Leporine Trespassing
Clips (musical and metallic) and two guys in makeshift space suits
Greetings, Friends of Bizarro.
This morning, we spotted a nearly human-sized rabbit who seemed to be hiding brightly colored plastic ovoids around the neighborhood. I opened one and found it filled with stringy plastic packing material (also brightly colored) and smaller egg-shaped objects wrapped in foil. I felt as if I’d entered a surrealist fever dream, so I’m going to draw the curtains and spend the rest of the day having a serene lie-down with my phone’s white-noise app whooshing in the background.
Before that, however, I’m sending off today’s newsletter to let you know that the latest blog entry has gone live. In addition to the most recent comics and commentary, it includes an inspiring quote from a wonderful French musician who’s no longer with us.
Since we last spoke, I’ve made many ink marks on paper. Some of them resembled medieval clerics, a bocce competition, an old-school diner, Medusa, and various office supplies.
I also had an unusually productive writing day, powered by caffeine. After I finish the next batch of gags, I’ll begin work on two new “theme weeks” for July or August. I’ve done weeklong riffs on a topic or approach before. They’re fun exercises for your cartoonist, and seeing how readers react to them is always interesting.
Looking Ahead & Looking Back
This enigmatic image will make sense in the context of the complete panel.
Today’s throwback art is a double (or is it quadruple?) portrait of Ferrante and Teicher, a pair of musicians whose long career began with wild experiments using prepared piano before evolving into a yawn-inducing (but more lucrative) puddle of easy-listening slush.
The foreground figures show them in their early days. This is the top layer of an animation cel painting. An inked drawing was photographed onto a piece of clear acetate, with the gray tones applied to the reverse side using cel-vinyl paints.
I used the same paints on Bristol paper for the background image, showing the duo in later years, when they looked like the smarmy lounge musicians they had become. I used a small piece of sponge to create the blue field behind them and the “crushed velvet” texture on their matching tuxedos.
The acetate painting was then overlayed on the color background to be scanned for printing. This technique was used for animated cartoons in pre-digital times, and I used it for hundreds of illustrations. Fortunately, that experience prepared me for later use of Photoshop’s layer feature.
Again With the Ancient Texts
Yet another CD review from Cool & Strange Music Magazine
Ferrante and Teicher - Blast Off!
Varese Vintage CD, 1997
The bins of used vinyl stores across the country sag under the weight of countless Ferrante and Teicher LPs. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t good for anything other than landfill. Throughout the 60s and 70s, these guys released album after album of lame piano duets in gloppy symphonic settings. However, early in their careers, fresh out of Julliard, they recorded a few LPs that were as experimental as any John Cage composition and as entertaining as a chihuahua with a bowlful of beer.
A handy guideline for judging the desirability of a given F&T record is to check the cover photos. If they’re wearing matching crushed velvet tuxedos, bad toupees, and worse mustaches, avoid them at all costs. On the other hand, if they look like nerds from chemistry class, or are sporting Ban-lon shirts, by all means, grab it.
Let’s apply this criterion to Blast Off!: They’re wearing horn-rim glasses and home-made “space suits” with fishbowl helmets and gardening gloves - looking more like the fathers of They Might Be Giants than smarmy hotel tinklers. Our litmus test would indicate that this is one great record. How bout that? It worked again!
For Blast Off!, the R&D team of piano pop applied Cage’s “prepared piano” techniques, along with primitive multi-tracking, to a few originals and several popular standards (”I Got Rhythm,” “Bye Bye Blues,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” etc.) successfully plopping the avant-garde right in the middle of the road. They plunk, hammer, strum, mute and rap on their Steinways, turning mere earthly pianos into an otherworldly orchestra. Truly remarkable work.
The CD also has four bonus tracks from Ferrante & Teicher with Percussion, their first album to employ additional musicians. These tunes are excellent, but in light of later excesses, one wishes they had remained a two-man band.
Here’s a particularly fun selection from Blast Off!
This Week in Bizarro History
Laffs From the Past
Last year on this date, we featured a handy reference book.
In April 2021, Bizarro presented one of countless gags related to music.
Thank you for your support, readership, pipe pics, comments, and questions. Please keep them coming. Your input makes the newsletter much better.
Keep an eye peeled for giant rabbits distributing plastic eggshells, and if you see one let me know that I wasn’t hallucinating, or at least I wasn’t the only one.
With best wishes from your cartoonist,
Wayno
Hi Wayno. I’m just going to comment on your editorial. I’m going to have my lunch and then listen to the music that you have here. I may get back to you. It seems derogatory (to me) to draw someone’s head hanging lower than it would be in normal life. I refer to the person (in black and white) in the lower left of the foursome above (color on top). The color pictures are interesting because, if I understand you correctly, they were taken from real photos. I’ve never worked with photoshop in my life but I’ve seen so many different pictures and videos attributed to it. It must be expensive. The last thing that I wanted to mention is your “white noise generator”. I built one of these in the 70’s, with earbuds, to sleep better. I would have traded my electronics learning for the ability to draw, in a heartbeat. John Hurlbut
I'm old enough that I remember making out furiously in somebody's basement rumpus room to Ferrante and Teicher playing "Green Fields," or something of that nature. It seemed romantic to us.