"Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.'
I started drawing 12 years ago There were a bunch of local bands hoping to open the show and they were a lot of fun to render in stick form. Such as this mixed media I did for The Man Factory
And this was a stick figure rendering of a Cush song Called Shout Love At The Heart Of The Atom
It was spring when I first started drawing and we had our annual deluge so I drew a weather report for my blog. The stick figures, though rudimentary, had a charm that were both terrible yet adorable and strangely engaging.
Behold The Bean Pusher 2000 which is powered by an exhausted post pregnant lactating hamster who requires an endless supply of beans to function. Djs new existence now relied solely on the Shut The Fuck Up Meter. The faster the hamster runs, the more beans she can produce which keeps the shut the fuck up meter at its peak because bean churning is tiring work donchaknow?
It would be impossible to share with you all the stories I have of the endless amount of garbage that radio talent has to endure just to pursue their art. And radio done well IS an art. When I first got into radio there was a very delicate balance between programming and sales and we always managed to work well together. But in the past decade the line has disappeared along with so many on air jobs. The beancounters have tipped the scale and decided that what we do is not work or even worthwhile. This is highlighted by the invention of the greatest scourge in broadcasting history.
Voicetracking.
It is an insult and disgrace to replace live local talent who know their community and engage/connect with their listeners with overwhelmed routinely browbeaten jocks in other markets. Voicetrackers don't know the vibe, energy and slang of the multiple cities they are frequently forced to voicetrack in. It takes a lot of work off air to do a great show on air. It also takes a lot of sustained energy that is not something people outside of the booth understand or respect.
Voicetracking is a disservice to the art, to the industry and to the communities it infiltrates.
Voicetracking is monotonous, frustrating, time consuming drudgery and eliminates the wild spontaneous magic moments that can happen on live local radio that makes radio so special and unique.
Voicetracking has sucked the life out of radio, eliminated thousands of jobs and hacked the wings off of what few air talent that are left. Morale in the industry is the lowest I have seen since I got into radio 31 years ago. Voicetracking has grossly homogenized radio even more than playlists did and the combination of the two has gutted a once thriving, electrifying, vibrant and relevant medium.
Over the past 10 years I have watched well respected and experienced programmers be replaced by craven, inexperienced opportunists whose management methodology is to berate and browbeat their talent into total submission. They rule by fear. Their abusive approach includes demanding jocks lie and even to flagrantly violate FCC and FTC regulations.
Endorsements which were once the most lucrative and highly coveted aspect of a radio personality's career have become a stultifying, unbearable albatross. Clients are charged endorsement rates for what amounts to nothing more than glorified commercials and promised that talent will say anything they want them to. They aren't really endorsements when the air talent's job hinges on their doing them. They aren't really endorsements when jocks are told what to say. They aren't really endorsements when jocks are not allowed to have their own experience which includes not liking a product or service and being allowed to refuse to endorse something that they don't want to.
The industry has become so corrupt that many radio companies have made endorsements compulsory for what few jocks they do hire and who are forced to do them for free. In the rare case of a paid endorsement the jock only gets a pittance as the stations are keeping the majority of the money for themselves. The end result are jocks sounding like obnoxious shills and listeners tuning out. Jocks are universally blamed when ratings are bad but the real problem has always been the excessive ads and a malevolent sales force with no moral compass.
Whoring out the talent to the highest bidder and putting money before people is a recipe for disaster.
I was treated like a problem child for steadfastly refusing to lie to listeners. For not wanting my credibility with them exploited and for not wanting to give my passion away. Not everyone is for sale. That is a heretical notion in an industry that seems to have forgotten its primary mission which is to serve their community. People matter and when you put them first everything else will fall into place. Always.
Endorsements which were once the most lucrative and highly coveted aspect of a radio personality's career have become a stultifying, unbearable albatross. Clients are charged endorsement rates for what amounts to nothing more than glorified commercials and promised that talent will say anything they want them to. They aren't really endorsements when the air talent's job hinges on their doing them. They aren't really endorsements when jocks are told what to say. They aren't really endorsements when jocks are not allowed to have their own experience which includes not liking a product or service and being allowed to refuse to endorse something that they don't want to.
