World-weary
Jaded
Romantic
Byronesque
Ennui
Roué
Broken-hearted
Party Time (or Night Life)
Euro-centric
Greasy Kid’s Stuff

“LOOKING FOR LOVE IN A LOOKING GLASS WORLD” – (Per Johnny Bacardi and Sean Collins, a few personal reflections on a classic Roxy Music elpee:)

The cover to Roxy Music’s Stranded (a.k.a. “The Third Roxy Music Album”) clearly announced that this was No Album for Little Boys: a full-breasted model in a torn red dress, languorously lying on the ground with a “just laid” look. Inside the original LP gatefold, three rows of individual pics of the band – each row tinted different colors like an Andy Warhol silk screen – hid as much as they revealed. You had your typical longhaired guitarist, a familiar enough look for 1973, but who the hell was the guy with his hair slicked back?

It was Bryan Ferry, of course, lead singer and primary composer of this unparalleled Brtish prog-pop group. Stranded was not the first Roxy album that I’d heard, but it was the first that I’d thoroughly keyed into. “Street Life” was the immediate grabber – a yowling plaint that begins with off-key synth sounds and Ferry yelping, “Wish everybody would leave me alone!” – with “Mother of Pearl” a close second. Both songs open on pure chaos, “Street Life” only barely climbing out of it, while “Pearl” quickly settles into a “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” vibe. (When Bryan Ferry opened his first solo album with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall,” many critics saw it as a joke; I thought it was his means of tacitly acknowledging one of his foremost lyrical influences.) They’re two of the album’s most openly rock (third such track being the Spanish-tinged “Serenade”), and while the songs remain highlights after all these years of listening to it, they’re only part of Stranded’s story.

To be honest, much of this album eluded me at first: slower, even more elliptical, more quietly pretty than the bombastic cuts that first grabbed me, it hardly fit the profile of glam rock (where the band was frequently miscategorized at the time: think of groups like Sweet or Gary “Big Drums” Glitter). Indeed, most of Stranded is barely rock at all (hardest rockin’ of the RM catalog: Country Life) – more like eccentrically personal cabaret.

And then there’s “Psalm,” eight minutes of solemnly religious lyricism (hard to tell how serious Ferry is being with this, but he did later do a cover of “Amazing Grace” for one of his solo albums, so who knows?), much of it just Ferry and his piano ‘til Andy Mackay’s improving sax, Phil Manzanera’s guitar and Paul Thompson’s heavily cadenced drums enter. If ever there was a track designed to test the patience of a fastpop focused listener like me, it’s this ‘un. Yet Ferry’s voice is so bald and affecting in this cut that I can never push “skip” on it.

I need to emphasize Ferry’s voice because, for all the brilliantly off-kilter musicianship of the rest of the band (Manzanera’s guitarwork catches me more than once on this disc – the soaring interlude to “Amazona” for instance – it’s both studied and uncontrolled at the same time), Bryan remains the voice and vision of Roxy Music. A crooner’s instrument capable of attaining trills unheard since Tiny Tim frolicked on the soundstages of Laugh-In but also adept at plain melodic balladeering, Ferry was an unlikely lead for a rock band in the early seventies. And the persona he evoked, that of a world-weary roué perpetually unlucky in love and also too smart to know (as Peggy Lee would also realize) that “party time wasting” was not all there is, was not in sync with the way we in America, at least, wanted to see in our rockstars. (Like David Bowie, Roxy Music would have to wait for the disco era – where the beat could camouflage the lyrical irony – before really hitting big in the U.S.)

As a singer, Ferry is not as adept on Stranded as he would later get – at times you can hear him camping things up where later he’d be more subtle – but he’s still phenomenal. Listen to him on “Sunset,” the album’s gloomy finale (in a way, it’s his rewriting of “Seasons in The Sun” – the Jacques Brel version, not the sappy Rod McKuen Americanized translation), sounding elegantly reflective and rueful as he inhabits one man’s reflections of a wasted life, and it’s clear that the man belongs to the tradition of great actor vocalists. (Whether that’s rock ‘n’ roll probably depends on whether you believe Lou Reed’s “Heroin” is fully autobiographical or not.) To my ears it just cements the message of Stranded’s cover: that this is not music for little boys – not even grown-up little boys.

