Running Amok

I've just read on the Analogue blog that the Running Amok zine I made for them at the end of last year is included in a show in Norwich called D.I.Y. Issues 1 - 20 are on display until 22nd March at the Norwich Arts Centre. Mine is number 14. If you can make it along, have a look because it sounds quite good. If not, here are about half of my pages:

Analogue have been producing the zines for a while now. You can have a look at who's done what on the Running Amok page. Some are really amazing. Each artist is given free reign and 100 issues are printed. My issue, I'm happy to say, is sold out.

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Sideshow Flyer

Sideshow Flyer

For show at The Changing Room, Stirling
April 2007

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March News

Philadelphia is the news. My show opens on the 8th of May in Amble and I have some hard work to do. As usual, any sort of schedule is out the window and I'm preparing for a mental breakdown around the 18th of April. The only certainty so far is the title, which I will keep a secret for just a little while longer. The reason: no reason!

I'll be travelling out almost a year since my last visit, this time with my old friend Fergi. Philadelphia is a step up from other trips we've managed since school, which have included the wonderlands of Blackpool, Anstruther and, wait for it, Livingston. I'm pretty excited.

Apart from that, I've a few projects on the go that I can't really mention until they're final - which makes them no-news I suppose. Why am I telling you this? Because no-news is better than bad-news you dummy.

Coldman

Coldman

ink & acrylic on card
from "Take To The Woods" at Analogue, November 2007
(sold)

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Reggae Reggae Sauce

What day is it? Oh it's Thursday. I was hoping it was Monday so I could start a little "Music Monday" feature. Nevermind. This can be a little Thursday-teaser-tester.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been listening to quite a bit of reggae. I don't own very much (my iTunes says I have a mere 63 reggae songs) and I'm pretty clueless as to what's what, but the stuff I've got I really love. It makes me happy. So much so that kicking a broken old amp in my cupboard to make that squishy reverb noise has become a bit of a hobby.

For years my knowledge was limited to a Toots & The Maytals record that I bought for some long forgotten reason, until recently when I grabbed a couple of Trojan compilations and some other odds and ends. I particularly liked reading about how Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead completely immersed himself in the genre, on a mission to listen to something he knew nothing about. The compilation that he put together called "Jonny Greenwood Is The Controller" is really top of the pops:

There is a cloud that hangs over reggae though, more than almost any genre. It's the danger of becoming "a reggae guy". Those crusty, boring, student dudes are such a deterrent to the genre it's not funny. They suck! Don't become one of those guys. Did you know that it's possible to have a little reggae in your life without turning into someone people avoid at parties? Crazy but true!

While blindly clicking about like a silly man, not really knowing what I was looking for, I discovered the video above. It's of Lee "Scratch" Perry working in his Black Ark studio. It's bloody brilliant. Have a watch, and even if you don't give a monkey's about reggae you'll like it. If you don't, I'm afraid you're an idiot. Sorry to be the one to break the bad news.

Bah, this is not the most coherent thing I've ever written. It's really just an excuse to post that wee video, so you'll need to forgive me. I find writing about music a tricky business, because as a reader I ususally don't care what some chump on the internet thinks is wicked-cool.

A Terrible Secret. A Horrible Lie

A Terrible Secret. A Horrible Lie
ink & acrylic on card
from "Tenterhooks" at Analogue, 2007
(sold)


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Knitting & Crochet Bee

Kirsteen MacDonald, the Visual Arts Development Officer for The Changing Room has started a little knitting and crochet club at the Tolbooth in Stirling. I've made a flyer for it in a little envelope that can be used for swapping patterns and stuff. The Bee is on Wednesday nights and is open to all. I try to go myself when I can, despite being useless. I'll post the info here so the search engines pick it up:

Knitting & Crochet Bee
Wednesdays 5.30 - 7pm
Upstairs at the Tolbooth: all welcome
Jail Wynd, Stirling, FK8 1DE
For more info contact Kirsteen MacDonald
Tel: 01786 274005

If you're interested, either ping Kirsteen an email or get in touch with me and I'll tell you what I can. Here's a slightly clearer version with the details, will possibly get a better scan/photo of the other bit soon:


Go along if you fancy it, don't just sit on your bum. Everyone is really nice and there is usually some cakes and tea and stuff. If you would like some flyers to distribute anywhere, contact me.

