In strict tempo

The music Jones is playing in frame one is Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer', true to her roots in boogie woogie and ragtime. In the last frame she's playing Bach's 'Well Tempered Clavier'.

Modern Classical

Originally published 22 April 2010

Speak for yourself, Jones, I like a nice bit of atonal madness now and again. And besides, there a lot of good nicely behaved modern classical out there as well.

Here's a particular favourite of mine, Alan Hovhaness' Mount St Helen's Symphony, the first movement of which takes us on a gentle walk up the slope of the mountain as it was before the cataclysmic eruption of 1980...

This strip was published on a Thursday, so I could crowbar in the following day's time sensitive strip...

Arpeggio

Originally published 21 April 2010

Downbeat

Originally published 19 April 2010

This explains how the cats operates the pedals on the piano, but the answer to how Jones manages those finger stretching boogie bass riffs remains a mystery.

I know I've copied the music from some sheet music I found via Google, but I can't remember what it is. Is there anyone out there who reads music that can play these fragments on the piano and identify the piece?

Plan cute

Originally published 16 April 2010

Having crystallised the premise of the comic, 'what do cats do when they're not being observed?', I felt I had to answer the question of what happens when they ARE being observed. This is it. If you've ever wondered why your cat is looking inexplicably guilty when you suddenly come into the room, but can't figure out why, it's because a split second earlier something similar was going on…

Boogie Woogie

Originally published 14 April 2010

As I've mentioned before - Smith and Jones were real cats who lived next door to me when I was a kid growing up in Tunbridge Wells. I had a friend, Eric, who lived directly opposite my house on the other side of the road. We both liked cats and all the cats in the street knew us. As kids do, we made up stories about the cats, developing a sort of mythology where the human race had vanished overnight in some unexplained but very convenient apocalypse and the cats were now in charge. Smith was effectively king, and Jones was his queen. We were kids, these things don't have to make sense.

Eric's dad was a trombone player with a Trad Jazz outfit The Expedient Jazz Band, based in the unimaginably distant and exotic town of Hastings. Their house had a wonderful battered stand up piano in the dining room, and on top of the piano was a mound of old sheet music from the days of ragtime and boogie boogie. In our stories, this piano was given to Jones, and the image of Jones playing it has stayed with me ever since.

Here are the Expedients playing at the Rye Jazz festival. The personnel may have changed but they're still a proper New-Orleans style street band.

This is the strip where I crystallised the whole premise of the comic: what do cats do when they're not being observed?

This is also the point at which Smith and Jones' house turned into my own one. The Ikea sofa, the fireplace full of ornaments, the TV, the stand and the boxes underneath are all essentially drawn from life. The wall colour is not as grotty, though.

Spin

Drawing the music festival cartoons a few weeks ago made me remember that I hadn't drawn any strips about Jones at the piano for a while. This rectifies that situation, though its more about the spinny stool than anything else.

Overdoing the colour

The second frame of today's cartoon took me three hours to colour to my satisfaction - normally I can get away with one colour for the sky, another for the ground, and then filling in the cats' eyes, ears and any body tint required. For this one I was concentrating on getting that dingy gig atmosphere, while also making sure Jones and the keyboard stood out. I think I succeeded, but it's a very different palette to the one I normally use.

It's pronounced tomarto

I say tomarto. My wife says tomayto. We both say potayto. Who on earth says potarto?