Something from the weekend

Inspired by pics of Michael Caine and Alicia Keys!

James Jean and Tara McPherson

I've been to quite a few comic 'do's over the last couple of years (check out the events on www.paulgravett.com, so many cool things going on) but tonight I went to a really cool one - no waffle, really informative and entertaining...
It was basically talks by James Jean and Tara McPherson on their work. Now I'm a massive fan of James Jean, so I was very excited about that. James came on second, so first up was Tara. She's a cool pretty rock chick person who seems to draw the same girls over and over again, but in a very appealing stylish way. Very 'now' and a bit 'emo'. She was lovely (altho considering we only had a limited time in the room I could have lived without her fiddling about with her mobile and playing a couple of short movies on how she hangs paintings for a show).
James was incredible - I mean, like Adrian Tomine, I thought he would be a recluse, but he was very funny and engaging ('I slept my way to the top', 'this painting is quite soft and luscious like my hair'). So James talked us thru some of his work and how he got into the biz and a few anecdotes (a recent XMen painting earned him a five-figure sum...) and he also intimated that he's moved away from comics and into his surreal paintings.
What fascinated me, was how these guys just do their own thing and do incredibly well out of it. They both openly admitted that they can't be bothered drawing comics! They just like doing portraits.
So anyway, great stuff, very inspiring. Gonna do some drawing now.

Selling Spandex

I thought I’d do a little con report – following Sunday’s Comiket small press con at the ICA.
It was the first show I’d done in a couple of years. I used to really enjoy them when I was doing The O Men, but after 10 years, and 35 issues, it was getting hard to keep everything in print, plus people are less likely to 'get on board' as the numbers increase (however much I try to make O Men accessible), so I ‘retired’!
I’d been going to shows in the meantime as a punter, and was getting really inspired each time, so I’m glad I finally got back into the ‘scene’ to launch Spandex.
I was actually only there on Sunday for a couple of hours, due to a clash, but it was really worth going. I met some really nice people, and shared a table with Mr Paul Rainey, who is very entertaining company. Spandex seemed to go down well, and I was happy to sell some copies – and actually gave some freebies away to people who had no money on them. Bad ‘business sense’, I guess, but I’d rather someone actually read it than leave it to fester unread on a coffee table (or bin). I was a little embarrassed when some kids started to come up and look thru my stuff – it’s very adult!!
On a whim, I also took a few O Men copies, and they went down well too – and it was nice to meet people who had really been into O Men (and I mean really into it!!!). It actually made me want to do some more O Men comics sooner than I’d planned... I’ve actually kind of shelved O Men away in a part of my brain, to an extent where I can’t remember much about it! A guy at the con was talking about an old storyline, and I actually couldn’t rememeber it! That’s quite sad...
My favourite moment though was when I was leaving (ha ha carry on reading) and I put some Spandex fliers on the table near the entrance – and while I was packing my bag, a lady went straight up to the table and grabbed one straight away – it seems to be attracting people at least!
I bought some nice wares too. I was very pleased to get my hands on the final two parts of Necessary Monsters, and I checked out Howard Hardiman’s comics (very intense, but impressive), plus I got my hands on Solistic Pop, which is a gorgeous collection. Shame I wasn’t there longer so I could have met more people and bought more stuff.
The only downside was the venue – dark, windowless, hot, crowded – I felt like we’d all been rounded up and were about to be exterminated or something... Death to the small press!!
But anyway, thanks to Paul Gravett for organising this show, and also for adding ‘the launch of Spandex’ as one of the highlights on the program flier – what an honour!!

The X-Factor – my two-pence

Well what a shocker! In case you didn’t know, the ratings/headline-grabbing X-Factor ‘twins’ (who can’t sing or dance but are fairly entertaining) were in the ‘bottom two’ with ultra-talented Welsh girl Lucie last night...
The decision came down to Simon Cowell who has said he has hated the twins all along – and he effectively decided to get rid of Lucie from the competition.
I need to get some stuff off my chest!
First of all, all the people saying ‘but this is a singing competition’ - well yeah, it’s about talent, but it’s all about the X-Factor. Are Robbie Williams and Madonna excellent singers? No they’re not. Pop is about more than singing, it’s about presence and charisma too.
And now onto Simon Cowell. I like the guy, he speaks the truth, but he did expose himself as a lying hypocrite last night – he effectively sacrificed a talented young girl’s career just for ratings. Seeing her crumble into tears on stage was very sad and disturbing.
But for a few weeks now, Simon has started to grate on me, because his nasty words have a real weight behind them. He’s like a bully – and when he (falsely) criticises someone (purely to swing the audience against them), the audience will take note and start to believe what he says. His words hold a lot of weight.
And for him to say ‘I’m basing this decision purely on the sing-offs’ was utter rubbish. Lucie sang her heart out, while Jedward jumped about like two desperate men who knew it was their last performance. Plus Simon was apparently talking to the Producers just before he made his decision...
So I think the show crossed a line last night - putting the audience’s wishes behind those of the ratings. The Jedward 'joke;, as much as I like them, has worn thin and I’m bored of them now. But how Simon can happily show himself to be a liar, a hypocrite and a deeply uncaring ‘human’ being, is absolutely beyond me...

