Crumb has been living in a small village in the south of France since the 90's.
In the "Crumb" doc he says something along "They're all wearing baseball hats. I'm getting out of here.", speaking about the US.
He also laments having taken too much LSD.
The intro about him not liking the music reminded me of the Letter of Note entry when Crumb is sent an experimental jazz album and replies to the musician:
https://lettersofnote.com/2015/12/17/torturing-the-saxophone...
> I gotta tell you, on the cover of the CD of your sax playing, which is black and has no text on it, I wrote in large block letters, in silver ink, “Torturing The saxophone—Mats Gustafsson.” I just totally fail to find anything enjoyable about this, or to see what this has to do with music as I understand it, or what in God´s name is going on in your head that you want to make such noises on a musical instrument. Quite frankly, I was kind of shocked at what a negative, unpleasant experience it was, listening to it.
I had always know him as a visual artist so I was recently very surprised to learn that not only does Robert Crumb play music but he's actually been in a few different bands.
It's a bit too early in the morning for me to find the specific albums that I found enjoyable so I'll provide the links to the bands and perhaps others who know more about the musical performer side of Crumb can expand on this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Crumb_%26_His_Cheap_Suit_...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_and_John%27s_East_River...
Crumb is from my small town in CA. During the fires, not so long ago, my mentor kept some of his old journals safe for his family. 10 or so notebooks full of doodles, all in one place. I can only imagine what that was worth! Much more, culturally, to be sure.
Anyone see the documentary about him: "Crumb" (1994)? Everyone in his family is a little off, but back in those days, you just did the best you could with what you got and if you were a gifted artist like Crumb, you turned being an odd ball into a career.
One of his co-temps, Gilbert Shelton made great comics - the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Broth...) were my favorite. He had many characters in the FFFB, Norbert the Nark, Fat Freddy's Cat, Let My Chickens Free, and many others.
Reg Mombassa's stuff is somewhat reminiscent of Crumb's, especially his designs for the surfwear label Mambo: https://www.regmombassa.com/pages/mambo
The nice thing about vinyl album covers is there's plenty of space for art.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/440508407309861046/
fly on the wall
This is just pure cowardice:
> As for Crumb’s depiction of that scene from the musical [the viciously racist depiction of a black woman], lets not even go there. Suffice it to say that a cover like that will not see the light of day today.
Especially if you're not completely avoiding Crumb's views on race:
> Asked about how a white guy connects so deeply with black music created in the 1930s, he answered: “I don’t know. There’s something so raw, kind of beauty that speaks to me in a deep and direct way. Personally I barely even know any black people and I can’t relate to lower class black culture very well at all. It’s very alien to me in a certain way, and people I’ve known from that black culture, I’ve never been able to get very close to, because their values are so different. So what is it about their music that speaks so directly? It has some universal appeal because it has had such a big influence on the music of the entire world.”
There's a straight line between "lower class black culture is very alien to me" and using darky iconography the same year MLK was shot - even in 1968 this was a deliberately racist provocation. There's also a line between Janis Joplin as a white blues singer and her approval of the artwork. And of course there's the straightest of lines between ignoring Crumb's racism while uncritically hagiographizing his connection to black music.
You can still tell a sympathetic story about Crumb: he is far from the only young avant garde American artist to use racist rhetoric to elicit cheap thrills and controversy. And unlike, say, Quentin Taratino, Crumb's later work shows a sincere understanding of and repentance for his earlier dreck.
But you can't claim to be telling the story of the album cover if you're whitewashing its most controversial aspect. What you're doing is spinning a fairy tale.
There's a picture of Janis Joplin standing on the sidewalk in SF in which the city looks exactly the same, as though frozen in amber for 50 years.
Approved by the Hell's Angels?
wonder what R Crumb would've thought of Electro Blues (either before, or after, a few tabs from that black on yellow Joplin portrait)?
>about an artist who draws an album cover for a band he does not care for, playing a music style he does not listen to, appealing to an audience he does not connect with
What? None of that is true.
this link not working
The album cover is from 1968. This article is from 2020. Just to clarify the ambiguous date added to the title on HN.
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Robert Crumb was interviewed for a BBC Radio 3 program where he played some records from his collection and talked about them.
One song was particularly fascinating: a primitive attempt at the new fangled sound called 'jazz' by a French country musette band from the early 20th C.
Crumb explained that when early American jazz bands went to Paris in the 1910s, the new sounds caused a sensation when they performed in the up-market venues. So the country bands were aware of the new style of jazz but most people had never actually heard any and had to play what they imagined jazz to be, mostly based off verbal descriptions. I remember this record as a crazy sound, but brilliantly entertaining.
Unfortunately I can't point you to the song or the interview, but if anyone else can please reply :-0