The industry has become so corrupt that many radio companies have made endorsements compulsory for what few jocks they do hire and who are forced to do them for free. In the rare case of a paid endorsement the jock only gets a pittance as the stations are keeping the majority of the money for themselves. The end result are jocks sounding like obnoxious shills and listeners tuning out. Jocks are universally blamed when ratings are bad but the real problem has always been the excessive ads and a malevolent sales force with no moral compass.
Whoring out the talent to the highest bidder and putting money before people is a recipe for disaster.
I was treated like a problem child for steadfastly refusing to lie to listeners. For not wanting my credibility with them exploited and for not wanting to give my passion away. Not everyone is for sale. That is a heretical notion in an industry that seems to have forgotten its primary mission which is to serve their community. People matter and when you put them first everything else will fall into place. Always.
Music and my passion for it has been sacrosanct since I fell into radio so many moons ago. And just as important as the music was serving my community and I always found a ways to balance them and to bring listeners a deeper sense of both. The more my industry sacrificed professional dignity, respect, & integrity the more I withDREW into my art. With PPM jocks were under the proverbial magnifying glass and the industry began actively shutting us down. We were no longer allowed to do on air interviews or even creative content. Eight breaks an hour dwindled down to 2. My show was literally limited to 65 seconds an hour. All of the creative energy that I previously put on air was now going on to my blog and social media. And in to my art.
The 14 hours a day I used to spend at the station was now spent at my drawing table. As my passion grew it also exceeded my skill level so I signed up for drawing classes at a community college where I learned to draw eggs and milk bottles and upside down ponies.
In my 3rd class my teacher went thru my sketchpad without permission and upon seeing one of my non class related drawings openly scoffed at it: "If you are going to keep doing shit like this you are going to need the basics" She insulted my pancake batter and it hurt a deeply vulnerable part of my already wounded spirit.
I was so stunned. Yes I need the basics, that is why I was in her class. Her surprise attack of my work was frightening. I couldn't run the risk of losing the only means of coping with what was happening at work. If I lost this creative outlet I would have lost my mind. So I grabbed my sketchpad and pencils, & walked out. From that day forward I used books & youtube tutorials to learn to draw.
I would soon discover that the greatest art teachers would be my favorite writers... visual wordsmiths like The Bloggess, Jenny Lawson, who made me laugh w her filing cabinet full of chickens and douche canoes featuring a more personal hat tip to the moongoose analogue.
I first drew Sam Pink's "I'm sorry I cut off my thumb & glued it to your baby's head bc I thought he'd look better as a unicorn" in 2011...
And came back to it to draw it again in 2014...that is ketchup by the way
One of my favorite drawings from this period was inspired by Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes and the amazing Jim White who had a song called A Perfect Day to Chase Tornadoes. I combined the two in this drawing A Perfect Day to Chase Termaters which is how you spell tomatoes in the south and also Wyoming.
I cleaned my brush for the hairball in this drawing inspired by a viral post I had seen on twitter "...if you fill the piñata with kitty litter, kids might lose their annoying sense of entitlement"
Another inspiration was David Mckee who shared the amazing secret on how to draw. . I picked up a random pencil, put it to paper and wouldn't you know it A GOAT CAME OUT.
In Skinny Legs & All there is a wild gang made up of sentient Can o' Beans, Spoon, Painted Stick, Conch Shell & Dirty Sock who lives up to her filthy reputation
Tom Robbins is such a tremendous influence on my work and kept me going at some of my lowest points. I am perpetually haunted by this: "Pan had begun to live in his memories, an unhealthy symptom in anyone, suggesting as it does that life has peaked." I come back to that quote from Jitterbug Perfume a lot.
I came back to Tom's work this year and for the first time since embarking on my artistic journey drew a portrait of the man himself.
ecstatically,
irrepressibly.
This is the way to burn”
~Tom Robbins