Walking Hand

Walking Hand
ink on wall
from "Wanderlust" Philadelphia, 2007
(photo by Concetta Barbera)


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Jeremy Beadle Graffiti

This was drawn very large, and very somewhere it shouldn't be by my friend, who I'll call John Locke. I think it's fantastic and probably cheers lots of people up when they see it. John has been upping his game recently with lots of funny drawings, videos and prank phone calls.

When I was younger I remember being slightly disappointed when I discovered Jeremy Beadle wasn't really called "Jeremy Beetle" and I still think that's a better name. Oh well. Also, If we must mention the hand, the funniest thing I have read is someone saying this on a messageboard:

"Years of hard work in entertainment to be remembered for having a fucking ridiculous tiny fucking hand. The only reason I remembered his name is peeps used to do his hand in school photos."

Fairwell Jeremy Beetle. The jokes were inevitable, but it's a shame he died. He seemed alright.

The Handstand

The Handstand
ink & acrylic on card
from "Tenterhooks" at Analogue, 2007
(not for sale)

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Xbox 360

After my Tenterhooks show at Analogue, I treated myself to an Xbox 360. I've always been fairly into my computer games, though I wouldn't dare to call myself "hardcore" (who would?). I tend to buy only a few games which I know either to be fantastic, or that seem really up my street, and play them fairly thoroughly. Joining the current generation, a little late as usual, is still always a wee event.

I'd been toying with a new console for a while, but the tipping point for buying the 360 was Skate by EA. It's already made it to my Top 5 all time games. As a dirty skate-rat, it's a brilliant representation of skateboarding and makes the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series look really tired and just, well, crap. I will perhaps write a little something more about Skate soon, but you can see some of my uploaded videos HERE for now if you like. I'm very good.

Call of Duty 4, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Rez HD are all amazing as well. As with Skate, I might do a little post about my experiences with them just because it'd be fun to write. If you have an Xbox yourself, I'd recommend all of the above games. I've not been disappointed yet.

But.. the point of writing all this is really just to say that I could do with some more folk on my freinds list. If you would like to add me on Live, my gamertag is Galletly. Oh, here's a little thing I can post:



If it's of any use, I'm a bit crap at COD4, alright at TF2 and the doo's boos (good) at Skate. I'm also lovely.

Misfits Flyer, Edinburgh

Misfits flyer
photoshop / illustrator
client: Cowgate, Edinburgh


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Yellow Trainers

I am not a trainer-guy. Trainer guys are boring geeks that should go away. People should not buy trainers wrapped in plastic or use the phrase "colour-way" ever. I wear the most basic of footwear, mainly Converse and Vans in simple styles and colours. The occasional Emerica or something maybe because I skate and need something that will stand up to my incredible abilities, but on the whole my feet aren't getting too nutty.

The exception to this is when a trainer is yellow. A yellow coloured trainer is a thing I like to buy. It started years ago, when a friend of a friend had a crazy pair of yellow Etnies that I liked the look of. They must've turned on some nerdy yellow radar in my brain because I was suddenly noticing yellow shoes everywhere. Who were these yellow shoed people? Where did they come from? They were happy. They made me happy. Could I be their friend? I wanted to be like them. I splashed out on a pair of yellow Converse. I never wore them.

However, the slip-on boom of the past few years started things off again. Slip-on Vans were everywhere, and available in almost every stupid colour and pattern you could imagine. I reckoned I'd grab a pair of yellow ones. That seemed like it'd be an obvious colour for slip-ons; all bright and summery. No chance. They could not be found anywhere. The more I looked, the more I got addicted to finding a pair. It became a mission. A few close calls on ebay (wrong size) and in the female section of a shoe shop (too pale and girly) almost pushed me over the edge, until finally, after over a year of searching, I found some Emerica yellow slip-ons in a skateshop down south.

