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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Portraits and Music Recordings

I've been scrambling the last couple of days trying to get this:

ready for MOCCA this weekend. It clocks in around fifty pages, and will cost $5. But you know what? I woke up this morning and my voice felt so darn good that I just had to sit down and record a couple of songs. Both are covers of other people's songs, but I tried to put my own twist on them. The first, Devotion, is a B-side from Weezer's glory days, and the other is my favorite song on the Sixteen Candles soundtrack, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want by the Smiths. Give 'em a listen!

Devotion

Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

I owe these recordings to Alec Longstreth, who recently posted some of his own and got me (and quite a few other people, I imagine) thinking about how much fun it is to make music.

Also, for you folks going to MOCCA this weekend, I've been making 4 x 6 ink portraits of various persons of interest... at least they're of interest to me. I've done a few: Rafael Sabatini, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Barrie, Jeffrey Farnol, Terry Gilliam, John Huston, J. K. Rowling, George MacDonald Fraser, C. S. Forrester, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stewart Granger, Rudyard Kipling, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold so far, as well as these three:

Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo:


P.C. Wren, author of a number of great Foreign Legion novels, the most famous of which being Beau Geste:


Akira Kurosawa, the director of such legendary films as The Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo:


As you can see, my choice in subject matter is relatively esoteric, but if anyone wants to commission a particular writer, director, actor, cartoonist, etc, and can ask me before Thursday night (I leave Friday morning) then I'll have it for you at MOCCA. I'm making them so that people who want my original art can afford it (they'll run $10 apiece, less for a good trade) and they're the perfect size for affordable framing. So let me know! I hope to eventually do a couple of hundred or so and amass them in a book. When I get back I'll start a portrait gallery on my web site.

Anyway, find me if you're going to Mocca! I'll be at the One Percent Press table.

4 comments:

Lindy said...

i want a shoot the moon book...

Chad! said...

Chris!

I loved the song Devotion back in Weezer's "glory days"...well done man...loved the cover!

the portraits are looking great man...wish I could head up to Mocca as well...alas tis not to be...have a great time!

...Chad!...

Anonymous said...

awesome job chris. awesome song choices too. please please please has always been one of my all time favorites. it is so simple, yet so emotional. and i love how it was used in sixteen candles and also an instrumental version in ferris bueller. and i had the pleasure of seeing morrissey live a few weeks back and i almost fainted when they played this classic.

Chris Schweizer said...

Wow! I never put it together that that was the museum song - I don't know why, it's just been so many years since I've seen the film. I always thought it was some Tangerine Dream song or another. No idea why I thought that. Now I want to watch it again.