I brought you fellas a classic slice of festive rockabilly. Whether you like it or not matters less than the fact that I adore it....and no, I didn't keep the receipt.
Wanda Jackson - Let's Have a Party (from Queen of Rockabilly, 2000)
Monday, March 31, 2008
correctable omissions
I brought you fellas a classic slice of festive rockabilly. Whether you like it or not matters less than the fact that I adore it....and no, I didn't keep the receipt.
Wanda Jackson - Let's Have a Party (from Queen of Rockabilly, 2000)
when I'm over the pain
I'll be at the dentist's office today. Normal service will resume tomorrow.
Wall of Voodoo - Good Times (from Dark Continent, 1981) - Of the the Stan Ridgway kind, not the Jimmy Walker variety. I'm still waiting for a reissue of this album, one of the finest to come out of the SoCal punk/wave scene.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
never comprehending the race had long gone by
If there's one lesson I need to learn, it's that the personal complacency that serves me well on so many occasions should not be applied to matters related to dental care. It's not as if I wasn't clued onto that in a big way three months ago, but some habits are harder to break than others.
While I do my best to shoulder my current self-made cross of avoidable stupidity, here are a few things that possess the ability to make me forget the pain, if only for a few short moments...
Kylie Minogue - Did It Again
Belly - Now They'll Sleep
Modern English - I Melt With You
Saturday, March 29, 2008
do it now before you die
As is the usual way of things, the wife has gone off to actually do something while I remain comfortably ensconced in our humble home to write about it. It might seem rather sad to outside observers, but we're quite happy with the arrangement.
Besides, any scenario that doesn't involve me having my flesh perforated with an electric needle is tops in my book. After much contemplation and consideration, Maura has finally gone off to get the tattoo she has wanted to have done for years: a stylized rabbit in the moon, with an inset of the Southern Cross constellation, on her upper arm. It's an image with multiple levels of personal significance and the fact that Maura is willing to overcome her fear of needles -- she considered the Commonwealth's prerequisite blood test for obtaining a marriage license strong grounds for eloping -- to have it done is nothing short of remarkable.
I'd never get one, though. That's partly because I can't think of anything so significant that I'd want to have it indelibly etched upon my person. The only thing that even comes close in a talk-but-never-do kind of way would be an image of Freckle Face Strawberry with "DOI!" underneath it, tattooed on my right forearm. (No, I won't explain my reasons.) It will never happen, though.
The whole body art/b-mod/piercings scene is one of those things I've long since filed into the "not for me" folder. Sure, I used to wear multiple safety pins in my ear, but that was the extent of my dabbling in such matters, and all that remains today are two small scars and a gold hoop I fixed into place twelve years ago and don't even think about until it catches on something. I don't (usually) fault other people for indulging in tats and nose piercings and whatnot, as we must determine our own individual drafts and ballast loads when it comes to appearance and self-image.
That said, whenever I see a young'un who has gotten into the scene in a major way, I can't help but think of two telling memories. The first is of a conservatively dressed businesswoman I saw on the subway a few years back. She was around my age, and had a small scarified indentation on the side of her nose, a permanent artifact of a time before she swapped the mosh pit for an investment manager's portfolio. The other is of a high school English teacher who, after much prodding, rolled back the sleeve of his sweater to show our class the USMC tattoo he'd gotten during the Korean War. At one time, it must have been a gorgeous work of art, but time and cellular breakdown had transformed it into an indistinct gray-blue smear.
Permanence has a flip side to consider, too.
Carter USM - Let's Get Tattoos (from Worry Bomb, 1995) - They make it sound so tempting, but my answer's still "no."
As much as I loved Carter's first three albums, I lost interest in the band's material following 1993 single release of "Lean On Me I Won't Fall Over." I recall feeling that they'd lost their edge. That technically might have been true, as nothing from that point on managed to reach the lofty pop heights of "Sheriff Fatman" or "After the Watershed," but upon revisting their later material recently, I realized that there were quite a few gems, like today's featured track, that my younger self failed to appreciate.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday Night Fights: It Don't Mean a Thing
All right, fellow hep cats and kittens, another set of seven brights has passed us by, which means it's time to beat it out and ante up my contribution to the killer-diller shindig that the ever-solid Bahlactus has got going on.
