Through the window pane

And wouldn't you'd like to have one of those in your house? Perfect subject for a stained glass window, if you ask me.

Ringo, the Artist

In case you didn't know, and I bet you didn't, Ringo also paints. Or doodles, or whatever you'd want to call it. With a computer. Oh, yeah. And he also does exhibitions. And his paintings sell for big bucks. You gotta love him. Take a look at some of it below.

Amazing Pencil Drawing of The Beatles

You have no idea of the sheer amount of artwork dedicated to Mr. Starr available on the web. It's quite overwhelming. The one you see above is one of the very best and while it's on the subject of The Beatles, I couldn't help posting it. Quite gorgeous, isn't it? I found it over at flickr.com and as much as I can, I like to give credit where credit is due, so follow this link to know more about its creator.

Take care and I see you soon!

Hirschfeld #2

Just thought I'd post another Hirschfeld Ringo picture I've just found. Isn't it great?

In other news, this is my very last vacation day. Did some terrific things (managed to go to Lisbon and Vigo, among other typical holiday stuff) and luckily the weather was fantastic! Back to work now!

Mark Ryden's artwork for Time Takes Time

A little bit of trivia: the artwork for Ringo's album Time Takes Time you see above was created by Mark Ryden, a famous american painter that besides doing record covers for big name artists (among them Michael Jackson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jeff Beck to name just a small few), has built a reputation on creating some very striking pieces of work that portray the darkest sides of what is generally perceived as children's fare. As always, Wikipedia is your best friend in these and other matters:

Mark Ryden's paintings instantly trigger a warped déjà vu. His works recall a parallel universe of 1950s Little Golden Books and the whimsy of Lewis Carroll. His cheery bunnies, rendered in the glowing hues of children's books, are more likely to be carving slabs of meat rather than frolicking in the forest. Ryden's work mingles superb technique with outre images to create a world of strange and disturbing beauty. At once intriguing and unsettling, baffling and enchanting, Ryden's works are subtle amalgams of many sources and influences as wide-ranging as Psychedelic and Vienna School artists, Neon Park and Ernst Fuchs, to classical French formalists Ingres and David.

Ryden's work combines a saccharine cartoon-like sensibility - much like the doe-eyed Margaret Keane creatures of the 1960s - with a detailed fullness and a creepy combination of numerology, little girls, meat, Catholic and Buddhist symbolism, and carnivalesque Americana. Toys are a big component of his art. His work ranges from large highly-polished oil paintings to small black-and-white works on paper. Like modern illustrators Sir John Tenniel and Edward Gorey, Ryden is influenced by the fantastic art of Alice in Wonderland and early Renaissance landscapes.

See more of his work over at his official site. I promise you it's really worth it.

Alan Aldridge Illustrator Extraordinaire

The lovely picture you see above is by renowned artist Alan Aldridge, a very famous english illustrator who did the bulk of his work in the 60's and the 70's. Here's what our friend Wikipedia has to say about him:

Alan Aldridge is a UK artist. Born in 1943 in East London, he currently resides in Los Angeles. His career began in 1965 when he happened to meet the art director of Penguin Books, and began producing illustrations for book covers. Over the next two years he took over as art director, and introduced his style which resonated with the mood of the time. In 1968 he moved to his own graphic-design firm, INK, which became closely involved with graphic images for the Beatles and Apple Corps.

During the 1960s and 1970s he was responsible for a great many album covers, and helped create the graphic style of that era. He designed a series of science fiction book covers for Penguin Books. He made a big impression with his illustrations for the Beatles Illustrated Song lyrics. He also provided illustrations for "The Penguin Book of Comics", a history of British and American comic art. His work was characterised by a flowing, cartoony style and soft airbrushing - very much in step with the psychedelic styles of the times. In the theatre, in February 1969 he designed the graphics for controversial Jane Arden (director) play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven at the London Arts Laboratory, Drury Lane.

He is possibly best known, however, for the picture book The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast (1973), a series of illustrations of anthropomorphic insects and other creatures, which he created in collaboration with William Plomer, who wrote the accompanying verses. This was based on William Roscoe's poem of the same name, but was inspired when Aldridge read that John Tenniel had told Lewis Carroll it was impossible to draw a wasp in a wig.

If you do a simple google search for him, you'll be sure to find lots of truly wonderful images that really capture a sort of magical imagination deeply rooted in the best breed of british whimsy. But for now, I'm going to leave you with a Beatles record cover designed by Aldridge and initially proposed for the White Album. I'm glad this gobsmackingly beautiful illustration was not binned for it's one of my favorite Beatles images ever. See you soon!

Ringo's Singles

A little bit of vinyl heaven for you here in the format of some of Mr. Starkey's single record releases. Fun covers, too as you can see.

Lisztomania DVD Artwork revealed!

I really can't wait for the new Lisztomania DVD to arrive in stores. Take a look at the brilliant cover artwork that was created for the upcoming release right above. I think it perfectly describes what the movie is all about: a glam-rock 19th century musical biopic! Great job, Digital Classics.

Rambling on Ringo

The lovely drawing you see above is by brazilian cartoonist Ademir Antônio Bacca and for me it captures so much of what Ringo means to me that I just had to share it with you lot out there. Hope you enjoy it.

