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Saturday, June 02, 2007 ( 6/02/2007 03:48:00 PM ) Bill S. "HAVING BEEN SOME DAYS IN PREPARATION . . ." – On the 40th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (the record, not the abysmal movie), Johnny Bacardi has a loving track-by-track appreciation of the album, which was first released when he was seven years old. Me, I was just seventeen (if you know what I mean), when this groundbreaking platter debuted in the record shoppes – and not as big a rock music junkie as I would become (t'was my younger sister Barb who owned the first copy in our household) – but even as geeky novelty record addict who made fun of his sister's preferences simply she liked 'em I could recognize what a great collection of pop music this was. If asked (and sometimes when not even asked), I'd opine that the Beatles' Revolver is this much-loved quartet's pinnacle, but Pepper remains joyfully replayable – something I confirmed this very afternoon by putting it on ye ol' CD player. Think I like "Lovely Rita" more than Johnny does, though – for both its woozy orchestrations and lyrics (which you just know a young Rick Nielsen learned by heart) . . . # | Friday, June 01, 2007 ( 6/01/2007 03:44:00 PM ) Bill S. SIXTY-MINUTE MANGA – (This Week's Episode: "There was something about Dee that made him impossible to hate.") When our local comic book shop recently began divesting itself of its manga stock, I started availing myself of the opportunity to explore some of the older series on the shelves (Battle Vixens, Comic Party, the Samurai Champloo manga) as well as catch up on some series that I'd let fall by the wayside (picked up five volumes of GTO, f'rinstance). One of these series, Sanami Matoh's Fake (Tokyopop), was of a genre of manga that I'd regularly heard about but hadn't yet read: shōnen-ai manga, whose main plot focuses on the growing attraction between its two male leads. It appears to be a popular storyline for girl readers, and Matoh's series, which was first published in Japan in 1994, has had a successful seven volume run; Tokyopop's translated version of the series debuted in 2003, and at present all seven volumes appear to be available in the U.S. Additionally, a new "second season" of the series has reportedly debuted this spring in a Japanese magazine called Hug, though it's probably too soon to tell if this second batch of Fakes will make it to these shores.  In any event, I picked up a copy of the first book in the series to see what all the to-do was about. The series centers on two young and dreamy NYC cops, Randy (a.k.a. Ryo) Mclean & Dee Layter (is English adapter Stuart Hazleton to blame for the puns in these names?), who work out of the 27th Precinct. Ryo is the newbie, a blond-haired androgynously pretty recruit who immediately attracts the attention of a female desk sergeant when he comes in to report for work. (First full shot we get of his face, the background of the gritty precinct is suddenly filled with flowers.) He's partnered with Dee, who we first see getting chewed out by the outrageously large-mouthed precinct Chief for what we presume are the usual Rule Bending Cop violations of procedure. Just yer typical NYC precinct, in other words.First case our duo gets assigned concerns a murdered mule named Dick Goldman, who was running dope for a local drug kingpin named Richard Feldman (first time I read this chapter, I had to go back to verify that the editor hadn't made a slip-up – what's the idea of giving two characters names that are so close to each other?) Dead Guy Goldman has a son named Bikky, a roller-skating bi-racial street kid whose unruly blond hair pokes out from under his cap, making him look like a would-be Thompson Twin. Bikky is pugnacious and prone to sudden outbursts of temper – a younger version of Dee, in a lot of ways – but Ryo breaks through the kid's barriers by being his nice guy empathetic self. Though Dee protests ("he's still a kid out of the 'hood!"), the rookie detective decides to take Bikky in. Ryo doesn't know, of course, that the young kid is in possession of his dad's drugs – and, since no one seems to think of searching the little spud when they have him at the precinct, he's a target for Still Living Guy Feldman. When Bikky and Dee get kidnapped in the park by Feldman's henchmen, it's up to Ryo to save them both – which he improbably manages to do by sneaking onto Feldman's estate, planting a bomb(!) in the attic and then phoning the police with an anonymous city-wide bomb threat. (And this is the cautious member of the team?) Pretty ludicrous even by the standards of yer average brain-dead buddy cop actioner, but, then, most of Fake's Older Teen readership hasn't come to this series looking for a serious police procedural. The prime focus in Fake, of course, is on the developing attraction 'tween Dee and Ryo: which is teasingly protracted throughout the first book (and presumably prolonged even further for the next five volumes, at least). First indication that our two police lads will be exchanging lots of yearning