Spandex - first internet review!!!

Woooooo!
"The next big thing in comic books. 9/10"
Check it out here!!!
From http://totalscifionline.com/reviews/4221-spandex

Music!

It’s been an amazing year for albums. I want to mention two albums in particular in a bit, but let me just waffle on for a while...
So yes, anyway, not one but two albums from Tori! Plus new albums from loads of my faves like Kings of Leon (a bit over-rated), Bats for Lashes (better than the first one), Regina Spektor (awesome), Jenny Owens Young, Florence and the Machine (a bit shouty), Imogen Heap (disappointing!), La Roux (great!), Lisa Hannigan (disappointing!), Neko Case (awesome), PJ Harvey (not bad), Tegan and Sara (cool), The Veronicas (oh dear), Yeah Yeah Yeahs (amazing) and Karen O (cool).
Plus it was a year where I discovered the amazing Katherine Edwards, Sarah Slean, St Vincent and Paramore.
And I was online the other day and discovered that a couple of my faves – Mindy Smith and Catherine Feeny – had new albums out and I’d had no idea! (I’ll never forget when I was a kid and I loved Edie Brickell and I was so thrilled to find her 2nd album in the Virgin Megastore in Birmingham – I had no idea there even was a new album. I think it’s moments like that that you try to recapture in life... It’s one of my favourite albums of all time.)
So yes, a great year for music (for me lol), altho not so much for my bank balance. Scary but true, sometimes I spend more money in a month on music than I do on food...
But I just wanted to mark out two new albums in particular...
First up is Nerina Pallot’s The Graduate.

Now as you may know, I like my angst-ridden women, and Nerina kind of falls into that category. So I heard she had a new album out - ‘meh’ I thought... Started to see some live songs she’d put on her website – ‘blimey she doesn’t half witter on’, I thought. I got the album, which was quite strong... I decided to see her play a gig – not that I was all that bothered, but some of the tracks on the album were lovely and she was playing at the ICA, which I thought would be a nice venue (it wasn’t that nice!). I was expecting a drab night of wittering-on...but my god!!! Incredible!!!! She rocked!!! She was amazing! Really gave me a complete new perspective on her, and in particular some of the songs on the album that are a bit weird. For instance, the bizarrely ‘up-tempo’ ‘I Don’t Want to Go Out’ is actually a piss-take... In the gig she also did an Elton John medley which sounds crap but it was astonishing!!!
But anyway, yes, fab album – Human is one of the best songs you’ll ever hear, When Did I Become Such a Bitch is a stormer – the only clunker is English, where I’m not sure what message she’s trying to convey. I think it’s a bit of a mis-calculation to be honest...
I don’t really understand why she released Real Late Starter as the first single – there are so many better songs on the album!!!
Anyway, take a look at this live take on Human. Fast forward to 2.30 if you want to avoid the wittering (it’s such a great idea to do these live promotional versions, but the wittering is really annoying!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbFIBltiZUw
Second album worthy of mention is The Temper Trap’s Conditions. If you’ve not heard of them...well you probably have! Their current song Sweet Dispostion, is one of those tracks you hear on the radio and love, but you don’t know what it is!

It’s Q Magazine’s fault that I avoided this album, because they described the album as sub-U2, blandly epic. Luckily I heard more at the weekend and my god, it’s amazing!!! It’s like a cross between Radiohead and Bloc Party (who I think I’m bored of now) (also a teeny bit of Scissor Sisters) - but it’s kind of what they should be doing now (instead of BP and RH slowly disappearing up their own backsides). It’s such a fantastic album, although it’s a shame it’s only 10 tracks long (one of which is an instrumental, and there’s Sweet Dispostion too, which I’ll probably over-listen to very soon...)
Anyway, check out this awesome awesome video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MltGXUcq-fs

How I spent my Sunday

Some new pics here, that i've had bubbling away in my brain...
They're actually all modelled on poses of famous actors and actresses - a prize if you know the originals (they're really obscure lol). The Diva one is loosely based on the Hello Boys ad thingy, I'll give you that one.
I hope, by basing some of my pics on photos, that I'm not going to get a reputation as the next Greg Land hehe - they really are only loosely based... inspirations.