Friday, July 21, 2017

Stars and Stuff


I am finally at a place in my life where I am confident enough to actually tackle all the ideas I have. There was once a time when I'd simply write ideas down for "later", knowing that "later" was as good as never. Now I have so many ideas I have to prioritize them, which is awesome. The most exciting thing is to do these little tributes to the bands I love, and that list is infinite. (Sorry Big Country, I'm comin'.)

I got into The Psychedelic Furs after hearing "Love My Way" on the radio at an impressionable age. I remember the DJ playing some interview snippet that lumped them in with Echo & the Bunnymen because of the similarly pretentious arty monikers. (And as I write this, "Lips Like Sugar" follows the Furs on my streaming radio, and I'm kind of creeped out.) Although they are steeped in Molly Ringwald pop accessibility, the Psychedelic Furs are also dark and edgy and just impossibly cool. (See "Fall" and "Sister Europe" from the debut.) Richard Butler is also one of those doubly-inspiring creatives because he's a visual artist on top of being a top-notch musician. I think the first album I ever bought on vinyl was the US release of Forever Now. The band apparently hate the cover art on that version and the whole tracklisting is flipped. That sort of thing has become a pet peeve of mine as a record collector. Like, the album has to be dumbed down for America. Why can't I just hear it and see it the way the band intended!!? We ARE kind of dumb, but I digress.

A lovely friend later gave me Mirror Moves on cassette, and boy does that one go down smooth; not a stinker in the bunch. Seriously. "Alice's House"? Yeahhhhh. Also, here is a thought I had while working on this one: if I were famous, I think I'd go down the Tim Butler/Joey Ramone route and hide behind sunglasses at every opportunity.



Preliminary sketches and studies. Thinkin' about old west cowboys. The Furs actually sing about cowboys a lot? (Well, at least twice.)


The line-drawing stage.



"They're no fun at all."

No comments:

Post a Comment