In sum: a splendorous record, sad and thoughtful, propulsive when it needs to be and tranquilly melodic (c.f. “Just Like You,” which I’d love to hear a singer like Annie Lennox wrap her tonsils around) other times. It’s the album that hooked me into Roxy Music – and later into Ferry’s solo stuff – and for that I’m still thankful. . .

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Friday, August 01, 2003
      ( 8/01/2003 07:07:00 AM ) Bill S.  

PHEW! – Picked up a copy of Craig Thompson’s mega-graphic novel Blankets (Top Shelf), and I’ve gotta admit I’m feeling a bit daunted by the thought of dipping into the 500-plus page beast. Where most genre comics read quickly and disposably (thanks, in part, to years of familiarity with their visual clichés), I move much more slowly through works like this: started Seth’s It’s A Good Life If You Don’t Weaken last weekend, for instance, and I’m only halfway through it. Perhaps I spend too much time reading and watching crap, but I also like to be more deliberate reading non-genre fare like this. So maybe I should take a day off from work and devote it to reading Blankets, eh?

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Thursday, July 31, 2003
      ( 7/31/2003 12:38:00 PM ) Bill S.  

FLIES IN THE POOL AND OTHER DISASTERS – Well, July’s sure been a Hernandez Hootenanny – what with Los Bros. releasing two new issues of their black-and-white Fantagraphics comics (Love and Rockets, Vol. 2, #8, and Luba #7), plus two hardback collections of earlier work (Jaime’s Dicks and Deedees plus Gilbert’s collection of the complete Palomar saga) – and I couldn’t be happier. At this point, I’ve got all but the Beto hardback, though I fully intend to purchase that, too, so I can readily reread his “Heartbreak Soup” tales in their entirety.

I’ve been enjoying the brothers’ work for so long now that it’s easy to take for granted how remarkable their more sustained storylines have been: Jaime’s continued saga of Maggie and her Hoppers pals; Gilbert’s complex family serial with the hammer-wielding matriarch Luba as its pivotal center. To a new reader, coming into these two works has to be a bit like picking up Book Six in The Forsythe Saga and starting with Chapter Eight. Yet unlike the mishmash that comprises most long-running genre comics’ continuity (one writer undoing what the previous two established), the Hernandez’ complexity is ultimately character illuminating. Reading “Bay of Threes” in Dicks, for instance, humanizes a figure that I’d long considered a put-on, Penny Century. The character’s futile desire to be a superheroine may work as a joke on fanboy expectations, but the joke’s not at the expense of Penny.

Aside from the occasional surreal side trips (e.g. a Beto three-pager in L&R about “Little Stunt Boy”), the two booklets focus on the Bros.’ more realistic serial dramas. “Maggie,” Jaime’s big piece in L&R, revolves around our heroine’s current doomed infatuation with the buxom and self-destructive Vivian (“You know, straight girl bustin’ out and getting’ girl tongue,” Maggie notes), who has swiped a folk artifact from her dangerous boyfriend Sid. Gilbert’s “High Soft Lisp” (chapter five of a six-part story) charts the deterioration of the marriage between curvy therapist Fritz and her rich husband Mark; it’s packed with disturbing images of sado-masochistic sex. In Luba, “more characters than you can keep track of” – including Fritz and her muscular sister Petra – indulge in even more fluid relationships and heartbreak, as an approaching meteor hints at the possibility of doom. But even with Apocalypse on the way, the characters in Hernandez California remain mired in their personal problems.

