music – carlisle studio

The pinkStardust Blues

The music video. Part III. Synchronicity, timing, vision.

The alley behind Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, CO – where I have a studio, and where we referenced Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues music video, shot in a London alleyway, for *The pinkStardust Blues* music video.

I chatted in an earlier blog posting about why I chose to reference Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues music video for my The pinkStardust Blues music video - in an alleyway, tossing cards with bits of song lyrics on them. Referencing Dylan’s video (early 1960s) conceptually aligns with the Timeline of the pinkStardust installation / conversation about our atomic testing times.

Filming my music video in the alleyway tangles the past to our present in a similar way that the pinkStardust installation Timeline itself tangles events with the people who experienced them – directly, or just by being alive while their world was “happening”. I myself being in that world and of that world, having been born in 1954, just 2 months before the infamous Castle Bravo test (our first thermonuclear test, conducted in the Pacific) and personally experiencing the fallout of the Cold War both physically and emotionally.

The pinkStardust installation timeline (above) as it appeared on my studio wall before completion, meaning I finished developing what the layout will be when installed for exhibition, and chose what events will be highlighted with “pictures, forms and sound” (4th versed of The pinkStardust Blues). The Castle Bravo test (mentioned above) is one the events that will be highlighted.

BTW – when I capitalize and italicize the word Timeline, it refers to the Timeline that will be in the exhibition of the pinkStardust installation – an ‘object’ so to speak. The lower case, unitalicized word refers to working the timeline for the development of the installation. On the right is an image of the first timeline incarnation in 2012, masking tape that ran along my apartment wall. I saved it – taping it onto the pages of a notebook.

Back to creating the music video

To create a bridge from past to present a bit further, one that could be traveled either way (past to present, present to past in a abstracted way) I asked my filmmakers Joey and TJ to continue editing the filming we did in the alleyway into black and white, keeping their brilliant idea to tint the umbrella and toss cards in pink.

The pink umbrella featured in the music video first emerged as a symbol for the presence of radioactive fallout in an installation Timeline event highlight, The Four Enola Geisha (4 life-size painted images on canvas) and continues to reference radioactive fallout in the music video – both with Zoe’s channelling of Edie Sedgwick in the alleyway, carrying the umbrella, and later in the video with studio some cut-a ways. I will use that same umbrella when I construct another Timeline event highlight for the installation, the Duck-n-Cover Altar, a sculpture that I have designed and collected material for, including a 1960s era school desk, but as yet have not completed.

Images of the pink umbrella in stills from the music video – above and below

Footage shot in the studio will remain in color – as one of the other brilliant ideas my filmmakers had (Caryn, Joey and TJ) was to include shots of some the finished works (11 of 32) of a companion series to the pinkStardust installation that I am working on called The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests (I blogged about the series in an earlier posting and there are some Instagram postings about them both at carlisle.studio and mymanhattanproject – yes, all one word). Simple but effective special effects using light takes their idea to include some of the paintings into extraordinary imagery for the video.

A still of the process of the simple, but still special, effects highlighting a finished image from *The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests*. The painting displayed on the pedestal is of Castle Bravo of 3/1954, our first thermonuclear test that I mentioned earlier in this blog posting.

And, in past postings, I have chatted about how Andy Warhol became my main muse when I was struggling to create the poster for the pinkStardust installation back in 2012.

That I reference him in the music video then, is no surprise. How?

One, by including my daughter Zoe as she channels Edie Sedgwick, Warhol’s main muse for a while, and sometime girlfriend of Dylan’s. Zoe’s striped tee with black stockings, large earrings (a custom creation made for Zoe by a very talented Melissa Robinson: artist, jewelry maker, mom and Zoe’s former art teacher – and she’s still teaching art to student today!) and a fake fur (it was cold that morning) are what Edie might have worn that day. The fake fur is not a leopard coat like Edie had, but remember we are referencing, not trying to replicate.

Edie in her leopard skin coat

Two. I myself dress to conjure Andy - pay tribute to his inspiring and informing me not only for the creation of the poster, but the whole look of the pinkStardust installation. And now, The pinkStardust Blues music video too.

