The Fine Art and Design Blog of Darren Daz Cox

"Shared my secret with a few of my friends, should have kept quiet ‘cos they’re laughing again" - Belly Jean by McRackins

Damn, I have to re-write this post from scratch because for the first time, ever, Wordpress didn’t save what I was writing and logged me off. It makes sense why that happened because what I’m going to share with you is a crack in the egg of reality, and the world will try to prevent me from sharing it with you. But sometimes life is one guy vs. the rest of the universe.

One of my favorite songs of all time is Belly Jean by McRackins. Official McRackins website here.

Wikipedia says about the McRackins

The McRackins are a Canadian pop punk band that was formed in 1994. Their song and album titles revolve around egg puns (i.e. "Bat Out of Shell") They have had approximately 70 releases from over 30 different record labels.

The McRackins nearly always play live in full costume and made up to look like two eggs and a dog. The band claims that they were transformed from men to two eggs and a dog and given super pop-punk powers as the result of a freak nuclear accident. Since then, twin eggs Bil (guitar, vocals), Fil (bass) and dog Spot (drums).

I noticed that this song didn’t make the McRackins top 100 list on last.fm, well, there are alot of great Mcrackins songs. But it looks like, other than me, no one has listened to the song at all! I know it’s a rarity but it’s not that rare! It’s on Amazon.com!!!

I did a Google search for "Belly jean" mcrackins and found two measly hits, one was the Amazon site for the CD that has Belly Jean by McRackins, Music To Listen To Music By (there’s a sample of the song on Amazon yea). the other hit was this site haha!

You might think, oh well maybe it’s a spelling mistake problem, but the search for "Belly Jeans" Mcrackins only gets three hits, all for listings for the CD and the song is Belly Jean not Belly Jeans.

last year I wrote Bil McRackin, the guy/egg who wrote the song, and even he didn’t consider it a ‘hit single’, he remembered writing it and quoted the lyrics, and while he had a sense of pride about it he considered it a rariety that didn’t make the cut for one of their regular albums but it might be included in a rarities CD one day.

"My Belly Jean she means the world to me, my Belly Jean if you could only see, could i be that lucky guy, you can’t say I never tried"

I loved this song the moment I heard it, it has all the elements of a perfect pop-punk song including the 5 second guitar solo and catchy chorus, even lalala’s hehe! and now it seems a miricle I ever found the MP3 in the first place, I downloaded the MP3 from Napster back before it was illegal to do so. Weirdly, some years later, I knew a girl called Jean who this song totally makes me think of, in some ways it’s the best memory I have of her, or rather it makes me remember her in the best possible way.

Do you ever get that feeling that the world makes things just for you? "a ten pin bowling ball, she threw a strike like it was nothing at all.."

Words can’t really describe how grateful I am for this song, even if I am literally the only person who has cared enough to write about it on the internet, I might not have seen a ufo or had any paranormal encounters but do I have a glimpse into the magical way this world works when you take the learned suggestions of Dannion Brinkley to heart, inspire, be inspired and appreciate (and you’ll understand the meaning of life a little more).

Anyway, my new zine Go B Zine, is a labor of love and while it’s slightly behind schedule and has an initial print run of less than a dozen, that doesn’t mean that it might not be the coolest art ‘zine ever! My goal is to do art that gets to the right person at the right time, like I discovered Belly Jean by McRackins I want someone to pick up my zine and get that feeling that I wrote it for them, that they are the reason I wrote it and while no one else seems to think much about it, they love it regardless of how obscure it might be.

The model for the girl on the horse in the upper left corner was Jean!

One of the many (double) pages of my new zine that is becoming behind schedule because I can’t stop trying to add just one more visual element (without the composition collapsing like a house of cards).

To me, ‘more is more’ until it is too much, but how much is too much? all I can do is trust my own sense of the ascetic.

When folded into the paper zine these pages will not connect visually but one of the many enjoyments is to see how the pages that will end up next to these two halves WILL connect. After all, the same artist will have done both with the same tools so there will be a common thread.

I want this zine to have many layers, one: the obvious ‘content’, stories, poems, artwork etc,  two: the connection between the various pieces of content, some of which are obvious such as the alien species called Meganoids are mentioned in several places but some are less apparent, even to me, and as I add content seemingly at random it suddenly connects in a meaningful way, making the project a success before it is even finished.

There is another layer where the abstract light and shadow can activate the innate creativity of the mind, the same way that you might see a face in a cloud, even if you pride yourself on your sensible rational no-nonsense nature, your mind is still making you see imaginary faces in clouds, and that is proof of your innate creativity, you can’t help but create things, in clouds, in your dreams and your waking fantasys, creativity is the type of engine your mind uses.

