5 Questions with RON ENGLISH

I have to confess, I'm guilty. I've surrendered my cash (and health) to just about all the monsters that Ron English relentlessly wages art war on. I haven't been to a McDonald's in years, but when I drive by one I can still taste the Quarter Pounder With Cheese, and the oily fries. I own a few Disney movies on Blu-Ray. I smoke. When I was thirteen, I was a card carrying member of the KISS ARMY. Guilty as sin.

Having said that, I'm also aware enough to see the blistering truth in English's work. As far as I'm concerned, he's one of the most important artists working today. I assume anyone reading this blog already knows who Ron English is. He's among the finest guerilla artists of our time. His solo show "Seasons In Superbia" at the Corey Helford Gallery was the best exhibit I saw last year. He was just immortalized on The Simpsons for chrissakes! So, you can imagine my excitement when he answered the phone and agreed to do "5 Questions". Here's the thing though, if you had a chance to ask Goya five questions, it wouldn't be enough. You'd immediately want five more, and five more after that...and on and on. So I may have to start a new "5 More Questions" feature soon.

At any rate, here's how it went:

1) Your transition from photographer to "hyper-realist" painter seemed to happen effortlessly, and at lightning speed. Was there much of a learning curve, or were you able to hone your painting skills without much struggle?

Ron: Someone once told me that if you can draw, you can paint. I had been drawing photorealistic pieces on cardboard and staging them as environments in my photographs. I thought painting would be easy. The first painting I ever made, I sold. It was of Saint Basel's Cathedral. I was eight. A teacher bought it to show her students what an eight year old could do. But as far as New York Art World level painting, I really wasn't on terra firma until I was around 30 years old, four years after I began my quest to become a painter. I still struggle.

2) Have Disney and/or McDonald's ever tried to hire you?

Ron: I did art for The ESPN Zone in NYC. It was a series of 30 paintings that were mash-ups of art history and sports history. I also did a colab Stitch figure with Disney and a colab Mad Hatter figure. I brought 40 clowns to lunch at McDonald's, but they didn't try to hire me then or ever. Do you have any contacts at McDonald's? I was just thinking my little fat Ronalds would go good in Happy Meals. I'm sure they would be all about that.

3) Are you a KISS fan, or do you consider them emblematic of the insidious culture of branding?

Ron: Well, they probably merched out better than any band since The Beatles. Actually they probably have more merch than The Beatles ever dreamed of and you can bet your bottom dollar Gene gets his fair share of the profits. If I were a young band I would study my Kisstory.  It's really hard to make money off your music these days and having a lot of collectable merch available could help a lot. Personally I love little collectable chotchkies and would be pretty stoked if a band I love like MSI released little characters of themselves designed by an artist like Tara McPherson or Jeremy Fish. That would be cool, right?  I have a toy coming out with Chris Brown and a bust with Slash this year. I would love to do something with The Apples in Stereo or The Dandy Warhols. I have a band too, The Electric Illuminati. Maybe I should listen to my own advice and do an EI toy!

4) There was a painting in SEASONS IN SUPERBIA that had a tiny little Warhol skull framed and hanging inside a doll house. There were these little white blotches across it. It's really been bugging me. Was that an accident...or am I missing your intent?

Ron: It is supposed to be reflections from lit windows in another building. Probably too confusing.

5) Assuming you have an iPod, what song has the highest play count?

Ron: The Eels' "Mr. E's Beautiful Blues".

Thanks Ron!

All photos taken at The Corey Helford Gallery by KrossD

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

I was just reading about the closing of  EAR-X-TACY in Louisville. So, us music dorks have lost another great gathering place. We lost another holy shrine.

In honor of EAR-X-TACY, I am re-publishing here, a blog I originally wrote 4 years ago on Myspace (remember them?), then later posted on FoundTrack. At the time I wrote this, Benway Records had just closed and I was having a hard time coping with it. It might sound silly to anybody who doesn't have this aural affliction, but the closing of a record store can really feel like a death in the family. It hurts.

Here's the original post in it's entirety:

                                                       FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

The first record I ever bought with my own hard earned allowance was DESTROYER by Kiss. I could make some shit up and try to tell you it was The Stooges FUNHOUSE or Patti Smith's HORSES but I was 11 for Chrissakes!  No, it was Kiss.

 First of all, there's that cover. Four alien, super-powered freaks apparently dancing on the scattered remains of some city (Detroit?) decimated by the havoc that Kiss hath most surely wrought. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wish they had thought of this.  Then there are the songs. "Detroit Rock City", "Flaming Youth", and the raging hormone fantasy of "Do You Love Me?"  When you're eleven years old, and you've liked girls since you could draw breath, but you also collect comic books, so girls just think you're a dork…well, you need Kiss!

 I bought that record at a Licorice Pizza in Hawthorne, California. I think it's a Subway sandwich shop now. But then, holding that record, staring at that cover, riding home on my bike, album tucked under my arms, putting it on, blasting the speaker, well,  I've just never been the same since.