Andy:

Andy in his striped tee, black jeans, and Ray Bans

Below, a still of me channelling Andy in The pinkStardust Blues music video, with Zoe and Steve (our reference to Bob Neuwrith from Dylan’s video) in the background – still in color.

It is obvious with this project that things happen in the time that they are supposed to happen. That has certainly been true with making this music video. The song, written in 2012, (the same year Andy and I created the poster to keep me on track with the look and feel of the installation), speaks to more than just my stedfast dedication to the project.

The recording of the song, along with those who played on it, Saja (vocals, guitar, mixing and recording), Cliff (harp) and Matty (stand up bass), and finding the right people to film the video (Caryn, Joey and TJ), would be so different had I been able to move forward on it on my own in the many years that followed the initial spark.

Although I did what I could in the years since I first began in 2012, continuing to research and develop the installation while working full time, raising Zoe and making other artwork, once I was able to retire (I did so early so that I could finish and exhibit this installation before I leave the planet from a totally pooped old body giving out!) I have been able to focus on the project and bring the development to completion as I finish making the work.

Next posting will include more discussion about RatWorks Productions, the company who’s filming of The pinkSardust Blues music video I am proud to say is their inaugural project. I will also include some images of some toss cards that I made in 2012, comparing them to what I created and used in 2023/24, and some more stills of the making of…

Hopefully the finished video will be in my hot little hands by the end of this month – to be included in my exhibition proposal that is also finished and ready to submit. Here I come Los Angeles!

The pinkStardust Blues

The music video. Part II. Choices

Making a music video implies one has music in the first place, no? And I didn’t yet, at least not recorded (turns out music in one’s head doesn’t count). So as I began to search out the help I would need to create the music video for The pinkStardust Blues, I began to ask around about finding someone to sing and record The pinkStardust Blues.

Barbara, a friend I have worked with on many projects, suggested I contact one Saja Butler at Urban Monk Studios in Fort Collins. Best damn advice I could have gotten. And fortunately for me, when I pitched the project to her, she said yes!

Saja performing. Here is her website: http://www.sajabutler.com

Saja sings The pinkStardust Blues like she was born to. During our first meeting I was popping up to use the john when I heard Saja humming the tune in the kitchen. When I returned I said “That’s it! You’ve got it.” Just the sound I was hoping for. She rocks it.

Down to the basement recording studio we went. Saja singing and playing guitar, me voicing the call backs as I call them.

First chorus

Saja singing: “Atom splitting”
Me calling back: “Uranium”

The schematic of a uranium atom (R) printed on the back of Hiroshima Maiden from the Four Enola Geisha – the paintings that will be exhibited in the installation pinkStardust. The back of the painting has been skinned in aluminum foil (matte side out) – part of the nod to Warhol (and Billy Name from Warhol’s first Factory studio) that I give Andy in much of the installation. After all, he’s my main muse on this project.

Saja singing: “Atom splitting”
Me calling back: “Plutonium”

The schematic of a plutonium atom (above ) printed on the back of Nagasaki Maiden from The Four Enola Geisha, on aluminum foil. Images of the front of The Four Enola Geisha paintings will not be shared until exhibited in the pinkStardust installation.

Saja singing: “Atom splitting”
Me calling back: “Currie’s call”

Dr. Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer. Or as I call him in the *pinkStardust* timeline ‘Daddy O’

Saja singing: “Atom splitting”

Me calling back: “Oppie’s fall”
OOoooooooo…

As the song The pinkStardust Blues continued to move from conception to existing in our phenomenological world, hearing Saja sing it, playing the guitar while sitting in her basement studio, my excitement grew. Hearing the song come to life has been amazing.

And, as with much of how this project has developed, when I was telling my friend Claire about it over a glass of wine, she mentioned that her hubby Matty plays stand up bass. I love stand up bass! Would he consider playing on the recording? Turns out he would, and did! Mix in my brother Cliff’s playing harp (sent to Saja from Ohio) and oh man am I a happy gal.

Saja’s mixing is perfect. Not fussy, or over produced, it sounds like we are all sitting on the back porch singing the blues about “…our atomic history and where we might be bound” (from the last verse of The pinkStardust Blues).
Thanks Saja!

