Alternative Comics And Music

STREET PAINTING TO MUSIC

scene from HEY APATHY! Book Two

still from HEY APATHY! time lapse video 3.5 HOURS with Mike Parsons

Yesterday I posted a few portraits of my musical heroes and mentioned some strange stories about playing their music in the middle of the busy streets. I have also incorporated this passion of mine into the HEY APATHY! comics. In the books I use a little seance machine (a portable radio) to summon the spirits of dead musicians. This little narrative device allows me to give clues as to what kinds of music I enjoy and permits me to intermingle or discuss stories about the the musician's themselves as I often do while performing. I consider the "ghosts" to be a representation of the internal imaginary dialogue I have with these artist's when ever I listen.

The first picture depicts the morning's routine out on the street, setting up , watching people, and pressing play... note the upper left hand corner of the panels and you'll see me summon one of my dead musician friends. The second photo is a picture of me painting out on Queen West. in downtown Toronto, the little black blur in the lower left hand corner is my ghetto blaster. Photo by Craig Boyko. I plan to post a web-page on my site dedicated to my artworks about music, but it's not a big priority right now. I did however complete sizing and pasting all the text for the first installment of monster comics and page 10 or something of the online comic book so a whole bunch of new comics are almost ready for you to read...

LIFE of an ARTIST ink portraits Francis Bebey

Francis Bebey & quote playing a flute of one note.

Another February day passes quickly away as I fill out forms, attach attachments, and rewrite proposals accordingly. I actually got quite ahead of myself in the submission processes today, completing not only those which are due immediately but venturing forth into the March deadlines as well. Unfortunately I hit a few minor set backs on the latter submissions which will require human assistance but today is a holiday. My inquires will have to wait until tomorrow. It's a good thing I got on this early, it would have been quite problematic to encounter these minor technical difficulties the evening the applications were due!

Anyways the day was productive enough that I was able to check out a website sent to me by my good friend Hunter Vaughan. Hunter is a long time friend and former fellow street artist whom I met out on the Queen West pavement. Hunter works in clay sculpture & pottery as well as saxophone, flute and percussion. (We practice music socially on a weekly basis with a number of other creative people) He is also an endless resource of information when it comes to world music and all oddities involving sound and performance. I got a wicked link from him this morning and was shortly thereafter introduced to Francis Bebey.

Francis is listed as a musician and writer and proves himself quickly in the little video I saw. I was so taken with this strange new (to me anyways) character that I could not but help capture his words and likeness in ink and post them here for all to see.I'm not going to describe the man nor the documented events , just check him out at www.keyofgrey.com/2010/02/francis-bebey-plays-a-one-note-bamboo-flute/ . If you're already familiar with Francis check out my website instead it is all about "savages in the city" http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ (how's that for a shameless self promotional segue!)

Life of a Canadian Artist

I saw IGOR's FireBIRD Suite on Friday Feb12 2010 !

Okay I'm about a day late on this post in the Life of a Canadian Artist, but this time of year I generally find my self writing endless proposals and booking all my shows for the upcoming season (two of these submission packages are due tomorrow!). As a result I usually have to sacrifice my drawing schedule for a couple of weeks in Feb. in order to handle all the bureaucratic paper pushing. Anyways I said to hades with it all this morning and put together this little sketch.


This drawing was inspired by a sequence of unusual and amazing circumstances which befell me over the past few days. I recently met my new house mates of whom I was previously informed were musicians. Naturally I rolled my eyes at the thought expecting a couple of pot-head techno DJ's or some wannabe fashion model mick jagoff impersonators, (I live in Kensington Market and this is pretty much all we ever get around here). So I finally bump into these fellas outside our home and they were actually nice and well spoken individuals. I told them of the rumours I'd heard regarding their profession asked them what kind of music they played. "WE ARE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL PERCUSSIONISTS" and I replied "Edgar Varese!" and Ed , my new house mate responded "Ionization!". If you don't know what I'm talking about look it up. One thing led to another and a few short days later I received a pair of tickets to see Ed & Dan play the "Firebird suite" at Toronto's new and magnificent KOERNER HALL.

Ed and Dan are part of The Royal Conservatory Orchestra of the Glenn Gould School and it rocked. The show consisted of 4 musical pieces including Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No1. in D major, Op 25 "Classique", a little watery throwback to nineteen century, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor, which I was unfamiliar with but am no longer (this stuff makes Sun Ra look like a Republican!) and a beautifully sung french piece entitled Sheherazade by composer Maurice Ravel. The show closed with the feature Igor Stravinsky's Firebird suite. The Firebird was (and always is) ridiculous. I haven't enjoyed myself so much in a long time ( rarely escaping my studio workload )and highly recommend any who have the opportunity to get out to the new Conservatory and experience some of this crazy music! THANKS Ed & Dan and orchestra and IGOR!!!

This is a picture of the hall from the program, really wish there was an orchestra playing though I think it would have looked way more interesting.



I've got a couple of other sketches & stories regarding this music/experience however I''ll have to save them for another day ... my application deadlines approach showing no signs of mercy