This time around we're turning the spotlight on a happening jack by the name of Swing Sisson, "the band leader who is hep to other things than jive and whose fist can do something besides hold his baton." Yowza!
Let's take a gander as he lays his percussive racket on some cut rate hood...
Dig that sweet symphony of chin music! He's truly a cat who knows where it's at!
Louis Prima - Jump, Jive, an' Wail (from The Wildest! 1956) - And oft covered, but never duplicated swingin' masterpiece suitable for all your rug-cutting needs.
goalposts moved while u wait
So Basra and Sadr City have become the latest theaters in Iraq's inevitable slide into civil war. This current wave of violence is between factions within the country's Shiite community, demonstrating the continuing fractalization of internal strife in the country.
It's the Pandora's Box scenario envisioned by the foreign policy realists prior to the invasion of Iraq and dismissed out of hand by the neoconservative contingent. The present situation is exactly what the "surge" strategy was supposed to forestall, boosting troop levels as a means of generating a level of security in which political reconciliation and stability could take root. Yet even as events once again prove the limitations of conventional military superiority in dealing with counter-insurgency scenarios, the "success" of the surge approach continues to be trumpeted by the powers that be and the mainstream media's host of enablers.
If what we're seeing is supposed to be viewed as a success, then I clearly need to reassess my own life, as under those metrics it can only be an unending series of laudable accomplishments.
That incident a few days ago with the staplegun and my thumb? A triumph for Andrew-ocracy!
When I slipped on the pile of magazines the other night and nearly dislocated my shoulder? Mission accomplished!
My first semester in college where I tried my hand at majoring in physics? A series of victories, despite what the anti-Andrew biased report card might have said!
The time I deliberately provoked my wife and she mashed wet cat food onto my face? A resounding achievement!
When I was a kid and stuck a nail under the tire of my dad's car? A remarkable accomplishment, ruined only by my father's hectoring negativity!
I'm beginning to understand the allure of adhering to neoconservative ideology...
The Ankh - Before Success (from a 1982 single) - Female vocals and a minimalist gothy feel? Yes, please. I make no attempt to conceal my biases.
Iggy Pop - Success (from Lust for Life, 1977) - Mr. Pop wrote the lyrics but the sound bears the unmistakable influence of co-writer David Bowie. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, mind you...
Thursday, March 27, 2008
you know you're wasting your time
Mr. Morris, the owner of radio station WHIZ, finds himself in dire financial straits:
"Well, you see, Billy, there's this place called the Emperor's Club, and..."
Shrugging off Billy Batson's optimistic bromides as the empty platitudes they really are, Morris decides to flee the country before the inevitable subpoenas start arriving. He decamps at a South Sea island refuge popular with other fugitives from life's petty hassles...
"The natives call the place Enewetak. Don't mind those warships moored offshore; the Navy boys are supposed to be doing some kind of 'test' or something."
...and Morris becomes quickly enthralled with his new low-stress lifestyle, which is refreshingly free of FCC hearings, incipent ulcers, and impossible-to-please sponsors.
Before Morris can get too comfy, however, Billy dispatches his superheroic alter ego, Captain
Marvel fails to convince Morris to quit his hedonistic idyll, and even begins to succumb to the island's seductive allure himself...
...though he is fortuitously saved by the giant stick wedged up his ass. Unwilling to give up his missionary work on behalf of stifling conformity, Marvel again approaches Morris about his un-American behavior. This time, however, the Big Red Cheese makes use of visual aids to prove his case, confronting Morris with his eventual fate should he decide to remain on the island...
"DEAR LORD, NOOOOOOOO!"
