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Saturday, March 10, 2007 ( 3/10/2007 10:15:00 PM ) Bill S. NOW "V" ON THE OTHER HAND – A sign of the irredeemable Scrabble addict: watching an ad for an upcoming Lifetime romantic comedy starring Teri Polo, Love Is A Four-Letter Word, both Becky & I noticed the movie ad logo using faux Scrabble tiles to spell out the word "Love." Only one of the four tiles had a point value assigned to it, and that was the final letter "E," which had a little four in its lower right-hand corner. "No way do you get four points for using an 'E'!" we both said as one . . . # | Friday, March 09, 2007 ( 3/09/2007 12:10:00 PM ) Bill S. "I THINK YOU REVEL IN MY DISCOMFORT!" – First question to cross my mind when I recently received a review copy of the revived DC superhero title, The Brave and the Bold, was, "So which Green Lantern is this on the front cover?" Last time this writer ventured very deeply into the current state of Green Lantern, the ring of power was in the hands of a young cartoonist named Kyle, while Hal Jordan – the Silver Age GL of my youth – was apparently serving time as the Spectre for some major cosmic crime. The figure on the cover of B&B #1, flying over a Batman who appears to be ducking back from a power ring shot, looked like Hal Jordan, but I lived through the first Spider Clone Saga, so I've learned not to take this stuff for granted. Fortunately for me, writer Mark Waid obviously recognizes that I'm not the only returning reader who might be a buzzy on the GL front, so he establishes things quickly without being too openly expository: we see two GLs – the black Green Lantern John Stewart, played by talented voiceman Phil LaMarr Justice League cartoons, and his white compeer – as they're flying through space, reminiscing about great team-ups past. As they prepare to soar their separate ways, the white GL advises John to check out planet Wondil-8: "I hear Green Lanterns eat free," he sez. "I'll tell 'em Hal Jordan sent me," John replies as he swoops off. Well, that answers that question . . . On his way back to Earth, Hal happens upon a corpse floating in space – the discovery is not, we suspect, happenstance since Hal himself has already told us that he regularly takes this particular flight path ("I could find my apartment blindfolded, I've made this approach so many times.") – so he rings up Gotham City, where it turns out the Batman is also looking at an identical dead guy on the floor of the Batcave. It's a mystery, alright, so naturally you do a "quick consult" with the guy who used to be billed as the World's Greatest Detective long before it was decided that Dark Knight was a sexier title. GL heads for the Batcave where one – or both? – of the bodies prove to have a playing card from the Kismet casino in its shirt pocket. Waid makes smart use of the Batcave setting in this sequence, including that giant penny which has long been a part of the background – and, while our teamed-up heroes fend off an attack by the still-mysterious bad guys, we learn GL's power ring no longer has the dumb vulnerability to the color yellow which used to be a part of the Silver Age comics. Our duo travels to Las Vegas, showing up in the Kismet Casino in their civilian identities, which provides the writer a chance to play Bruce Wayne's playboy identity off Jordan's middle-class adventurer persona: there's a nice irrelevant scene at the blackjack tables designed to contrast Hal's risk-taking ways against the more deliberate Batman, and, while I don't really have a sense if this dichotomy makes "historical" sense, it works for the story. Kismet's owner proves to be a villainess I vaguely recognize (Bruce helpfully tells us that she's "run afoul of the Justice Society in the past"), who's in possession of the MacGuffin that brings out the story villains for a second big dust-up. Both the Batcave and Vegas fracases could've been a bit more clearly delineated for this reader: artists George Perez & Bob Wiacek had me longing for the cleaner, less frenetic superhero art of Silver Ager Gil Kane more than once during the fight scenes – especially when they get hyper-busy with the green and pink power rays. You can clearly see the twosome having fun with the Vegas setting in general, though: the page where Bruce & Hal first enter the Kismet has an appealingly Bond-ian feel. Ish #1 ends with the MacGuffin in the hands of our mysterious alien antagonists – and with the promise of an issue two team-up between GL and Supergirl. That's another character who's had more pretenders than the throne than I can keep track of, though, on the basis of this minor but diverting opening outing, I feel confident scripter Waid'll be able to babystep me into her current story . . . # | Thursday, March 08, 2007 ( 3/08/2007 11:32:00 AM ) Bill S. YOU CALL THIS CRITIQUING?!? – Received my contributor's copy of The Comics Journal #281 (the "Best of 2006" ish) in the mail yesterday: a lotta good short interviews with the likes of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Melinda Gebbie and more, but, of course, the first thing that I did on opening the journal was check to see how my review of the Greg Irons' retrospective, You Call This Art?!?, read in the cold light of magazine print. Don't feel bad about the piece at all, actually, even if this blog's address was flubbed up at the tail end . . . # | ( 3/08/2007 08:24:00 AM ) Bill S.  