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Saturday, April 03, 2004 ( 4/03/2004 09:52:00 AM ) Bill S. DEADED DREADLINE DROOM – Got a writing deadline to make this weekend, so bloggish posting will be light to non-existent over the next few days. I did want to note that I received a package of AIT/Planetary books for review late yesterday, so I'll be reviewing a bunch of 'em over the next few weeks. Looks like publisher Larry Young is doing a p.r. blitz of the comics blogosphere. It'll be instructive to see how this plays out. . . # | Friday, April 02, 2004 ( 4/02/2004 01:17:00 PM ) Bill S. IN-JOKE DU JOUR – That floating body we saw at the end of the debut issue of Bendis & Bagley's The Pulse (Marvel) turns out in issue #2 to be "Terri Kidder," recently hired gal reporter for The Daily Bugle, who was previously employed at "one of those big, old-fashioned, great metropolitan newspapers." Okay, but if Bendis tries to tell us her middle name is Phyllis or Noel, then he's really stretched the joke too far. . . # | ( 4/02/2004 11:25:00 AM ) Bill S. FACTOIDAL – Because I'm annoyingly fond of trivial factoids, I couldn't resist picking up Craig Yoe's Weird but True Toon Factoids (Gramercy Press) when I discovered a pile of copies of the 1999 book going cheap at local comics shoppe Acme Comics. A collection of "Believe It Or Not"-styled pages of odd toon trivia (some of which appeared in The Comic Buyers Guide), Yoe's book is jam-packed with the kinda data that feeds my addiction to semi-relevant parentheticals. Though some of his items have more than a whiff of p.r. flakkery about 'em (unless you believe, for instance, that Bob Kane truly was the sole creative talent behind Batman), the collection makes for fun bathroom reading. Only item I would thoroughly dispute: a piece which asserts that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer "was first introduced to the public in a 1951 comic book." Gene Autry's recording of the holiday perennial debuted on December 3, 1949, and recharted for four consecutive Christmas seasons. The singin' cowboy rerecorded the song in 1957, which may account for some of the confusion. That nitpickoid aside, I'd recommend picking up a copy (it's available for $5.95 through Bud Plant) – and I promise not to blow the whistle on any bloggers who use its material in their postings. . . (One sign of the speed with which things change on the web: the '99 collection alerts the reader to the presence of Yoe's weirdbuttrue.com site, but an investigation of that current URL takes you to "The Leading Quizes Site on the Web." Oh, the firefly life of websites!) # | ( 4/02/2004 07:56:00 AM ) Bill S. "IS BIG CRIME TO MAKE ANYTHING PERFECT ON BIZARRO WORLD!" – Yesterday's round of Bizarro bloggery (as most explicitly exemplified by Franklin Harris) produced plenty o' amusing moments: John Jakala's gorgeous bloggish reworking of "Stan's Soapbox," Steve Wintle's "Family Circus" hosanas, Mike Sterling's reinvention as gambitfan and Sean Collins' four-word Hush review among them. But the topper has to be Jim Henley's day-long political about face, which inspired a long and emotion-packed thread at leftist poli-blog Eschaton. # | Thursday, April 01, 2004 ( 4/01/2004 07:18:00 PM ) Bill S. A SEXY THOUGHT ON WHICH TO END THIS DAY: Bob Dylan in a Victoria’s Secret bustier. . . # | ( 4/01/2004 01:17:00 PM ) Bill S. "AND NOW ON OUR STAGE . . ." – Mark Evanier offers an informative appreciation of three short-lived Gold Key comics, Barney Miller, Three's Company and The Ed Sullivan Show. Used to own a copy of that last title, myself, but I remember trading it for an issue of Hollywood Palace (the ish that showed Allan Sherman on the cover with his fly open!) # | ( 4/01/2004 11:59:00 AM ) Bill S. A CORRECTION – In an earlier post, I may have given the impression that I was an avid teevee viewer. I don't watch much television. # | ( 4/01/2004 10:39:00 AM ) Bill S. I'D RATHER BE WATCHING THAT BITCHY SIMON GUY, ANYWAY. . . – If I watched much teevee (which, as I noted before, I rarely do), I might choose to comment on ABC's decision to shift their Stephen King mini-series, Kingdom Hospital, from its Wednesday berth to an hour earlier on Thursday. Moving the struggling mini-series mid-story to a different night opposite a ratings juggernaut like CBS's C.S.I. strikes me as an act of utter programming genius – especially since there's not a whit of overlap between the audience for a show filled with graphic depictions of blood-&-guts and King's horror fiction. Only thing better for viewers would be if a third network – Fox, say – decided to move a struggling whimsical