The complex artwork and careful design is such that it should stimulate that part of your mind that is beyond your rational willpower to control.

You can’t not see that face in a cloud once you initially see it can you? Well, you will see things in this zine that are not actually there because that’s how your mind works.

What you do with the things you see and feel are entirely up to you, but i think if you consider this zine a cataylist for your own creativity it will work best!

I like to use birds as metaphors for the soul in my art, it’s an old fashioned concept but it suits me.

The canvas was spray painted gold then oil paint was put on which causes the gold to turn liquid again and make some amazing shapes.

The bird is silver but the way the light was when I took the photo made it look cyan, so I was playing around in photoshop to correct this and desaturated part of the picture to make the bird look silver again. Suddenly the project took on a new meaning, after all, I haven’t done anything in black and white in years.
I might do a black and white painting soon I really like the greys there. I’m going to have some b/w pages in my zine as we all remember the b/w cheapo xeroxed zines from back in the day but these days the quality is so much better and some things look better in black and white. Taking an art form and making a new version of it appeals to me.

It’s funny how I almost always make a complicated sky, I’ve been trying to figure it out. Is it some kind of reflection of inner turmoil in my mind or something? Kids generally create a sky as a solid color with a cloud or two for flavor, my skies are writhing contrasts of light and darks with shiny gold or silver haha!

I think it’s because I’m always try to capture something dramatic, those moments when you feel little below the gigantic rolling sky.

What do you think of latest blog banner? Blue and white are great colors with a scandalous hint of gold!

I’m done with the gold/violet/green series for a while here’s the last of it for now.

This is acrylic paints on canvas then sprayed gold then oil paints! It’s getting done, slowly..
I’m trying to capture the feeling of ‘gloriousness’ hehe, is that a real word? But that’s the word that comes to mind. I love combining realism with more abstract motifs and I love have multiple light sources as it makes the pictures come alive in your mind!

In other art news, I decided to make a few virtual art galleries again in SecondLife (after a long absence, which seems to be a pattern with my art, I’ll stop one type of art for a while and try another and when i come back to the first it is with a renewed vigor not seen by many (hehe that’s an interpolation of the poetry from the mighty Henry Rollins).

You might see my really cool personal logo around the sims of SecondLife, my avatar is called Daz Honey! 

This is the type of thing I want to show the wfabi.org people, this is graphic design from a fine art perspective which is a precious commodity in this world where that ipod silhouette idea gets rehashed over and over until people just don’t notice it anymore. Graphic design needs to be fresh or people don’t look at it, they see it, but they don’t look and that is the difference between a successful design and just another design.

 WFABI Mission: To define standards to aid in the design, development and marketing of websites, from the teachings of experiential fellows; to help produce a "better internet"

I know graphic design, I graduated with a BS in graphic design in 1999 and have been ‘experimental’ ever since. My friend Scott Tranchitella (DJ Disaster) and I built our own graphic design studio and taught ourselves to become media experts. We built websites, bought domain names and made a thousand graphics (see the logo on the wall behind DJ Disaster in the photograph below). We built a recording studio with a sound booth and used pro-tools, we bought a professional broadcast tv camera and half a dozen M2 decks and learned Final Cut, we produced and recorded several albums worth of original music (Homer Simplex) to use for our indy movies and commercials, we acted and produced in a weekly live comedy radio show and streamed several stations 24/7 from our studio to promote the artists we had recorded, often writing the beats for the hip hop tracks to suit the clients, we even started work on an internet tv show before I left for Michigan (and eventually wound up here close to NYC).

That’s just the work part, after all, everyone and their grandma is an amature graphic designer and videographer these days, children make CSS that can rival the pros (seen Neopets lately?) and social networking experts are a dime a dozen, so the actual nuts and bolts of software wrangling isn’t that important when you can crowdsource a project to the most available, cost effective and proficient person you know third hand on twitter. Proficiency can be hired but originality has to be sought out.

I’m 42, I’ve been around the block, hell, I went to school on three different continents. I’ve moved dozens and dozens of times, each time refining what is most important to take with me and discarding the rest. I have little left of my childhood except the same dreams that surface like liquid gold each time I create something great. I’ve been wealthy, I’ve starved, I’ve had great love affairs and I’ve been miserably lonely but I’ve always been an artist. It’s not a jay oh bee as that means someone elses rules, it’s not a career as that means it has to end, I fully intend to follow in the footsteps of Michelangelo and Picasso and be a old man who makes interesting things, by then I should be pretty damn good don’t you think!

If you want people to brainstorm about making a better internet, I would be a good choice I think!