Brian Dewan

Vil slå et slag for en allsidig og talentfull kunstner fra New York som ikke akkurat har solgt haugevis med plater her til lands gjetter jeg. Brian Dewan har gitt ut to plater; "Brian Dewan tells the story" (1993) og "The operating theater" (1998). To kjempebra plater der tekstene er historier det er like kjekkt å høre for søttitredje gang som første og musikken er melodiøs rock/pop/folk med framtredende vokal. Han spiller på sin egenbygde zither med 88 strenger og gitarpedaler bl.a.

Foruten å bygge sitt eget instrument har han designet møbler, laget forskjellig kunst og designet ting til plate cover (bl.a David Byrnes "Uh-oh" og Neutral milk hotels "In an aeroplane over the sea".) og musikkvideo rekvisitter. Han lagde et slags "alter" til sine venners nyttårs selskap hvert år, disse vennene innbefatter bl.a bandet They might be giants som han har jobbet endel med, bl.a åpnet for de på mange tidligere turne'er. Ett år ble "alteret" så bra at det ble coveret på They might be giants fantastiske "Licoln" plate fra 1988.

Begge platene han har gitt ut er verd å sjekke ut. Får håpe det kommer en ny snart!

Tekstene hans kan ofte leses som små historier, her er et eksempel;

The cowboy outlaw

Gather 'round my children, and I'll tell a tale of woe
About a famous cowboy outlaw who lived a hundred years ago.
Today his soul at last is resting peacefully in hell
Though many years have passed away since through the gallows-trap he fell.

He was sitting propped up in a chair just after he was hanged
And they photographed his body as a distant churchbell rang.
A circus man was waiting with fifty dollars in his coat
And he bought the cowboy outlaw so he could have him in his show.

And very soon he was embalmed and toured from town to town
People paid to see the outlaw that they'd heard so much about
He stood before them with a pistol against a painted scene
The greatest cowboy outlaw that the world had ever seen

But in time he was forgotten and no one knew his name
And when he began to fall apart they took his booth away
They painted him with varnish and put a crown upon his head
Come and see the king of Egypt said the sign out front instead

And then one year the circus closed, the tents were packed away
And he was sold to an amusement park on Massachusetts Bay
He was sold for next to nothing and they packed him in the van
They thought they'd bought a dummy but they'd really bought a man.

He was sprayed a special color to help him look a fright
And they hung him from a gallows 'neath an ultra-violet light
He hung there in a spookhouse for many, many years
As youthful faces passed him by in tiny railroad cars

Until one fine and fateful day in 1976
He fell down from the gallows when the hangman's noose unhitched
His arm broke at the shoulder as he clattered to the floor
And the man who went to fix him was stunned by what he saw

And the teenage boys did holler, and the teenage girls did faint
When they saw the bone protruding from the varnish and the paint
A coroner came to serve him and ran a slew of tests
they found out who he was, in time, and laid his soul to rest

A hundred hears have come and gone since he spoke his final words
I'm not afraid to die and leave behind this rotten world
So go and pull the lever hangman, now my race on Earth is run
And he thought his life was ended but it had only just begun