Back in the sixties, Stan Lee first utilized the basic format of soap opera to structure series like Spider-Man, but it took the Hernandez Bros. to fully bring true domestic drama to graphic storytelling. Their characters wander from job to club to new relationship to party to newer relationship with real-life aimlessness. What keeps it from being tedious is both artists’ facility with dialog and art in the pursuit of characterization – and their willingness to periodically plunk their people into pure graphic story fancy. In Dicks and Deedees, for instance, Jaime treats us to a prolonged Maggie dream sequence that’s a marvel of wit and visual sureness, while his current plotline in L&R has been piling on the foreboding for several issues now. In “Lisp,” our troubled couple utilize an anachronistic-looking sex machine that could only come out of comic books.

The capacity to blend playfulness and seriousness without seriously compromising either is something only a limited number of comics writer/artists have successfully explored (Eisner managed it in his later “Spirit” stories). Yet over the years both of the Bros. have managed to consistently do it. Any month you get a new comic book of Jaime or Gilbert’s work is a good month. July was a great month.

LATE BREAKING CORRECTION: Received a copy of Fantagraphics' catalog updating Friday a.m. and learned that I was mistaken in thinking that the Palomar book was released in July. (So that’s why it hadn’t shown up at area comics shops yet!) According to the publishers, it’s scheduled for release in September: a sweet note on which to start the Fall.

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      ( 7/31/2003 06:50:00 AM ) Bill S.  

THANKS BUT NO THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES – Kindly Fred Hembeck alerts us to a plethora of Bob Hope films on both Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics. But with the exception of such early fifties gems as 1952’s Road to Bali and Son of Paleface, the bulk of the material is fairly weak (1955’s Seven Little Foys is a rote show biz bio that doesn’t much play to Hope’s strengths as a comedian; the stuff from the sixties is out-and-out lame). Who owns the rights to all the great Paramount stuff from the thirties and forties?

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      ( 7/31/2003 04:56:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“SOME CIVIL SERVANTS ARE JUST LIKE MY LOVED ONES” – Several days late, I finally watched the much-hyped “Search for Osama” ep of The Dead Zone on tape last night. Though the basic outcome was never in doubt (it’s not like we’re watching Will Eisner bring Hitler to the streets of New York or anything), the show did muster up some decent action/suspense about the ultimate fate of the squad sent in after him.

Though the show’s writers were careful never to explicitly use his name, USA Net’s promo writers felt no such compunctions. (SEE! Johnny Smith use his amazing psychic powers to find the Mastermind Behind 9-11!) The episode even opened with a nudge-nudge/wink-wink disclaimer that said: Yeah, we know this is fiction, but wanna bet that the government isn’t trying this very thing as we speak? Fair enough. But what I had a hard time buying was the story’s finish.

Here we have this double secret underground government installation where our hero has been brought to utilize his powers – and he’s clearly demonstrated that he has abilities far beyond the rest of the penny ante psychics working the room. So what happens after his first attempt doesn’t yield the Big Capture? Johnny sez goodbye, and the government lets him go! Now we know we’re far from the Stephen King Universe. Remember Firestarter? Those bastards would’ve put a lock on Johnny for as long as they could.

I know, I know. These are different times – when even a small bit of X-Files-ish paranoia is grounds for a series of blogland rants about that Damn Leftist Entertainment Industry. Still, I would’ve liked to have seen an indication that someone in the compound was considering the act, if only so one of the more noble govt. servants could’ve chimed up, “We don’t hold people just because it suits our purposes – this is America!”

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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
      ( 7/30/2003 08:07:00 AM ) Bill S.  

AND I THOUGHT I HAD A TIN EAR – Caught the second ep of Nip/Tuck last night and noticed that in the opening recap sequence, they reran Joely Richardson’s line about “the death of you and me.” Somebody’s actually proud of that line!

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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
      ( 7/29/2003 12:19:00 PM ) Bill S.  

THE CIRCLE GAME – Some smart words from Sean Collins on Marvel Comics and the way company President Bill Jemas has become a larger-than-life ogre for many longstanding Marvel fantypes. I agree with Sean that Jemas has brought a healthy willingness to fuck with formula, but with this has come a seeming inability to differentiate between thoughtful/playful tampering (Truth, Unstable Molecules et al) and plain ol’ self-indulgent crapola (c.f. the Ron Zimmerman oeuvre). If the latter is perceived to overwhelm the former, than Marvel has a problem.