....devolution into a smelly hippie. A fate worse than death, indeed. The shocking revelation convinces Morris to violently repudiate his slacker ways and return to whatever fate awaits him back in the civilized world:
As it turns out, the music Morris must face is the "Crony Capitalism Rag," a perrenial plutocratic standard composed by the Old Boy Network. I haven't been personally privileged enough to hear the piece performed live, but I believe the first two lines are "If you're rich and white/it will turn out all right":
(From "Man's Worst Enemy" from Captain Marvel Adventures #91, December 1948; by Otto Binder & C.C. Beck)
Deadbeats - Kill the Hippies (from a 1978 single) - A fine piece of early L.A. punk that pits the hollowness of trangressive nihilism against the self-righteousness of narcissistic "enlightenment."
The Specials - Rat Race (from More Specials, 1980) - "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that." - Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
pants on fire
I've been following the controversy regarding Hillary Clinton's imaginary exposure to sniper fire in Bosnia with a fair degree of bemusement. It's the latest tempest in a teapot in an election year driven by such ephemeral distractions. While I have no affection for Clinton as a politician, it seems that there are plenty of other substantive reasons to be troubled about her candidacy instead of harping over a standard bit of campaign trail Munchausenismo.
It's odd how the greater "we" have resigned ourselves to the fact that politicians are inveterate liars -- to the extent where this aspect of the vocation is accepted as a brute fact -- yet we still manage to conjure up some half-sincere shock and outrage whenever a petty falsehood is exposed. Big lies, on the other hand, dealing with issues of real importance and perpetrated by those who wield real power, tend to be swallowed with gusto and are seemingly unkillable, despite mountains of contrary evidence presented to dispel it.
Sexing up a story about a state visit in a campaign speech? The audacity of it! Using discredited evidence about WMD programs and links to terrorist organizations to stir up support for a disastrous war? Eh, it happens.
On a related note, I was impressed, even as I winced, with Obama's brief moment of candor that withdrawing troops from Iraq might be a more complicated process than anticipated, as he does not have access to the people and information needed to make a clear assessment of the situation at the present time. His campaign spokespeople have since downplayed that statement, so as not to alienate the bloc of anti-war voters (of which I am a unswerving member). When speaking of realities is unwelcome, it seems disingenuous to harp over distortions of the "truth," the quotation marks signifying the confirmation bias inherent in the term as presently understood.
So Hillary has her tale of high adventure in the Balkans, Obama his "I knew but I didn't hear" excuse about his pastor, and John McCain his story about Cuban torturers in the Hanoi Hilton (which could very well be on the level, but it seems like something lifted from a Chuck Norris film and rather conveniently appeals to an important voting bloc in a large swing state). These calculated pieces of window dressing provide ample opportunities to engage in petty sniping and childish taunts -- amplified and abetted by the mainstream media -- which have rendered the public political discourse at a level on par with a schoolyard dust-up. Substantial debate and well-considered policy positions are fine and all, but it's more entertaining (and sadly, more effective) to make fun of how much a rival candidate spent on a haircut.
One thing that I find interesting is that whenever a politician "misspeaks" about his or her personal accomplishments, the statments trend universally toward the positive, which is statistically unusual given the implied excuse of spontaneous, unconscious error. A candidate might "accidentally" tell a bogus story about the time they saved a litter of puppies and the Baby Jesus from a barn fire, but never one about the time they shanked a hobo for half a bottle of Thunderbird.
Funny, that.
The Castaways - Liar, Liar (from The Best of the Castaways, 1999) - Outstanding garage rock from the Twin Cities, this 1965 classic is a fine example of the stuff I used to look forward to hearing on the local oldies station...before its corporate programmers decided to quit trying and just pander to the blandest common denominator. Goodbye, wild organ riffs and falsetto vocals; hello, "Muskrat Love."
Sex Pistols - Liar (from Never Mind the Bollocks..., 1977) - I don't have to explain why I picked this track, do I? (If you answered "yes," there's a high probability you're reading the wrong music blog.)
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
damn the consequences
Garbage - When I Grow Up (from Version 2.0, 1998) - It's not conformity. It's evolution. Being able to let things go is just as important as knowing what to hold on to.
