The makers of Skechers shoes do not know how to spell.

Something else about sketches...

Sketch Fest: The Sketchening.

Sketchy People.

This week is going to be all about the sketches. Basically I'll be just drawing a ton of whatever for awhile, then edit the page together for premium viewing opportunities. Enjoy!

Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

Todays song is 'Signal Your Intention' by Hodges, James, and Smith. I couldn't find a ton of information on them, and for the most part it looked like most sites just copy and pasted parts of what this site had on them. So, I will do the same but also link to them and tell you all to check them out.

Hodges, James & Smith (HJS) was the brainstorm of producer/writer William “Mickey” Stevenson, Motown’s A&R Director during their glory years. All Detroit natives, Pat Hodges, Denita James, and Jessica Smith were handpicked by Stevenson, though they each took different routes to get there. Hodges played the clarinet in a local band, then attended college and earned a B.A. in music. James studied ballet and tap dancing, while Smith had a gospel background.

Mickey Stevenson had a great vision for HJS and groomed them to play the top, plush clubs. He created a snazzy nightclub act for them that rivaled the Supremes. They played the sweet gigs throughout Europe and recorded Incredible on 20th Century Fox in 1973, but the only thing incredible about it was the speed it reached cutout bins at discount record stores. Although a solid album, it just didn’t get a decent push. Another 20th Century album, 1975′s Power in Your Love, disappeared so fast that most people can’t recall its title. The lack of recording success though, didn’t douse HJS’ flame; they continued traveling, doing the plum gigs.

In 1976, they signed with London Records. What’s on Your Mind received quite a bit of promotion and acclaim that, unfortunately, didn’t transform into sales. A second London release What Have You Done for Love, met a similar fate. During 1977, they had a few singles that nested in the nose-bleed section of the charts: “Don’t Take Away Your Love,” and a medley “Since I Fell for You/I’m Falling in Love,” but no major busters. Other artists including Bobby Womack, and Sylvester used them on sessions, but after a few more years of the same the trio disbanded, never having achieved the success they and Stevenson tried so hard to obtain.

Here is the track for your enjoyment:

And as a bonus here is their first single 'Nobody' which has a funkier vibe to it, and was also from when Carolyn Crawford was in the group as well:

While I Was Sleeping.

Humbug.

The last couple of nights have been quicky ones because I've been super busy. But, I got a few things done I needed to in the last couple days, which is very good.

I'm looking forward to this weekend, hope everyone else feels the same.

Dobbers.

Loved this game, despite being super frustrating sometimes. I still have the Nintendo cartridge for this game. You can read all about it on the Wikipedia page for it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Madness

Magic Everywhere in this B.

Just is case, for anyone who hasn't seen the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs

Members Only.

Tea Party.

In celebration of all this March Madness, even though my team has been eliminated, this will be a week of madness comics.

Remeberful.

So, a little something different for the song of the day. The song is by one artist, while the history will be by another.

Last week the soulful Nate Dogg passed away. He was one of those singers that made appearances everywhere and always killed it with his singing, but never got a lot of support as a solo musician. I always wished he had gotten a little more love and would have been able to do a little experimenting with his singing. 

He started out in a group called 213 with Snoop Dogg and Warren G before being discovered by Dr. Dre and doing some hooks for Dre's 1992 classic, The Chronic. A couple of years later, in 1994,  he and Warren G would work together on the song 'Regulate' which ended up propelling both of their careers to new levels and earning them a Grammy nomination. Nate continued to do hooks for a wide range of artists and recorded a solo album to be released in 1996 by Death Row, due to legal problems though the album was not released until 1998. The album charted, but not very high. He recorded two more solo albums and countless more hooks before suffering a stroke in 2007. This stroke left his entire left side paralyzed. He suffered a second stroke in late 2008 and required physical therapy. A few more tracks featuring his voice were released in the following years, though I don't know when they were recorded originally. Last week he died from a heart failure and complications brought about by his strokes.

The song used today is Michael McDonald's 'I Keep Forgettin' which served as one of the main samples in 'Regulate.'

And just for easy memory/comparison sake, here is 'Regulate.'

And as a double bonus, here is Nate Dogg's song he recorded as a St. Ides commercial. You've got to give respect to anyone that can make a malt liquor add sound this smooth.

RIP Nate Dogg

About Me.

I've already apologized to my girlfriend about how I drew her, she accepted the apology.

As a bonus today, here is the comic I did for a show at Pimlico Library in London. Once I know a little bit more info about when the opening is and how long it runs, I'll post that info here for anyone living in the area.

