Martinex1: We are heading into some March madness, so today is a good day to kick back, relax, and enjoy some good company. Believe it or not, we've got some great things coming this month!
THIS PAST WEEK: We hopped on a bandwagon and spent most of our days discussing music. Whether comic soundtracks, stage and screen musicals, Dr. Demento's silly songs, or secondary album efforts - we had it here this week. We also conversed about pets, JLA teammates jumping to Marvel, and our comic storage systems. Lots of great comments in the past few days, so check it out.
COMING SOON: Redartz rolls out the Show and Tell feature he has been promising these past few Sundays. We will continue ranking and filing the top team superstars. And we will pull some bronze age treasures from the past in our second outing of Pulled from the Pack.
All that and more this week.
RECOMMENDATIONS: It's been a busy week, so let me share just a few photos of movies, books, and games you might want to check out. Feel free to add your own recommendations for food, novels, films, biographies, blogs, or anything else you think is worthwhile. Have a great week!
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| Bananagrams |
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| Flannery O'Connor Stories |
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| Unagi Maki (Eel) |
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| Year of the Dragon |
21 comments:
If I may, could I just randomly add things as they come to mind, today...?
The talk of less-well-known- 80s made me did out my compilation CD of less-well-known 80s songs. Anyone ever heard "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers??? It was just a 7" single in the USA (I think like Human League's big hit "Fascination?" in the USA?) but a big and popular album in the UK I think.
It's one of those songs that you popping in your head and better listen to or it will just keep circulating in your head all day!
Colin B, Steve, Graham (?) et al. from UK.. pray tell if they were also a Sheffield band???
I'm a big fan of the Stranglers. They were not known much at all here in the US until "Dreamtime" (pictured yesterday) hit the stores and they had some airplay with "Always the Sun". But "Golden Brown," "Peaches," "No More Herooes," "Strange Little Girl,". "Nice N' Sleazy" and "Nice in Nice" are amongst my favorite songs. I think they are a great band and I'm not sure why they never caught on here. Their live album is fairly decent. Hugh Cornwell's solo effort is just okay. But Jet Black and J.J. Burnel's rhythm section throughout the Stranglers run is like no other in my opinion. Hard to believe they formed around 1974 and I believe the band started in Guildford but the members came from all over (from Notting Hill to Ilford to Brighton). Good listening!
Charlie, the Stranglers were far too aggressive to be from Sheffield. As Martinex says, they were mostly from various parts of the South East.
This page on Wikipedia lists notable musical acts from Sheffield, most of whom I suspect are totally unknown in America but there are some better known names amongst them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musicians_from_Sheffield
Sorry, CH47, I'm not from the UK. My Mississippi accent would be a dead giveaway. 🙂
Hi Gents,
Thanks for the insights!
Marti - I will check out more Stranglers!
Steve - Regrettably I've only been to England a few times (London, Cambridge) and have never developed a sense of geographies and their personalities.
Graham - Too funny. In London and Cambridge there were instances I could not understand my fellow English speakers whereas I never had that problem in MS, LOL. (Loved those crawfish boils at Univ of Southern MS when I visited!)
Hey! For what it's worth, I just heard on the radio that Sgt. Pepper's 50 year anniversary is going to be re-released with Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane on it. Apparently they had been culled from the original to release them as a 45 rpm. (I would have loved to have heard the decision process determining which was the "A" side, LOL!)
If I wake up timely on Tuesday, maybe I'll ask "What was the first and last 45 rpm you bought?"
Charlie, yes the Strangers were tough nuts from London and the south east.
A Stranglers-related aside - I once picked up an 'application form' to work in the Rough Trade record shop in Ladbroke Grove, near Notting Hill.
The Rough Trade shop was (and is) the most painfully credible underground music store in the UK, and the job questionnaire reflected this status. It included the question 'give the three reasons we don't stock Stranglers records'
I think one reason was that The Stranglers were on a major record label, with a second reason being that they were considered sexist. But I still have no idea what the third reason was - it bugs me to this day.
The only other question I recall is 'where would you file 'Bad Brains' in the shop? That one was OK - 'US Hardcore'
I didn't apply for the job in the end but I've never had so much fun with an application form.
Marti - you probably already know, but the new Feelies record came out last week. The Pitchfork people like it:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22923-in-between/amp/
Colin B - You have me ROTF LMAO! That underground store job app reminded me of the suicide-bomber job app the US allegedly found when they captured Osama a few years ago. It had questions like "Where do you see yourself in 3 years?" and "How do you measure success?" I honestly do not know if that story is true or urban legend.
Also, I been meaning to share this with you since BitBA had the discussion about UK vs. US tv shows and you had a nice observation about in the UK it's more like a normal person amongst a bunch of abnormal people whereas in the US we were inserting Genies, Horses, etc. among normal people.
Anyhow, I finally found what I wanted to search. On the site TheAtlantic.com (a popular magazine in the USA) they have a nice article entitled "Why the British Tell Better Children's Stories." YOu can just "google" the titles and find it as well. Hope it is of interest to you! I and the french wife and kids found it quite interesting. Cheers!!!
Excellent article, thank you so much Charlie. I worked as a children's librarian for several years so it's nice to see the literature taken seriously.
I have an alternative spin on the thesis. That is, British history,traditions and institutions have roots lost in history. They simply exist. That tends to lend itself to imagination and fabulism.
America had (or chose to) invent itself. I have always found the unique combination of puritan pessimism about human nature and the Enlightenment belief in reason one of the most wonderfully creative things about America. Not only that but it was possibly gave foundations for the particular genius of the Founding Fathers.
As the article says, this historical quality to Ametica does lead to a literalism and moral stance in children's literature that you really don't see in Britain. I think children's writers in the UK have a licence to be subversive, following the tradition of Roald Dahl. It's interesting to compare Roald Dahl with Dr Suess - both on the surface were subversive but Dahl in the end rejoices in childhood as an end in itself, while Seuss rejoices in life while still slipping positive moral messages in.
Sorry, getting carrried away, best stop before everyone goes to sleep!
Dr Seuss, not Suess. D'oh.
Hello all; sorry I've been absent somewhat: been under the weather for a couple days.
Colin Bray- love your story about the job questionnaire. I'm sure it was more practical, and applicable, than many of the HR questionnaires we suffer through these days. Also enjoying your and Charlie's) discussion about British children's literature. Some days here are so educational...
Colin B - you are surely asleep by now! Regrettably there is a 6 hour time difference. On the other hand, if there were no time difference you probably would not be from the UK and thus we would not be discussing this, lol.
If you are, I would ask you (and Steve) what is the significance if any, of "East End Boys and West End Girls" getting together in the Pet Shop Boys song "West End Girls?" I really, really dug their hits! Maybe I should have been born in the UK, given my 80's preference for Human League, Heaven 17, Pet Shop Boys, Culture Club, etc.! And then, what survives in my vinyl collection is Beatles, Moody Blues, Who...
Charlie, I don't know if it works the same in American cities but, in British cities, the East side of town is usually where the poor people live and the West side is where the wealthy people live. This is because the wind mostly blows from the west towards the east. Back in the days when our big cities had heavy industry, this meant that the smoke from factories and houses was blown towards the east side of town and away from the west. Thus, those who could afford to, moved to the west side of town to get away from the pollution and the poor were left to live a lifetime of being polluted to death in the east.
So, as far as I can make out, the song is basically about rich girls' lust for rough, tough working class males, and working class males' liking for posh girls, as seen through the filter of someone who's clearly watched too many British gangster movies.
Adding to Steve's reply Charlie, you may already know that Neil Tennant led the Marvel UK office in the early/mid 70s...?
Steve and Colin, Wow, wow, wow! Now I know! And there's a comic connection too! If I may ask one more? Dez Skinn refers to himself as the UK's Stan Lee, True? Hope your Monday is a good one! Thanks again!
I'd seriously hesitate to call Skinn the UK's answer to Stan Lee but he certainly modelled himself on Lee, with his, "Sez Dez," column and his tendency to put photos of himself in his publications. It's easy to see why Lee saw him as a kindred spirit when he put him in charge of Marvel UK.
Unfortunately, for me, Skinn taking over editorship of Marvel UK signalled the death of the venture. The quality of the weekly comics fell through the floorboards after he took over and I quickly lost interest in them.
Partly that was his fault because he wanted to make the comics more British in style, which suggested he failed to understand their appeal to UK readers. Partly it wasn't his fault because Marvel UK was running out of material to reprint and the country's economic situation was making it harder to sell comics. There were also clearly problems with distribution and with getting newsagents to stock the comics. For me, the weekly comics became almost unreadable under his stewardship.
On the other hand, he did launch a bunch of monthly mags for Marvel UK, based on the mid-1970s US Marvel black and white mags, which were of a much higher standard than the weekly comics and he did give work to British creators, which Marvel UK hadn't traditionally done.
So, I wouldn't compare him to Stan Lee because he didn't leave behind the undeniably positive legacy that Lee did but he was certainly, for a while, the most high profile man in British comics, as Lee had been in American comics, even if he never achieved the fame amongst the non-comic-reading public that Lee has.
Great knowledge Steve, thanks. Much of that is new to me.
Awesome reply! I am fascinated that Fleetway, Thompson, etc churned out weekly comics! That had to be a challenge! I don't think we had the equivalent here until Superman was essentially weekly appearing in 4 different titles each month staggered by 1 week in the early 1990s.
For what it's worth some guy on eBay in the USA is offering 140 Beano Weeklies which is a rare listing in the USA, from the early 80s. He wanted at least $100 from what I can tell but I was the only bidder and maxed out at &10 for the lot, lol.
In fact I know little about UK comics but got Thompson annuals do this is quite an education! Thanks!
Wait... Did Skinn take over for Neil at Marvel UK in the 70s???
Apparently, when he left, Tenant was replaced by Nick Laing who was there for about a year before being replaced by Skinn.
Geese, now I'm wondering what Pete Townsend was singing about... "Rough boys running the streets...". The London west end crowd?
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