fantasy series – Wonderfalls, say – into the exact same time slot! # | ( 4/01/2004 10:17:00 AM ) Bill S. BLOGGERIFFIC! – Smooth talkin' Franklin Harris beat me to linkage on blogmeister Dirk Deppey's return, but he somehow managed to miss the wealth of new postings at Four Color Hell! # | ( 4/01/2004 08:59:00 AM ) Bill S. THE "DIS" – As I noted in my previous piece, I don't watch a lot of television (unless, of course, it's weekend sports). But my curiosity was definitely piqued by this posting on Cartoon Brew, describing a proposed Disney cartoon teleseries created by Michael Eisner himself! Reads like a real winner to me. . . # | ( 4/01/2004 05:55:00 AM ) Bill S. THE SIXTY-MINUTE MAINSTREAMER – (Episode Umpteen: In which our mainstream explorer takes a tentative dip into mutant matters.) I happened upon a copy of the mainstream graphic novel, X-Men: Evolution without much advanced word on this title. Sitting on a shelf alongside more familiar Tokyopop and Viz titles, the Marvel book jumped out at me because of its darkly busy cover and smiling kid faces. "The hit Kids' WBI cartoon is now a comic book!" the back cover tells me, so apparently this new "All Ages" mainstream title is based on an animated TV series. (I don't watch a lotta teevee, so I couldn't tell you when it's on.) Sounds like a blend of Mai, the Psychic Girl and Psychic Academy, thought I – and since I've enjoyed both of those well-known manga series, I decided to give X-Men: Evolution a try. At $5.99, it seemed like a decent buy, certainly less pricey than a volume of Iron Wok Jan! I've gotta tell ya, though, after years of reading manga, the format of these so-called "mainstream" comics continues to throw me. I'm still unaccustomed to reading my comics from left to right, so the first thing I do is open the book on an ad for something called the Marvel Encyclopedia. And more than once, while reading along, I find myself falling back into old habits, so on one page, orphan mutant Scott is on his ass before an intolerant human decks him. Kinda like watching your VCR tape run backwards, it is. . . X-Men: Evolution is the creation of Devin Grayson and an artist named Udo (at least I assume it's their creation since the book doesn't contain any other credits on its two title pages - aside from five different editors, that is – perhaps Grayson & Udo were responsible for the earlier WBI cartoon show?) Befitting its connection to a cartoon series, the art is entirely in color instead of the more easily scanned black-&-white – though perhaps as an aid to manga readers coming to this material for the first time, much of the coloring looks one step away from gray-scaled. The book opens on a shirtless figure lying in the snow – who he is, we're not told, but the guy seems to have major problems with his knuckles since a close-up of his hand reveals some extra-long curvy spikes coming from his hands. What are they? How do they work? Are they out all the time? If not, how does the guy managed to bend his wrists when the spikes are retracted? We don't get any answers to these pressing questions yet, since the story shifts to an unnamed campus and a wheel-chaired college prof. Turns out the professor, whose name is Xavier, is an expert on mutations – of which, presumably, knuckle boy is an example. He sets up a school for adolescents who are just discovering that there’s something different about 'em. Grayson is inconsistent when it comes to describing these young mutants' place in the world. At one point, two of the new students are accosted in the streets by an angry group of townspeople for being mutant "freaks," but later, one of these two – a kid who shoots rays from his eyes – tells another, "The world isn't ready to know about mutants yet." Perhaps this world is like the one in The Big O, only instead of the characters experiencing world-wide memory loss, they suffer daily glitches with short-term memory? The first volume of X-Men: Evolution primarily devotes its pages to introducing each of our teen mutant characters – though some are more clearly delineated than others (among the others: a red-headed telekinetic, a woman who can make it rain and a blue guy who can "bamf!" – which apparently involves creating big black clouds and jumping out of 'em!) Not a whole lot of action occurs in the first four issue – which is fine because who wants to read about a bunch of guys 'n' gals jumping around in goofy costumes? – though there are hints of something bigger coming down the road. In the book's first chapter, for instance, we see the professor arguing with a colleague about the place of mutants in the world. Said colleague