Kanye West & Gemma Cairney: The Moronic Glastonbury Experience

One of the reasons I always enjoy watching Glastonbury is that it introduces me to music I wouldn't normally listen to. Friday night, I settled down and watched the BBC2 late night show, not knowing what I was going to see but unsurprised that I found so much to like. Though they're not a band I've ever listened to except, perhaps, at a previous Glastonbury, Florence and the Machines surprised me with a fantastic set. It might have been a bit happy clappy for my tastes and all that nonsense about grabbing the person next to them sounded like the prelude to charges of public groping but, as headlining acts go, it was impressive. Florence earned an extra fan on that performance alone and should clearly be promoted to a proper headline slot at a future festival.

Even more impressive, to my ears, were the bands that came after. Wolf Alice really seriously impressed me with their thick grungy sound. I then found myself doing a Google search for Sharon Van Etten after a good solo performance on the BBC stage. Hot Chip were good but I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to buy an album but the opposite is true of the Kasai Allstars. The Allstars were sublime and precisely the kind of thing that sticks in my mind as being the very best of Glastonbury. Not sure what it says about Glastonbury being a music festival when they performed to a relative small crowd but they made a fantastic sound and conveyed real passion for their music that transcended language. Definitely a highlight of the festival so far.



Not performing to a small crowd last night was Kanye West. I'd read somewhere that Ron Mael (of Sparks and currently FFS) said that he was a fan of West. I couldn't tell if Ron was serious or not but I thought this was a chance for me to see what West is about. I went into it not knowing a thing about West except that he's married to a Kardashian about whom I know even less except for the 'break in the internet' photo of last year. I have never ever heard Kanye West's music. I don't know his back story except that I know that he has a high opinion of himself and some people have protested his invite to Glastonbury.

I watched the entire Kanye set and, I confess, it was a struggle. The person I was watching it with even had to leave the room after I said I'd like to see it through to the end. The performance was making her so angry. I shared the sentiment but I knew I wanted to write something about it today and it seemed only fair to watch the entire thing before making a judgement.

It began well. Visually the single figure of West under the bank of lights was striking. West's backing tapes (no sign of any musicians in any of this) were catchy but that was true throughout. Perhaps I'm not postmodern enough to appreciate this but I'm not entirely sure you can claim to be a musical genius when the best parts of your act are samples ripped from catchy songs of the past.

After a strong beginning, the performance settled into a pattern and really didn't develop. The lights would change occasionally but the whole thing was either a muffled rap or a middle of the road soulful croon. The crooning was better than the rapping but I wish I could say something about the lyrics which were largely incomprehensible to me and hard on the ears. Nearly everything was pushed through some kind of vocoder, which too often made him sound like a dolphin farting in a bathtub. Occasional phrases stuck out but it was usually the word which caused Jeremy Clarkson no end of trouble when he was thought to have barely muttered it a year or so ago. Last night, the BBC delighted in the fact the word was broadcast a few hundred times and at one point was being chanted by the crowd. It's a point that's not always picked up and I do wonder if critics are right when they argue that West is given a far easier time by a largely white press who are so desperate to emphasis their liberal credentials they won't condemn a performer who is crass, disrespectful of his audience, and utterly unworthy of praise.

Not that bad language bothers me and I've heard much worse. Yet what really bothered me was the sheer banality of the performance. The worst thing you can do as a Glastonbury headlining act is be boring but Kanye West was precisely that. I've never been so bored watching a so-called 'superstar'. Perhaps I'm just old but I doubt if that's it. I like difficult sounds. I embrace challenging music. This wasn't even that. It was just bad music and far below the standards of Glastonbury, which elsewhere is a serious music festival for people serious about their music.

One other point: I've never seen such a grumpy person in the business of entertaining people. He stopped songs perhaps two or three times, occasionally muttering rebukes to his team. He seemed constantly unhappy yet at the same time believing that he really is the 'the greatest living rock star on the planet'. I hope to God he was saying that with his tongue firmly in his cheek because, in truth, he wasn't even the greatest living rock star at Glastonbury. I'm not even sure he was the greatest living rock star on that stage.

