Astoria report

[Paul Mather]

On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 05:47:26PM +0100, M Holmes wrote:

=> There's always a little strangeness at these things.  This time I ended
=> up next to a guy with a drawing book and what seemed to be crayons.  he
=> was slashing away at the paper during the gig in various colours and
=> then flipping the pad at the end of each song.  Expecting this to be
=> just some stoned idiosyncrasy, I chatted to him.  I still can't decide
=> if it was a windup but he claimed that he draws impressions of songs on
=> his pad and then sells the results to Americans and sometimes earns
=> triple figures (in Dollars I guess) for the results.  He was clear that
=> it didn't even really much matter which band and cheerfully concurred im
=> my assessment that this would be money for old rope. He seemed more or
=> less sober and I know that the art world will do shit like pay a fortune
=> for a pile of bricks or an unmade bed, so who knows, maybe he was for
=> real. If anyone knows of this guy, I hae to admit I'm now curious about
=> it all.

I don't know if it's the same guy, but there *is* someone who sells in
the USA impressionistic paintings he makes at gigs.  The only examples
I've seen are ones he did at the first Bonnaroo Festival that someone
had included amongst their digital picture scrapbook of the event.  (I
saw his rendition of the Gov't Mule set amongst the pics.)  From what
I remember, the guy I saw used paint and canvas, not crayons and a
drawing book, so maybe it is a different bloke, or maybe he just works
on the cheap when overseas (or indoors)? :-)

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa