#alphabands

Here are my last six #AlphaBands drawings. What a great challenge! I'm thrilled that there were so many full alphabets submitted. Music and visual art are both such an integral aspect of humanity. Getting to see how different artists combined the two was a fulfilling experience. Thanks, all of ya!

AlphaBands is a weekly online collaborative project in which illustrators and cartoonists draw a band or musician for one letter of the alphabet each week for 26 weeks. See the art and find out more at the AlphaBands tumblr: http://alphabands.tumblr.com/

There's still time for any contributors to get their "Z" submissions to us!  We'll be accepting new submissions through Sunday, July 20th, so keep them coming!

Happy to be done with it… the next project I’m going to do I’m going to announce next month. You can look at all the AlphaBands I did here.

My final submission is a little band from Texas formed in 1969.  I think I first heard of them, like many of my generation, when they achieved international super-stardom in 1983.  Their album from that year, Eliminator, is their most popular and well selling one to date.   By 1983 they’d begun to completely change their sound from groovy, blues-inspired rock into more new-wave, synth-heavy radio rock.  They became common on MTV, with their tongue-in-cheek, sexy videos making the regular rotation.  I wasn’t very fond of ZZ Top back then, but that would change. In my early teens when I was listening solely to classic rock after having been burned out on the other radio stations in DC, I was reintroduced to ZZ Top via their older work.  I found it very engaging.  They had some funky hooks, playful lyrics, and scorching guitar licks.  They were heavy!  I’d never thought of them as being so good, but damn was it some fine music.   Jimi Hendrix went on the Tonight Show in the late 1960s and told Johnny Carson that Billy Gibbons, then of the band the Moving Sidewalks, would be the next big guitarist in rock.  Gibbons went on to form ZZ Top with bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard.  Their lineup has been constant since.

AlphaBands is a weekly online collaborative project in which illustrators and cartoonists draw a band or musician for one letter of the alphabet each week for 26 weeks. See the art and find out more at the AlphaBands tumblr: http://alphabands.tumblr.com/

I have no attachment to Yes at all. Like X I barely know them as a band and what I've listened to never really took. I know Yes mainly for those insane album covers.

I don't know what it is about British progressive rock that is so appealing.  Mostly because it doesn't generally appeal to me.  It's just not in my wheel house.  There is one exception, and that band is Yes.  Their three albums from 1971-1972 are in my collection.  I haven't been that fond of their work before The Yes Album nor after Close To The Edge, but those two and the one they bookend, Fragile, are works of art. The high, ethereal vocal sound of Jon Anderson, the finger-picking complexity of guitarist Steve Howe, the incomparable organ wizardry of Rick Wakeman and Tony Kaye, the thick, warm tones of bassist Chris Squire, and the jazzy drumbeats of Bill Bruford are, when put together, a wall of beautiful sound.   Their work on these three albums alone is a testament to their incredible collaborations.  They borrowed from their influences in jazz, classical, and blues to sculpt a singular style that is timeless. The first album of theirs I owned was The Yes Album.  It's a gem from start to finish.  Check it out here: http://youtu.be/9rpBUD0hjaI