Young Ejecta, The Planet. Naked woman album cover! How French-pop retro. The music too. At least its tough and forthright rather than Jane Birkin-whispery.
Monthly Archives: December 2014
For Tomorrow We May Die: Diary of a College Chum #255
Mar’s mother loans us the money for more rent.
Rock Gods #305: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
A guy was sound-checking at Hamilton’s Thursday. He launched into one atrocious classic rock cover after another. He was laughing, but we in the audience (there early but not for him) were cringing. We could see straight through to his soul, see.
He slurred and leered and spat and otherwise mocked the lyrics of these egregious tunes, but he knew them too well. He wanted to come off as a jester for the hip kids. But we suspected that he had a happy hour gig Friday nights in a seafood restaurant at a strip mall, where they (and he) didn’t get the joke.
Tonight: Sloven Cina and The Norsk at the Bullfinch (holiday reunion show)… Suomi at Hamilton’s (holiday party show)… Permanent Link at D’ollaire’s (holiday hell show)…
Gas Songs
Last week we wrote an innocuous intro to a batch of book reviews, mentioning in passing that we were converting our house heating system from oil to gas. We were amused to see that the post was favorited on Twitter by the National Propane Gas Association.
Well, the NPGA’ll this one even better then. It is presented in honor of the completion of three weeks work in our house: the removal of two oil-based furnaces and an oil tank and the installation of two propane-fueled furnaces and a propane-fueled tankless water heater. We are wonderfully warm.
For the purposes of this list, ambiguous uses of the word “gas” were allowed, but specific references to gasoline were not. That would lead to a much longer list (of stock-car and trucking songs) for another time.
1. “Classical Gas,” Mason Williams. This guy is an American treasure. He was a comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers and other TV variety shows. He published a book of amusing poetry. He testified before congress by telling stories and playing his guitar. He collected songs about rivers. And he was an accomplished guitarist who had this amazing instrumental hit record in 1968.
2. “It’s a Gas,” Mad Magazine. Printed on cardboard as a giveaway in a 1963 Mad special issue, this song takes “gas” to its logical flatulent extreme.
3. Sage the Gemini, “Gas Pedal.”
4. Lil JJ, “This Song is Flammable, Call It Propane.”
5. A$AP Rocky, “Angels.” It begins “Ten gold chains, wood grain propane. Sell the whole thang from the cellphone rang.”
6. The Wrens, “Propane.” “38 hours since I got you home safe/ 42 gallons of your favorite propane.”
7. T.I., “Propane.” “I’m so on fire they call me Mr. Propane.”
8. They Might Be Giants, “Solid Liquid Gas Song.” So, “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas” is not the only TMBG gas song. And this one’s an original, not a cover.
9. Erik Friedlander, “Block Ice and Propane.” Friedlander was in New Haven in June with his concert of this title, about travelling cross-country with his photographer father.
10. “Propane for Life,” on the Louisiana Propane website.
11. “Propane for the People,” Saucer. A protest song penned after an explosion at the Sunrise Propane plant in North York, Toronto.
12. Pendulum, “Propane Nightmares.”
13. Kid Rock, “American Badass.” “30-pack opf Stroh’s, 30-pack of hoes, no rogaine in the propane flows.”
14. “All About Propane,” Mikey Bolt’s parody of Meghan Trainor’s “All About the Bass.”
15. The King of the Hill theme song.
16. “Mr. Gasser,” by Mr. Gasser & the Weirdos. From Hot Rod Hootenanny, an amazing 1963 surf/garage album based on concepts by car-cartoonist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.
17. The Wheel Men, “School is a Gas.” An answer song to the more credibly argued “School is a Drag” by the Super Stocks.
18. Flanders and Swann, “The Gas Men Cometh.” The British comedy duo, on how workmen just make more work for the next workmen.
19. There are multiple “Propane” songs which are direct parodies of the Eric Clapton hit “Cocaine.” The best known by Pinkard & Bowden, from the ealy ‘90s.
20. Gas-themed band names out there include The Gas Men, Bus Gas, Natural Gas, Propane Cowboy, Propane Penny, Propane James and yes, Propane Propane.
The trade journal Oil & Gas Monitor did their own list of songs about oil and gas, and proclaimed disappoinment in their findings. The list of “OGM’s Greatest Oil and Gas Songs that are NOT that Great” is here.
Scribblers Music Review
NLannon, “Hazy Shade of Winter.”
First version of this song I could stand all the way through, and that includes the Simon & Garfunkel. Alternately sweet and creepy, this version doesn’t so much grow on you as suck you in, with lo-fi psychedelics and unfussy vocals. Starts with fancy picking then descends into electric keyboards and up-front percussion. None of that wimpy folk S&G headbanging.
For Tomorrow We May Die: Diary of a College Chum #254
We hear all our stuff has been stolen from the Glee Club shack.
Riverdale Book Review
Big Archie Comics announcement last week: The company’s flagship comic, Archie, will be relaunched, and its issue numbering reset from #666 (or thereabouts) to #1. The impetus is the participation of two major comics talents, writer Mark Waid and artist Fiona Staples.
The recent history of Archie is of attention-getting stunts that assure big sales of the first few issues but which have debatable longterm impact. The more realistically drawn “New Look” phase lasted a couple of years and was confined to the digest and trade reprint formats, not imposing on the major Archie titles. The various grown-up Archie series—“Archie Marries Betty, Archie Marries Veronica, Archie Marries Valerie, the Life With Archie magazine, et al.—ended a few months ago with the Death of Archie finale. The zombie comic Afterlife with Archie is currently still hot, on its seventh issue and boasting a new spin-off, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The author of those comics, playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, was recently given the title of Archie Comics’ Chief Creative Officer.
So, this could just play out as another easy-hype quick-fix.
But it should be said also that rebuilding Archie’s flagship title right now is not such a bad idea.
This is far from the first time that Archie has been reinvented. The original 1940s stories drawn by Bob Montana seem harsh and grotesque compared with the willfully softened renderings of Riverdale by Joe Edwards and others starting in the 1950. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Archie employed two superlative comic artists, Harry Lucey and Dan DeCarlo. DeCarlo’s influence was particularly widespread, and many later Archie artists willfully aped his style. The other supreme Archie artist was Stan Goldberg, a giant in the teen-comic genre who did Archie knock-offs for both DC (Binky & His Buddies) and Marvel (Millie the Model) in the 1960s before spending 40 years doing the real thing. The main Archie comic belonged to DeCarlo and Goldberg for most of the last 40 years. They are the titans.
But DeCarlo, godlike as he was, died in 2001, not long after a tragic falling-out with his longtime employers over rights to the Josie & the Pussycats characters. Goldberg, who was Archie’s ace delineator for the last decade, trusted with major projects like “Marries…,” passed away at the end of August. Some DeCarlo and Goldberg disciples still exist in the Archie stable, but only Jeff Schulz comes close to nailing that style which has defined the Archie characters since the early ‘60s.
There have been some inroads made in finding a new Archie art style. I’m partial to the work of the artist known as Gisele, who drew the instant-classic “Reversedale” tale in which Archie and the gang switched genders.
Fiona Staples, who’s been entrusted with Archie’s latest new look, may be able to make hers stick. She did an awesome Josie & the Pussycats poster—it hangs in our home—and did some excellent alternate covers, ones so good I bought the same issue twice. She draws teens as rough-and-tumble rock-and-rollers. There’s an energy to her work that rumples up the old clean-cut Archie to good effect. As for Mark Waid, he has a loyal following for his Marvel Comics work, and did a bang-up job reinventing The Fox for the revival of Archie Comic’s old Red Circle imprint.
It seems, unfortunately that the Archie makeover team is only contracted for a few issues. Hard to know if this will really get the ball rolling. The Life With Archie magazine, which came hot on the heels of Michael Uslan’s ingenious Archie Marries… saga, foundered quickly due to convoluted plots and lack of direction. Hopefully there’s a long game plan for the new Archie. The Archie #1 announcement suggested that whatever transpires will be lasting, that the renewed Archie comic will differ from the classic Archie that will persist in the digests and reprint books.
Changing times, bold measures. Archie used to exist in order to explain what a teenager was. Now teens rule the planet. A new Archie is indeed in order. The thesis here is sound. But can they deliver?