The whole evening was perhaps best summed up when the gawping fool Gemma Cairney came back on screen and was breathless with praise for what we'd just watched. She praised him for being unpredictable (being hoisted into the air on a cherry picker being an example of that) but what I saw was a performance only remarkable because it was completely unremarkable. If you want stage presence and invention, go watch the last song of the Kasai Allstars' set as they all mount an invisible motorbike and dance off the stage.

I've written before about Cairney being the most high profile representative of a new brainless BBC but her performances at Glastonbury usually sets a new standard for being witless. I'm sure she has equally witless defenders inside the corporation who believe she appeals to an important demographic but any demographic that identifies with Cairney is a demographic that needs immediate remedial help and checking for brain leaches. She splutters and gasps and groans in the place where you'd hope for words and each appearance makes you seriously wonder if the BBC aren't suffering an outbreak of the living dead. If you do a Google search for her videos, you come up with her playing 'Innuendo Bingo' on Radio One, which I'd not seen before but pretty much sums up this lamentable side of Aunty Beeb's attempts to appeal to 'yoof'. It involves two people, mouths filled with water, poised over a dustbin. The presenter then plays clips from shows containing filthy double entendres and the point of the game is to avoid laughing. Of course, the player who doesn't laugh will get the other person's mouthful of water spat into their face.

Spitting water in somebody's face is about the level of Gemma Cairney's skills as a presenter. She might be ideally suited (and, indeed, I think she is) to children's TV, but anybody over the age of 13 must get slightly pissed off at her infantile style. 'Gormless' is the phrase that keeps coming to mind when she speaks. She has a wide eyed passion for everything, as though seeing everything for the first time, but it quickly turns into a spluttering inarticulate shower of stupidity and I find it hard not to turn it off.

She's the worst aspect of the BBC's otherwise superlative coverage. They don't cover any event with quite the same brilliance as they do Glastonbury. They have presenters like Jo Whiley, Mark Radcliffe and Lauren Laverne who are simply stunningly good at their job because they match their knowledge of music with genuine wit and a relaxed presenting style. Yet the whole thing is brought to its knees by Cairney who seems to be there only because the BBC are desperate to get the affirmation of the dumbest segment of its audience. If the BBC ever lose the license fee, it will because people like Cairney have radically undermined what the BBC should represent. The license fee can only be justified if it's a tax we pay to produce a cultural product that sets a higher standard for thought and action than would be possible when striving to be competitive in the commercial marketplace. Cairney doesn't even aspire to a mediocre standard for thought and action. She makes you resent putting money in her pocket. Her inverted donkey laughter is like the death knell of the BBC. It leaves you wondering how much the BBC pay this fool and how we can demand a portion of our license fee back.

Now, I'm off to finish watching today's set by Patti Smith. So far she's been everything that Kanye West wasn't last night.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 8

Here’s a very hastily doodled adventure of Ron and Russell Mael, or at least, my imaginary versions of them. And yes, you might say that I’m still peeved that they’re coming to the UK but not playing a venue within 200 miles of where I live. I’m having very little luck at the moment. The job hunt is soul destroying, I’ve now run out of Bristol Board, and like the Ralph Steadman exhibition and Baconface’s stand-up before them, Sparks have chosen to ignore the north west of England. It’s also quite surprising. After their last Manchester gig, I thought they’d definitely return, especially given that their live Two Hands One Mouth album ends with the rousing Manchester finale. That they’re playing three nights in London was also a surprise and adds to the sense of grim futility that pervades everything at the moment. Needless to say, I won't get to see the perform this year.

But enough glum talk… This cartoon strip is thanks to Virginia, who told me that Sparks fans have been enjoying these highly unauthorised shows. I hope they have. I’m currently spending my days with the album The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman looping as I work, so no doubt there’ll be another Sparks strip at some point, perhaps in Swedish just for you, but then again, perhaps not.

Give Me Readers Not Visitors

It feels like another day of living life in lead underpants and with clipped heels. Everything seems to be running so slow: the web, the weather, and even the news. The only thing predictably regular is the arrival of people looking for 3d porn, news about Angelina Jolie’s tattoos, and pictures of Rod Stewart’s mole. Can you imagine how depressing it is to realise that those three things comprise 95% of your blog traffic?

