Thanks for the great drawing, Joe. I'll get that Morrissey book to you soon.

Volume Six Coming Soon

Volume six of The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music is mostly laid out for print, and this one is going to be packed. So many stellar drawings have arrived in the last year that this book will contain more drawings than any previous volume. This will be a jam-packed, attractive zine for you to hold in your hands. I am really excited to put this one out.

But if even more drawings were to arrive before publication, it wouldn't take much to convince me to add even more drawings. This volume will be dedicated to drawings based on Jimmy Page's hairdo, so if you want to contribute to the project, please consider making a rendering of Mr. Page on the template above. For inspiration, check out this great portrait sent in just last week or any of the other hundreds of drawings that have been showcased here over the last couple years.

I love this project and want to see more people have fun with it, too. If you want to join in, just click on the image above, then click to view the picture at full size and print off a copy. Fill it out and send it back to the address at the bottom. You will likely see your work on this website and maybe featured in the forthcoming book.

Thanks as always to all past and future drawers!

Necessity Is the Mother of Sandwiches

It's not just about hairdos here at The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music. We also love sandwiches. Here is the second sandwich review to be posted here, AND WE'D LOVE TO READ MORE.

The first sandwich review was a detailed analysis of a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and you can read that review at the bottom of the first post recounting our adventures at the Madison Zine Fest. That review was kindly written/drawn by a friend in Texas who sent it through the mail to The Famous Hairdos P.O. Box. (In related news, the friend in question draws an autobiographical comic called Weak Highlights that you should check out.)

This newest review is by my brother, given to me in person in a car heading to my mom's sixtieth birthday party. Yes, my brother owns a rubber stamp of an AK-47. Don't you?

Thanks, Adam and Lindsey, and happy birthday, mom!

If you want to see your sandwich review posted here, send it to:

P.O. Box 11872
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Best wishes.

Thank you, Kathy!

Wow. I love these. The chance that something like this might have arrived over the weekend at the Famous Hairdos P.O. Box is what makes me walk my dog to the post office as soon as I wake up on Monday morning. Inside, instead of the more typical nothing, was these two somethings.

So apparently pastel does not hold up so well against postal sorting machinery. Who would have guessed? But I sort of like the mechanical smudging on these drawings. Maybe the drawer would disagree, but regardless, I want to thank them for sending them in and making my Monday. Thanks and best wishes!

This drawing by a local high school student was procured for the Famous Hairdos of Popular Music by my pal Tom, an art teacher and longtime friend of this project. Big, big thanks to the drawer and thanks as always to Tom.

This postcard was in the Famous Hairdos P.O. Box this morning. Thanks to the drawer for sending it in. I love these drawings where all the constituent parts are nameable, like, ok, that's a river, some hills, Morrissey's hair, a tongue, shining sun, maybe those are nostrils, stegosaurus spikes. Yeah, that's everything. But still, what am I looking at? Is this a prehistoric ancestor of Morrissey's hair, pausing to drink from a cool mountain spring? There has always been a Rorschach element built into this project, but it's interesting when a completed drawing comes back and the hair has been turned into yet another inkblot, and I wonder just who is in the psychiatrist's chair, so to speak.

This is fun. Let's keep doing it!

A little roughed-up by the postal service, but nonetheless a nice postcard drawing retrieved from the Famous Hairdos P.O. Box this afternoon. Thanks to the drawer for sending this in! Here Jimmy Page has a neck to make Parmigianino proud.

Famous Hairdos Postcard Installation

Last week (while showing off all the great drawings from the Madison Zine Fest) I promised exciting news, and here it is: For the next two weeks (October 11- 22, 2010) blank postcards for the Famous Hairdos of Popular Music project will be hanging in UW-Milwaukee's Mitchell Hall for passersby to take and fill out! For anyone new to the project, this short paragraph should catch you up and give all the necessary details:

The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music is a two and a half year old collaborative art project based in Milwaukee. Friends and strangers complete drawings inspired by images of famous musicians' iconic hairstyles. Between October 11 and 22, you can participate in the project. Check out the space in UWM's Mitchell Hall between rooms 349 and 353 on the third floor, take a postcard, complete a drawing, and mail it back to the address printed on the reverse. This project becomes more fun the more people participate. Please join in!

I have to thank Lisa Moline, who arranged this for me, and Marcelino Stuhmer, whose students' work usually hangs in this location, for allowing me to use his space. As I write this, my fingernails are still sore from sticking all those pushpins. As an added incentive, the first hundred postcards come pre-stamped, so you can give your drawings to the project without spending the twenty-eight cents to mail them in. I will be dropping by often to replenish the postcards as they are taken. So please take them.

In other news, some may recall that a small contest was held here a few weeks ago to celebrate the publication of the fifth volume of The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music. I doubt that anyone is waiting with bated breath for the results of this contest because, well, no one entered. But if there are any armchair quarterbacks who have been checking for updates, that's your answer. No winner, but also, I suppose, no losers (or infinity losers, pessimists), but I'm not too disappointed. It was fun to try, and a similar contest will likely be mounted when the sixth volume comes out.

Thanks as always to any drawers, past and future, who keep this project going.

Madison Zine Fest, Part 3

Here are the last of the drawings acquired at the Madison Zine Fest for The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music project. There are some all-time faves in this batch, too. If you want to see the rest of the drawings, the first batch is here and the second is here. So pour yourself a generous glass of red wine and admire some truly inspired drawings.

Thanks again to all the drawers, festival organizers, attendees, and other friendly folks. Best wishes.

Madison Zine Fest, Part 2

Here are some more (but not all) of the remaining drawings that we collected on Saturday at the Madison Zine Fest for the Famous Hairdos project. Only while scanning the stack of postcards that we went home with did I realize just what an awesome outpouring of great drawings we got that day. So here is the second of three batches. Click here to see the first.

Thanks again to everyone who drew.

Madison Zine Fest, Part 1

The Famous Hairdos of Popular Music have just returned from a long, fun weekend in Madison. The Madison Zine Fest held on October 2 was a blast. It was maybe the most fun we’ve had at one of these events, aside from trying to navigate the streets of the Borgesian labyrinth that is Madison, and even that wasn’t too horrible.

Big, big thanks to the organizers of the Fest, everyone who came down, and anyone who bought a book from us, gave us a drawing, or both. Thanks to all of you I am still very excited about this project. It wouldn’t exist without you.

Back home in Milwaukee, there was a postcard waiting in the Famous Hairdos P.O. Box from a stranger here in town, so we’ll start with that one, and then please keep scrolling down to see half of the wonderful submissions we gathered in Madison. The rest will be posted very soon. Last but not least is a wonderful, not-hairdo-related, illustrated review of a peanut butter and jam sandwich sent in the mail from a good friend in Texas because some things are too great not to share. If you feel compelled to share your own sandwich reviews or hairdo drawings or any other correspondence, send them to:

P.O. Box 11872, Milwaukee, WI 53211

There should be more exciting news here within a few days as well as the rest of the Madison drawings. Stay tuned. Thanks again and enjoy!





































And here is a review of peanut butter and jam sandwich: