PIONEERING ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO WITH TOM WAITS HAS BOOK RELEASE PARTY

NOVEMBER 14, MEET THE AUTHOR AND BOOK SIGNING EVENT!

1979 ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO WITH TOM WAITS GETS BOOK RELEASE

Tom Waits For No One (1979), is documented by the film’s Director, John Lamb, in Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook. The video, lost for over 25 years, resurfaced on YouTube in 2006, and represents Tom Waits’ first music video and the first job in animation for The Simpsons and Monsters Inc. director, David Silverman. Fans of the film funded a Kickstarter to publish a scrapbook of art, drawings, photographs, newspaper articles and rock ‘n roll artifacts related to the film.

Oceanside, CA – November 14, 2015 – John Lamb will be signing and reading from his book Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook at Legacy Brewing Company at 363 Airport Road, Oceanside, CA 92058 – starting at 6:00PM, followed by a multi-media showing of the original animated video and the live-action footage of Tom Waits, which the video was based upon.

The book celebrates the making of this obscure, but significant film. With a Foreword by the leading music video historian, Professor Gunnar Strøm, the film is identified as a pioneering American music video, and quite possibly the first animated and rotoscoped music video ever made.

The short film was Tom Waits’ first music video, and represents the first job in animation for David Silverman, Director of The Simpsons and Monsters Inc. One year after the film’s release, the Director would win an Academy Award for co-inventing the equipment used to make the film: the Lyon Lamb Video Animation System.

In its Hollywood film festival debut (1979), the film took first prize, and then quickly slipped into obscurity. The book includes a rare 1980 Mix Magazine interview with Tom Waits, Waits says of the film: “It’s got a lot of style… I think it’s got a big future.”

Published independently by Big Buick Press, the first edition hard-cover book includes 150 pages of hand drawn art, original character studies from the film, concert ticket stubs, newspaper articles, photos and animation cels. A limited number of the original 250 signed and numbered first edition books are still available.

The books are available at the book signing, and at www.tomwaitsfornoone.com for $95. The second edition book, with a full-color, soft-bound cover will be released December 1, 2015 through Amazon.

Link to the video Tom Waits For No One: https://youtu.be/jCNDZY4vXPs

Watch ‘Tom Waits For No One:

About John Lamb

In the 1970s, Lamb’s early animation debuted with surf and skateboarding cult films like Five Summer Stories and Spinnin’ Wheels. Lamb’s self-taught animation style was rough and colorful.

In 1976, he co-invented the Lyon Lamb Video Animation System (VAS), which revolutionized animation production and stop-motion animation in special effects. In Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the VAS was used to animate the AT-ATs and TaunTauns. According to Phil Tippet, the VAS was instrumental in the “go motion animation” process he created for Empire. In 1980, Lamb was honored with an Academy Award for co-invention of the Lyon Lamb Video Animation System.

Today, Lamb’s artwork is on permanent installation at the California Surf Museum in Oceanside, and his animated sequence Secret Spot was included in the 13th Annual SurFilm Festival’s (2015) “Surf, Civilization and Barbarism“ art installation in San Sebastian, Spain.