Even if this blog has had plenty of visitors there have only been a few true readers this morning. So to those of you who are readers and have made it back: a sincere thank you. Because, otherwise, there’s something utterly dispiriting about posting something new to a blog and returning three hours later to discover that not a single pair of interested eyes have even looked at it. You begin suspecting problems in the ether but end up reaching for the bottle of ether… Just one reader makes a huge difference.

I write this blog for readers, you sometimes imaginary souls who want to come back and to follow what I write or draw. Visitors, on the other hand, arrive looking for an answer to their search. They don’t want to befriend me or know who I am. They want a cartoon depicting ‘cheese mutilations’. They want to know ‘how tall is Tom Cruise’ or ‘who was the smallest dwarf’, both of which incidentally are the same question asked two different ways. Visitors want to be entertained and the moment you fail to entertain them, they move on. They don’t want you to be a real person, who has good days and bad days and days when you work hard but things just don’t go right.

I dwell on this as I see my webstats crawl. I’m also having one of those days when I’m stuck between projects. I work out of confidence and anger and neither feel particularly strong today. I started to doodle a Ron & Russell Mael strip expressing my profound disappointment that they’re not coming back to play Manchester. I don’t know if I have the enthusiasm to finish it. Then I have my ‘Real Things People Say’ strip which I’d intended to submit to a competition. I need to finish the backgrounds but the fact that it had zero hits and zero feedback from either readers or visitors makes me feel like that too would be a mistake. Perhaps I should send the Putin strip or the Elephant in the Room… Perhaps I should try something else or just give up trying.

Late last night, I thought I’d do something different and try the Steadman approach to drawing a cartoon. I did less preparation, less cross hatching, and tried to be less restrained as I threw ink around the page. I even made use of my mouth atomizer and I think finally understood how to use it. I was quite pleased with the result but that optimism too dissipated once I’d posted it here where it almost died an ignominious death. At least a few of you looked at it.

This afternoon, I need to sit down and put in some hours of hard work. I write this blog for readers not visitors. I hope one day there will be more of you but you are such rare people. Each one of you is worth ten thousand indifferent souls. I’m lucky to call you readers.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 7

Sparks have filled my morning. First of all, I see that my original Sparks Show cartoon strip has been published (right) and can be found in French music magazine New Noise along with an interview with Ron and Russell Mael.

Less good news comes with the news that Sparks won’t be playing Manchester on their next tour. The UK dates have been announced and they’re limiting themselves to Glasgow, Bristol, and a few nights in London, meaning that despite my best efforts, Manchester won’t see them and, more importantly, I won’t see them. So bitterly disappointed...

Despite the absolute silence and zero feedback about my current work-in-progress (surely it’s not that bad or perhaps it is!), I’m posting the last of my Sparks strips. I didn’t post this before because I didn’t think it quite worked. Now I know that Sparks aren’t coming to Manchester, I realise that none of my strips worked how I intended so I might as well post this last one today… Naturally, click the image to view it full size.

The Elephant in the Room

Traffic is so slow in these summer months that there’s didn't seem any point in my posting anything particularly good today. Yet at the same time, it means that I can post anything I like and nobody will bother reading it.

I didn’t intend to post this at all but I thought I’d put it out there for a limited time only. Perhaps I’ll get feedback which will help me on my next attempt at one of these longer strips. It was an experiment in doing something different and I had originally intended to enter it into a competition. As you’ll see, it doesn’t work. It's a glorious failure. The Ron & Russell Mael comic within the comic doesn’t have a strong enough reason to be there. I couldn’t find the right words to explain why I fall into fiction, or, if I had the right words, I didn’t have enough space to fit them. I suppose the strip began as my figuring out why I’m so cynical towards art and why I choose to write comedy. That explanation was the thing I eventually couldn’t fit in the finished strip. However, it’s another lesson learned and will help my next strip, which will probably be some kind of dark gothic tale which is currently rattling around in a shapeless form inside my brain.

Of course, click to enlarge both images...

Annie Hall 3D

Arriving at my desk late this morning. Difficult days grew more difficult with sickness in the family, meaning that I’m being pulling in all directions. However, I keep my head down and try to press on. Little chance to do very much yesterday. Andy Murray was partially to blame but today has been equally hectic with distracting trips to pick up prescriptions and the rest. Not heard from the places I wrote to regarding the various jobs and freelancing opportunities. My comic 1000 words written for some start-up magazine clearly were a wasted 1000 words but I’ll wait until next week before I post them here.