Willy.

Last origin story of the week. 

Looking forward to a long weekend of formatting stuff for printing, I really am looking forward to it.

Hope everyone else has an awesome weekend too.

It's Not Easy, Wearing Green.

Happy what's left of St. Patrick's Day! 

Hope everyone is being safe out there...

St. Lunatics.

The Pen 5 Club.

Jared.

More origin stories this week. Enjoy!

Daft.

Going to be a little short on the history, lots and lots of work to be done on other projects today. 

Over the course of his career Edwin Birdsong was a studio musician for many artists, including Stevie Wonder. He helped pen some stuff with Roy Ayers as well. He spent some time as a solo musician as well, but did not find a lot of success. he had a cult following, but nothing particularly wide spread. Here is one of his songs that was later sampled by Daft Punk which was then sampled by Kanye West. So, here is the original version of the sample of a sample, 1979's 'Cola Bottle Baby' by Edwin Birdsong:

Zombay-A-A-O-O.

Figuring out what to prepare for the MOCCA fest in April. 

It will probably be compilations of a bunch of the comics from here.

It will be my first foray into printing my comics in color, I am nervous and excited about it.

I will be sharing the table with my buddies whom I've collaborated with on this blog before, Will Varner and Brendan Leach, I'm pumped up about it already.

Oh, and you should read about the Zombie Ants in Brazil here:

http://bit.ly/f6jIii

The Blue Muppet.

Twitter week comes to a close! Hope everyone has enjoyed it. Here is an article about the origins of 'Follow Friday', with graphs!

http://mashable.com/2009/03/06/twitter-followfriday/

Have a good weekend everybody.

Lemonade Was A Popular Drink.

One Man Winery.

Those other 11 are super into him though.

Deal With It.

I guess I still have the presidents on the brain...

Rockin' Robin.

I've been doing the whole twitter thing for a couple weeks now and it has been ruling my life. So, why not let it rule my blog for a week? Short and sweet comics...just like twitter! Hopefully short and sweet enjoyment will follow. 

Hide-and-Seek.

Todays song is brought to you by those Philly soul crooners The Delfonics. They worked heavily with one of the Philadelphia soul godfathers in Thom Bell. He helped them string together some hits in their early days (late 60's early 70's) while working on their first four albums. He says that due to low budgets he played most of the instruments himself on the recordings. Some of where the Delfonics history got interesting was after 1975 when they split into multiple groups. The group didn't break up, it just became two groups with the same name performing the same material with different members. The lead members from each group would record together and then tour separately with a couple filler singers, though occasionally the combination of leads would vary. So, any given night you wouldn't necessarily know which line-up you were seeing. But, this song was from their pre-split days and is one of the Thom Bell penned and produced hits (lead singer William Hart also had a hand in the writing.) A lot of people might recognize the chorus from The Fugees re-do and the horns from Missy Elliot's 'Sock it 2 Me.' Here is 'Ready or Not Here I Come (Can't Hide From Love)' by The Delfonics:   

And the bonus track today is 'La-La (Means I Love You)' a song Nicholas Cage later butchered on film:

Late?

Do people even still jokingly use "You're the man now, dog!" anymore?

This is one of those situations where A) I kind of hope someone has thought of this already, and B) Can't believe it took me 11 years to think of it, (Finding Forrester came out in 2000) and C) For some reason still think it's funny.

I suppose the 'You're the man now dog' meme site still keeps it fresh in peoples minds...

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Float, Float On.

And this rounds out movie week. Hope everyone enjoyed the rarely seen movies behind the movies we all enjoy so much.

You can relive your memories of the above movie at the link below. But also, seriously, there are no other parts of peoples skeletons in that entire opening scene. Just skulls. What the eff James Cameron. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsIlEIwdgzI

Washed Out.

Do you like your favorite movie scenes with modern dance music in place of the original soundtrack? If so, then you are going to love reliving this scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rTqIKbqz_E

Hard Work.

Hi to all the awesome new visitors! Thanks for taking a look. Big thanks to Scott C. and Ryan Pequin for the shout outs. Even though most of you probably came to be here through one of them, make sure you support both and check out their sites. Scott C and Ryan Pequin

And if you guys prefer to do blog looking at on tumblr, I have one of those too, with the same stuff on it at:

http://eatmorebikes.tumblr.com/

Then once you are done with all that you can relive the above moment here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMF1Id2ePQA

The Greens.

Another day, another neato movie reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNFPaPor8A