As has been my habit for the past 2+ years, when I’m in a foul political mood, I indulge some light-hearted K3 songs. Somebody was nice enough to put good quality K3 videos on YouTube, saving my site from the storage and bandwidth burdens. These are two of my favorites, with the original line-up, Kristel Verbeke (black), Kathleen Aerts (yellow), and Karen Damen (red) — the colors of the Belgian national flag.
In Love
Is There Somebody on Mars?
Aww, what the heck, here’s Tele-romeo…
These are two of the most versatile, talented, hardest-working and, yes, sexiest women in show biz. I am certain the only reason Karen and Kristel aren’t internationally famous is because they aren’t from England or America.
Yesterday, Christie’s auctioned a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $42,642,500. The painting is “OHHH… ALRIGHT…”, from 1964. I had to smile (maybe it was more of a smirk) when I read this in the catalog listing.
The seamless surface of Ohhh…Alright… may look as if it was rolled off a printing press in a matter of seconds, but it is actually the product of a long, painstaking procedure. Lichtenstein chose the original illustration from the DC comic book Secret Hearts, which Lichtenstein has made his own by subtly manipulating its content.
Attributing the source material that Lichtenstein used is undoubtedly thanks to the diligent research of David Barsalou, whose Deconstructing Lichtenstein project reveals what’s really behind Roy’s “monumental iconography.”
“Barsalou is boring to us,” comments Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation. He contests the notion that Lichtenstein was a mere copyist: “Roy’s work was a wonderment of the graphic formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by others. Barsalou’s thesis notwithstanding, the panels were changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact copy.”
Nonsense. I don’t deny that Lichtenstein had his own style, but “OH… ALRIGHT…” was copied from a panel in a DC romance comic-book that was drawn by Bernard Sachs, and Barsalou is the only reason why Christie’s acknowledges that. If Art is supposed to be about Truth, Deconstructing Lichtenstein is an essential resource.
The best, and most evocative, use of Lichtenstein’s work I have seen in another medium is by our own Miss Lia Pamina, featuring Margo Guryan’s sublime “Love Songs”.
Even in these recessionary times, there’s always something to buy! As featured previously here and also here, next week there’s a great new CD coming out, called Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records. It includes a track by Lon and Derrik Van Eaton, and at 5 minutes into this video from Ringo’s 1978 TV special, you’ll see Lon playing fantastic slide guitar on a rockin’ rendition of “Hard Times”. You can hear Ringo say, “All right, Lon!” Thank you, Elaine Staats for pointing this out.
Yes, that’s Carrie Fisher, a year after Star Wars, before cocaine started to wreck her. For me, 1978 was the year after my college graduation, which I didn’t attend. I was working in radio with Cactus Lizzie, and I was broke. I was living in a rented room in a finished basement, and I didn’t have a TV, so I missed the Ringo special, but I remember watching The Rutles with Bismo at his parents’ house.
The recordings that Frank Sinatra made with arranger Nelson Riddle are classics, but did you know that Riddle also once worked with the Doors? Riddle was the musical director for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and he backed up the Doors for a live performance of the song Touch Me.