My seventh (seven already!) Sparks strip is now partially inked. Once I’ve finished working on the main lines, it will be a few hours of cross hatching, then it’s lettering on the PC and final clean up. Hope to get most of that done today to post tomorrow but life seems determined to throw obstacles in my path at every opportunity. I must have been a tyrant mercilessly putting my foes to the sword in a previous life because, in this one, I'm having zero luck!

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 6

Here's the latest Sparks comic strip. I'm hard at work on Episode 7 so look out for that in the next few days, plus I'm also planning a special three pager in which I intend to improve my drawing of Russell Mael!

Day 2

Don't worry. I probably won't have the focus to maintain these updates about my attempts to escape penury. Today I've been looking into freelancing opportunities. There are plenty of freelance writing jobs out there, just very few which have a broad enough remit that I might actually want to write about something that interests me and would permit me to be funny. Many of these ‘opportunities’ are demands for 1500 words articles, ten times a week, about electronic cigarettes, for which I’d be paid a cent a word. I can’t think of many things I’d be less motivated to write about.

So, I’m currently hammering my way through an article about computer games and I’ve also had a few messages from people who have enjoyed the Sparks strips. I’m now hard at work on Episodes 6 and 7. They should appear in a few days if I can maintain my concentration levels whilst also sending my CV hither and yon.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 5

My latest Sparks strip featuring Ron and Russell Mael.

It's A Sparks Show: Episode 4

A very quick Sparks strip inspired by the actual launch of the new Sparks store. I still don’t know how many of these I’ll draw except to say that they constantly cheer me up. I have another on my table right now, though I probably won’t finish it until Monday or Tuesday. I'm still getting no close to capturing the likeness of Russell Mael.

It's A Sparks Show: The Slave To Fashion

I know I said I probably wouldn't draw any more of these Sparks strips (Part 1, Part 2) but after Ayumi's kind comment and Leg-Iron’s encouragement, I found myself drawing two long oblongs on a piece of paper late last night, not knowing what I was going to do with them. I needed very little encouragement to draw Russell Mael in his plus fours. Something about Sparks always brings me back to cheerfulness so I continued late into the night with this strip being the result.

This afternoon I need to just sit here and write some one panel gags. My list of ideas is beginning to look a little short and I need those ideas for the days when my brain isn’t firing but when I want to draw.

You Are Here

Perhaps it's the rain. Perhaps it's Wimbledon. Perhaps it was the intellectual pretensions of my second Sparks comic strip. Perhaps it was the way I cruelly mocked Canada’s favourite comedian. All I know is that there's been almost no web traffic today except for somebody searching for ‘Bullseye Tony Green’.

Actually, parts of that need some explanation.

Last night, I thought this blog had been visited by somebody hostile to Canadian stand-up sensation, Baconface. On reflection, I’m pretty sure the visitor was the Canadian stand-up sensation himself. He arrived searching for ‘Baconface awful’ just before 5pm and didn’t stay long. Why? Well, who knows? Perhaps he was so offended by my first pen and ink caricature that he didn’t even bother to look at the second. Perhaps I said too many good things about him. How do I know it was Baconface? Well, as wiser minds than mine figured, who else would type ‘Baconface awful’ into Google? He was clearly looking for anti-Canadian criticism which he might then weave into the fabric of his show. Had I been crueller, he might have come back. That should teach us all an important lesson: that we should never be nice to anybody ever again…

He’s postmodern like that, Baconface. He deconstructs what it means to be a Canadian comedian in a country hostile to Canadian values, such as Celine Dion, world peace, and untreated lumber. The fact he didn’t leave a comment hurts but I have a whole pile of hurt in the corner of my room. Some days, I sculpt it into interesting shapes, such as this blog post, road rage or letters to Argos (see below).

Of course, he’s wouldn’t be the biggest celebrity to visit the blog and never come back. I’m guessing that either Russell or Ron Mael of Sparks might have visited too. That is another exciting but ultimately depressing thought. Exciting that they might have dropped by but depressing that they never came back to see the second part of my two part trilogy. In fact, almost every single Sparks fans on the planet has managed to stay away today. I had a very generous comment from a visitor called Ayumi asking me to draw more Sparks but I’m clearly paying for not playing to the core Sparks audience who didn’t enjoy my tank puns and references to Nietzsche’s ‘Birth of Tragedy’.