As for Garbage, I was emphatically unimpressed with the band upon their debut, as they seemed to be simply a vehicle for alterna-angst and crotch shots. (When the band performed "Only Happy When It Rains" at an MTV awards show back in the mid-1990's, there was a decidedly disturbing gynecological approach to the videography.) My originally negative reaction to the band has mellowed somewhat over the years, to the point where I have to admit that they were among the most enjoyable of the mainstream-in-alternative-clothing acts foisted on the world during the Clinton years.
Monday, March 24, 2008
amoral compass
All I ask is a decent playlist and a theme to steer it by, though it would be wise to bring along some supplemental navigation materials, just in case:
The Fall - Hit the North (from a 1987 single; collected on The Frenz Experiment, 1988) - While I do not approve of violence, I have to admit that the North has been asking for it lately.
The Stone Roses - Driving South (from Second Coming, 1994) - Second Coming is fairly often cited as a textbook example of the "sophomore slump." I'd argue that designation stems more from absurdly high expectations than the actual quality of the material on the album, which was decent enough if not quite groundbreaking.
On a different note, whenever I listen to this track, I keep expecting Toni Halliday to chime in during the fuzzwash with "My name is FAIT!"
Lone Justice - East of Eden (from Lone Justice, 1985) - Another respectable effort marred by external forces -- in this case, a relentless juggernaut of promotional hype that ultimately translated into mediocre album sales, one hit single, and an overplayed music video for said single.
For years I wondered about the frequent application of the cowpunk genre tag to Lone Justice, as "Ways to Be Wicked," the above-mentioned hit, had a fairly mainstream country-rock sound, and didn't really fit the rough-and-tumble definition of cowpunk as I understood it. It wasn't until a few years ago, when I finally got around to listening to Lone Justice's debut LP in its entirety and heard today's featured track that I realized the label does apply to some (not nearly enough) of the band's work.
Pet Shop Boys - Go West (from a 1993 single; collected on Pop Art: The Hits, 2003) - If Lenin fronted the Village People, and renounced violent revolutionary action in favor of meticulously-crafted pop music...
Sunday, March 23, 2008
feed your head
While I've used the above cover to The Unexpected #202 (September 1980) in at least two previous posts, I've actually never managed to get around to discussing the actual story to which it loosely refers. It's a grevious omission on my part, and one I plan on rectifying in today's special Easter installment of Armagideon Time.
Written by Michael Uslan and illustrated by Terry Henson, "Hopping Down the Bunny Trail" begins with the residents of Anytown, USA wondering about a mysterious advertising blitz for an Easter Egg hunt being held at the local Place of Ill OmenTM. While some parents have questions about the whos and whys behind the event...
...they are quickly shamed into silence by their less intellectually curious peers, who just assume that the municipal government is behind the proceedings.
After the Doubting Thomases have been convinced to put their faith in the City Council ahead of parental concern, the kids are sent off to join in the festivities and indulge in a moment of heavy-duty, low-grade horror comic story foreshadowing:
Upon arriving at the abandoned mansion, the children are greeted by the the Easter Bunny himself, a jovial lagomorphic nightmare who tempts them inside his secret lair with offers of candy and presents and strange mutterings about "nine days, three hours, and two minutes"...
The tykes let their greed (or stupidity, considering how vulgar Darwinism tends to be the motivation du jour for characters in cheapjack horror comics) overcome years of warnings delivered via filmstrips, after-school specials, and parental lectures about taking presents from talking animals (or even worse, from furries), and go gallivanting through the dark, bat-infested ruin in search of ovoid booty.
Things take a strange turn, however, when the kids fall into a concealed pit and land in a vat of chocolate sauce. This would normally be the point where a person with a fully functioning fight-or-flight reflex might tumble onto the notion that perhaps the Easter Bunny has his own separate agenda that goes beyond simply bringing joy to the children of Anytown. Not these kids, though, who seem to take it all in wide-eyed stride...
..until it's too late to make a difference, that is...
