Today is my good friend Robin Deacon’s birthday. He is 48 and a recovering artist. He has appeared twice on my podcast The Coiled Spring (episodes 6 and 8 – go and listen!). Quite literally a “friend of the show”.
I know I’ve posted this stuff before, but I know that this will magically appear on Facebook for all his students, so here it is. Plus any chance to recycle old content with minimum effort for a friend is good!
For Robin’s birthday nearly ten years ago I photoshopped his face into some classic album covers. I was using a pirate copy of Adobe Photoshop (which I didn’t really know how to use, as you can tell), and I was on company time. Deal with it.
Robin and I have been EC fans for a long time, albeit separately and before we met. I was please with this one, because I managed to get the special “worn cover” effect in the middle that was actually fake on the original, to make the album look like an old soul LP. Not sure where the picture of Robin came from, probably a publicity shot.
I don’t know why I had a photo of Robin as a child. But I do know why it a good idea to put him on the cover of a Frogs album – the Frogs were awesome, and Dennis Flemion is sorely missed.
In this piece, the psychedelic scronk platter gets a reworking with me putting Robin’s face instead of a dead fish. Funnily enough, the image I used of Robin gurning was from Robin’s 2000 performance with Laurence Harvey (of Human Centipede II fame and notoriety), called The Costello Show. I like to think it brings it full circle, which I believe is the plot of Human Centipede III.
Robin just finished a show in New York, which used a series of old obsolete video tape formats. I’m sure there will be some documentation soon at his website, or on his Vimeo feed.
Happy Birthday, pal.