But isn’t that just the perennial the problem we all face? Just when you’re getting on well with somebody we go and mention mad German philosophers…

So, it looks like I’m back to blogging for a small but highly intelligent audience who don’t mind misguided intellectual pretensions mixed with a regular diet of arse jokes. You see: the red bottom of the Bobo the chimp! I was sitting on a rich seam of comic material right there but I had to ruin things by sticking myself in the cartoon. I’d mention ‘metafiction’ but I think it would lose me yet more readers. Now I bet even Ayumi won’t come back…

So here, then, is a cartoon I’ve just finishing drawing whilst sobbing to ‘The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman’. It clearly wouldn’t find a home anywhere else so it goes out to the seven of you… And to think, had things gone differently, I might now be picturing the seven of you sitting on a large virtual sofa with Baconface on the end, whilst Ron & Russell Mael of Sparks provided an impromptu 'Two Hands One Muth' set… As Ingmar Bergman has just sang:

Send an angel down to lead
Lead me from this barren land
How the Hell can I believe
If you withhold your guiding hand...

It's A Sparks Show Part 2

When this mad lizard of an idea came to me, I planned to draw a couple of comic strips about my favourite band. I imagined that both would be completed inside a couple of days. This second, alone, took three days or nursing a sore elbow late into the night. As you can now see, it ended up twice as long as I’d originally planned. The problem is partly that they are addictive and fun to write and draw. I’m delighted that the first one was viewed so much and made Spark's official Facebook page. It should also be appearing (in translation) in the French music magazine, ‘New Noise’, in the next month or so, alongside an interview with the real Sparks. Great on the CV, I guess, even if it does nothing for the stomach...

This strip I don't expect to be such a success. I just cast it to the ether to be enjoyed or not. I had yet another batch of rejections from Private Eye this morning so I now need to work on some cartoons that might actually put food on the table. After that, I might draw another strip. At the moment, I just don’t know... The rejections from the Eye are beginning to take a toll. This is turning into a grueling business for men with spines as thick as a dinosaur's backbone.

So, if you’ve enjoyed these strips, please feel free to boost my confidence with a comment or email me. I don’t hear laughter or giggles of delight. I'll now post this and all I'll hear is the whirring of my computer’s fan and the wind in the trees. Hope you enjoy!







[Technically, I think this one’s a better strip but perhaps lacks the tightness of the first which had a better single joke. I was originally finishing this second strip after page 1, but I thought the songs puns weren’t a good end. I added the second page but trying to make the chimp the punchline but that didn't turn out well either. Last night, I drew the entirety of the last page. I liked the idea of breaking through the fourth wall by using myself as an even bigger chimp in the last frame. Other cartoonists do it occasionally and Crumb does it all the time.

What I learned: more frames gave me more room to breathe and to write. I really enjoyed writing the last page. I’ll have to try working at length again, perhaps going even longer but giving myself a full week to work on a strip, perhaps three or four pages long, which would be double this or 8 pages of A4. I was also much more liberal with Tippex in this strip. I've always tried to minimize mistakes but working with Tippex helped me change lots of things around if they didn't work. If only one good thing came of this it was learning to use Tippex properly!]

Private Eye and More Sparks

As you can see, I've posted a brand new cartoon. Yes, that means Ian Hislop must have come back off his holidays. After a long two weeks, the cartoons I sent to Private Eye came back with the familiar ‘Editor says sorry not to use’. This is turning ugly.

In fact, it’s becoming an almost morbid pleasure, this cycle of hope and rejection: a period of intense cartooning, firm belief that I have better cartoons than last time, a shred of hope, all to be dashed in one ugly moment of inbox hell. I’m beginning to think they’ll never accept any of my cartoons. This batch really contained some of my best and it seems that my best isn’t good enough. Between you and me: I think I’ve now given up.