Now some of you might be wondering how the act of mastic decapitation performed upon a confectionary effigy could justify a similar action taken against a living being. The answer is deeply rooted in the Lapinite world view, which does not differentiate between the symbolic and the actual when it comes to assessing transgressions and assigning consequences. This aspect of lagomorphic culture was also the reason behind the global outbreak of violent rabbit protests following the publication of Beatrix Potter's manuscripts.
Lest the ersatz irony of that harsh (though cultural relativists may object to that description) act of retribution be lost on the readers, the writer and artist were considerate enough to restate it in the concluding panel, which in keeping with genre conventions possesses all the delicate subtlety of a grand piano dropped from a third-story roof.
If you thought that was creepy, you should have seen the sick plan for revenge the marshmallow Peeps staged that year.
The Damned - White Rabbit (Extended Version) (from the 1991 CD reissue of 1979's Machine Gun Ettiquette LP) - The Damned take Jefferson Airplane out for a spin and it turns out to be a quite groovy -- if slightly wobbly -- trip, indeed.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
don't need the masters
It's an all right place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there.
Today was supposed to be fairly quiet and uneventful, what with the wife away negotiating the cosplay-and-body-odor-heavy seas of the Anime Boston convention and little old me being left to my own devices here at our house on the hill.
Not that I'm unhappy with how things turned out. I could have done without the family hassles which manifested themselves and the dinnertime encounter with the Church of Latter-Day Saints' black-suited community outreach program. The visit from my brother was a nice surprise, though, especially as it included the gift of a stack of old Marvel comics from the 60's and 70's and a marathon sibling co-op session of the Xbox 360 version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
The Pillows - Little Busters (from Little Busters, 1998; also available on Fooly Cooly OST 1: Addict, 2004) - I didn't accompany Maura to today's convention because that particular form of salinity lost its savor for me sometime in the early 1990's. It was a combination of popcult saturation fatigue (coupled with the ubiquitous shallow Japanophilia in the fan scene) and the simple fact that my personal tastes and prevailing trends in manga and anime have diverged a great deal over the years. (I'm an unreconstructed old school mecha jockey and space opera enthusiast.)
There are a lot of things of note out there at the moment, but very little that appeals to me personally with the exception of occasional works like Youtsuba&! or the not-that-recent, but wonderfully bizarre FLCL, which featured today's song (as well as several other gems) by the Japanese indie rock outfit The Pillows on its soundtrack.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Friday Night Fights: Gotta Laugh
Let's say you're the Web, one of the Mighty Comics stable of 60's superheroes, and you're trying to convince your concerned wife and harridan of a mother-in-law that dressing up in a gaudy costume and fighting crime is a worthwhile career. Would you really want to cite this particular incident....
...as a way of pleading your case? It's not so much an effective means of persuasion as it is evidence to be submitted in the inevitable divorce proceedings.
There's nothing else quite like the superhero comics published under Archie's Mighty Comics imprint in the mid-1960's, and that's for the best, really.
Squeeze - Slap and Tickle (from Cool for Cats, 1979) - Fully realizing the pulsating pub-funk hybridization that had previously been hinted at on the band's debut single, "Take Me, I'm Yours."
(Bahlactus doesn't have to explain anything.)
Thursday, March 20, 2008
each time I feel it slippin' away
Well, I thought it was a magnificent speech. Eschewing the usual penny-ante gotcha politicking and expedient dissembling, Barack Obama took the opportunity in speech last Tuesday to not simply address the politically troubling remarks of his pastor, but to offer an insightful look into where we are as a diverse nation, and where we could, and should go from there. "We," as in all of us.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.I am not so naive to think that a speech, however eloquent, done under the pressure of "dealing" with a campaign controversy automatically equals "what will be." The usual segments of the chattering classes (or is that "nattering nabobs?) have been laboring to spin, dissect, and analyze Obama's lofty sentiments -- He's "dodging the issue," he didn't go far enough to condemn Reverend Wright's remarks, what does it mean for his poll numbers -- as another action in the great and cynical game of politics.
