Friday, January 23, 2009

Which of these should be the cover for 3,000,000 Rejected Operas?

If you have an opinions, please lemme know. I love opinions.        










                                                                          















Posted by at

3 comments:

roconnor said...

Aren't you afraid of being mistaken for Daniel Johnston?

January 24, 2009 at 12:20 PM
Patrick Hambrecht said...

Yeah, that's why I sat on all this stuff for 8 years.

Regarding the Johnston thing: If you break it apart overall, it's pretty bad: I draw the same images I'm attracted to (guys with suits, guys with suits with guns, angry dogs, Old Testament types, Bible pictures, guys with swords, empty cities, barren countryside) over and over in a crude self-taught style, my brain is dominated by comic books and the Bible, I record weird lofi songs often in a high plaintive voice, etc.

I think in some ways, FF was a delibrate attempt to go counter to these impulses.

But it seemed even MORE phony not to release 8 years of recordings, because they might sound like someone else.

The excessive macho "yarghs!" and growling howling I do in FF is probably to do the opposite of this, or is sort of the other side of it all.

I think it just comes down to a certain type of brain being strongly traumatized (i mean that in a good way) by a religious upbringing. The bible is made to strongly traumatize, to create a sort of spiritual/mental feedback loop, so that's not really so weird. It did it's job, and I like thinking about Jesus and Bible stuff, so I'm not unhappy. But I think there's something about certain types of comic books for people who are more sensitive to certain aspects of the Bible that strongly resonates.

Sadly, the new breed of emo comics, where somebody draws themself as a casually dressed dog, with really nice clean lines, wandering around their urban city, talking about their girlfriend or whatever, does nothing for me. I wasn't made for these new comic times, and am back to reading pulpy violent stuff instead of alternative stuff. Alternative stuff has lost all it's hysteria and surreal expressionism, it's much too healthy to relate to.

Speaking of Marvel Comics and Bible, have you noticed that Obama is starting to talk more and more like Thor or Dr. Doom? I hope he keeps doing that. His acceptance speech was a long string of those titles that Stan Lee used to write for FF... "For it shall be... A Mutant!" Obama actually says shall.

I know Obama's a big Marvel comics fan...I wonder what kind of music he'd self-record?

Also, regarding the cover art: If I'm doing a solo album, getting someone else to paint the cover seems wrong.

I could draw better too, if I did it the right way, learned to pencil and then ink, but I think that not inking what you feel the first time and making it count seems like cheating. Just for me. I dunno. I hate tracing lines, it seems so self-editing and phony. The line you draw comes out of your brain, and you don't know exactly how it's going to born, and it's sort of magic. Then when it's done, it seems rude to erase it.

I realize that's a dumb way to look at things, but I just don't like that whole sketchbook thing where you draw lots of lines to form the line you want, and everything looks like it has lots of gross hairs growing out it, bushy and whiskery. Like the world has mold or scraggly, spikey moss growing on it. Yuck. Repulsive. I like sharp, intensive, clean lines that wave around and bounce into each other.

January 24, 2009 at 1:16 PM
Patrick Hambrecht said...

I realize that I said I both like and then don't like clean lines. What I mean is I that I like clean, kind of vibrating lines, like Dame Darcy or Louise Fitzhugh or Charles Crumb. Lines that kind of vibrate with a psychedelic tension. Cave painting lines. I don't like emo clean lines.

January 24, 2009 at 1:27 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)