When I first returned to reading about the big comics companies two years ago, part of the Conventional Wisdom had it that DC had blown a ton of slowly-built critical credibility from its Vertigo comics line by letting sharp scripters like Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis slip over to the competition. Marvel, which was dining on the success of its Ultimate books and offshoots like its MAX and Marvel Knights books, was the happenin’ superhero comics line. But anyone who’s watched this industry over time knows how quickly the pendulum can swing the other way. Think of the periodic mass exoduses from Marvel to DC – writers like Len Wein & Marv Wolfman in the seventies, artists like John Byrne & Frank Miller a bit later – the field is filled with such tales of heavy duty talent plundering.

I’m less worried about the prospect of Marvel losing its “edge” because I fully expect the company to get it back after DC management has let its own corporate policies alienate a sizable number of the creators who’ve gone over to the company for exclusive contracts. As for Jemas, I’ll let those who actually know him write the eulogies. Bet some of those folks are preparing drafts right now. . .

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      ( 7/29/2003 08:55:00 AM ) Bill S.  

“I’M COMING OVER SHORTLY/BECAUSE I AM A PORTLY” – More pudgy-guy-in-a-Hawaiian-shirt bashing. Will the madness ever end?

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      ( 7/29/2003 06:38:00 AM ) Bill S.  

COMMENT, ALLEZ-VOUS? – Just discovered (thanx to a nudge from Johnny Bacardi) that my Comments section has been quietly doing nuthin’ ever since Blogger made its big template change. It’s not like I have a rabid comments section or anything, so I’m probably lucky that it only took me a month to discover this. Sez something about my inherently introvert nature that I was so slow on the uptake, though. . .

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      ( 7/29/2003 05:53:00 AM ) Bill S.  

UNFINISHED BIZNESS – Man, you’ve gotta wonder if you’ve been overdoing this blogging stuff when you dream about posting a blog entry. Said posting was about Bob Hope, me writing a review of an imaginary teevee tribute special (probably broadcast on NBC, right?) and snobbishly going: Ah, but his early movies were so much better.

That’s true, of course (see: Monsieur Beaucaire, Son of Paleface, Ghostbreakers, My Favorite Brunette, Road to Utopia and more), but probably irrelevant after all these years. Like Kate Hepburn, there are generations for whom Hope was more a show biz institution than a fresh or surprising entertainer. There are also folks for whom Hope carries more weight as a political figure than a comedian – ultra-conservative, heartily supportive of our boys in battle, proudly unquestioning as to whether those boys should’ve been there in the first place – a lot of those folks have zero interest in comedy, I suspect.

As a kid, I remember watching Hope on his television specials: enjoyed the stuff he did in the studio but was lukewarm about those specials that showed him flying off to do his U.S.O. show for the troops. Don’t know whether the veneer of patriotic self-congratulation got in the way or the material was just a bit more slapdash – either way, as a callow kid I was much less enthused about Hope the Entertainer of the Troops. (I do recall reading one of his books describing his World War II U.S.O. experiences and found it a suitably jaunty experience, for what it’s worth.) As a more-righteous-than-thou anti-warmonger back in my college days, I’d have probably sneered at Hope’s specials, if I’d been watching any TV at the time. My sneer would’ve been misdirected: whatever I thought of the war or its supporters had little to do with the guys ‘n’ dolls going off to entertain ‘em.

Still, when I think of Hope, I’d rather recall the brash and defensive young guy who reluctantly battled zombies on a tropical island or shot quips at Peter Lorre. Ah, but his early movies were much better! With a career as long and as successful as Hope’s, we all get to select the parts we liked best. . .

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Monday, July 28, 2003
      ( 7/28/2003 02:21:00 PM ) Bill S.  