The speech and the sentiments expressed therein stand head and shoulders above the present election narrative. As dictated by the sensationalist, Heisenbergian format of modern journalism, the election process has been reduced to a gaudy sideshow cast in terms more purple than the commentary at a pro-wrestling match (the better to fill the time between pharmaceutical ads). In such an environment, cynical calculated behavior has become the order of the day for aspriring candidates. Principles are dealt out like cards in a game of blackjack, with the goal of hitting electibility without going bust. "I stand for X, except when I was against it." "I stand for X, unless this important voting bloc wants me to stand for Y instead."
Even if Obama's speech was bullshit, it was a better class of bullshit than any I've encountered so far this election, and, to reiterate what Dave Lartigue has already said, it's light-years ahead of what we've seen from the other two candidates, whether the short-sighted divisive tactics employed by the Clinton camp or McCain's obsequious efforts to pander to fundamentalist demagogues whose documented views meet and exceed anything that has ever come from Reverend Wright's pulpit. ("But they aren't McCain's personal ministers," say the pundits. No, they just get an inordinate amount of access and power to shape government policy...which is more acceptible, somehow.)
Brinsley Schwarz - (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding (from The New Favourites of..., 1974) - I've said it before, I'll say it again: Nick Lowe trumps Elvis Costello.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
so many mothers sighing
Has it really been five years? Why it seems like only yesterday that the Powers-That-Be were promising to shock and awe their way to victory in Iraq, and that the road to Baghdad would be sprinkled with rose petals and lined with cheering throngs of the newly-liberated grateful.
It was supposed to be an easy and clean war, sanitized and vetted for all-ages consumption. Go in, collect a full suit of psuedo-comically nicknamed war criminals, secure Saddam's stash of death rays and other imaginary superweapons, change the nameplates on the government buildings, and convince the newly installed
Five years, a half a trillion (a low-ball figure) dollars, and an immeasurable amount of human misery later, American forces are involved in an ugly guerrilla war with no end in sight, with the metrics of progress calibrated to resolve issues that we were assured would not arise. Even the vaunted "surge," with its widely trumpeted "success," is merely a bit of strategic sleight-of-hand to placate dissent on the homefront while failing to accomplish anything of lasting import, and amounts to nothing more than deploying a large bucket brigade to bail out a flooded neighborhood while ignoring the breaches in the levee.
The Iraq War has been such a colossal and unforgivable waste in so many ways, and I can't shake the feeling that future historians will point to the Bush cabal's misadventure in arrogance as the point of America's irreversible decline as a superpower -- a mad fling on borrowed money undertaken without regard for how many lives are wrecked, friendships damaged, and property ruined in the process.
I'd like to hope that the upcoming presidential elections will change things, but unless the Democrats take immediate steps to staunch their self-inflicted internal hemorrhaging, all signs point to a victory in November for John McCain, a man who, despite his (undeserved) reputation as a straight-shootin' maverick, combines the political ethics of Ulysses S. Grant and the geo-political subtlety of Douglas MacArthur.
David Bowie - Five Years (from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972) - I suspect the coming apocalypse will be less literal and more existential in nature -- an endless cycle of degradation, humiliation, and petty cruelties committed simply because there will be nothing else left to do.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
but if there is no next time
In this, our first installment of Found Object Theatre, I would like to present a short piece I've titled "The Discreet Charm of the Text Page."
For the musical portion of our program, I present a pair of relevantly-titled tracks -- a subjective alpha and omega of 1970's art-pop, if you will -- by artists whose tremendous influence lingers into the present day.
Roxy Music - Re-Make/Re-Model (from Roxy Music, 1972)
Gary Numan - Random (from The Pleasure Principle, 1979)
Monday, March 17, 2008
what you don't know
For all the talk about sales figures, mainstream media coverage, and whatnot, the comics scene is still a fairly insular environment with a public profile on par with that of contemporary poetry. Most people are aware it exists, few outside the bubble of cognoscenti and critics would be able to name even handful of recent "important" works. Comics do have a leg up on poetry in terms of licensability (there isn't exactly a rush to adapt Charles Simic's work into an XBox 360 game or a Hollywood summer blockbuster), but that cross-medium saturation hasn't effectively translated into a boost in interest regarding the source material.