looks comes when Dee, with zero concern for the niceties of personal space, goes nose-to-nose with Ryo and asks if he has "some Japanese" in him ("Your eyes are pitch black," he explains.) Turns out Ryo is half-Japanese – it's a multi-culti big city, right? – but the main thing we take from the scene is the rabbity expression on Ryo's face when his new partner Stands So Close to Him. Is Dee coming onto him or not? Well, there's that later moment in the same chapter when the tough cop "jokingly" asks his new partner if he'll "still love" him – not to mention the kiss he plants on Ryo's lips once they've safely concluded the Feldman Case – but what's a little smooch among co-workers? It's not a question that Ryo wants to spend much time pondering, anyway. "I'd better stop obsessing about his sexual orientation," we see him thinking at one point. "If I focus too much on him, I'm going to have to admit some stuff about myself." What stuff is that? we're supposed to wonder. Perhaps Ryo's not really half-Japanese? The two cops continued this back and forth throughout most of the first volume: Ryo kisses Dee a second time to throw off a gang of pursuing thugs; Ryo ponders Dee's long eyelashes; Dee watches Ryo sleeping; Ryo feels a flash of jealousy when yet a third 27th Precinct detective pops up and kisses Dee. If much of this behavior seems more 'tween-aged than adult, perhaps we're meant to take it as a reflection of our two closeted leads' relative immaturity in the realm of Boy Love. Still, the whole shmear can't help coming across more than a little unintentionally campy. Matoh's art, unsurprisingly, is at its best contemplating its attractive leads (including Bikky and a second street-wise teengirl named Carol who mainly seems to've been pulled into the storyline to reassure us that the little sprat will grow up straight) in languid repose or contemplation. (Matoh's action scenes are serviceable, if by and large unexceptional.) Perhaps the most jarring art moments for me came from the artist's reliance on massive cartoon shout mouths during some of the more deliberately comic scenes: whenever she used this approach with Bikky, the results wound up resembling cartoon black-face. Not the look, I suspect, she was actually going for. After three long acts of the Dee & Ryo Delayed Gratification Show, the first book concludes with a short act centering on Bikky & Carol at Youth Camp. It's a fairly silly sequence and doesn't add a bit to the shōnen-ai storyline, but we do get to see gallant Bikky kiss the girl after he's rescued her from a bear. Sure, it’s a distraction from the series' main plot – but after watching the adults kiss-and-back-off three (or is it four?) times in this book, it's kind of a relief to see a kiss that's just a kiss . . . # | Thursday, May 31, 2007 ( 5/31/2007 04:08:00 PM ) Bill S. CLEARLY I'M NOT PART OF THAT PARTICULAR READER DEMOGRAPHIC – So I go to the mailbox this afternoon and see a new issue of Entertainment Weekly among all the summer catalogs. "Is that one early or late?" wife Becky asks, and I reply that Memorial Day Weekend must've messed up mail delivery. Then I take a closer look at the cover and see this isn't a regular issue of EW at all but "Your 2007 Idol Yearbook" with a beaming Jordin Sparks on the front cover. "Well, that's a quick read," I think, tossing the special ish onto the recycle pile . . . # | Wednesday, May 30, 2007 ( 5/30/2007 01:41:00 PM ) Bill S. MID-WEEK MUSIC VID – Sure it looks like it was recorded underwater (dig those pixel-ated go-go dancers!), but this teevee appearance of Barry & the Remains' garage-iste remake of "Diddy Wah Diddy" is still pretty fab – and maybe even gear, too! See if you agree. ( 5/30/2007 11:56:00 AM ) Bill S. ALWAYS LEAVE 'EM WANTING MORE: PART TWO – Yeah, I know I wrote I was gonna hold off on the second part of this quickie teevee Season Finale eval until June, but I decided to get these four down today while they were still comparably fresh. As before, the Rock Rating System will be used:
# | Tuesday, May 29, 2007 ( 5/29/2007 08:55:00 PM ) Bill S. PRETTY OBVIOUS THAT SHE'S THE KILLER – Heard on a rerun that I missed the first time: "It's something losers put online for others to see!" – an N.C.I.S. suspect's answer to Jethro Gibbs' question, "What's a blog?" # | ( 5/29/2007 06:31:00 AM ) Bill S.  "THE LESS FOLKS KNOW, THE MORE THEY HAVE TO SAY" – To many sixties pop 'n' rock hounds, Boston's Remains are primarily known as the band who opened for the Beatles during the Fab Four's 1966 American tour. (How's that for a thankless assignment?) For lovers of that fecund musical era's garage sound, the band also has the distinction of appearing on Lenny Kaye's groundbreaking retrospective collection of psychedelic "artyfacts," Nuggets, with its rousing performance of Billy Vera's "Don't Look Back." That the Remains could gain a fervid underground rep without ever once cracking the singles' charts is a testimony to the ferocity with which their regional fans (a young Jon Landau among 'em) carried the band's banner. It's not as if the group did itself any favors: when their one and only Epic label long-player saw its first release, the boys had already disbanded.But cult legends die hard, and the Remains' one-and-only sixties elpee has at long last been reissued by Sony Legacy, with ten bonus B-sides and studio tracks added to the set. Are Sony's archivalists doing these guys any favors by making more than one or two selected tracks from their catalog available for collector consumption? Short answer: yup!!! Too often, when you dig into full albums by so many of the Nuggets's "artyfactors," you find an overabundance of crap fillers. Not here. The Remains still stands as an example of solid sixties rockin' at its most energetic. Led by guitarist/lead vocalist Barry Tashian, the band was as adept at Kinks/Stones-styled blues based stompers as it was more harmonic Beatle-y frug-&-shouters. "Don't Look Back," the group's last released single remains a high point – a masterful pop single that breaks into a glorious "Shout"-styled piece of sermonizing by Tashian right in the middle – but the track which follows it on the album, the band's first single entitled "Why Do I Cry" is the one that I'd wager got 'em the Beatles gig. Sweet melody, great cavernous vocals, a slick tempo shift in the middle of the track (negotiated by the band's first drummer Chip Damiani) – why the hell wasn't this a hit single? Elsewhere, the boys beautifully revamp Charlie Rich's "Lonely Weekend" into a mildly spooky slow song and take on Bo Diddley's "Diddy Wah Diddy" (also being weirdly reinterpreted around the same time by Captain Beefheart, amusingly enough). At times, the band's revolving door series of producers (among 'em, Nashvillian Billy Sherrill) don't do 'em any favors by mixing Tashian's fiercely economical guitar squonks further back than they should be. But crank this puppy up and that probably won't matter. According to early Remains booster (and later MC-5/Springsteen producer) Landau, none of the group's studio cuts came close to matching their loud excitement in concert. But, you know, that doesn't matter either 'coz until someone invents a time machine, this collection of the Remains' studio work sounds plenty fine on its own. The CD's bonus material – which includes more-than-respectable garagey covers of blues standards like Willie Dixon's "My Babe" (neat harmonica plaint) & Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking About You" – is almost as strong: proof that this band could've beaten the sophomore slump if it'd stayed together long enough. In sum: a great reissue. If you at all care for sixties rock, you owe it to yourself to get this disc and blast it through every open window in your home . . . # | Monday, May 28, 2007 ( 5/28/2007 09:09:00 PM ) Bill S. BLOODMOBILING – It's an obvious thought but still worth stating: that the act of giving blood to the Red Cross – on Memorial Day or any other day, for that matter – is somp'n that should go beyond personal politics. While there are plenty of good reasons why a person may not be able to give (I personally find the upper weight restrictions dubious, but that's just me), if you can, it truly is worth doing. As Glenn Reynolds correctly notes, donations are down right now, and every fresh unit helps. I gave a weekend ago at our local mall and got a spiffy XL "Blood Donor" tee-shirt for my efforts. # | ( 5/28/2007 02:04:00 PM ) Bill S. "THE RING, VIC, DON'T TOUCH THE RING!" – Watched Ron Howard's flat-footed adaptation of The Da Vinci Code via Starz-on-Demand last night (How do you leech every bit of gamine appeal out of Audrey Tautou?) and, in a wonderful bit of synchronicity, caught a PBS rerun of Monty Python's Flying Circus not long afterward, featuring Terry Jones as The Bishop. As we watched this much-loved episode, I started recalling another Python target – and, in what she doubtless thought was a complete non-sequitur, said to spouse Becky, "You know who should've directed Code? Ken Russell!" # | ( 5/28/2007 12:12:00 PM ) Bill S. "PUT ON YOUR SUNDAY CLOTHES, THERE'S LOTS OF WORLD OUT THERE" – Wife Becky's a regular visitor to the Game Show Network, and one of the classic reruns that she frequently can be counted on to watch is The Match Game, especially when Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers were on to feed off each other. I'm less of a fan of Reilly's poofy game show stints, but I do have a long, fond memory of his performance on the soundtrack of the original Broadway production of Hello Dolly, an album that was much played on Sundays in my house when I was a teen (my parents were both big musical theatre buffs). Reilly played Cornelius, the stock clerk who blossoms thanx to matchmaker Dolly's nudgings – and the sound of his voice on that known-by-heart long-player is forever lodged in my post-adolescent brain. R.I.P. Charles. UPDATE: Jim Treacher in Comments is the first to remind me of Reilly’s sublime performances as Jose Chung in two of Darin Morgan’s X-Files and Millennium episodes. Shame on me for forgetting them! # | |
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