augmented reality app. It all came about when I was looking around for someone to help me out with an AR project I was trying to pitch, and a friend introduced me the Antesim (the publisher), who were looking for someone to do an AR book with.

What motivates you?

JK: Not entirely sure. Not to sound too clichéd, but at times art feels as if it’s something I need to do. If I haven’t made something in a while, I tend to get this uneasy feeling. In a sense, I just really love making stuff, and don’t feel whole unless I’m working on something.

What’s next?

JK: No idea. I’m sitting on a couple projects that will slowly roll out over the next year that I’m really excited about. One of which is another book, but this time it’s in collaboration with some writers who wrote this fun story. One thing that’s been on my mind is that I would love to experiment a little more, and get back in to posting on my socials a little more regularly, which, for me, I think go hand-in-hand.

You can buy the book Do You Like Relaxing? or follow Scorpion Dagger on Instagram or Facebook or see more of Kerr’s work here.
 

 
See more from Scorpion Dagger plus and interview, after the jump…