I attended a number of poetry readings back in college. It was part of my "excuses to spend more time with a girl I liked" program, though I do have a certain fondness for verse (mostly Classical, Romantic, and Moderinst stuff). With only a couple of execeptions, the material presented at the readings was tripe of the most self-indulgent variety, sophomoric profundities gilded with free verse sleight-of-pen. Then, a couple of days or weeks after the event, I'd read a review (written by a colleague or friend of the poet in question) in the Boston Globe or The Nation praising the poet's works to the rafters.
What contemporary poetry lacks in Entertainment Weekly coverage, it makes up for in perceived legitimacy. Taking up a pen and composing verse means participating in a tradition stretching from Homer and Ovid to Byron and Shelley to Eliot and Pound. In contrast, to the ears of the American masses "comics" doesn't evoke Eisner, Miyazaki, or Moebius as much as Superman, The Family Circus, and Rob Liefeld's X-Force -- disposable diversions largely targeted at children or scary obsessive fans.
This situation, combined with the insularity of the scene, has led to a defensive mindset, complete with elaborate attempts at self-justification, in some quarters. The people who have tied their sense of self-worth to the hobby, as outlined in Pal Ken's infamous post, are most frequently cited in regards to this phenomenon, but it has wider and more subtle effects than ingrained fan entitlement.
"The easiest way to look handsome and smart," as the old joke goes, "is to surround yourself with ugly, stupid people." Because the comics industry, in perception as well as sales, is dominated by decadent, inbred superheroic material (and manga, which has a similar crap-to-quality ratio as Marvel's and DC's products once one has set aside the lux oriente nonsense), there is a tendency to overvalue relatively decent material. As I said to a friend when Madonna's performance in Evita started to generate Oscar nomination buzz, "Not being lousy is not the same as being great."
Novelty and "purity of artistic vision" (whatever that is supposed to mean) in and of themselves are not enough. It doesn't matter how diminshed one's expectations regarding the medium are, a work has to stand alone on its own merits and not be graded on a scale because the prevailing standard is "barely tolerable, if not worse." Compared to According to Jim, Scrubs seems like a rare work of genius, but the "better of two bad choices" only really works in the realm of politics, and really isn't something a rational person would want to see applied in wider circumstances.
Think of how much the "indie" label has been manipulated and abused, not just in comics, but in film and music as well. The implied sense of artistic integrity and edginess in the term's use is meaningless on an aesthetic level, intended more to engender a knee-jerk "FIGHT THE MAN" reaction. It's a sentiment I can empathize with, but it's not a guarantee of quality or an innoculation against failure.
It's not that I'm saying that "good enough" isn't, well, good enough. I think that the record shows that I have been unswerving in my affection for the "solidly acceptable" class of entertainment choices. How else is one going to pass the time between transcendental works of genius? What I am troubled by is the willingness to laud good-not-great material as the Word made manifest -- replete with suspended critical judgement -- simply because Secret Infinite Invasion Crisis and whatnot have set the quality bar so damn low.
The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup (from The Very Best of the Foundations, 1995) - Is it bubblegum? Is it soul? A little bit of both? Does it even matter? Not to me, it doesn't. It's a damn fine piece of pop no matter how you tag it.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Until You Find Out (from God Fodder, 1991) - "I picked up a couple albums from some bands I'd been hearing buzz about -- Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Nirvana. I didn't really like the Ned stuff, but Nirvana was frigging awesome." On that day in 1991, a friendship died.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
last year's model
A snapshot of the cultural sensitivities of Nixonian America, as represented by two advertisements for model cars which appeared in DC comic books during that period:
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass - Tijuana Taxi (from Going Places, 1965) - HONK HONK!
Happy hour at the Eden Roc's lounge: One-piece molded plastic chairs and the curved Formica surface of the well-stocked bar. The clientele sporting sharkskin suits and Brylcreem-lacquered "smart look" 'dos or pastel "Jackie O" ensembles and sky-high bouffants. They tap the ashes of their Kents into crystal ashtrays while sipping at their Tom Collinses or vodka martinis, and over the din of casual conversation can be heard the peppy, suburbanite-safe sounds of light quasi-Latin jazz, the echoes of which will resonate in shopping plazas and elevators for decades to come.
Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles (from Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, 1980) - This cautionary ditty about the dark side of paternalistic liberalism (resolved fortunately by America's drunken stagger toward petit-fascist ideology) came up on the Zune's driving playlist during the commute home last Tuesday, and it reminded me that I voted for Jerry Brown in the 1992 Democratic primary.
Oh, what a lovely thing the American political system is, offering each and every voter the opportunity to choose between getting devoured by fire ants or drowned in a bucket of slaughterhouse offal.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
don't mix with new groups
I'm a bit busy today, but not so busy that I couldn't take the time to post this important reminder....
...that the Good Old DaysTM were actually pretty damn horrifying, and wonder why our society is more germ-o-phobic now than it was back in the days when polio, scarlet fever, and the like were far more widespread and less easily prevented and/or treated.
Rip, Rig, and Panic - Beware (from God, 1981) - I had been saving this short but unsettling instrumental number by the genre-transcending postpunk-jazz-funk collective (which included a couple members of The Pop Group and a pre-"Buffalo Stance" Neneh Cherry) for this year's Halloween countdown, but October is quite a ways off and it fits today's topic perfectly in both title and tone.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Friday Night Fights: Simplicity at Its Finest
Nothing complicated or clever for this week's contribution to Bahlactus's Battle That Rocks the Cosmic Block -- just a fist, a face, and a constellation of hurt:
It's simple yet elegant, which means I don't have to explain the anti-television pogroms, phallic skullcaps shielded against Luddite radiation, and hot pants-wearing conquistadores which lead up to the featured punch-in-the-face action.
Swell Maps - Blam!! (from A Trip to Marineville, 1979) - In which the pioneering (and sadly deceased) Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden chart a DIY postpunk course into Nuggets territory.
everybody has cowlicks to conceal
Sad, but true: As the bright optimistic glare of the Atomic Age dispelled the lingering shadows of noir culture, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, the very archetype of the hard boiled detective, found himself reduced to a pitchman for hair care products...
"The stuff that dreams -- and damn fine hairstyles -- are made of."
(from Captain Marvel Adventures #91; December 1948)
Hopefully the licensing royalites from the ad helped Dashiell Hammett defray the legal fees stemming from the Civil Rights Congress of New York (of which Hammett was chairperson) being labeled as a communist front organization by the Truman administration in 1947. The group's efforts to raise bail money for accused "subversives" and unwillingness to turn over the names of fund contributors to the government led to Hammett being found in contempt of court. After a similar refusal on his part to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee 1953, Hammett was blacklisted as well.
Quite a way to treat the man who gave the world both The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, yet there are plenty of folks out there who long for nothing more than a return to that lovely chapter of our history. Grand, ain't it?
You can find a handful of episodes of the old Sam Spade radio show for your downloading and listening enjoyment here. The Maltese Falcon, the 1930 novel featuring Sam Spade, is available (along with The Thin Man) as part of this handsomely-designed omnibus edition of Hammett's works. The equally indispensible 1941 film version can be found (with the racier pre-Code 1931 version and Satan Met a Lady, a 1936 comedic take starring Bette Davis) on this DVD set.
Duran Duran - Watching the Detectives (from Thank You, 1995) - Wonderfully wrong.
Adolph Deutsch - Theme to The Maltese Falcon (from Legendary Film Noir Movies, 2004) - Atmospherically right.
Ray Anthony & His Orchestra - Peter Gunn Theme (from The Ultra-Lounge Sampler, 1996) - A swinging delight.
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