CHERCHEZ LA FEMME – Haven’t really listened to it enough to get a clear handle on Belinda Carlisle’s new collection of French cabaret poptunes (Brian Eno on the keybs – wow!), but, damn, doesn't she look like a dark-haired Ann-Margaret on the cover?# | ( 3/08/2007 08:02:00 AM ) Bill S. DÉJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN – Driving in this a.m., I chanced to catch NPR's "Morning Edition" story about the Death of Captain America. (The short piece, which includes quick snippets of Stan Lee, Joe Simon and current Cap writer Ed Brubaker, can be read or listened to here.) Not to make too much of a story that's largely being treated by the media as an entertaining little puff-piece, but, c'mon, people – doesn't anyone at National Public Radio remember just fifteen years back to the similar big media play that was accorded the over-ballyhooed Death of Superman? (You know, Mister Truth-Justice-And-the-American Way.) Some days I think our mainstream press counts on us all possessing the long-term memory of a sand flea . . . # | Wednesday, March 07, 2007 ( 3/07/2007 10:39:00 AM ) Bill S. "NEVER MORE TO BE FREE" – Ten minutes after I posted last week's Dressy Bessy mid-week music vid, I realized that I'd put up energy-themed videos for two weeks in a row. So why not go with the electrical flow? Here's Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's classic "Electricity": # | Tuesday, March 06, 2007 ( 3/06/2007 05:35:00 AM ) Bill S. "SET YOUR MIND FOR A CHANCE TO BE HAPPY" - (In which we continue our reconsideration of Collector's Choice Music's recent reissue of a bunch of 4 Seasons discs.)  If Genuine Imitation Life Gazette was the 4 Seasons' failed attempt at garnering hip cred, follow-up Half & Half (1970) can perhaps be seen at the core Seasons' swansong. (Founding members Tommy DeVito & Bob Gaudio both retired from live performing before the release of 1972's Chameleon, the group's sole Motown release.) Per the title, the album is only half a 4 Seasons record. Alternating group tracks with cuts designed to build from lead singer Valli's '67 solo success with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," it pretty much lives up to its billing as a sporadically satisfying record: half pop and half schlock. Though it's tempting to draw a thick line of demarcation 'tween the Seasons songs and the Valli songs (especially when listening to an egregious bit of "inspirational" hokum like Valli's "To Make My Father Proud"), the fact is both sides stumble in their piecemeal pursuit for a seventies hit. Listening to the attempts at early seventies sweetening (hey, there's the obligatory pedal steel guitar!), at times it all sounds more than a little desperate. And did we really need to end the album with a version of "Oh, Happy Day"?Still, Half/Half contains two sweetly done minor hits: a great remake of Della Reese's 1957 pop hit "And That Reminds Me" which is comparable to the Beach Boys' remake of the Ronettes' "I Can Hear Music," plus "Patch of Blue." Both tracks effectively pit Valli's lead against the other Seasons' soaring harmonies. Album opener "Emily," a solo take on the Laura Nyro song, is also plenty fine, even if its frantic conclusion can't hold up to Nyro's original version, while a group sing written by Chip "Wild Thing" Taylor entitled "Sorry" is engagingly campy in a sixties Cali pop kinda way. (With its sitar outro, it sounds like a track that might've accidentally left off Gazette.) But a few smooth tracks can't mask the fact that this once mighty hit machine was no longer working up to full capacity. Disco saved the boys' asses, of course. After bumping up against the faux naturelle sounds of the singer/songwriter seventies, the plastic urbanity of disco proved the Seasons' salvation. Even if Gaudio was no longer touring with the Seasons, he soldiered on as the group's core songwriter and studio maven: it was he who co-wrote their boys' two big dance club hits: "Who Loves You" and "December 1963 (Oh, What A Night)," which would prove to be the Seasons' longest chart-topper. CCM's batch of reissues doesn't include the studio elpee which featured both singles (1975's Who Loves You), though both songs are showcased on the 1980 concert set, Reunited Live, that is a part of the series. But, before we consider that record, we need to take in the second half of the Half & Half/Helicon reissue, originally released in 1977. While Half divided its tracks between group and solo, Helicon is only marginally Valli's: only one track features him as solo lead (the seriously sappy closer "I Believe in You"), while relative newcomers Gerry Polci and Don "Mister Dieingly Sad" Ciccone take the lead on tracks like "If We Should Lose Our Love" and "Let's Get It Right." The results – if you'll forgive one last Beach Boys comparison – are rather like listening to Bruce Johnston or Blondie Chaplin handling vocals in the years Brian Wilson was incommunicado: pleasant enough but nowhere near the group at their most exciting. And at its worst, the elpee sounds like some unholy blending of Air Supply and the Doobie Brothers. The only time Helicon truly flies is in Gaudio's buoyant disco track, "Rhapsody," featuring both Valli and Ciccone on vocals plus a sessioning Duane Allman on the Hammond keybs. When the song hits an extended instrumental break and Frankie's falsetto zooms in over it, the rush is almost enough to elevate the rest of this MOR placeholder.  