Phew! Close enough, and dirt cheap too. I was so relieved. With the pressure of the chase gone, I found a pair of slip-on vans online soon afterwards. All was well and all was holy. They looked like this:

Then I realised, oh my goodness! Oh my God! I was a big trainer nerd! They may not be limited edition Dunks or Adidas but crikey, they're bad enough. Worse! I was a trainer nerd for stupid children's shoes. I was living in Balamory. I stopped buying yellow trainers immediately and rarely wore the ones I owned.

Now to the present day. After being free of the yellow fever for months, I've relapsed. Vans put out some limited-edition, collaborative, Anti-Hero, yellow, nerd-a-thon TNT's and I've bought them up like a chump. It wasn't easy either. These things came out ages ago in the states and buying them here is a nightmare. Through keen searching I found some at Kate's Skates (free next-day delivery, goddamn) and I am once again at peace:

They're not the prettiest things I've ever seen, and certainly not anything you'd call dainty, but they're freakin' bright yellow.

Presstube Screensaver

Presstube.com, by a man called James Patterson is one of those sites that hangs about in your bookmarks forever. I must've shoved it in there years ago. Every so often, as with countless other things I've saved, I'll have a look to see what's new. Long enough has usually passed that I can't remember what the bookmarks even vaguely link to, and clicking the damn thing reveals a redesigned site with a bunch of new stuff to look at. It's a nice little moment of exploration and recognition.

The difference with Presstube is that I'm exposed to Patterson's work daily thanks to his amazing screensaver which I installed after one of those visits a long time ago. It's a fluid, randomly generating, black on white animation constructed from odd little drawings that hypnotically grow and morph into one another. It's the best screensaver I've ever seen. Every so often it'll go crazy and surge with movement and splashes of colour. It's the bees knees. I've made a little photo of it running on my Mac:

Looks good eh? All nice and white. Obviously it really zings when it's moving, but you get the idea. It's available for download for Mac and PC - HERE. As with all of the Presstube animations, and thanks to my ignorance of how Flash works, it boggles my brain trying to work out how he makes the damn things. Fair enough having the patience to create a line animation with a start and end, but making something that constantly changes and has a seemingly endless bank of clever drawings is too much for me to get my head around.

Go and have a look about the site. There are lots of great things to see. Especially his animations on the Projects page. He is a patient man.

EDIT: The screensaver stopped working on newer Macs for a while, but it's back! You can get it here. I also have a new blog post about it too.

Fortune Teller T-Shirts

Fortune Teller 10th Birthday T-Shirt
commissioned by The Changing Room gallery
(sold out, I think)

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Adam and Joe

Like most people, I'm influenced and inspired by all sorts of folks who do all sorts of things. I have favourite authors and artists and actors, Who doesn't? Somewhere in my brain box, however, is a mental list of my favourite favourites. This wee list isn't necessarily made up of the best of the best, just the people I like the most. I'll try to post about them here under the 'People' tag.

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish get on this list. If you're not familiar with them, they're most famous for a television programme called "The Adam & Joe Show" broadcast on Channel 4 in the late 90s. The show was a mix of home-made nonsense featuring the chaps in their bedroom with a lot of ideas and some toys. See!:



There are tons of other clips from the show on YouTube, so have a hunt about. Adam has been uploading a lot of his personal ones (including the new stuff he did with Radiohead) to his blog and to his YouTube channel. Joe often writes good stuff on his MySpace blog.

Something I feel often gets overlooked is how just dang funny they are, regardless of the toys and the 'studenty bollocks' skits. They're a pair of polite, well educated and slightly posh dudes who can make chatting about trivial rubbish entertaining without ever falling into horrible internetty-humour or rubbish Family Guy style wackiness. They also have crazy amounts of pop culture knowledge (Joe in particular seems to have seen every horror film ever made) and damn good taste. They're brills!

