kendoza.com

Although not much of a surprise it was still sad to hear at the weekend that The White Stripes had decided to call it a day. They were one of a handful of bands that I think will stand the test of time as legends from my generations music scene and each album by them was eagerly awaited by me. I was fortunate enough to see them perform live near the start of their career at the small QMU venue in Glasgow and it was perhaps the best live gig I have ever attended. Not only were The White Stripes on top form but the support band for the evening The Von Bondies turned in a performance that rivalled the main act.

The following morning I went out to Avalanche Records at Queen Street Station and bought the Von Bondies album ‘Lack of Communication’ in what turned out to be the first of many such instances that I bought an album by a band that I had only heard of through the endorsement of Jack White. Subsequent albums bought were by The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, The Greenhornes, The Come Ons, The Compulsive Gamblers, KO and the Knockouts, The Souldad Brothers, and many others. The White Stripes popularity opened up the garage rock scene for bands to tour the UK from Scandinavia and Down Under including bands such as The Raveonettes, The Hives, The Sahara Hotnights, The Hellacopters, The Datsuns, The Casanovas, Jet and The Vines, most of which I saw in concert in Glasgow too.

Jack White’s influence on music is still vast, he performs with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, and he runs one of the most influential new record labels in America called Third Man Records, which among others has the tremendous British model Karen Elson on their books. She also happens to be Mrs Jack White, and her debut album ‘The Ghost Who Walks’ was one of the stand out albums from last year. An act who wouldn’t sound out of place at our very own Shetland Folk Festival! Check her out at the link below.

Anyway, this is my montage to The White Stripes I knocked up in Photoshop to illustrate this piece. Cheers to you Jack & Meg!

Links:

The Guardian: The White Stripes: Detroit’s rock heroes remembered

To visit Karen Elson’s site click here.

To visit the Third Man Records site click here.

I was asked to do some graphics by a squad at the Scalloway Fire Festival for them to use as props in their act. Their skit was about the closure of the Scalloway School, a hot topic locally over the last months, and possible joke alternative uses for the vacant building which were to be presented to members of the council as depicted by squad members. Their suggestions included a parody of the Mareel Arts Centre called “Marackel”, a Total oil workers accommodation block, a recycling scrapstore and a Reestit Mutton Pâté factory, a delicacy which has recently become very popular thanks to the chef at the Scalloway Hotel. The posters were printed by Tay Cad at about 8 feet x 5 feet with superb print quality.

By all accounts the act went very well on the night at all the halls and was taken in good fun by folk mentioned or represented in the sketch. I hope the Return night went well last night and am looking forward to seeing the videos!

Click the link below to view the 3 other posters:

In case you blinked and missed it the other day… sunshine! Here is some of it shining in the window through our house plant.

Happy New Year!

I have created a selection of 2011 desktop wallpaper calendars that you can download if you like. They are available in two colours with either black or white backgrounds depending on your personal preference.

They are sized 2560 x 1600 pixels and can be scalable for smaller monitor sizes and cover most typical laptop or widescreen desktop display sizes. The images can be easily resized in Photoshop to suit your monitor resolution, to find out your screen resolution go to display settings in the control panel. Tried and tested on both Mac and PC displays without issues!

To download simply click on the image below, which shall load the fullsize calendar in a new window then drag or right click to save to your desktop.

I hope you find something you like and might find useful, and all the best for 2011!

Click the link below to view the calendar downloads:

The Viking Energy Wind Farm. A ‘community’ project that has divided the community like nothing else in Shetland. This coming Friday is the deadline to make your opinion known to the Scottish Government’s Energy Consents & Deployment Unit.

Out of my own interest in the wind farm I wanted to understand how these proposed turbines would compare to other large structures, which led to me creating these illustrations. The buildings in the illustration above are from left: Canary Wharf, Strata, the London Eye, Mousa Broch, one of the 5 Burradale Wind Turbines, Shetland Museum Boat Hall, the Bressay Transmitter, one of the proposed 127 Viking Energy turbines, Lerwick Town Hall, Nelson’s Column, Big Ben, the Gherkin and the British Telecom Tower. Drawn to a scale of 1cm to 10m the proposed turbine model towers over existing Shetland structures and does not look out of place among the selection of landmarks from London – taller than the London Eye and with a turbine tower almost equal to Big Ben. The illustration below shows all 127 turbines against the existing Burradale wind farm, again the turbines are in scale to each other, and tries to convey the split in the community.

Size and number are of course only 2 factors, this is a long running argument with many contributing conflicts of opinion in support or opposition – far too many to go into here. For more reading on the project I would point you to the links below.

The supporters of the wind farm have a website, click here to visit: www.windfarmsupporters.org

The opponents of the wind farm have a website, click here to visit: www.sustainableshetland.org

You can email your support or opposition to the project to the Energy Consents & Deployment Unit at representations@scotland.gsi.gov.uk – remember to include: your name, address, reasons for support or opposition, and the development you are referring to is ‘Viking Energy Wind Farm’.

Everyone has their own opinion and you should make it known now, the deadline is Friday, 19th November, 2010.

It would be good to get some feedback on your thoughts of the Viking Energy Wind Farm, if you wish please leave comments to this post below.