later appears, floating in the air and wearing a goofy helmet on his head, and though he doesn't really do much, I'm guessing we'll see more of the guy in the future. Udo's art took some getting used to. For all the adolescent angst we're privy to, it's relatively affect-free aside from a few brief smiles. And though we see the characters engaging in physical exercise – and yoga – in the professor's school for mutants, none of 'em ever breaks into a cooling sweat! Perhaps that goes along with being a mutant; in which case I imagine one of the first big enemies that our strapping young X-Men (the name comes from a so-called "x-gene," incidentally) will face is the superpowered owner of an anti-perspirant company. Another visual convention that took some adjustment was the freakishly small size of each character's mouth and eyes. Would I buy future volumes of X-Men: Evolution? I'm not sure the idea has legs, to be honest. Perhaps if Grayson & Udo further downplayed the mutant thing and focused even more clearly on the travails of school and teenhood, I'd be more enthused. (Maybe they could add a wacky instructor – like Great Teacher Onizuka! – to the cast.) If I watched a few episodes of this supposed "hit" cartoon, I suspect I'd have a better handle on these characters – but shouldn't these so-called "mainstream" creations be able to stand up by themselves? After reading this offering, I've gotta wonder if the guys at this upstart Marvel company know what today's manga-reading kid wants. . . # | Wednesday, March 31, 2004 ( 3/31/2004 08:53:00 AM ) Bill S. REALLY BAD NOSEBLEEDS – After weeks of Am Idol nonsense pre-empting it, Fox's 24 returned last night. And with its fuller focus on the actual bioterrorist threat in L.A. plot, the show happily seems to've recovered much of its dwindling energy. Watching Kiefer Sutherland's hard-nosed Jack Bauer do the undercover bit in Mexico earlier, I found myself growing progressively more removed from the goings on. Last night's ep provided a clue as to why the show nearly lost me: during that long stretch of story, you never had the sense that ordinary people were in jeopardy, just a buncha of ultra-resilient superagents. Watching Michelle (Reiko Aylesworth) attempt to calm a panicky Angelino to keep him from leaving a contaminated hotel, I realized that – as dopey as she could get – one of the main functions of Elish Cuthbert’s daughter Kim in the first two seasons (along with Bauer's wife Teri in the first 'un) was to provide a needed element of Regular Folks in Peril. As for the secondary plot involving President David Palmer and his duplicitous ex-wife Sherry (Penny Johnson Jerald), I've gotta admit a part of me shared the woman's indignation last night when Palmer laid into her for all her misdeeds. It’s a scorpion & frog thing: c’mon, guy, you knew that Sherry'd get you entangled in something messy – it's in her nature. For all his supposed smarts as a leader, Palmer has a real wavery learning curve. . . # | Tuesday, March 30, 2004 ( 3/30/2004 02:07:00 PM ) Bill S.  "YOU'LL GET A PHONOGRAPH TO PLAY THIS RECORD ON" – Only just caught up on the news today that Jan Berry, half of the 60's hit group Jan and Dean, died last Friday. I owned several Jan and Dean singles as a young teen. At their hitmaking peak ('63-'64), they nearly matched the Beach Boys in their record of charting surf-&-car-themed vocals, appropriate since it was the group's collaborations with Brian Wilson which led to many of their biggest singles. Listen to their pre-hit tracks (their remake of the Tin Pan Alley hit, "Linda," for instance), and you hear a not-particularly-stellar pair of nasally pop vocalists attempting to blend doo-wop with teenboy idol moves. With "Surf City," though, the duo really took off; backed by Bri and the boys, they almost sounded as good as their rivals.Where Jan and Dean had it over the Beach Boys was less in singing – or songs or production – but in humor. Beach Boys' singles were goodhearted, but essentially meant to be taken at face value. (They saved the goof-offs for the album filler.) It was Jan and Dean who brought the essential silliness of this music out in the open: with paeans to "Popsicle" sticks, "Side Walk Surfing" and that "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" – not to mention their great, multiply ironic melodrama, "Dead Man's Curve" (inspired, reportedly, by a car crash that incapacitated famed voice man Mel Blanc). Plus, they also recorded what is arguably the best soundtrack vocal theme for a surfing movie ever: "Ride the Wild Surf." Farewell, Jan; here's hoping that "one last ride" is a great one. UPDATE: Fred Hembeck (no permalinks, but it's the March 28th posting) has a sweet appreciation of the comedic source for some of Jan & Dean's novelty material: The Jack Benny Show. # | ( 3/30/2004 11:25:00 AM ) Bill S. INDULGING MY SOFT ROCK SELF – It's not all rowdy psychedelic madness at the Gadabout: recently purchased a copy of the newly remastered Fleetwood Mac and have been enjoying rediscovering the strong non-hit songs on the disc (Lindsey Buckingham's cover of "Blue Letter," the much-covered but unmatched Stevie Nicks' vocal on "Landslide," the bluesy Christine McVie/Buckingham collaboration "World Turning"). The new Mac release contains some extras, but outside of a mildly diverting studio jam, the bonus material's limited to single cuts of the three Top Ten tracks that the album yielded, plus a single version of "Letter." Not much surprise there. I was hoping, though, when Warner/Reprise released its two-disc collection of The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac last year that it'd be the precursor to a decent set of single album reissues. (Record companies often use these retrospective collections as a way of gauging audience interest in this older material.) And, as far as the Buckingham/Nicks Era Mac goes, the three discs released this month (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and, to a lesser extent, Tusk) represent this configuration at its finest. I'd love to see a similar remastering job done on the band's earlier releases (Kiln House, in particular), but on that score, I'm probably doomed to a life of sighing disappointment. . . # | ( 3/30/2004 10:25:00 AM ) Bill S. REVIEWS WORTH READING – One of the comics review sites I've been regularly visiting lately is Johanna Draper Carlson's thoughtful Comics Worth Reading page. Miz C. has been doing some of the same exploratory manga reading that yours truly has been attempting, so I've been particularly intrigued by her informative reviews in this arena. Didn't realize until recently that she also does critiques for the Comics Unlimited website, but her most recent piece there looks at four manga graphic novels, two of which (Kodocha and Paradise Kiss) have also been examined here (links on the right, of course). Definitely worth checking out. (I'm in the midst of writing an update on the first dozen series I've reviewed since I started the project, incidentally. With luck and pluck, it should be up later in the week.) # | Monday, March 29, 2004 ( 3/29/2004 12:51:00 PM ) Bill S. "WELL, HE MAY BE A FOOL, BUT HE'S OUR FOOL" – Mark Evanier recollects the old Dick Cavett Show and the notorious guest appearance by then Georgia governor Lester Maddox on the show, but he misses one more significant fact about that particular outing. Per Randy Newman, that show sparked the writing of his Southern-themed cycle of songs, Good Old Boys, and his anti-anthem "Rednecks," which even opens with its narrator describing Maddox’s talk show appearance. In one of those moments of bloggish synchonicity, I picked up a copy of the recent Rhino reissue of Boys just last week. Though some Newman fans have pronounced it the man's masterwork, I don't find Boys as effective as either 12 Songs or Sail Away, in part because the distance between the songwriter and his unreliable narrators is so much obviously greater. While Newman still maintains his empathy for the gallery of Flannery O'Connor-esque types populating this disc (c.f. "Naked Man"), it's none too far from the biteback irony of "Rednecks" to the cheap jokery of "Short People." Still, there are some marvelous songs on the disc: the note-perfect drunkard's love song, "Marie," which descends into a self-pitying catalog of the myriad ways that the singer has failed his beloved; the still-aptly sardonic "Mister President (Have Pity on the Working Man)" and "Louisiana 1927," which beautifully describes a devastating flood during Coolidge's presidency plus the infectiously tuneful "Birmingham." If for no other reason than this album, Maddox's Cavett Show guesting is worth remembering. . . # | Sunday, March 28, 2004 ( 3/28/2004 09:48:00 AM ) Bill S.  "EYES OF THE LIVING STARS HAVE SEEN US!" – What hath Lenny Kaye wrought? Back in 1972, when the rock critic and future Patti Smith Group guitarist compiled the first Nuggets collection, few would've guessed that he was paving the way for a small cottage industry. Kaye's two-record anthology of "original artyfacts from the first psychedelic era" – which is to say: whacked out garage band cuts from '64-'68 – proved so influential to succeeding generations of would-be fuzztoners that it sparked all manner of legit and quasi-legitimate follow-ups, collecting increasingly more obscure sets (Pebbles, Back from the Grave, etc.) of energized out-of-touch attempts at approximating the drug-drenched sound of barely competent musicianship at its most experimental. In 1998, Rhino Records brought things back full circle by releasing Nuggets as a four-disc boxed set – first disc contained Kaye's original selection, while the remaining three added similar tracks by many of the same suspects – then following up with a four-disc collection of European Nuggets.Clearly, there's a market of fanatics for this stuff – record store devotees who'd rather listen to the Barbarians than the Hives – and to meet this cult need, Rhino has turned over part of its boutique label, Rhino Handmade, to feed our sonic gluttony. The first of two recent Handmade releases, Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults, culls 24 singles and album tracks from the voluminous Warner archives, and it delivers the goods. Clunkily profound lyrics and cheesy sonic effects (every time someone sings the word "high," you can rest assured someone on the board is gonna mess with it), chaotic guitar and wrongheaded attempts at approximating Sgt. Pepper, spoken interludes and strangely treated instruments. It's all there for the listening; you supply the incense and peppermint. Most of this material isn't strictly garage, of course, but the sound of professional and nascent professional musicians, would-be poets and total poseurs, struggling to capture that golden vibe. The opening title track, "Hallucinations," isn't even the work of a young 'un: singer Baker Knight was a former rockabilly artist (who wrote "Lonesome Town" for Ricky Nelson), though you can barely tell by the flabbergasting guitar sound being laid by a group of cats who'd been rockin' together since 1956. The Tokens, best known for "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," show up as both producers and performers here – as do future names like session king Jim Keltner and munchkin songster Paul Williams (in a band happily called The Holy Mackerell). Where many of the original Nuggeteers looked to blues rock for their inspiration (think of the Thirteen Floor Elevators' grandiose "You're Gonna Miss Me" or Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes' early geetar hero cover of "Baby, Please Don't Go"), the predominate template on Hallucinations is Association/Mamas and Papas styled folk-rock. So when The Collectors – who later would become Canadian popsters Chilliwack – sing about the joys of "Looking at A Baby" ("So innocent and pure and clean[!] just like a newborn baby"), they do so with baroque instrumental flourishes and lotsa sweet harmonies. When the Association themselves try to reach for the cosmos, they layer a superfluous sitar over their usual sound and pen sub-Kahlil Gibran lyrics. The result ("Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies") made for a flop single but a great Nuggets cut. But if the would-be hitmakers on this collection aren't all authentic feed-yer-headcases, there are plenty of mind-expanding moments for the listener. Like L.A. scenester Kim Fowley's "Strangers from the Sky," which interrupts its Zappa-esque song cycling to portentously announce "there is life on Alpha Centauri." Or the Salt (the studio creation of future bubblegum maestro Joey "Yummy Yummy Yummy" Levine) and their equally disjointed paean to "Lucifer," which strives for rock operetta seriousness but keeps undercutting it with a laughing chorus reminiscent of Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Loving." Or sessioneer Lee Mallory's Love-influenced cover of Phil Ochs' "That's the Way It's Gonna Be," with its Les-Paul-on-uppers guitar break. Or the otherwise unknown Ellen Margulies' "The White Pony," a folkish experiment that almost succeeds at blending madrigal with Theodore Bikel. In the end, the selection on Hallucinations is exemplified by Rhino's inclusion of a single mono mix of "Porpoise Song," the Goffin-King song cut by the Monkees for their last-ditch attempt at a career salvager, Head. Featuring strings by Jack Nitzsche, the track attempts to replicate "I Am the Walrus" and damn near succeeds. Thoroughly inauthentic? Certainly. But just try and resist when the music stops and then suddenly swells into an "I wanna turn you on" symphonic blend of music and chattering porpoise voices. Now that's artyfactual. . . NOTE: Rhino Handmade releases are limited editions sold through mail order, so if you're interested in this disc, check out the label's website. # | |
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