Valli temporarily quit the group in '77, but three years later, he reunited with members of the disco era Seasons for a two-record Warner Bros. live set. Not surprisingly, given the group's personnel, the emphasis in Reunited Live is on the disco biggies – along with those solo tracks Valli also made hits in the same era: "Swearin' to God," "My Eyes Adored You" and Barry Gibb's "Grease." The early sixties hits get crammed into a trio of medleys, primarily creating the impression that these once mighty singles are little more than a series of catchy li'l choruses. While this tack may be satisfying in a live setting, it's much less so in a recording of that concert – especially for listeners like myself who have taken the early songs' "stories" to heart. For fans who primarily love the group for its mid-seventies stuff, though, Reunited is probably the Collector's Choice reissue to get. The boys' well-oiled performances are danceliciously crowd-pleasing, though leaving "Rhapsody" off the set is a minor disappointment. With 1985's Streetfighter (check out that cover photo of Frankie and the gang lookin' all menacing!), producer Gaudio and songwriter Sandy Linzer turned toward the then-prevailing synth-heavy New Wave sound for their sonic pallet, and the results were surprisingly effective. The boys' remake of "Book of Love" even deliberately recalls ABC's "Look of Love" in its tongue-in-cheek opener, while throbbingly infectious tracks like Linzer & Irwin Levine's (the man behind many of Tony Orlando's hits) "Veronica" or Corbetta/Crew's "Commitment" (sounds like the title for a Spandau Ballet song, doesn't it?) could've probably been hits if they'd been tackled by dapper video-friendly young guys instead. And as the cover hints, you can even hear an attempt at returning to the Jersey Boys' hardscrabble roots in some of the lyrics, most notably the title song wherein our narrator recalls bringing a baseball bat to school to fend off bullies and brags about his ability to hot-wire a car. Not that far removed from the street braggadocio of rappers-to-be, when you think about it.1993's Hope + Glory maintains the same sense of synth plasticity and, more importantly, features Valli more consistently stepping into the vocal forefront – and even tosses in a brief (regrettable) snippet of rap into the mix ("Just the Way You Make Love"). If the results aren't stellar, it's still somewhat comforting to hear the man holding onto the lead and showing that he still hit the high notes, even if the first track (the discoid "Love Has A Mind of Its Own") opens up by making him sound like he's about to sing the extended version of a Duran Duran song. Best track is the finale, Gaudio & Linzer's "The Naked I," which adds a thoroughly acceptable hint of moody Euro-disco into the mix. In terms of potential musical direction, the approach was promising, but, unfortunately, the main thing the future held for Frankie Valli & the 4 Seasons was remixes, oldies' tours, Greatest Hits collections and the fossilization of a Broadway tribute. Of the eleven albums resurrected by Collector's Choice Music, few could probably be considered essential to an understanding of the 4 Seasons and their music. Their early hits, as noted, came out in an era where albums were largely considered afterthoughts, while the bulk of their releases produced during the heyday of album oriented rock was the work of a band looking every which way to recapture the limelight. But great pop groups don't endure without producing an abundance of tracks as good as the ones which comprise the Official Greatest Hits Package – and the 4 Seasons were a great pop group. For many hard-core fans, I suspect these releases will provide welcome relief to their collection of overplayed vinyl; me, I'm happy to have a copy of Gazette back on the shelves where it belongs. Hey, CCM, any chance of re-releasing the trumped-up Battle of the Bands album, The Beatles Versus The Four Seasons, that came out during the height of Beatlemania? Or is that 'un too much of a licensing nightmare? # | Monday, March 05, 2007 ( 3/05/2007 01:15:00 PM ) Bill S. AN AIM NOT SO TRUE – Saddest sight of the weekend (and I watched A Series of Unfortunate Events on Sunday!): seeing Rob Corddry work overtime for the tepid chuckles on Fox's new Seth MacFarlane Get A Life updating, The Winner, which has to set a new low for the most irritating laff-track in contemporary sitcoms, not to mention the most blatant misuse to date of both an Elvis Costello song and comedian Lenny Clarke . . . # | Sunday, March 04, 2007 ( 3/04/2007 07:23:00 AM ) Bill S. "WASH AWAY MY SHAME" – Another periodic Lost pop thought: watching this week's ep over the weekend (a definite step up from the previous week's Jack-centric outing), I was struck by the apt use of Three Dog Night's "Shambala" in Hurley's flashback (not to mention it's none-too-coincidental appearance on a Dharma van 8-track tape). The song captures the character's out-of-step Cali pop hippiness and desire for redemption beautifully . . . # | |
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