It was December of 1995, and my New York art studio had just burned down. Another bad turn of events in my artistic sojourn. It was going to be six months before my studio was rebuilt and I would be painting again. I found myself faced with the prospect of that which I fear most: boredom. My friend Michael Welch had often invited me to check out bands with him, but I always declined, being too busy preparing for my next show and what not. When he invited me out to see a band called the Gefkens I found myself at last without an excuse and my wife Tarssa and I joined Michael at Maxwell's in Hoboken for a Gefkens gig. I don't think I'd checked out the music scene since my college days, when musicians had been an integral component in my life. I didn't have a stereo back then, but I did have eleven house bands at one point. Bands played my parties, bands played my openings; Michelle Shocked, Daniel Johnston, REM, and countless others performed. If you wanted to hear great music you needn't look further than the latest English art show or party. That hadn't exactly been the case since my move to New York. The comedic folk singer Charles Herold had been just about the only act I bothered putting down my paintbrushes to check out. I felt like a born again virgin watching the Gefkens tear the house down. All I could think after the show was "Wow! How can I be involved in this?" The floodgates were open. For the next six months I combed the clubs of New York in search of the artists that would appear on English 101. Once my studio was up and running it quickly became a way station for touring bands. The first arrival was the Sutcliffes, who played Velveeta Underground to my Anti-Warhol for two weeks. Stumbling over sleeping musicians in my studio became an all too common occurrence. It was like the old days again, only now I was taking full advantage of my musical associations and working together with them on recording projects. I would have been thrilled enough to just meet these musicians. Now I was actually collaborating with them with great results. Maybe having my studio burn down wasn't such a bad turn of events after all.

English 101

I was watching a documentary about Saddam Hussein on The Biography Channel. It was mentioned in the piece that Saddam had 110 songs about him. I figured I could top that; I probably knew a lot more musicians than Saddam. I'd just ask them to write a song about me, how hard could that be? Okay, so I knew it would be weird and boy, it was weird. The next couple years I spent approaching every stray guitar player roaming New York, asking them to write a song about me. Society has a lot of unspoken boundaries and I'd definitely stumbled across one this time. Generally I received the reaction one would expect, though not always. Some bands actually weighed in with some great songs. The first "Ron English" songs were released on a small label from San Francisco. They called the compilation CD ENGLISH 101. It included songs by The Gefkens, Charles Herold, Baby Snufkin, The Sutcliffes and others. All in all it turned out to be a wild adventure and in the end I managed to top Saddam's record, which made it all worthwhile. I wonder if he ever received his copy of ENGLISH 101.

Popaganda

The participants on the project CD POPaganda were given a CD ROM and videotape of the art contained within this book and asked to create a soundtrack to the art. Beyond that the instructions were unspecific. A couple of the bands were completely stumped, so I wrote some lyrics and a couple of hooks. From there, it was uncharted territory. It has been my experience that if you present talented musicians with a good challenge, they will rise to meet the challenge, or in this case wildly exceed it. The stuff they came up with was quite varied and brilliant. I don't think there's another record like it. If I were to review it, I would probably say it's the musical equivalent of seeing the world through rose-colored magnifying glasses from atop the Empire State Building while bi-planes try to shoot you down. It's a magical/mystical exploration of the sounds one hears in one's head while buried in the sand on the other side of a no trespassing sign. It's a CIA wiretap recording of a tree falling in the forest, broadcast via pirate radio to the malls of America, where nobody hears it because nobody is really listening. Besides, isn't there a sale at the Gap? It's like finding a quarter between the cushions of the couch at your shrink's office and putting it in someone else's parking meter because you can't afford a car of your own. It's like finding a quarter-pound of God between the buns of your Big Mac. It's a Revolution you can dance to. Are we spending money yet?

Revelations BOOK II

The new millennium was looming on the horizon. The Gnostic Gospels were slowly seeping into popular consciousness. Christianity was a grand two thousand years old. It seemed a great time for a new mythology to begin to take shape and an appropriate time for me to find my own resolution to the old one. My favorite quote attributed to Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas is as follows:

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you will bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

The Gospel According to Thomas, a collection of Jesus' sayings, is considered the oldest surviving Christian text. As an artist struggling with ideas on a daily basis, the statement made profound sense to me.

I believe that in the creation of the Christian myth the authors drew heavily upon earlier religions and mythologies, layering in additional concepts that supported their own agendas and deleting anything that might compromise their agendas. Christianity, like everything else, is always in flux, continually reinterpreted and rewritten. It's a natural process. Everything created is only partially original. With this thought in mind I penned the text to Revelations Book II in the form of lyrics using the Gnostic Scriptures and the King James Bible as my points of departure. Revelations Book II is the story of the resurrected Christ as related by the players of the drama in a musical format.

After creating the text I recruited the best musicians to complete the work. Casting the musicians would either make or break the piece. I believe I was highly successful on this front. The tone and mood they created breathed the life into the piece. Revelations Book II is my oblation to the great unknown.

Hyperjinx Tricycle

Countless musicians have made earnest efforts at recording the classic record. Of course, few have succeeded and there were those other few who failed to create the classic record but unwittingly created the cult classic. The cult classic, that rare, out of print, impossible to find monument to the existence to life outside the mainstream, far outside the mainstream. The nude lightbulb soul, the diamond in the buff, the naked, left-brain noise no right-minded, serious artist ever intends to create, the recusant rhymes no truly right-minded artist would even be capable of creating. That was the thing we set out to create when Jack Medicine, Daniel Johnston, and myself formed The Hyperjinx Tricycle. Four days and nights in my studio with a four-track recording machine, three relentless imaginations laid the groundwork for the record. The hours of zealous efforts at pop masterpieces, midnight ramblings, and delusional dramas were all recorded and passed around to various producers with the simple instructions, "Finish this."

Song of Absente

I got a call from Michel Roux. Michel had been CEO of Carillon Importers, responsible for introducing Absolut vodka to the US in the 1980's. He'd used me in the famous Absolut artists campaign in the early nineties, which was probably the single most important event in my career at the time. Michel had taken Absolut from zero to number one in a few short years using an inspired ad campaign, part of which featured famous artist "portraits" of the unusually shaped Absolut bottle. Michel turned the bottle into a celebrity. Since that campaign he'd started his own company and had begun importing a new product, Absente. Attempting to fill the 90-year void created by the 1912 prohibition on Absinthe, Absente derives its kick from a sister plant to the infamous wormwood, the herbal engine of the original Absinthe. He wanted me to come up with a revolutionary new way to promote the product. In the Absolut campaign Michel had put me in the company of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring; now Michel had dropped me into the company of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Pablo Picasso, and a seemingly endless list of the giants of art and literature, all Absinthe drinkers. But what could I do that would be different? How about a concept CD about Absente? Instead of buying time on the radio to air a jingle for the product, why not have the station pay you to play a real song about Absente? You could give it away with cases of Absente. You could get it on the jukeboxes of the bars that carry Absente. If the songs were good and well produced, and the whole thing held up conceptually, it might even have a chance at the charts. I asked my friend, musician-producer Jack Medicine, if he'd be interested in collaborating with me on the project. Then I called Michel up and asked him to send over a case of the product in question. Jack and I sat down at my studio with a guitar, a piano, a notebook and a bottle of Absente and set to work. Out poured "Songs of Absente."