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21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ “The 365 Days Of September” – Day 1, September 21, 2010

People always ask me what my favorite song I’ve written is. I hate to favor any of the babies but pound for pound I’d have to shout “September”! I think it’s an eternally uplifting song. It makes people HAPPY, not just with a capital H but ALL CAPS!! I write a lot of happy songs but even perennial foot tappers like “Neutron Dance” and “Boogie Wonderland” don’t inspire the immediate mood shift that “September” does. I’ve never been in a room where people’s toes didn’t start tapping or heads start bobbing as soon as it comes on. I’ve never been to a Bar Mitzvah or wedding where it wasn’t played, including Beyonce and Jay-Z’s, where I wasn’t but learned from US Weekly that that’s what they danced their first dance to. And they didn’t even get married in September.

Without question, the original Earth Wind & Fire version is and will always be my favorite.

With EWF founder and lead singer, Maurice White, and EWF guitarist, Al McKay, I started writing “September” the first day we met, in the summer of 1978. It was actually written as the third song in a trilogy that Maurice and Al had already created, EWF’s “Sing a Song” and The Emotions’ “Best of My Love”, two of my favorite Pop Soul records of all time.

Although most of the music to “September” was completed that first day, it actually took a couple months to finalize the lyric, during which time I was also working with Maurice on all but two songs that became their (thankfully) legendary crossover album, I Am.

I used to be hung up that the “September” lyric was a little sing-songy, not the most intelligent I’d written. But seeing the effect it has on people I’m happy I took Maurice’s advice: Never let a lyric get in the way of the groove. If a lyric isn’t grammatically correct or even if it’s nonsensical – like the key words in the “September” chorus, “Ba-de-ya” – don’t replace it with something that is. If you marry the lyric to the music just right, the meaning will come across in the feel. I have no doubt that the love expressed in the chorus of “September” comes across even better with this nonsensical phrase than it would have had we merely filled those syllables with “I love you”.

The first time I ever went on YouTube just months after it launched in 2005, there were already tons of versions of the song there. Over the years I’ve watched “September” videos multiple like rabbits, some good but mostly a little on the lame side – Bad bar bands, jazz bands, marching bands, people in their living rooms, bathrooms, underwear, at auditions, dance classes, birthday parties, on lawns, mountaintops, in line dances, in lines at stores, playing solo bass, drum, keyboard and guitar parts, making animations and short films with it, in all varieties of languages, styles and quality.

Most songwriters are tortured when they hear cheesy versions of their work. As the Grand Master of Kitsch however, I LOVE it. I love that something I’ve created inspires someone to perform it despite an apparent lack of talent or rhythm. If it makes them happy it makes me happy.

And, trust me, this is a song that’s still making me happy. In one of my YouTube searches I stumbled onto Pomplamoose, a band that completely deconstructed the song and did it so distinctively I suggested we work together. The resulting “Jungle Animal” song, video and game went live TODAY.

But back to “September”… 1978 wasn’t the first time I placed my bet on a song that glorified September. Four years earlier, my first and only album, Childstar, came out on Epic Records. It contained the first 10 songs I ever wrote. The tune the label thought had the most single potential was called “What Kind of Shoes Does September Wear?”.

Although my career didn’t get off to the running start I had hoped it would then, I’d have to say that, in retrospect, September did, indeed, have some very nice shoes!

A few nights ago I went back on YouTube to see if any new versions of “September” had been done. To my astonishment, it was like the song had In vitro and gave birth to enough versions that if I played one a day for a year I would never run out. So I made it a goal to chronicle the madness. From this day forth, the 21^st of September, the date in the opening line of the song, until the 21^st of September, 2011, I shall feature one (brilliant, alarming, innovative, ridiculous) version of the song a day.

So here now, I offer you the most definitive version of all, the Godhead, “SEPTEMBER” by EARTH, WIND & FIRE on this, the 21st day of September, 2010, the first of 365 days of September. It pretty much goes downhill from here…

Badeya!

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “JUNGLE ANIMAL” ROARS TODAY!!

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “JUNGLE ANIMAL” ROARS TODAY!!

