Downtown Skyline photo joins others for rich scenic Stumptown tapestry
Portland, OR – The ZehnKatzen Times – 29 April 2008 – An agreement was reached today that grants The Russ Belville Show rights to use Samuel John Klein's downtown Portland skyline photo Portland Skyline From Marquam Bridge as an element in the design of his web page, http://radicalruss.com.
The photo, taken from the back seat of a car hurtling over Portland's Marquam Bridge, shows off one of the best views of downtown Portland, complete with Riverplace riverscape and a dramatic afternoon sky scattered with typically Oregon clouds but still having vast, beautiful areas of blue.
"Much of the civic beauty that is Portland can be seen in this photograph" states the photographer, Samuel John Klein, a Portland-based graphic designer, artist, and writer. "We keep hearing from acquaintances who see this view what a lovely city Portland is, and why it has the reputation it does. We, quite naturally, agree."
The photo can be seen if one surfs to the show's web page and looks on the left end of the rotating tag-line picture strip, just below the page header itself, where the image itself stands proudly aside other beautiful and famous images of Portland.
The Russ Belville Show is helmed by its namesake, who uses the nom de broadcast "Radical Russ", and broadcasts nationally via XM Satellite Radio channel 163 and locally to the Portland market from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM Saturdays via Portland's Progressive Talk KPOJ AM 620, who has a fast, frequently funny, and always witty and lively view of progressive issues and the news of the day. It's also available via free podcast (you can also subrscribe to this via the iTunes store. We do.).
933. Continuing with the general television bent we've aquired around here lately, it has latterly occurred to me that a dream job would be designing a TV station's logo and identity.
I'd give my right arm for this. Failing that, i would also accept money.
I have very little experience with it, guys, but any local takers?
I have Adobe Illustrator! I'm kind of half serious about this! Or maybe more than half!
884. As usual, the theme is something I'm taking forward with me into a drudegery-filled weekend in order to make it a little more survivable. This time, the Peter of the Gabriel.
Like a whole lot of music consumers of the day, being raised at the time on top-40, I had a limited awareness of the British supergroup Genesis (my loss, since rectified). What I therefore had no way of knowing was of the huge role that Peter Gabriel had in it, nor his inimitable sense of artistic style, which is why when his song "Shock the Monkey" became popular and started to get heavy rotation on MTV. This was in 1982.
To this day I'm not sure I even like the song really. But I can't resist listening to it, even today. And if I see the video playing (which you can probably find on YouTube). I'll always pause to take the whole thing in.
In 1986, Gabriel broke a string of self-titled, avant-garde'ish solo albums with a sparely-designed album sparely titled: So. Compared to what I've heard of his previous effort, it was almost unabashedly commercial, but since Gabriel was as Gabriel did, it didn't sound like a sell-out; it was listenable but still had all the interesting quirks and influences and experimentation that made Peter Gabriel's music what it was.
The song "Sledgehammer" was an interesting bean, notably opening with the sound of a shakuhachi flute, then going right into a brass-heavy blues sound. The lyrics were fun and entendre-laden:
You could have a steam train/If you just laid down your track/You could have an aeroplane flying/If you'd bring your blue sky back...
But the real triumph of "Sledgehammer" was in video form. In the 1980's, having a good song was one thing; having a good song backed up by a killer video took you to the top. And "Sledgehammer" has a killer video:
Watch it, then, we'll discuss.
The joke of the video is that it took the lyrics and purified them. In each scene, the metaphoric content is represented literally, making it a sweet, fun, jokey sort of song. It couldn't be otherwise–the human/animation of the video had a power that couldn't be denied.
The power of the content arrested so much attention over that year that it seemed to be in heavy rotation on MTV nearly all that year, from the time it was released. In 1987, it garnered (according to Wikipedia):
...nine MTV Video Music Awards, a record which still stands as of 2007. It ranked at number four on MTV's 100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made (1999). MTV later announced that "Sledgehammer" is the most played music video in the history of the station. "Sledgehammer" has also been declared to be MTV's number one animated video of all time.
It's impossible not to watch it, once you stumble on it. There's so much going on in every frame you want to go back and look at it again, just to make sure you don't miss anything.
Technically, the video's most obvious technique is "pixilation" (which must be distinguished from pixelation, which is what happens to a GIF or JPEG when you zoom in on it, or pixelization, which is how they obscure faces and logos on shirts on television). Pixilation is essentially an stop-motion technique in which your subject is a person; the person becomes the stop-motion puppet.
