Archie

Riverdale Book Review

Rhyming Titles from Archie #365, March 1989

“Neat Feat”

“Beat Treat”

“Borrow Sorrow”

…and one of the worst, most dated, Archie rhyming titles of all time:

“Colleen Scene”

In this brief gag, Archie is “punished” by having to sit in the back of the class. But it’s not really a punishment, see, because he can ogle girls from back there. Girls, aka colleens. From Wikipedia: “Colleen is a common English language name of Irish origin and a generic term for Irish women or girls, from the Irish cailín (caile, countrywoman).”

Colleen Scene. Gosh. Even “Back of the Class Sass” or “Last Row Gal Ogle” might’ve been better choices.

Music reviews

Scribblers Music Review

The Afro-Semitic Experience, Jazz Souls on Fire (www.afrosemiticexperience.net). This is a departure, even for the ever-eclectic and adventurous ASE. It’s not that the band doesn’t do covers, but they’ve tended to be of traditional melodies from various religious services.This is a more contemporary set, though no less sacred. The songs are rousing spiritual soul, funk, jazz ditties by such hallowed talents as Duke Ellington, Pharaoh Sanders (“The Creator Has a Master Plan,” suffused with the distinctive slide-guitar stylings of Stacy Phillips), Sister Rosetta Thorpe, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley. The foundations on which the band was built, klezmer and gospel, are diminished here (though not by any means gone), and there are a lot more vocals (in English, anyway) than ASE listeners are accustomed to. Thomas A. Dorsey’s “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song,” which has been recorded by both Mahalia Jackson and Nina Hagen, is given a brisk bluesy vibe. There are some trad spiritual tunes to round out the disk: “Fon Der Khupe,” “Avadim Hayinu” (previously recorded on the first Afro-Semitic Experience album, Once We Were Slaves, much fuller and richer and more resonant in this rendition, which spotlights the bass virtuosity of Afro-Semitic co-founder David Chevan) and a “Go Down Moses,” which has almost a marching band feel, until the jazz piano kicks in. A noteworthy stretch for this accomplished ensemble, less overtly prayerful than the band’s earlier work perhaps but with no less faithful fervor.

Lists

Singing in the Shower for February

These is the random stack of CDs cluttering the downstairs bathroom this month. I have a handy Sony 5-disk player in there for showertime.

  • Elf Power, Sunlight on the Moon. Oft-overlooked, pretty darn prolific (15 albums) Elephant Six collective member. This is their most recent album, from 2013.
  • The Best of Antoinio Carlos Jobim. One of those “20th Century Masters” budget CDs. Judging from this, Jobim liked to swim: “Agua de Beber,” “Aguas de Marco,” “Wave,” “Tide” and the ultimate jazz beach song “The Girl from Ipanema.”
  • The Shazam, Tomorrow the World. One of their most audacious power pop efforts, as suggested by lead track “Rockin’ and Rollin’ With My Rock and Roll Rock and Roller.”
  • Elvis Costello Live With the Metropole Orkest, My Flame Burns Blue. The bonus disk is the shorter version of the “Il Sogno” Suite which Costello composed for a ballet based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (performed in 2000 by the Italian Aterballeto Dance Company).
  • Christiane Noll, The Ira Gershwin Album. There was a time in the ‘90s and ‘00s when Noll was not only making a name for herself on Broadway, she was visiting Connecticut frequently—with Jekyll & Hyde, the Urinetown tour, at the Goodspeed in Mack & Mabel and Lizzie Borden, and in concert appearances at the Bushnell and elsewhere. I love the unexpected selections on this Gershwin set: “Tchaikovsky,” “I Was Doing All Right,” “In Our United State,” “There Is No Music”…
  • The Funky 16 Corners. Amazing funk comp of groundbreaking regional hits of the early 1970s. Does for funk what Nuggets did for garage rock.
  • The Essential Adam Ant.
  • Adam Ant, B-Side Babies. This guy deserves a reappreciation, and it’s nice to see him get taken seriously in some of the newer New Wave history books.
  • 10cc, 10cc. Those first albums captivated me as a teenager, and still think that the blend of the hyper-creative risk-takers Lol Creme and Kevin Godley and the mainstream pop craftsmen Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart had genius to it. Now I’m older, I think they often too self-consciously precocious and clever, but in the ‘70s there was nothing as smart out there.
  • Teenage Fanclub, Shadows. I don’t think they did one perfect album, but each one has several perfect songs.
  • Randy Newman, Harps and Angels. Proof that, over a winding and unpredictable half-century career, he’s never lost his sardonic touch.
  • MOJO presents DavidHeroesBowie. The free disk that came with the latest issue of MOJO, of “the artists that influenced David Bowie.” Anthony Newley and Jacques Brel and Vince Taylor and The Pretty Things, of course, but also Bobby Bland, Billy Fury, Ronnie Ross Quintet and The Flares (“Foot Stomping,” a taste Bowie has in common with John Waters, who put the song in the original Hairspray film).
Rock Gods