Finally, after months of work and a whole lot else my song, video and game, “Jungle Animal” – Pomplamoose and Allee Willis launched TODAY!! To cut to the chase:

VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQo8LMaeE8s

SONG:http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/jungle-animal/id392982313?i=392982319

GAME:https://www.alleewillis.com/music/pomplamoose/jungle-animal-player.php

I’m never as interested in just collaborating on music as I am in a full multi-layered collaboration where I get to use my visual and social interactive skills as well. Long gone are the days that I wish to club 3/4 of my brain dead so I can just remain in something as a music writer. “Jungle Animal” provided me with the opportunity to connect everything I do into one cohesive multimedia project, just the way I like it.

You can take a peek at the collaboration as I worked on the Jungle Animal music with Pomplamoose here. Keep scrolling down on that page and it chronicles the days we spent together in LA and in Northern California where they live. I did the animation and game technology on my own down here in LA.

If you like what you see and hear, please email the links above to your friends, family, gardeners, mechanics and anyone else hovering in your spheres. There’s a lot going on in the jungle today!

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The 21st Of September Jubilee!

21Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The 21st Of September Jubilee!

Because the opening line of my very first hit song, “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, is “Do you remember the 21st night of September?” I constantly get asked the significance of that date, the very day it is TODAY. People are always looking for some great meaning, especially those whose birthdays are today and to whom the song has held a special place. Sad to say, the only real significance is that that it felt so perfect to sing. Those three syllables – twen-ty-first – hugged those notes tighter than an angora sweater and once that happens any good songwriter knows they need to just leave it alone because it works. What I’m most proud of achieving with my co-writers, Maurice White and Al McKay, is the transformative effect the song seems to have on people. I could be at a funeral and if “September” even came on as a ringtone most people’s lips would curl into a smile and their toes would automatically start to tap. Beyoncé and Jay-Z even chose it to dance their first song to at their wedding. And that makes me very happy.

Ever since the song was released at the tail end of 1978, September 21st has been a magic date for me. In the pre-email/text days when I used to check my phone, the messages would be filled with people singing me the song. Some of the singers were famous and the versions were killer. Sometimes it was my dentist or a friend from camp and the versions were terrible, just the way, as a lover of kitsch, I love them.

Through the years, the popularity of “September” seems to grow, so much so that the entire month of September has started to feel like a holiday to me, especially this year when it started with Earth, Wind & Fire playing “September” with a 70 piece orchestra and fireworks at The Hollywood Bowl. So, I’ve decided to honor this date that has given me so many gifts with a few gifts of my own:

• First, the release of my “Jungle Animal” video/song with Pomplamoose, a YouTube sensation band I contacted to work together after I saw their version of “September”, with over 2,000,000 views on YouTube. Now would be a good time to watch “Jungle Animal”:

• Second, the matching “Jungle Animal” music composition game I designed and that’s ready for your jungle playing pleasure right now at https://www.alleewillis.com/music/pomplamoose/jungle-animal-player.php

• Third, in celebration of the one-year-to-the-day opening of my social network, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at AWMOK.com, The Jungle Animal Petting Zoo is now open, featuring some of the most cheesy and brilliant jungle animal artifacts on the planet.

• And fourth, the launch of “The 365 Days of September”, where I’ll post one new version of “September” a day for a year from the thousands of insane versions of it on YouTube.

And I JUST found out that September will continue into October for me as The University Of Wisconsin Marching Band will play my songs at the Homecoming football game on October 9th and I’ve been asked to conduct! As some of you know, UW is my alma mater. And I LOVE marching bands. And even more pertinent on the kitsch tip, despite the fact that I’ve sold over 50,000,000 records and counting, I still don’t know how to read a stitch of music. So I anticipate that conducting the band in front of 80,000 people is going to be one of the seminal kitsch moments of my life!

So to all of you on this September 21st I say thank you and wish you a big “Ba-de-ya!”. May you all have nothing but”golden dreams and shiny days”.

20Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Jungle Animal” (Theoretically) Coming Tomorrow!

20Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Jungle Animal” (Theoretically) Coming Tomorrow!

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For the last few months I’ve been holed away in the creative jungle known as my desk trying to complete a long-distance collaboration with Pomplamoose, the YouTube sensation band I collaborated with after I saw them do a highly unusual version of my song, “September”. With “Jungle Animal”, a song and video we worked on together, as well as an online game that I whittled away at myself, theoretically just hours away from release, I thought that this off-kilter Atomic 1950’s zebra, knees buckling but still standing, was the perfect visual representation of what one feels like when they emerge from as intense of a workload as this.