Recently Adam and Joe have been floating about radio-land, starting out on XFM and now appearing on BBC 6 Music. Their show (HERE) goes out on Saturday morning and can be listened to live on the 6 Music site and heard for the whole week using the listen again feature. Radio suits them well as they're given space to talk about whatever they want and have even started trying to out-sing each other on their 'Song Wars' feature. They even write their own jingles and play good music.
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PODCASTS!
Best of all is their podcasts. These are a mixture of highlights from their radio show as well as some new golden nuggets recorded especially for the downloads. The archive of their XFM stuff is available HERE and is in my opinion the best podcast out there. It's some of their funniest work and manages to be perhaps the only Gervais beater.

This week also sees the launch of their new BBC podcast and is the reason I am writing these words. Go and listen to it. You can download it for free HERE. There is also talk of a beefed up, new material, sweary version appearing sometime soon as well. There you go. Boy, I hope you like Adam & Joe.

Shuff Shuff

Shuff Shuff
ink & acrylic on card
from "Take To The Woods" at Analogue, 2007
(not for sale)

January News

Hello, Happy New Year! Were you sick? I wasn't. Hope you had a good festive period. I've had a pretty decent time, which I might write about soon, even though it's getting a little late into January for talk of past and future. Anyway, this is me back from my Christmas "break". It's a quiet time of year, but I'll mention a few things:

THE CHANGING ROOM MOVES
The Changing Room gallery, the only contemporary art space in Stirling is moving location. It's not going far, just up the hill to the Tolbooth, where it'll hopefully kick some bum. I became involved with the gallery in 2007 when I was fortunate enough to be asked to put on a mini solo show. After that, I did some more odds and ends, hung about, helped out and met some great folk. Kirsteen and the staff did some amazing things in the old place so the prospect of a new, more public, venue is quite exciting. The new space is on for a Spring / Summer launch, possibly (hopefully) with a new name.

SHOW AT AMBLE IN PHILADELPHIA
It may be early to mention it but this is gonna sneak up and knock me over, I know it. In May I've got an as yet untitled solo show at Amble in Philadelphia. Who knows what I'll do, but it'll be bloomin' marvellous. I kid, but only a little bit. I'm really looking forward to spending more time through there and seeing the sights and friends and things.

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS A STAMPEDE OF HORSES
Finally, let me blow my head up like a big balloon by linking to a nice wee write up I got: HERE, from Meighan O'Toole at My Love For You.. Regardless of the stuff about myself, it's a brilliant wee site where Meighan posts her favourite art, illustration and photography from all over the shop. The unstoppable posting of weird and wonderful stuff should be added to everyone's feeds. Meighan is clearly just into it and her enthusiasm is pretty infectious.

There are a good few other things knocking about but I don't want to write about them just now. Over January I'll get as much work up as possible as well as a few mini project things and other nonsense.

Laurel & Hardy's Death Rattles

Stan Laurel's Death Rattle
ink & acrylic on card
from "Tenterhooks" at Analogue, 2007
(sold)

Oliver Hardy's Death Rattle
ink & acrylic on card
from "Tenterhooks" at Analogue, 2007
(sold)

I Lost My Bloomin' Sketchbook

Like a chump, I managed to lose my sketchbook the other night. It's a plain black A5 Moleskine which is about half full. Luckily, nothing important has been lost but there are a few bits and pieces in there I'll miss as well as a some postcards and stuff that people have given me that I liked to carry around.

Chances are it's been left it on a table or fell out my bag somewhere around the Meadowpark / Beat area near Stirling University. I definitely had it with me in Nicky-Tams and Varsity too incase that's where it vanished. I'm sure there is an alright reward stated on the first page, so if it were found, I reckon I'd be contacted. That probably means it's sat in a puddle somewhere, which is almost preferable to some stranger discovering the crap I write in it. If someone out there has found it, and has found this site, and are chuckling it up right now, all jolly, let me tell you that you're a stinker (unless you give it back then you're a lovely angel).