Liner Notes: February - Velvet Goldmine/Jack Fairy/2HB

Welcome to February's Liner Notes! I'm super excited about this month because I'm featuring one of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time Velvet Goldmine. This was one of those movies that could have only been made in 1998 and I'm so glad it was. What's also fun about this month's entry is that I'll be talking about some of the real people who are part of this movie later in the project. 

If you haven't seen Velvet Goldmine, go find it this weekend. I have a subscription to the Criterion Collection, so I can watch this movie and other unhinged and wild movies whenever I want (I'm looking at you, 1976 version of A Star is Born). I know it was available to rent on a few streaming services last year, and of course, you can always buy a DVD on eBay. 

Anyway, let's set the mood with a song:

If you recognized that voice, you're not going crazy. It is Thom Yorke from Radiohead. He's just one of the many musicians who worked on this film. We'll talk more about Placebo, Teenage Fanclub, Grant Lee Buffalo, and Donna Matthews from Elastica in future posts. Yorke is the primary singing voice for Brian Slade. 

Velvet Goldmine is a lot of things: an homage to glam rock, Citizen Kane (no, really), a "biopic" of David Bowie, and a camp cult classic. I really believe you need to watch it to really experience it, but I'll provide a little bit of a plot summary. The film starts in 1974 London with a bunch of glam kids running to get to Brian Slade's concert. Slade is the king/queen of glam and these are his people. During the show Slade is assassinated on stage. It turns out to be a hoax and then we flash forward to 1984 New York, which is a bleak, dystopian hellscape compared to the colorful glam 1974 London. I guess 1980s New York was in fact a bleak, dystopian hellscape, so there's that. We meet Arthur Stuart, who we just saw running to the Slade show, now looking more disheveled, at his newspaper job. His editor assigns him to a story on the 10-year anniversary of the Slade shooting hoax. Arthur doesn't want to cover the hoax, but his editor says "you remember," and so we're taken on a journey of memory and music and glitter. 

I remember seeing this movie in theatre in 1998 and absolutely loving every minute of it. I was also obsessed with the film's fashion, and that's what I've chosen to focus on for this month's liner notes entry. I selected the four "main" characters and each week I'm making a patch or a piece that references the clothes and the character. I picked Jack Fairy, Brian Slade, Curt Wild, and Arthur Stuart. That's the order. I also selected a song that I associate with each of them for their week. I'll also reference other songs from the soundtrack and from the era each week. One note about the songs: I've been adding audio to my Instagram posts and Instagram doesn't have any of the versions of these songs from the film, so I'm using the original songs (almost every song is a cover) on my posts. I'll share the soundtrack versions here. 

Let's start with Jack Fairy. I love this character. As Mandy Slade tells Arthur, "everybody stole from Jack." We're introduced to Jack as a young boy getting bullied at school. He finds a green jeweled pin in the dirt and from that moment on, he finds his destiny. The pin is said to have been Oscar Wilde's. Jack appears throughout the film, from passing the glam kids on their way to that first show to showing up in Berlin to help Curt Wild. 

We only see Jack perform at the very end of the movie and he sings his version of "2HB," so I always associate this song with Jack even though it's a Brian Slade song. Jack is played by Micko Westmoreland, and he's absolutely captivating in the role. He's the right blend of elusive, demure, and commanding. He's elegant and wears fantastic hats. 

Part of the fun of this movie is trying to figure out who each character is supposed to be in real life. I always thought Jack Fairy was Brian Eno or Bryan Ferry with a touch of Bowie, but Todd Haynes, the film's director, said that Little Richard was the inspiration for Jack Fairy. I absolutely get it - Little Richard was a true original, and so is Jack Fairy. He was the beginning, and the rest stole from him (literally and figuratively). 

My interpretation of Jack Fairy is based on a scene in Mandy's memory about the first time she met Brian Slade at the Sombero Club. Jack enters the room with a flourish and everyone is dying to see him. Jack's presence is mesmerizing. He's wearing this gorgeous velvet gown and strings of pearls. I found a piece of velvety fabric in my stash of upholstery fabric that's similar in color and texture to what I imagine Jack was wearing. I used old Mardi Gras beads to make a pearl necklace and used some Frosty Rays thread from Rainbow Gallery to attach the star to the page. The black background fabric was the closest thing I had in my fabric stash to a night sky with stars, which I felt fit in nicely for the soundtrack and film as a whole. I used DMC Etoile thread in black to attach the fabric to the journal page. I did a random pattern that reminds me of the line in "2HB," "your cigarette traces a ladder." 

Velvet Goldmine is about memory and music. "2HB" is the last song in the film, played on a jukebox in a bar. That's what this movie always feels like to me: sitting in a dive bar and a song comes on the jukebox and it takes you to a place or time you don't think about all the time but you remember. 

Here's this week's stitch journal entries. It's a lot of black thread on black fabric - it's a little hard to see. 

A big picture look at this month.

A stand-in for the Oscar Wilde pin.

Some notes on Velvet Goldmine.

February 1 - stitch lines only.

February 2

February 3

February 4

February 5

February 6 - you can see what the design looks like from the back of the page.

February 7 - Jack Fairy

February to date

Bea kept me company while I stitched the first part of this week's entry. She doesn't understand why I'd stitch black thread on black fabric either. She also thinks I need a better lamp in the studio. She's not wrong.

Songs referenced this week:

• "2HB" by the Venus in Furs (from Velvet Goldmine)
• "2HB" by Roxy Music
• "Velvet Goldmine" by David Bowie
• "Tumbling Down" by the Venus in Furs (from Velvet Goldmine)
• "Tumbling Down" by Cockney Rebel

WIPs and Other Small Joys

I haven't worked on any other projects this week. I finished a book, My Funny Demon Valentine by Aurora Ascher and start Tori Amos's memoir Resistance. Bea helped me get started with Tori's book. 

I also completed volunteer training at Upcycle Creative Reuse Center last Sunday. I start volunteering there this weekend. It's going to be fun helping out there...and also possibly expensive. I'm going to see all the things that get donated so we'll see. Everyone is very nice and now they know I embroider, so I have a feeling I'll be helping with other things in the future. 

Bea flexed her own creative muscles this week by contributing more to the art project that is my studio chair. She loves to try to hang off the chair with her claws without falling off. I love the collaboration between her and Keely. He set her up for success on this piece of art. 

I'm off to Tampa next week for a work event so I'm taking my liner notes journal with me. Bea will be staying with my parents and probably being completely spoiled by them. They're obsessed with her. I'm waiting to see if she sleeps with them. 

Off to take Meow Manor to the Woodlawn show. Stay warm this weekend and take care of each other!