Before this project, my connection to jungle animals was confined to those in my kitsch collection. Much more of a cat, dog or goldfish person, I certainly appreciated jungle animals but didn’t really come to love them as much until I had to stare at them over the last few months in order to do the artwork for the video and game.

I even opened a Jungle Animal Petting Zoo at my social network, The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at AWMOK.com, so I would have more animals to study. I can see all the anatomically correct models I want with a Google search but I was more interested in how they’ve been interpreted via pop culture artifacts. For example, I learned a lot from this “dreamy tiger” submitted by aKitschionado Nessa.

And staring at this slightly blurry rope lion submitted by omahamama……

……provided for my interpretation of the king of the jungle:

And God knows, I’ve been staring at this zebra for years.

Long one of my favorite ceramics I’ve ever owned, this spectacularly Atomically tilted 1950’s zebra originally had a mate, a perfectly-tilted-the-other-way zebra. They really were the best set of jungle animals for my taste I’ve ever seen. Both of them were quite heavy, filled with sand so they were sure not to fall off a shelf unless an earthquake of astronomical proportions hit. Unfortunately, that earthquake arrived in the person of someone I was interviewing to be my assistant who dropped the zebra carrying it to my car where I was about to leave to art direct some rock video. Needless to say, that was the end of the assistant, who I was much happier to lose than the zebra.

When it came to “Jungle Animal”, I stayed up for weeks painting.

I actually did every inch of painting in the computer. I just thought this was a great excuse to show what paints looks like when the artist loves her work. It was also a great excuse to show this box:

Perhaps if I spent less time growing up watching American Bandstand and more watching Jon Gnagy, the first television art instructor in the 1950’s and 60’s, I might have understood that despite the fact I think this looks dead-on like a real hippopotamus others might not.

The person who designed my favorite zebra was definitely not thinking about interpreting an animal of perfect zebratude when he sculpted and painted this:

Pound for pound, I think my zebra looks more like the real thing, though not as much as Jon Gnagy might have hoped for.

I can’t tell you how many years I wasted not being an artist because I was so hung up that I couldn’t draw anything exactly as it was. It took me decades to realize that true art is all about personal style. It’s about having the balls to show your stripes.

“Jungle Animal” was a very challenging collaboration for reasons I’ll one day be ready to talk about. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from painting and animating all these jungle animals, not the least of which was inspired by this full tilt zebra who, despite all odds, continues to stand up straight, it’s that with integrity and perseverance one can not only survive in the jungle but thrive.

(“Jungle Animal” is supposed to be up on YouTube at 1 AM tomorrow morning, the 21st of September. Ba-de-ya!)

19Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Lighted Kosher Sign and Breaking The Fast In Hollywood

19Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Lighted Kosher Sign and Breaking The Fast In Hollywood

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One of the most festive nights of the Jewish year is the ‘breaking of the fast’ meal after Yom Kipper, a veritable smorgasbord of chopped liver, corned beef, brisket, potato latkes, noodle kugel and whatever else there’s room for on the table. Trust me, after not eating for 24 hours the Chosen People are hungry! Although this “kosher” sign hangs happily at Willis Wonderland, mine is not the house that one wants to eat at on a night such as this. As such, I’m very lucky that I have a Break-The-Fast itinerary that I stick to like schmaltz (chicken fat) every year and head over to four hamish (friendly, folksy) friends whose houses are are stuffed with machers (big shots) and even some meshugehs (crazy, nuts people) to schmoose with (talk socially, network) while we nosh (eat) like chazzers (pigs).

For our first stop, Prudence Fenton and I hit Marla and Jeff Garlin’s house. You know Jeff from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Sadly, I have no photo with Marla, probably because I was too busy fressing (pigging out) every time she was around. It is so NOT KOSHER to only take a photo with one of your two hosts…

Sometimes the baleboosteh (mistress of the house) serves you bagels and lox and sometimes there’s some nice deli platters. But if Az a yor ahf mir (you should be so lucky) to be invited over to the Garlins to replenish your pupik (stomach) after it’s 24 hour lockout, the shtetl (village or small town) sitting on their dining room table includes corn beef, roast beef, turkey, three kinds of noodle kugel, mac and cheese – thank you for that extra goyish (not especially Jewish) bonus – bagels, lox, cream cheese, cream cheese with chives, three kinds of sliced cheeses, tomatoes, onions, dill pickles, black olives, whitefish salad, tuna salad, egg salad, fruit salad, salad salad, coleslaw and that’s just how far I got down the table before my plate was full.

