SUBURBAN SONGBOOK LOBBYCARDS: FAN ART TRIBUTE

‘Suitable for framing’ – I love that expression! It means or used to mean that you’re going to get a beautiful image, a beautiful print, that you can put up on the wall. At least, that’s what I’ve aspired to with this set of imaginary lobbycards to go with Suburban Songbook. These sixteen artworks I have created are an homage to the music, the life and the pop art of the era that the book describes, offered in the spirit of love, respect and fun and offered here, as nice hi-rez jpgs, for anyone to freely download to pin up on the wall or, in more contemporary terms, to serve as a screensaver. Go on – to use another expression I always loved – ‘collect the whole set’!:

​ARTIST'S NOTE: These artworks were inspired by bubblegum cards (especially the Australian Scanlens gum PopSwops series from the late 70s), record covers, pin-ups and posters out of magazines and even, to be very esoterically particular about it, the set of pop bottletops that Coca-Cola put out in Australia in the early 1960s. I took that idea of a sort of little cameo portrait – rendered in my own hand – and inset it into a larger image designed to evoke a classic song by the artist portrayed, all framed inside slightly psychedelic borders lifted directly from K-Tel’s 20 Explosive Hits-style albums. 

Those albums I loved and they were the way I heard so much music when I was growing up, and how I got turned on to so much Australian music before I even knew it was Australian. One of the early drafts of a cover for Suburban Songbook was as you can see a pure K-Tel homage, but for whatever reason it lost out in the race to the book’s existing cover. But I still love it. And so what I did just to not let the idea die was create these artworks, just for fun and to spread the word and hopefully maybe a bit of joy…