…and, if you don’t mind me asking, wherefore Jughead? His eponymous comic was put on hiatus ages ago due to its own rumored makeover. Hate to be greedy, but…
Rock Gods #304: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
In Paradisum, a religious a cappella ensemble from the college on the hill, opened for Der Flay, the basement metal band, Thursday at the Bullfinch.
The pairing was repeated, with different repertoire and band order, Sunday at In Paradisum’s school recital at the campus chapel.
Well, who hasn’t heard hi-falutin’ classical chords and angelic voices as intro music to savage rock shows? This just made that blend more human.
The classical chorale wore the traditional choral cassocks and cottas. So did Flay frontman Master Ratzenberger, who was clearly concerned about how his new collegiate classical pals would relate to his sinister scenester acquaintances. Ratz needn’t have worried. The choir drank the Flaymeisters right under the table.
Tonight: CYO at the Bullfinch… Yes Penguins Fly at Hamilton’s… D’ollaire’s is closed for repairs (we’ll explain sometime)…
Rutles Time
Purchased this box of tea at a Bed Bath & Beyond in Massachusetts
and of course thought of this:
and this:
At the end of it, they met Bob Dylan in the idyllic San Francisco of the mid-60’s, and he introduced them to a strange substance that was to have an enormous effect on them: Tea. Despite the warnings that it would lead to stronger things, the Rutles enjoyed the pleasant effects of tea. And it influenced enormously their greatest work, “Sgt. Rutter”. 
Scribblers Music Review
The Gravel Pit, Serpent Umbrella (DeeVeeUs Records)
I saw The Gravel Pit play live over a hundred times back in the 1990s, as they honed their quirky hard rock in such New Haven venues as the Poco Loco, Cafe Nine, Toad’s Place, Cheri’s, the German Club at the University of New Haven and the old Rudy’s Bar & Grill (across the street from the band’s practice space in the Rochdale Co-op). The band moved to Boston, which they ruled for a few years, and even gained a touch of national fame. Other projects intervened—frontman/songwriter Jed Parish’s solo albums, bassist Ed Valauskas’ day job at Q Division studios, the club rock band The Gentlemen which most of the Pit took part in—and The Gravel Pit gradually vanished.
This reunion album is well overdue, since the band members have stayed friends over the years and done a number of live reunion shows. This is The Gravel Pit’s first recording since they contributed a cover of “Closer to the Wall” to the 2009 Mark Mulcahy tribute project Ciao My Shining Star, and the first full-length Gravel Pit album since 2001’s Mass Avenue Freeze Out.
At first listen, Serpent Umbrella sounds closer to a Jed Parish solo album with full band backing than it does to classic Gravel Pit. That has something to do, I’m guessing, to the band members now being middle-aged. This was always a smart, literate band, but in its heyday it was also tough and bombastic, the pithy lyrics shouted over mighty power chords. Jed uses his falsetto more than his yowl here, but the songs remain intelligent and excitable.
The numbers that remind me most of The Gravel Pit I knew way back when are “Crybaby Vampire” (latest in a line of supernaturally themed Pit songs such as “Teenage Witch”), “Glimpses of the Underdog” (which has the quiet menace of “Time to Leave the Cradle” and other reflections on cruel society) and “Power Broker Blues” (an electrioc blues-rock work-out which reminds me that in the band’s infancy The Gravel Pit used to love covering “Tom Sawyer” by Rush).
On earlier albums, there always were songs that started slowly and lyrically. Many of them changed tone and became blaring anthemic rock bludgeons. Most of the songs on Serpent Umbrella stay on the softer side. Nothing wrong with that, and the production quality is better than on many of the older Pit albums.
You can hear Jed Parish’s still-impressive, still-defiant lyrics, still bitter about politics, corporate power games and upper class mores. You can assess the detail in Lucky Jackson’s guitar work for a change. You can admire the steady rhythm section of Ed Valauskas and drummer Pete Caldes. And you can imagine how The Gravel Pit might have progressed as a band without a 12-year interruption between albums. Would they have mellowed naturally and gradually from disk to disk, yielding this same result? Would they have become grizzled hard rockers, using cheaper sonic tricks to exhort crowds to get up and listen? Again, nothing wrong with this thoughtful new Gravel Pit album. But for those who saw this band in their explosive youth, this is like a ‘90s New Wave “September Song.”