More noshes (snacks) were still coming out when we had to leave after a couple of hours because we had another simcha (joyous occassion) to schlep (get) to.

The next amazing nachas (extreme joy or pleasure) food fest was at Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s, two of the most balebatim (people of high standing) songwriters on the planet. Being with them makes a songwriter such as myself kvell (explode with joy). As songwriters go, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil are EXCESSIVELY KOSHER.

Not only are they real mensches (people of integrity and honor), they’ve written some of the biggest gelt (money) earning songs in the eretz (land). For forshpeiz (appetizers): “You Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” – the #1 most played record of all time, – “On Broadway,” “We Got To Get Out of This Place”,”Uptown” and hundreds of more titles everyone would agree are HIGHLY KOSHER.

In 1992, Barry and Cynthia were over at my place for a distinctively non-kosher meal when they came to a simcheh (joyous occassion) where I asked guests to come dressed matching their potluck food. They brought and came oysgeputst (dressed up) like Blackeye Peas.

Although I was already too stuffed from the tsegalt zich in moyl (melts in the mouth, delicious, yummy-yummy) meal over at the Garlins, I did manage to kibitz (fool around with) with another songwriting maiven (expert, connoisseur) at Barry and Cynthia’s, Mike Stoller.

Mike Stoller is truly a KOSHER TO THE MAX songwriter, a choshever mentsh (elite and respected man of worth), one half of the rock ‘n roll dynasty team of Lieber and Stoller. If you’re going to write songs and you’re not Barry and Cynthia and you don’t want to chop your hair off on one side and be me I would suggest being Mike Stoller. A few of his early megillehs (big deals) include chachkes (little things) like “Hound Dog,” “Kansas City,”“Stand by Me,” “Charlie Brown,” and “On Broadway”, written with Barry and Cynthia. Mazel Tov (good luck has occured)!

All in all, I had a very frallech (fun) Breaking of the Fast and rolled home feeling like a big happy kishka (stuffed intestine). We didn’t dance the Hora (traditional joyous Jewish dance) but we carried on like we were boogieing in the Borscht Belt (Hotels in the Catskills with Jewish entertainers and clientele) on the ultimate KOSHER evening of all kosher evenings and one from which I’m still plotzing (exploding from excitement, as in “You got us tickets for Barbra’s comeback concert?? I’m plotzing!)

16Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Lipstick Camera and Greg Gorman’s Retrospective Last Night at the Pacific Design Center

16Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Lipstick Camera and Greg Gorman’s Retrospective Last Night at the Pacific Design Center

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Anyone who knows me knows that there are two things I never leave home without, my lipstick and my camera. I always carry at least two of each; my lipstick because I’m forever losing tubes in the bottomless pits of my purses, and cameras because you never know what will pop up in front of you and you don’t want to be without some way of capturing it should one photographic device malfunction. Not that I take it with me anymore, but a constant companion in my former years was this great looking, incredibly clunky Lipstick Camera, much more effective for its mental effect on the people it was shooting – they always smile when they see it – than for the grainy, patchy photos it took. Last night when I started writing my blog, where I like to tie in objects from my collection into what’s really going on in my life, the Lipstick Camera seemed like the perfect artifact to feature as I was on my way to a party for famed photographer and friend, Greg Gorman, honoring his 1970 – 2010 retrospective at The Fahey/Klein Gallery. As one who likes to match clothes and accessories to the event, I even thought about bringing the Lipstick Camera with me. But I knew I’d be seeing too many old friends and didn’t want to capture all of it with crappy photos.

I first met Greg Gorman when I moved to LA in 1976. He was the up and coming photographer to the stars and my friends, Bette Midler’s Harlettes, already back in New York, asked me to pick up some proof sheets from their photo session with him. He was really friendly and as I walked out of his tiny apartment on Laurel Canyon I remember thinking how great it would be to take photos of everything I saw that was interesting or significant to me so I would have this incredible documentation of my life. That began my habit of forever buying cheap novelty cameras as I was forever on a budget. Meaning most of the documenting I did until I stumbled on my first Canon Elph in 1996 made for some very grainy memories. Even when I knew where to buy film for the Lipstick Camera, the photos it took were pretty awful. But as someone who loves to play it as it lays, there was also always something so soulful about them.