Rock Gods #337: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

The problem with house shows? When you’re at the wrong house. Jeff & the Jazzcocks, a scrawny punk outfit from Omaha, had vague directions to a basement show on Spoon St., part of a ramshackle national tour the band had arranged. They lost the exact address but found the street, heard music in a backyard, walked in and set up. Turns out the Jazzcocks had crashed an engagement party which didn’t appreciate such original relationship songs as “Don’t Need You Too” and “Fuck Out of My Life.” The party they’d wanted would’ve been two blocks down, on the other side of the street, but had been shut down without notice because the host’s parents hadn’t gone on vacation after all.

Problem with house parties is that you can’t let too many people know about them. But some people just, you know, gotta know.

Tonight: The Pat Hobbies and Beloved Infidel at the Bullfinch. Smart lyrics… France by Big Shots and No Nutty at Hamilton’s, pop covers perhaps more obscure than you’d expect… Dame Rumor comeback gig at D’Ollaire’s, propped up by young upstarts Ted the Pink and Rodgers the Fink, all sharing the same pick-up band…

Archie

Riverdale Book Review

Style Signatures for Archie Artists

Bob Montana: Frowns, scowls and furrowed brows.

Samm Schwartz: black silhouettes, legs and arms sticking out beyond the panel borders.

Dan DeCarlo: Attractive anonymous women in the foreground of panels.

Harry Lucey: Back-end view of cars as they and their drivers leave the scene of an adventure, along a winding road.

Dick Malmgren: Loony reaction shots; comically twisted faces.

Stan Goldberg: full-body reactions, as if the characters had been pushed or thrown.

Joe Edwards: Beads of exasperation. Lots of close-ups.

Dan Parent: Thick strong lines, blank backgrounds.

Fernando Ruiz: Askew angles; diagonals and slants.

Music reviews

Scribblers Music Review

Belle and Sebastian, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (Matador). It’s weird to realize that I’m still having trouble dealing with the “new,” more professionally produced and mainstream-poppy Belle and Sebastian, even though the band has been that way for12 years now, since Dear Catastrophe Waitress. Something still strikes me funny about how Stuart Murdoch thinks his audience wants to dance rather than just stare at the shoes like in the good old days. Selling out, self-delusion, or whatever else, I still dig the more laid-back stuff, and fairly recent releases such as Write About Love and God Help the Girl show that it’s still in Stuart Murdoch’s power to show restraint. On the other hand, there’s an ironic bliss to songs like The Party Line, which has tacky old disco beats and lyrics like “People like to shoot at things with borrowed guns and knives,” or  the even faster, dancier, odder “Enter Sylvia Plath.” I can get it—Belle & Sebastian has its dance-pop crowd just like Stephen King has his sci-fi Dark Tower crowd, and I don’t have to like it. There’s still plenty of other stuff for me left to like, even if I wish there were some alternate solo acoustic take of the overblown yet essentially sweet and sultry “The Book of You” that I could wallow in. And I will never completely give up on a band that can write a song (the most wistful on the album) titled “Today” and subtitled “This Army’s for Peace.”

The "c" word: Criticism