natural’s not in it

“Names would be as useless to them as their non-existent tongues.”

Thank you, Roy Thomas, you rascally one. That line never fails to bring a smile to my face, and I’m not big on smiling, either.

Way back in my undergrad days, a professor of mine called me out on my unusual style of writing – the heavy use of ellipses and dashes, the twisted and recursive use of qualifying phrases and clauses, the strange juxtaposition of highbrow terminology and vernacular slang – and asked me how such a thing came to be. “Oh, that’s easy,” I told him. “I read a lot of comic books in my formative years.”

I’m still not certain if the furrowed brow and slow deliberate shake of the head he gave in response was rooted in disgust or pity. Perhaps a little of both, now that I think back on it.

Our trash-talking, colorblind android friend in the above picture is Adam 1 (no relation to Martin Milner), whose plan for androidal domination of the world hinged on replacing then-congressional candidate John F. Kennedy with an robot duplicate, with the very prescient notion that Kennedy would go on to become president of the United States. (Let’s see, Kennedy was elected to the House in 1946, and was sworn in as president in 1961. You don’t find that kind of long range planning in today’s evil masterminds. It’s all about instant megalomanical gratification for this new generation with their evil iPods, evil sports shakes, and evil microwave burritos. Bah, I say.)

Adam’s plans were thwarted, but at the cost of Captain America’s life, not the Captain America who spent decades frozen in a block of ice, but his replacement, who previously fought crime as The Spirit of '76. The Spirit of '76 was an amalgam of two other characters. His minuteman costume was a stylistic nod to the 1940’s superhero Fighting Yank, but he was introduced as a member of the Crusaders super-team, who were a direct reference to DC’s Freedom Fighters, and he stood as the Crusaders’ analogue to the Freedom Fighters’ Uncle Sam. (Yes, that Uncle Sam.)

After the Spirit of '76’s demise, the role of stand-in Captain America was taken up by the Patriot, a character who wore hot pants while fighting Nazis in the 40’s, but has since been retconned into a pair of tights that cover his previously bare thighs. (A lateral improvement, but he seemed happy enough about it.)

I know what you’re thinking at this point, but don’t you dare say a word. I’ll have you know that comics are an art form that dates back to the cave paintings made by our Neolithic ancestors. Today’s dour adolescent power fantasies involving dudes in tights sac-punching each other are the pinnacle of a cultural legacy as important and storied as the mastery of fire and the invention of the wheel.

The above musings are only tangentially related to today’s musical theme, which can be summed up as “songs with one-word titles suggesting artificiality or fakeness.” Because of the androids, see? Ah, forget it. Let’s just get to the songs.

X-Ray Spex – Art-I-Ficial (from Germfree Adolescents, 1978) – Such an clever and insightful teenager, that Poly Styrene. She had a ferocious set of pipes, too.

Curve – Doppelganger (from Doppelganger, 1992) – Kind of shoegaze, kind of gothy, kind of forgotten these days, which is unfortunate.

Ibiza Babes – Fabricated (Skimpy Fade-Out Mix) (from Chillout in Ibiza 4, 2004) – Oh, to be rich and European and dosed to the gills with a genetically damaging designer drug while raving the night away at some private party staged by the spoiled child of a German industrial magnate. There would be no need for Hamlet-esque existential dilemmas, only one obvious course of action to take: put the barrel of a Glock in my mouth and pull the trigger.

The Who – Substitute (from Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, 1971) – Yeah, yeah, I should have went with the Sex Pistols’ cover version, but man cannot live on punk rock alone.

The Epoxies – Synthesized (from Stop the Future, 2005) – The best example of the wonderful micro-genre that is synthpunk. One of my wife’s favorite songs, the single version was played at our wedding reception.

Kid Creole & The Coconuts – Imitation (from Tropical Gangsters, 1982) – Kid Creole was in The Forbidden Dance. That bit of trivia has nothing to do with this particular track, but I felt compelled to mention it. Expect a massive lambada revival to commence any day now.