When I started making furniture out of found objects in 1984, Greg Gorman was one of the first people to buy a piece. I know it’s embarrassing to show this fuzzy of a photo of a famous photographer but all I had with me the day I delivered his table made out of a window from a World War II fighter bomber plane I painted on and a spring from my 1955 De Soto was one of my cheap, nasty cameras.

A few months after that, Greg shot actor Christopher Atkins at my house. The white throw draped across my couch is Chris.

Here’s a much more flattering shot of him that Greg took that day.

And here’s a much more recent shot of Greg, taken last night at his reception. Unfortunately, we were standing in front of the only section of the gallery where his photos weren’t hanging.

Just as unfortunately, when I opened my photos once I got home, all of them were so pixelated they looked like a can of vegetable soup had spilled on them. It was as if they were taken on the Lipstick Camera, not the most ideal situation when you’re capturing you and one of the most iconic celebrity photographers of all time. If I had had half a brain cell awake in my brain last night I would have checked the settings on the Elph every time whoever was taking the photo said, “did the flash go off?” because it never did. Each and every time I said to myself, “hmmm,why isn’t the flash going off?”, only to get distracted by someone else I hadn’t seen in a zillion years until a few minutes later the same thing happened and I would say to myself, “hmmm,why isn’t the flash going off?”.

So what I have are a bunch of grainy, yet totally evocative of the evening photos. And here’s where my love of kitsch kicks in, allowing me to make sense of these moments of catastrophe. Had my Elph been on the right setting I would have had beautiful photos of people I saw at a photographer’s opening to feature in a post about a funny looking vintage camera. But now I have photos that look like they were taken with the Lipstick Camera itself! It’s so cosmic, so organic! And it’s these collisions of high and low art in the manifestations of my creative expression that I absolutely live for.

So knowing that I know that these photos look like they were pulled out of a landfill, here’s me with some other friends I bumped into last night. This one with my Earth, Wind & Fire compadre, Verdine White, and his fantastic wife Shelly, who I’d just seen last week at the life altering Earth, Wind & Fire(works) concert at The Hollywood Bowl, looks like it’s one of those early Polaroid color camera shots that you slopped that stick of goop on.

This one with Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn looks like it’s a still from an airport scene in a way too low-budget 1970’s movie.

This one with John Fleck and Stan Zimmerman almost looks normal but that’s probably because the boys have such good skin. Were you to see this at high resolution my hair looks like it has ants running through it.

This one with Ken Page is almost okay as it was taken in a particularly bright hallway.

So what, I will never be able to blow any of my photos from last night up into giant super graphics and paste them on the side of my house. But I’m incredibly artistically and psychically satisfied that so glued to my fingers is my trusty Canon Elph that it took it upon itself to emulate the Lipstick Camera and give me crappy yet perfect photos to remember a wonderful night by.

15Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – African Lady Ashtray

15Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – African Lady Ashtray

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Made of heavy metal and showing signs of many smokables ground out on her head, this petite 3″ long ashtray is one of my favorite pieces of Africana. I bought her in 1979 for 25 cents during my first run of the Earth. Wind & Fire hits, when my Soul memorabilia collection really kicked into high gear. On the African tip, I snatched up every wooden, ceramic or chalkware bust I could find, all excessively cheap because this was way before the frenzy to collect them set in. Since then my collection has tipped way more toward the pop culture soul side, primarily late 60s/early 70s massive Afro laden stuff, but my little expressive African lady is never far away from the pop action.

She has two convenient places to store smokable rolled substances: one, the concave series of necklaces that cover her neck for things already lit and two, her earring, into which a brand-new log can be inserted to stand up vertically until it’s ignited.

I shall never turn my back on this little lady becasue I love her so much.

14Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Wibbler!

14Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – The Wibbler!

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Despite the fact that The Wibbler is guaranteed “fun for all ages”, the last thing I’m about to do is jump on this thing and start to wibble. All it is is a brittle piece of vacuformed plastic that you stand on with no strap to hold your feet in position and then start to tip every which way. I would bet that rather than having fun more people ended up with broken ankles and chipped teeth from their wibbling activities. This is probably why I never heard of The Wibbler before and why nothing shows up in a Google search for it. Which makes me treasure this toy that’s “scientifically engineered and built like a bridge” even more. Would you want to drive across a bridge called The Wibbler?

I definitely think more time was spent on designing the packaging than figuring out the physics of wibbling.