Today's post will not be about any of Ringo's movies or even albums. I'm just taking a break here, I guess trying to make this a more interesting blog where I can also spill out of my rambling mind some thoughts and/or ideas that I suppose are interesting enough for me to expose them. Hope you don't mind. Don't expect anything highly philosophical, though. Want proof? Here's what crossed my mind today:

I would love to see a book completely dedicated to Ringo's movie career (and another one about his solo music output, but that's another story) and while I do know that such a book almost exists (the "almost" being that it covers everything else in his life - it's called Ringo Starr: A Life - but as I understand, it is written in a somewhat condescending way, which is wrong, naturally), I think that simply out of fun, someone should really consider such a possibility as a sure-fire winner, considering the variety and overall quality of the movie projects he was involved with. I mean, I bet that somewhere out there there's a book about "Toilet jokes The Beatles told while in the toilet", so why not this one, right?

Blecch

The lovely image you see above is from an illustration world renowned graphic artist Frank Frazetta made for the back cover of MAD magazine #90, when he was still a fledgling painter trying to make a buck. It's actually one of my favorite pictures of Ringo and I'm sure it will be one of yours too if you read what it says below more carefully.

Anyway, expect a very "animated" post in the coming days about one of Ringo's more sought out items. Or is it Dustin Hoffman's? Intrigued? Well, stay posted.

Goodnight Ringo!

A couple of quick things: just added a new link over at the Favorites section of the blog, entitled LP Cover Lover. I strongly suggest you check it out especially if you like watching (if not exactly listening) at old record covers. I literally spent more than an hour going through it when I first spotted it in this labyrinthine world they call blogging. Definitely worth your while.

And while I'm at it, here's my favorite Ringo album cover: the one for Goodnight Vienna. Isn't it just grand? And this one below here even comes autographed by the man himself as well as by two people who also performed on the album: Billy Preston (electric piano) and Bobby Keys (horns). Enjoy.

OST - 2nd Part

Glad you could make it because you're just in time for the second part of my attempt at tracking down the soundtrack recordings to most of Ringo's filmography. And we enter the 70's.

The Point! is a very peculiar animation long-feature (the first to be made for TV) and it was born entirely out of Harry Nilsson's head (Nilsson is a name that pops up frequently when talking about Ringo's life and career as you will see, because the two of them were close friends and collaborated quite often during the 70's decade). He came up with the idea for it ("I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to points. I thought, 'Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn't, then there's a point to it." - Harry Nilsson)and even wrote and composed the entire soundtrack. On For the Love of Harry, a wonderful blog about Harry Nilsson, you can find and download the entire soundtrack in this link here. Am I or am I not your best friend right now? Of course I'm not. But I will be. Just bear with me some more paragraphs.

Moving on, we find Frank Zappa's first movie effort, 200 Motels. This particular title has the distinction of being the first feature film to be entirely shot on video and then transfered to 35 mm. And it's still not out on DVD. Vent away your frustrations, all you Ringo and Zappa fans because as things are right now, you will not see this one through legit ways in a long, long time. In other words, get it through the grey market. Anyway, the soundtrack is out on CD (a double-disc, no less) and I actually have it and can recommend it very highly (it even comes with a small poster inside and all). Get it here.

The Spaghetti Western Blindman (which is out on DVD and is one of the movies that I will be talking very soon about) score was written by Stelvio Cipriani and while not particularly memorable, it has its moments and if you like the genre, give it a try. Who knows, you might even like it. Check out more info at that amazing reference site I mentioned to you about on the just below post, Soundtrack Collector.

Next stop is the glam wet dream of Born to Boogie, a part movie/part documentary/part concert film about Marc Bolan and his T. Rex band, directed and produced by Ringo himself. It's a wonderful time capsule of a movie and it's thankfully out on DVD in a fantastically produced 2xDVD edition with all the bells and whistles. And yes, you can get it also on CD here. For fans or initiated, this stuff is glorious. Highly recommended, of course. And from Glam to Rock and Roll as we move into one of Ringo's best movies (no, seriously), That'll Be The Day, the David Essex vehicle. No CD soundtrack appears to be available at the moment, which is a shame considering the amount of old Rock 'n' Roll gems it contains. IMDB lists some of them. Definitely one to get your fingers on, both movie and music.

We've now reached roughly half-way through the 70's and I'll leave the other half to the next time but before I go, I'm going to provide a link for a free download of the complete soundtrack to Son of Dracula (that peculiar movie I talked about earlier on this blog), from that wonderful Harry Nilsson blog I mentioned above. It's currently Out of Print on CD, so grab it now! See, I told you I was going to become your best friend.

Good Morning!

Top o' the morning to y'all! Hope you've been having a fantastic week. The weekend is just around the corner and make yourself a favour and enjoy it to the max, ok?

Now, while I'm still wondering which next Ringo movie to talk to you about on my next post (the choices are still so many and so juicily good that I'm really having trouble figuring out which one to choose), I'll leave you with the full picture from legendary cartoonist Al Hirschfeld that you can currently get a sneak peak at in my current profile. It's actually quite good, which coming from the author in question, is an understatement. Take a look -