Diableries

Hell doesn't seem too unpleasant in these pictures. It almost looks like fun. Find out more here.

USO 'Letter Home' Record (1944)

A few years ago, I found a USO ‘Letter Home’ record in an antique store. It was recorded by a soldier, Private Edwin Platz, in 1944. These were individually pressed records that men in the service sent to their loved ones back home. I’m always hunting for unique and unusual records, but I was thrilled to find this, as it is truly one-of-a-kind. The surface of the record was badly cracked and damaged, but it did play amazingly well in a few spots. It’s almost seventy years old and was certainly not made to last. “Well, here I am again. I’m destined to follow you forever, I guess. (unclear) Well I got in town today and it’s about one 1:30. Cost me five bucks to get off K.P. for this afternoon. So you see, I do think of you a little bit, even if I don’t write all the time. I called Mom up tonight. She said she hadn’t heard from you for quite a while, so why don’t you try to write to her. A couple of guys here … I don’t know (unclear). He’s from Michigan. I believe (unclear) The other one (unclear) Peter Rabbit, just another moron, you know, like me. (unclear) Ow, that hurt. He hit me on the knee. Anyway, we had a lot of fun together back home (unclear) … the best of it. I finally made my (unclear) to (unclear) paratrooper (?) so it’s all settled (unclear). So if I drop down in front of your front yard in a parachute, well … don’t be surprised. (unclear) Well, I hope you’ll tell your folks hello, and, I can’t think of a heck of a lot to say that you don’t already know. I guess maybe I’d better (unclear) your day (unclear) when I get back (unclear) hold you in my arms again (unclear). Well, goodnight, darlin’.”

Cassette Box Collages (late 70's)

Hit Gardon

Not long ago, I found an album at a thrift store by Hungarian musicians The Sebo Ensemble, released sometime in the Seventies. The music is impressive, but what really caught my attention was in the liner notes -- the photos of this brooding hulk of an instrument. The instrument is an "utogardon", also called a "hit gardon". I've read that the hit gardon is carved out of one piece of wood, and while it has strings, it is played more as a percussive instrument. I've found no video of this one being played by the Sebo Ensemble, but you can see a somewhat less-striking one being played below.

Vintage Textbook Illustration #2

The cover of 'Fun With Chemistry' (Scholastic Books, 1971). I inverted the colors to make the second image.

SUNDAY SESSIONS

Some audio for the weekend. Be sure and visit next week -- I'm cleaning up a truly one-of-a-kind recording from 1944 for your listening pleasure.

Vintage Textbook Illustration #1

The front and back covers of "Electricity" (1960) by James Teason. I found this at the local library's used book sale.

"Roadside Attractions" (1979)

ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS from jim cheff on Vimeo.

I made this film in 1979 on super-8 film. I added the soundtrack much later, in 2012.

Another Thrift Store Treasure

Not a record this time, but a book -- 'Little Fur Family' by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Garth Williams (1946). It's a nice story, but it's the illustrations by Williams that really make this book so intriguing to me -- a mixture of cozy and eerie that I find enormously inviting. Here are two pictures from the book. I especially like the one of the fur child's moon-lit dinner.

The Focus Group - The Elektrik Karousel

A new release from Ghost Box is always something to look forward to.  They say this one will be available in May.

As The Crow Flies Backwards In Time

One of my favorite albums of 2011 was The Advisory Circle's 'As The Crow Flies.' I liked the album so much that I performed a tricky bit of time travel, and arranged for a copy of it to be given to my younger self, in 1968. I thought it would help me develop good taste in music at an early age. Yesterday, digging through a box of old memorabilia, I came across this photo, which captures the transmission of the album on film. My time travel apparatus hasn’t been functioning since that last outing. But at least I have this memento of its last successful mission.

Beginning The Word

beginning the word

Another Crow Road

ANOTHER CROW ROAD

Thin Places

I’ve been reading Julian Cope’s massive book “The Modern Antiquarian” since December. I’d love to visit the sites that Cope writes about – stone circles with names like Balgorkar or The Twelve Apostles of Ilkley Moor. But, until then, I am kept busy exploring the ancient and powerful places of my native Arizona. I’ve always had an interest in ‘thin places’ – places where the boundary between this world and the ‘other’ world seems to grow very thin indeed. I’m certain that this describes more than a few of the places in Cope’s fascinating book. Here are some photos of some of the thin places I’ve discovered in my travels through Arizona.

Film and Collage

Posting my 1979 film ‘Roadside Attractions’ this week on Vimeo got me thinking of my art school days. I was a Painting major, but I spent most of my time there making movies and animated films. I had good timing -- when I enrolled at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, they had just decided that their new film-making course would count as a Painting credit. All through high school I had been intent on becoming a painter. But I found myself uninterested in traditional painting just as I entered a school that was actually trying to teach it. Blame it on John Cage, and Dada, and the bevy of other new approaches to art I was finding out about at the time. But film-making suited me perfectly. My instructor had a passion for the experimental and the conceptual. We were shown early films like “Un Chien Andalou” (not a particularly easy film to see in the pre-youtube days, I assure you) as well as the more-recent films of Stan Brakhage and Harry Smith. And we were given the tools and the time to make our own super-8 films. You can see the Harry Smith influence in the animated cut-out portions of “Roadside Attractions,” and also a collage aesthetic that I would return to again and again, even after my interest in traditional painting resurfaced. From “Roadside Attractions”:

Another Crow Road

This is the graphic for "Another Crow Road," a new track I've added to my Soundcloud page. Crows make an impressive variety of sounds, and I've used them in more than a few recordings. I sometimes have no choice but to include them. Flagstaff is full of crows. They are always busy outside my work-room window, and they won't quiet down just because I want to record something. Click on the track's title to give it a listen. If you're interested in crows, you might enjoy this TED talk by Joshua Klein.

Roadside Attractions

"Roadside Attractions" is a ten-minute film I shot on super-8, back when I was an art student in 1979. You can watch the film here. The music is called "Sunday Sessions 5." You can hear it without the visuals on Soundcloud

The Musical Instrument Museum

One of the best gifts under the Christmas tree this year was this hardcover book: "MIM - Highlights from the Musical Instrument Museum." The MIM has over 15,000 instruments in its collection, and this book has beautiful photos of more than 200 of them.

"Chance Favors The Prepared Mind"

Chance can be a great source of ideas and inspiration in music. But it plays an especially benevolent role during visits to thrift shops. Many of the things I enjoy listening to most have been found, by chance, in such places. One of today's finds is shown below. I love the jacket design and the photo of four choir members dressed as the Musicians of Bremen. I'll be posting unexpected treasures like these on a regular basis. See and hear the choir perform here.

The Circle Pond

So far, the recording that's been listened to most on my Soundcloud page is "The Circle Pond." This is a photo of where the natural sounds on the track were recorded. The pond is not far from where I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, near the San Francisco Peaks. My wife and I got to the pond at dawn, she to take photos and me to record. You can't hear the five deer that were passing by, but the ducks were doing an interesting "call and response." Later, I added echo to the sound of my wife's camera shutter clicking, to get a solemn, drum-like effect. You can listen to "The Circle Pond" here.

Mary Farfisa, Audio Wrangler

I'm known mostly as a painter and a cartoonist, but my interest in music seeps into just about everything I do. "Mary Farfisa, Audio Wrangler" is a children's book I wrote and illustrated. It's about a girl who lives in Space. She is an "Audio Wrangler." Her job is rounding up radio waves from old BBC broadcasts. Mary is a big fan of Daphne Oram, and she lives on a moon she named Derbyshire -- a children's story for the Radiophonically inclined! You can read the whole story here.

I'm Thinking of A Place/Sunday Sessions

Some pictures to go with the audio recordings I've been posting on Soundcloud. You can listen here.