Although, as an art director I never would have chosen a red background to demonstrate kids wibbling away as it looks like they’re just standing on a black line.

As you can see, most of the Wibbler examples show two people wibbling together. As my life and career are dedicated to promoting socially fun interaction between people I’m usually up for anything that promotes this kind of activity, like say “Twister”.

But as bone crushing as Twister can get, one is standing on their own one or two feet and should you topple over at least there are a bunch of other bodies to cushion the fall. Tettertottering on The Wibbler gives one no such padding. I would suggest having excellent medical insurance before one takes it upon themselves to wibble.

If you still want to know how to wibble, here are some easy instructions:

My guess is that someone like Weldon Smith loved to wibble.

For now, I think I will confine my walking and dancing activities to two feet on solid ground. But should I ever get the itch to wibble, I’ll stand on this plastic bridge, say a little prayer and hope for the best.

13Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – 1960’s Resin Seashell Masonic Lodge Pen Holder

13Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ the Day – 1960’s Resin Seashell Masonic Lodge Pen Holder

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Made of abalone shells sunk into resin with a big gold and red Masonic crest stuck smack dab in the middle, this kind of pen holder was all the rage among 1950’s and 60’s crafters who plopped anything and everything into the gooey hardening stuff to preserve it forever. Seashells were one of the most popular kinds of sunken treasure, right up there with butterfly wings and pennies.

I was never a one pen person, to this day misplacing them almost every time I take a break from writing and put one down. In my pre-computer days, before 1985, I used to have an array of these resin writing mates lined up on all my desks so at least ten writing implements presented themselves before me at all times. Though I had already begun my digital digression by the time I found this one, it was a must to buy as I love any product that has the Masonic or Shriners or whatever that circle and star thing/crest is on it. I have toiletry sets and salt and pepper shakers with it emblazoned on but my seaside pen holder is absolutely one of my favorites of the ilk.

A lot of times, crafters are too lazy to cover the bottom of their resin creations. The action’s all on the top and the bottoms are left to scratch tables and chip until the whole piece cracks. The Masonic shell freak who made this one was not one of those to take shortcuts and adhered cork to the underside of his construction.

Which is great because this honey gets moved around a lot. It’s also like a big Tetherball pole to my cats who bat it back and forth until the pen finally flies out to join the legions of others that collect under my couches for their 4 AM playground breaks.

12Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Massive Vintage Resin Grapes Lamp

12Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Massive Vintage Resin Grapes Lamp

In the land of kitschified 1960’s and 70’s decor there was no higher form of craft art than a bunch of resin grapes stuck on wire, drilled into driftwood vines and, if you were lucky, turned into lights. As much as resin grapes spread through living rooms of yore like asphalt, this is one of those buying trends that really exploded decades later with the growth of eBay. Ripped from the belly of garages and attics, these vestiges of middle class decorating tastes used to go for a few bucks a bunch. But in more recent years many have climbed into the hundreds. Yeah, you can still find a ratty little grouping of three or four scratched up grapes in the low-end of the pocketbook but the sets that are still in great shape, and especially the ones that have been turned into lamps and hanging lights, can go for a king’s ransom. But make no mistake about it, there are resin grapes and there are resin grapes. The 20 inch long grape beauty featured here is a masterpiece of RESIN GRAPES!

I’ve been collecting grapes for decades. I have plain old bunches that I scatter around the yard:

Some of them are multicolored:

Sometimes I group them with some of the ceramics that have hit the yard because they’ve cracked or chipped but are still too pretty to throw out:

There’s an area of my yard that’s like a retirement home for the grapes. I haven’t found their final resting spot yet but here they sit among their fellow fruit waiting for placement:

The really pretty grapes get to stay inside:

Among resin grapes, pink is one of the rarer colors.

Even rarer are the grapes that are lucky enough to have been turned into pineapple lamps. I have two of them:

As many resin grapes as I have, I haven’t gone as fruity as this person in East LA has:

My dream in life is to befriend whoever lives in this place. Can you even imagine what it’s like on the inside?!

But no matter how many grapes I should acquire over the coming years or how many more houses I stumble upon that treat the grapes like paint to cover drab walls, my twenty inch long hanging bunch is still the Godfather Big Kahuna Mighty Mighty of resin grapes as far as I’m concerned, lighting up my yard and life in all of its sweet grape spectacularness.