For many of the stills in the video, Gabriel had to lay prone, under a sheet of glass, over a process that took some 16 hours, according to the legend. Staging in this way explains quite a few visual aspects of the video, such as how in several animated scenes, Gabriel's face doesn't exactly look like it's quite being pulled by gravity in the traditional way, and how so many of the other stop-motion effects seem to magically maintain themselves in from of his face (the produce and the woodwork, most notably).
Many (if not all) the stop motion effects were done, in their pre-Wallace & Gromit days, by Ardman Animation, who, like Jim Blashfield, has a long and famous history with the music video. This would explain the familiarity of the stop-motion clay animation in the late-middle third of the video.
860. Once again, I'm going to show you what I'm taking with me into a dreary, drudge-job weekend to preserve the sanity.
In 1987, a certain Australian group hit the American pop charts in a big way, with the following video:
I give you (via YouTube) the 1987 international hit "Electric Blue", from the album Man of Colours, by the group Icehouse. Their history is interesting, in as much as they were a local Sydney band that made good, starting with spot-on covers of currently-popular artists such as Brian Eno.
The leader, Iva Davies, was classically-trained, and came to form a band called Flowers. After gaining a strong fan base around Sydney, they went international, changing thier name to after a popular single of theirs to avoid confusion with a similarly-named Scottish band; the album marking the change looks as though it was an album by Flowers called Icehouse...or maybe, because of the ambivalent weighting of the title and the band name on the album art, it was an album by Icehouse called Flowers.
Either way, it began the identity of the band which, much like Jeff Lynne and E.L.O., would essentially become, largely, a vehicle for the creative efforts of a single man. Throughout the history of Icehouse, Davies wrote the vast majority of Icehouse's output with some notable exceptions ("Electric Blue" was co written by John Oates...yes, that John Oates (who also provided guest-backing vocals).
Icehouse still exists today, as the rock-band creative front-end for Iva Davies, who has become something of a rock legend in the Great Southern Land; netting a neat handful of awards for such things as contributing to television and movie soundtracks (he collaborated on the Master and Commander movie), and recieving (as Icehouse) induction into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2006. A musical polymath, he has performed with Sydney dance and symphony companies as well as written extensively for them (the stage show Berlin; the album The Berlin Tapes, as apropos).
But, about that video...yes, that is yet another '80s-style mullet (which, as a commenter over on YouTube noted, was both the best and the worst Aussie mullet ever). What really shines through is the casual fun that the rest of the band is having while the lead singer (Iva) seems to operate on another plane, though still connected with his band mates.
Particularly amusing is the way the sax-player hangs about, waiting for his time, and then gets busy.
And, of course, that cute young woman, staple of the 80's power-ballad video, there completely for show (of course, it's her eyes we're wondering if something's hiding behind...but she, like the lead singer, seems to be operating on another level from the rest of the players).
Still, it all unifies into a signature style that instantly dates it from the middle of the 1980's.
That all being said, Man of Colours is quite an enjoyable album. The current version is an Australian import, complete with five bonus tracks and two additional extended/dance mixes of the songs "Crazy" and "Electric Blue", both fine and listenable songs and reputedly their two biggest hits.
Man of Colours is also well-represented on YouTube, as is a great deal of Icehouse output. Do a search on YouTube for some 80's music deliciousness.
And that's all for this Attack of the 80's. Thanks for tuning in.
847 As we face the weekend (which most of you will play whilst I work) I go into it equipped with a bit of my happy: one of the more underrated videos of the 80's: Daryl Hall's "Foolish Pride", from his 1987 solo effort Three Hearts In The Happy Ending Machine:
I love the song and like the imaging and the pacing of the video. The dark background and the blue neon are, of course, all that's needed to distinguish this song as Live from the 1980's (1986, to be exact. This was a Billboard #1. If it weren't for "and Oates", Hall would be a one-hit wonder). That, and Daryl Hall's hair, anyway.
While I do love this video and the music gets under my skin in the good way, it's loaded with 1980's stylistic conceits that verge on the OTT. You'll
Gasp as you gaze on the coordinated yellow jackets of the backup singers!
Palpitate at the stern looks of the backup singers!
Attempt to initiate a fight-or-flight response when you see the hexagonal electronic drum heads!
Giggle uncontrollably when Daryl gives that little hiccupy "Uh!" about halfway through his first verse!
Be Stunned (like a clubbed baby seal) at the incredibly wide range of emotions portayed by Daryl Hall's face–all the way from Over The Top™ to Waaaay Over The Top™. Accept no substitutes!
Still, I wish I had that hair. It's been long...but never that good.
