Tag: Bob Seger

Like a Rock partial  Lyrics:

“I was eighteen
Didn’t have a care
Working for peanuts
Not a dime to spare
But I was lean and
Solid everywhere
Like a rock……

And I stood arrow straight
Unencumbered by the weight
Of all these hustlers and their schemes
I stood proud, I stood tall
High above it all
I still believed in my dreams

Twenty years now
Where’d they go?
Twenty years
I don’t know
Sit and I wonder sometimes
Where they’ve gone……

Like a rock, the sun upon my skin
Like a rock, hard against the wind
Like a rock, I see myself again
Like a rock”

This artwork has developed  its own look, and offering these innovations:

I rounded the ends of my ledger lines, square ends before, and allowed them to dominate the notes. Before these lines where either connected to or behind my notes.  Also,  I positioned my blue flat incidental to enhance the look of the artwork not because of the music.

In sheet music each group of musical notes has its own beam, but for my music I connected two groups of my music with one long beam.  I than added some stripping in groups of five like the five lines of a musical staff.

Over the years of painting eighth and sixteen notes I have tried dozens of different looks. With this artwork I have created one of my better looks for my own 16th note.  Very Art Deco.

Although,  I may not be done with this half dome tie, not done before, my blue Tie here sits on top of my notes

I placed this rhythm dot, again where it works with the artwork, and not with the music.

Of course my original idea, that I woke to in late 2005, was to some how paint music using sheet music. From its beginning I kept some aspects of sheet music in my artwork to make it work.  I also knew than that I did not want to just paint sheet music, nor did I want to create an abstract splish splash,  and call it music. Instead I decided to paint music that connects.

To that end I want my best works to relive that lost trill of removing the cellophane from a new CD or Album, placing it on the spindle, and for the first time to actually hear music, only listened too before,  through speakers bigger than a toaster.

I want Like a Rock to be part of that goal of connection. I want to stand between the music and the artwork,  in the sweet spot of sight and sound,  cellophane toss aside.  I want it personal.

Scott Von Holzen

 

Like a Rock image two is where I put aside the subject of this artwork,  and work on bringing the music into visually harmony with the background.  As my saying goes, “…the artwork eventual seeks its own destiny, with little concern with its origins.” Image two is beginning to move to that direction, and by image three the harmony is in sight.

That is when I take another look to make sure my original plan for this music remains.  If needed the final steps  sharpen my vision for this painting. Finally, in key what I want to see is an artwork with a balanced sense of art and harmony

Scott Von Holzen

Like a Rock is a small work,  30 inches in length by eight. My choice of browns and black fits the classic rock look seen in the images of Bob Seger. The colors silver and gold  are also a good choice that you can see in these album covers:

Bob Seger is a Detroit “roots rocker,” who found his first national success with his 1976 album Night Moves. Although I can not recall ever listening or certainly buying the music of Bob Seger, here I am today spending two precious  weeks painting his music. How did I get here?

The birth and the foundation of what music means to me began with The Beatles, and has spread wide from there.  I know the exact date it was on February 9th 1964 when I was a sophomore in high school.   That Sunday night The Beatles appeared on  the Ed Sullivan show.  I along with 73 million others watched them perform  in black and white, and unknowing joined my generation that night.

The range of my early sixties Rock band music tastes expanded to include The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Cream,  Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Doors, The Kinks, Jefferson Airplane,  The Zombies, Buffalo Springfield, The Who, Credence Clear Water Revival, The Yardbirds, but not Led Zeppelin. I thought their music was too hard Rock.  That tells me that my Rock music taste included a lot of bands like The Beatles like The Turtles, Simon and Garfunkel, The Dave Clark Five, The Four Seasons,  The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers,  The 5th Dimension, The Association, The Mamas & The Papas, Blood Sweat and Tears,  and The Byrds.

Musically I also enjoyed the music of  The Supremes,  Sly and the Family Stone,  Jimi Hendrix,  Ray Charles,  and the electric Blues of B B King.  I mentioned that because I grew up in all white environments even though my family moved  several times from different homes to different states.  My first memory of ever interacting with a black person occurred while I was in college. It was than that my best friend Tom Haley and I attended a B B King concert at a local Madison bar. I remember going up to B B after the show, saying something to him and he responded how hot it was. That was all I remember.  I cannot but think that it must have been the diversely of the University of Wisconsin environment, my Liberal Mother,  and the impact of music that made prejudice meaningless in my life.

My attention and compassion for music changed in the late sixties, and early seventies after the garage band I joined disbanded, and I finished college.  With the rise of Disco music and the Bee Gees through the seventies,  I skimmed along musically with these Beatles style groups including The Eagles, Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, and Fleetwood Mac.

In the eighties I wandered through those musical years with Madonna and Prince.  In the eighties I bought one of my first CDs,  Back in the High Life. Steve Winwood was again another artist in the style the Beatles. In the nineties and on I  lost much of my  connection to popular music,  picking songs and artists, here-and-there along the way.

In early 2006 when I began painting music that expectantly became my second coming.  Suddenly, music no longer started with the Beatles and that February night in 1964. Today, I see music as having no beginning and it has no end.  From I Wanna Hold your Hand, to I am a Rock,  from the Classical Barque composer Antonio Vivaldi, to the Jazz master Miles Davis, as long as it is harmonic I am all in.

Scott Von Holzen