 That day I contracted my first addiction, records. An obsessive search for musical ecstasy and redemption began. How that search ruled my life, and led me to the Ramones, The Clash, Bessie Smith, Minor Threat, Nina Simone, Fats Domino, PJ Harvey and a cast of thousands is better suited for a book rather than a blog.

 The point of all this is, in case you haven't noticed, the record store, as a concept, as a dream, as a haven, as an endless sea of possibility, hell, as a fucking business, has died. All of it. Gone!

 Music just doesn't seem to matter to people anymore. They don't care much about art at all. They don't care how it sounds. They don't want liner notes. They don't care who engineered Led Zeppelin II or who did that god-awful mix of Raw Power. Just compress as much memory into some little chunk’o’plastic as you can and be on your way. Which won't be far because…why would you leave the house?

 My favorite record store ever was Soundsations, in Culver City. It still exists, in a lesser form,  in a different location, but in the late seventies, on Sepulveda, it was run by this really great guy who had very obvious…um, challenges in his life. The gossip was that he had done too much acid in the sixties and it attacked portions of his brain, rendering certain physical functions problematic. That's believable. Here's the thing though, that guy knew everything there was to know about rock music. He knew it all. Blind Willie McTell? He'd tell you what kind of shoes he wore. It was sometimes hard to understand him and when you didn't, he would get royally pissed. I have a vague memory of him throwing something at me once. I loved that guy. He refused to sell me Boston’s “Don’t Look Back”.  He protected me. It was because of him, I first heard John Cale's paranoia epic "FEAR". I bought "Trout Mask Replica" from that guy.

 I don't know where he, is now but I bet he's unhappy. He didn't belong anywhere, except a record store. It was the only place he was at home. In his room, surrounded by great art, that's where he was okay. He was just like me.

 You couldn't get me out of a record store.   I spent a good portion of my adult years working in vinyl dins of inequity.  I started at Tower Records (dead).  I worked at Music Plus (dead), The Wherehouse (gasping for air), Vinyl Fetish (the Cahuenga store isn't worthy to spit-shine the Doc Martin boot of the former Melrose location), I even worked for that pathetic Mall canker sore Sam Goody (mercifully reduced from 1300 stores to 191). If you couldn't find me selling records, you could find me shopping for records,  at Go-Boy (gone), or Moby Disc (being given life support by Django’s), or Aron’s (one of the best, buried alive by Napster).

 In recent years, with my horizons fading to black, you could find me at Amoeba (very dangerous place that)…or Benway Records.

 Benway was not the gargantuan monolith that Amoeba is, but Benway was everything a record store needs to be. You didn't go into Benway looking for one specific thing. On any given day, you could scour the bins and dig up some long forgotten jewel or some obscure critic fave you wanted to debunk, a Misfits t-shirt, and an Operation Ivy button. Whether it was Ron or Kelly at the front of the house, you had a fellow opinionated rock geek to commiserate with, rant with, inform and learn with. If I told Kelly that Ozzy's "Black Rain" album didn't entirely suck if you skipped the power ballad, she'd put it on and play it LOUD!!  I got all four of Camille Rose Garcia's dolls there. Sure, I could've gotten them at Wacko but I wouldn't have also come away with the Violent Femmes cover of the Tom Waits song "Step Right Up", like I did at Benway.

 When Aron’s had their going out of business sale, I took advantage of it like any vinyl junky would, but when Benway was closing, I couldn't do it. I couldn't pick over the bones of a friend like that. It was just too sad. It hurt too much. 

 So dear readers, the record store as dream factory has died. My safe-haven is gone. There are a lot of reasons why this has happened. It goes deeper than technology. More than anything else, I think we're just spoiled, fat, and lazy. Give me convenience or give me death! It's just too much trouble to pull the vinyl, clean the record, drop the needle, flip the record, and then there's all that listening you have to do. We have developed a ring tone attention span, and are hurtling ourselves into an artless coma. So, generation (why), as Sleater Kinney said, "you're no rock-n-roll fun."

 I defined myself in record stores and mosh pits. They were my church.

Amoeba will probably survive awhile what with all the neon and sheer girth but Benway's closing symbolizes for me the last clenched fist on the vinyl precipice opening up and letting go. I'm going to miss talking to Kelly in our natural habitat. I miss Benway already.

As I write this Joy Division is reaching the crescendo of “Day of the Lords" on my turntable.

                   

                   "This is the room, the start of it all

                     Through childhood, through youth, I remember it all,

                     Oh, I’ve seen the nights filled with blood sport and pain.

                     And the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained.

                     Where will it end? Where will it end?

                     Where will it end? Where will it end?"

 That means "Isolation" is next, so I should go get a “lighter head for my heavy heart”. Soon it'll be time to flip the record.

Keith Ross Dugas

11/01/2007