Today I should be drawing cartoons or at least doing some proper writing but the Sparks comic strip keeps growing. It’s now two pages long, which is four A4 sheets or 27 individual frames. That's as long as it's going to get and now I need only finish some crosshatching, some polishing, and then a final check. I have no idea why I decided to finish it except I’ve actually had a blast drawing Sparks. I think I've also learned new things in the process of creating a longer piece of sustained cartooning, even if I haven't quite figured out how to draw a convincing Russell Mael. And now it's almost done, I’m not sure I even want to post the cartoon now. It's taken such time that I'd hate it just to go ignored, like everything I post here. Yet I'm sure that will happen. It’s a little different to the last, more ambitious but slightly odder. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, except I do know I won’t be sending it to Private Eye.

The Sparkling Strangeness

What strangeness. What sparkling strangeness…

My Sparks cartoon appeared on their Official Facebook page tonight.

This is me (holds up finger) passing this close to greatness (passes finger past nose). My nose isn't a great nose but for the purposes of this metaphor let’s imagine it is. It’s a monumental nose. It’s a nose that makes the best albums in the business and, when seen live, my nose is a revelation. In fact, I hope my noses plays Manchester soon so I can see it again.

Excuse this ramble but, if you follow this blog, you’ll know that last week was a bad week because of my elbow injury (the swelling is now almost down) but there were other things too grim to mention. You might say I was filled with momentary euphoria when I saw my doodle on the Facebook page of my favourite band. Hell, my work getting posed anywhere is remarkable. I remember when my book first appeared in bookshops; I’d just go into Manchester or Liverpool and look at it in utter bemusement. Mind you, when it was pulped, I also stood there looking at it in bemusement…

However, this Sparks boost was a great surprise. Last October, I’d been standing across the road from the HMV Ritz in Manchester, shivering as I waited for the coach replacing my cancelled train home. I could see Sparks fans waiting around the stage door. I couldn’t wait. I wouldn’t have waited even thought I wanted to wait. It seems a strange thing to do: to annoy artists you admire by loitering and staring at them… And I say that as a man who wrote a book of spoof letters in which I annoyed artists I admire by writing them funny letters. Or I least I hope they found them funny. The best ones usually did. I’d written to Ron Mael about six months earlier and suggested they tour again. Some small part of me hoped I’d played my part in making it happen.

So, even if I hadn’t played a small part in making it happen, this cartoon gave me real pleasure. I’d drawn two strips based around Sparks and to have the first received so well filled me with confidence. Humour is a tricky venue to play, especially when you know that your humour is too warped for the mainstream, though I partially blame Sparks for that.

I remember Sparks from earliest childhood when I was too young to understand the music but Ron Mael’s glare would fascinate me equally as much as Russell’s missing tooth. I think even then my humour was warped. Or perhaps Sparks warped my humour. That’s something I’ve often considered. All I know is that I’ve always loved things that are left of centre. Cartooning, my heroes are the often incomprehensible B. Kliban, the I-dare-you-to-like-me Robert Crumb, and that wild visionary Ralph Steadman. My favourite books are the dense ‘Heart of Darkness’ and the second volume of Hunter S. Thompson’s letters. Films: Orson Welles’ ‘F for Fake’, Huston’s ‘Treasure of the Sierre Madre’, and Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ (which I maintain is *the* greatest movie about modern art ever made). Musically, it’s always been Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, and Sparks…

So, I write this blog for myself like I write my books for myself, hoping to find others that like them. So, imagine my delight when I saw that my cartoon had made Spark’s Official Facebook page. My grin reached from ear to ear, taking two circuits around the living room in the process. People seemed to like the strip. I’m feeling really happy and then…

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’

I paraphrase. I’m not going back to read that comment again. Just cue the mangled cry of the brass section falling down the stairs. Cue the comic slide whistle descending the depths of pathos.

Never ever look. Never read the praise. Never read the hate.

Hard lessons have taught me that. From my first absolutely stinking review on Amazon to snide comments to my work online, I’ve learned never to listen. When I was interviewed on Radio 4 last year, I never went back. Never listened to it. I don’t look back. I just move on. That’s my approach and why I don’t use Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps I should try the Stuart Lee approach (and why I rate him as the finest stand-up in the business) which is to embrace the hate. Only, the problem with embracing the hate is that you really need to know you’re good in the first place to carry that off. My problem is that I feel that my cartoons are essentially worthless. Working class paranoia runs deep up here in the north and I find self-doubt the greatest obstacle when engaged in creative projects. Admitting you're a writer around here is like admitting to being a sheep strangler, something that's not encouraged and possibly illegal. So when the blank page faces me, it’s cruel. Marking it is a defiance and I will scribble something rather than face nothing. It’s the best way.