In the meantime, and during my attending to the recording of the song, I again found the perfect people to create / produce the video. Enter the creative visual folk – Caryn, Joey and TJ.

And, I found the perfect people to join me in ‘acting’ in the video. My daughter Zoe (channeling Edie Sedgwick, thanks to hair and makeup by my sister Robin – yes, it’s a family affair and I am blessed with a very creative family) and her friend Steve (the two referencing Ginsberg and Neuwrith in the Dylan video).

Steve and Zoe relaxing after the shoot. Yeah, there’s a light streak across my darling Zoe’s face, but I like this pic – so there ya go.

Next posting, I continue to chat about choices made – how they are sometimes informed by both synchronicity and timing and how though one’s creative vision must be maintained, one must not cling so tightly to it that one loses out on the chance to expand, increase, enhance…
Cheers!

The pinkStardust Blues

The music video. Part I. Background.

Back in 2012 I conceived and began developing the installation that will be pinkStardust. As I began researching for the project (beginning with Las Vegas renaming itself the Atomic city and what all was tangled into that), I realized that the installation was going to be quite complex and multi-layered.

Not a problem – except when one is planning to send out proposals for exhibiting the work. I wondered. Can I encapsulate, reduce down, in some way more than just a written outline? Something informative but much more interesting?

That’s when I wrote the song The pinkStardust Blues. An approximately 3 minute overview of who, what, when, where and why. It works.

My first challenge with the song however wasn’t lyrics, or even the melody and music. They came quite easily actually, which surprised me because I am not a song writer.

My first challenge was trying to flesh out the idea I had to make the song a lounge-like tune. Like something one would hear not in a high-end casino on the strip, but rather, a smaller, little intimate bar with a singer on a piano backed by a guitar, bass, drums. Shouldn’t be too hard eh?

I thought of the song Roly Poly, performed in “… a little place called the Hidden Door.” in the hit film from 1959’s Pillow Talk, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

The tune was perfect. The setting was perfect. But, even though the lyrics were not the same, the licensing company wanted thousands of dollars to use the tune.

Although Rock and Doris sing along to Roly Poly in the Hidden Door in NYC I’m sure a Hidden Door-like bar could very much be found on a street in The Atomic City in 1959.

Yes, I considered just enough variation to slide by, but when these kinds of obstacles show up during the development of a project, I take note and listen. Because It usually means there is a better solution. And there was. Sing the song to a basic blues riff because after all, it is about a time one would be singing the blues if one knew what was up (and coming down – can you say pink stardust?) when those atomic tests were blowing left and right just 60 miles away – and “spreading the love” with every weather pattern blowing the fallout east.

As the song says in the second verse “Time went by.” I continued researching, selecting major events from the timeline I was creating that forms the structure of the installation, selecting materials – and started making.

I also began developing what a music video of the song would look like. Assuming that I would have to make it myself, I chose to reference Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues for many reasons.

First of all, it is one of if not the first music video made.
Second, it was filmed in black and white in one long, uninterrupted, unedited shot – a look I thought I may have to emulate as I would have to have someone stand in an alley with their phone and record it.
Third, It was released in 1962 – right smack dab in the middle of the pinkStardust time line.
And bonus, turns out it was an anti-nuke song – although Bob makes no mention of this in the actual song. Chaz Chandler, the original bassist for the British band the Animals talked about it when he was interviewed, saying Dylan invited the Animals up to his apartment to hear his new song, and at that time told them that it was a disarmament/ anti nuke tune. Perfect!

An image found on Wikipedia of the 3 site choices for Bob’s video for Subterranean Homesick Blues. They used the 3rd one, in an alleyway in London.

Here’s a link to Bob’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0

Yes, many bands have used the look and format, tossing cards with bits of lyric hastily written across them. But that doesn’t bother me. Actually, moves the choice into a pop culture group of good company – and pinkStardust is all about the POP!

In my next post I will chat about the making of the pinkStardust Blues music video. It is in final editing and will be ready to include in that pinkStardust installation exhibition proposal I am ready to send to – guess who?