“HOW IN THE WORLD WOULD I MAKE SOMEONE LISTEN?” – The Wondermints’ Mind If We Make Love to You (Smile/EMI) is the disc for pop-rock junkies who play their Beach Boys’ Brother discs more than any of the group’s earlier hit releases. A glossy collection of tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place on AM radio back in 1973, the disc is the band’s first full collection of original material to debut on an American label (the band’s had two elpees released in Japan and a cover collection that’s received domestic release). Of course, it’s been criminally overlooked since it came out in '02. Heck, if the mighty Beach Boys couldn’t sell this stuff when it was still relatively contemporary, what chance do the Wondermints have?

Maybe the boys don’t care: if anything, the group (Darian Sahanaja, Nick Walusko, & Mike D’Amico) has grown more uncannily like Brian Wilson & fam in the years since its first limited American single, “Proto-Pretty,” caught the ears of pop nerds everywhere. Make Love’s highlights play the Wilson card slickly: “Ride,” with its deep-boyish chorus (and guest appearance by Mister Sandbox himself), sounds like something that could’ve come out of the Boys’ Quixotic “Let’s Trounce Sgt. Pepper” era: replete with tempo changes and symphonic flourishes; “Another Way” starts out like a cut Eric Carmen (who once briefly managed this band) might’ve orchestrated, then moves into a blend of Carl Wilson-style lead, gorgeous harmonies and woodsy cello – it all sounds innocently ethereal ‘til you realize the lyrics are about a self-destructive grrl; “If I Were You” works a marriage between our California boys and Boston, of all things, without managing to churn into a gloppy mess; while “Everywhere I Go” successfully ventures into the melancholy realm of the Wondermentors’ classic Pet Sounds. All very melodious and (relatively) irony-free. Touring as back-up band for Brian’s live version of Pet Sounds seems to’ve tamped down the boys' show-off lyrical tendencies.

At times, the band overdoes its soft rock thing: three songs in a row featuring Latinate rhythms overwhelm the best of the three, “Sweetness.” But every time I get to the final cut, the gee-I’m-glad-I’m-in-love-with-a-gurl celebration “So Nice” (also guest-starring Brian), all my qualms about the album have melted. Kind of how I feel playing Sunflower or Surf’s Up: two flawed but ineffably sweet platters fulla pop-rock goodness. I bet the ‘mints wouldn’t mind that comparison at all. . .

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      ( 7/28/2003 12:00:00 PM ) Bill S.  

IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN, HONEY - I read from Sean Collins that Erik Braun, the lead guitarist for Iron Butterfly died Friday at the age of 52. The band’s only hit was a doozy, the mega-length (17 minutes) "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," a track that has since become a symbol of thudding psychedelia (it’s been used jokingly by both The Simpsons and a Nightmare on Elm Street entry) and musicianly excess. The hit single version was quite a bit shorter than its album-length original, of course, (no tom-tom drum solos). But even at the then-mandated AM-length, the cut sounded menacing: like some bellicose drunk – 250 pounds or so – who’s stomped up to ya and started poking his finger into your chest.

I owned the band’s best-selling album in college, so I can never hear that song without flashing on a cheesy blacklit dorm room. The band was one of a group of Atlantic Records signed “heavies,” a list that also included Led Zep and lesser lights like Rhinoceros. But, unlike the mighty Zeppelin, they were unable to sustain their career past one-hit-wonder status. Listen to any of the other sodden cuts on the elpee In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (available in more than one CD reissue), and you can hear why.

Wonder where I put that ol' black light?

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      ( 7/28/2003 08:03:00 AM ) Bill S.  

BLOGGIN’ FOR FREEDOM – Checking out my blogroll late in the evening, I see that Dave Hill also took part on the Blogathon – and went crazy on the comic book reviewing in the name of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Dave’s mammoth job inspired me to do something I should've done years ago: join the CBLDF.

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Sunday, July 27, 2003
      ( 7/27/2003 06:22:00 AM ) Bill S.  

"IN MY EARS AND IN MY EYES" – I know I said I wasn’t going to be around this weekend, but nobody else in the house is up yet this a.m. and I really wanted to give a shout-out to Elayne Riggs, who did this year’s Blogathon and included several quick-‘n’-thoughtful comic review postings as a part of her marathon binge. Check it out, why don't ya?

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