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’

But that line lives with you before you pick up a pen or type a word.

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’

The audience’s voice is always there in everything you do, ready to mock you for even trying to create something different, for simply trying to make people laugh and feel better...

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t find this cartoon funny in the slightest?’

Then I think: what would Hunter S. Thompson say.

And I think: fuck them. Fuck them in the desert where black ants can dance drunken Irish jigs on their shrivelled eyeballs. That’s probably what Hunter S. Thompson would have said but better than that, tapping deeper reserves of justifiable anger.

Because here’s the crux of the matter: there is more stupidity in the world than there is creativity.

Something happened to me a few months ago that puts it into context.

A friend teaches English Literature at a local comprehensive and one of her students needed help on an A Level project. It happened to be on the author I wrote about for my doctorate. I never have reason to use my PhD so I was delighted to write down some ideas about how to tackle the project. The suggestions were passed on. It felt like my ten years of university weren’t a total waste.

Fast forward two months. My friend mentioned the student so I asked how my advice has been received. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘they ignored your suggestions completely.’

‘Completely? You mean all of them?’

‘I know. She did something else. We couldn’t stop her, even though it didn’t make any sense…’

I shrugged but here’s the thing: when I got home that night, I actually went to my books and I researched the very thing I’d written down just in case I’d been wrong.

Of course, I wasn’t wrong. In fact, I was more right than I’d suspected and it was actually a pretty imaginative way of tacking the project. But after studying an author for ten years and having written a 100,000 word thesis, why did I think that I might have been wrong? Just because some vacant 16 year old, who couldn’t take her studies seriously, decided to take an easy option?

Then I realised it was just self-doubt, self-loathing… We all have it.

So, I’m writing this to myself as well as to anybody who creates and actually reads things like this ramble on the web. My advice to myself and to you: never listen to the critics. Never accept the praise. Ignore the scorn. Just write, draw, keep your head down. Produce. The poverty will get you long before the critics get to have a say.

Remember: the only thing that matters is the work. And occasionally getting your work on Spark's Official Facebook page. That makes it all feel almost worth it.

 

It's A Sparks Show

Coming soon... It's A Sparks Show: Part 2...

[caption id="attachment_2166" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Click to enlarge[/caption]

This was a comic strip idea that had been rattling around in my head for a long time so I’m glad to have finally sat down and drawn it out. I think drawing this was some kind of penance for once writing to Ron Mael as Stan Madeley (movie frogman) offering to teach him how to scuba dive. He never replied but I can hardly blame him.

I’ve been a big fan of Sparks, possibly from early childhood but, on a conscious level, since I discovered the 'Gratuitous Sax' album yet I consider myself to be far too sane to be one of those 'super fans'. I stood next to a few of them outside Manchester’s Ritz last October when I saw Sparks play live. It was a birthday present otherwise I would have probably missed the tour and missed standing in line with one scary woman who was ready to throw body parts onto the stage if Russell Mael had only looked in her direction. Rather than stand at the front, I crept up to the balcony and, as fate would have it, got one of the few seats in the house (video here). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sparks will come back to Manchester around October when they do another live tour later in the year. The evening was sublime.

Next to seeing the Ralph Steadman exhibition or going to the Fringe to see Stuart Lee and Baconface, a Sparks concert could be another highlight of that fantasy year when I actually earn money for my cartoons/books and can actually afford to see all the things I want to see.

Looking back at this strip, there are things I could have done much better. I mainly read underground comics so I love roughly framing, though, doing this again, I perhaps  wouldn’t make it quite as rough. Some of the crosshatching was also rushed. Yet there are parts of this I really like. Learning to draw cartoons is all about constant practice. I didn’t want to spend too long on this, though I’ve not drawn two A4 sheets for quite a while. Anyway, success or failure, this is one of those things I draw for myself. The monkey at the end amuses me enormously and I've not stopped smiling all day.