PERMANENT RECORDS: LITTLE 15

[NOTE: Next week's installment of Permanent Records will not be posted on Friday, but instead will be held until Sunday, 6/18, for reasons that will become apparent.]

Permanent Records is a year-long project. Each Friday (or thereabouts), I will post a new entry about one specific album, chosen due to its significance to myself as a fan. Though the list is numbered, a particular record's placement should not be considered a ranking. There will be 52 albums in all.

This endeavor is based on a concept started by Chris Tamarri at Crisis/Boring Change. It has since been expanded as a concept, as Neal Shaffer takes on a study of album covers over at Leftwich.

30. DEPECHE MODE - MUSIC FOR THE MASSES (1987)
Personnel: Dave Gahan, Martin L. Gore, Andrew Fletcher, Alan Wilder
Producer: Depeche Mode & David Bascombe/ Label: Sire/Mute

Every Depeche Mode fan has heard all the jokes. And I mean it. All of them.

We know what the detractors say, about how the band is dark and depressing, yadda yadda yadda, and we also know that you people just don't get it. There's actually a scene about this in the second Love the Way You Love, though it's a discussion of the Smiths. Tristan goes in for the attack when his arch rival makes a snide comment about wanting to slit your wrists when you listen to a Morrissey record. Tristan's more than happy to set this dumbbell straight as the soulless twit he is.

Which isn't what I've set out to do here, to convince you that Depeche Mode is really a happy band, all you need do is look beneath the surface. No, this is what we call a preamble. I'm leading up to my real point. That being...

Yes, Depeche Mode is a dark band. Yes, they concern themselves with heavy things. It's all love and sex and death and religion. So, isn't it funny that I came to the band in a rowdy, joyous fashion?

I had known about Depeche Mode for several years, but they had only been that "People Are People" band. Unfortunately, when my time would have come to discover they were more than that, I moved from the San Fernando Valley in Southern California to the more remote Mojave Desert. Had we moved just a few miles back over the mountain, I'd have still had access to Los Angeles radio stations, and my musical development would not have become stunted. I was thirteen, and easy access to new tunes had been cut off. Thus, until I was old enough to work so that I'd have more money--money I was becoming less interested in spending on comics--musical discoveries happened slowly.

I was 15 when Music for the Masses came out. I had some friends who lived down in Thousand Oaks, one of the endless lines of suburbs that grew like mold around Los Angeles, reaching out in all directions. If you faced the ocean, you had three choices: left was Orange County (and no one, not ever, called it the goddamn O.C.), behind you was where I lived, and to the right was Thousand Oaks. I would get my dad to drive me down there when I could. It was an escape, a place I could get into endless trouble. My Thousand Oaks friends were the friends who got me drunk for the first time (I think only a couple of days after the events I am about to relate). It's where I ended up sprawled on the hood of a cop car because I was sporting a fake beard and bandana and carrying a plastic Uzi for a silly drive-by shooting movie we were making. Turns out, that's illegal. Thousand Oaks was where I had my first date, stupidly selling my twelve-inch Macross transformable plane so I could buy the girl a bracelet. Too bad she got all serious on my little boy ass and demanded I go to her church the next day to meet her friends. I refused, we broke up, and I learned a valuable lesson about Catholic girls.

YOUNG OFFENDER*

Thousand Oaks is where I climbed into my friend Jeff's red Suzuki Samurai with three other guys and a bucket full of water balloons. Jeff had just bought a cassette of Music for the Masses. By the end of that night, I'd have heard it five or six times in a row, with special emphasis placed on the singles. "Behind the Wheel" and "Never Let Me Down Again" ("I'm taking a ride with my best friend") were particularly apropos for a night of tearing shit up in a buddy's car.

Actually, we had started listening to it back at Rico's house, playing it on a boom box while we messed around in his pool and hot tub. (Rico sometimes reads this. Hey, Rico!) Rico's house was where I always stayed. He had my dad fooled into thinking he was a good kid, just like I had his parents fooled into thinking I was, too. And essentially, we were. We did very little that was truly rotten. It was all mainly mischief. The worst thing we did that night, for instance, was try the vodka his dad had left out by the barbeque when no one was looking. To a man, we all spit it out immediately. One guy, I think Jeff, spit onto the fire and it exploded. "Why did people drink something that was flammable?" We just couldn't understand.

By the time we were in the car, I was already digging Depeche Mode. They were not the band I had expected them to be. There was "Strangelove" with its chants of "Pain, will you return it?" and the religiosity of "Sacred" and those weird sucking sounds on "I Want You Now." Like a lot of the other bands I was starting to get into around then, something struck me about them, that they were different, that this was somehow outside what the other kids were listening to. It was music I would probably want to hide from my father because he might think it's too bizarre, while secretly wanting to play it for him on the off-chance he would say, "Wow, that stuff is really smart. You're smart. Why was it that your sister listened to such crap?" That would be vindication. It was my sister's odd choices of what she would play in the car that had made me cautious. I remember the night she put on James Taylor of all things, and there was some song full of sexual double entendres about being a steam roller and other rather coarse metaphors, and at one point Sweet Baby James dropped the F-bomb, and whoaaaaa, look out! If it was going to be dirty, it had to be cacophonous so that his old man ears would not be able to translate. How many times had I played the first Beastie Boys record and him never catch on to how filthy it was?

Anyway, that's a huge digression.

It's a Friday night and you have four teenage boys feeding off each other's testosterone in the back of a jeep convertible with Music for the Masses blaring and, as I said, buckets full of water balloons. I don't know whose idea it was, but we were going to go out that night and we were going to throw water balloons at people on the street. That, dear reader, is unparalleled fun. Any time you can slam unsuspecting people with water, it's fun. In junior high, when I still lived with my mom, there was a BB hole in my window. (There were similar holes in windows all over the neighborhood. Legend had it some dude had gone crazy and went around shooting everything with his BB gun.) I had a syringe my dad had bought for his horses, and it's nose was just the right size to fit through the hole. I could spend all night squirting people on the street from my second story vantage. Later, when I was driving myself, I turned the windshield cleaning nozzles sideways so I could spray pedestrians and cars as I passed. I also swerved quite often to hit puddles and douse people on the curb.

Let me tell you. It never stopped being funny. None of it.

We were amped to go out and blast some people with balloons. Our initial efforts were slightly frustrated by the learning curve. Our brains had not yet comprehended certain scientific notions about throwing an object from a moving vehicle, and so we had to figure out when it was best to fire. As the night and supplies were dwindling, we had achieved very little success. There had been one direct hit on a suburban street, with Rico landing a balloon dead center on some guy's windshield, but when he stopped and was turning around to chase us, we had to park in a darkened cul-de-sac and hide in the bushes a little while. That was our second lesson: hit people who can't come after you.

Our enthusiasm would have likely waned had it not been for Music for the Masses. It never stopped being exciting when Jeff would crank it when one of the singles came on. They were louder songs to begin with, outlined in big noise. "The Things You Said" also became a big favorite, its sparse melody soundtracking passing urban mini-mall landscapes perfectly. I could see the world like I was in the credits of some cop movie, looking for skells on my nightly beat, the song playing over a montage of brick walls and grafitti. "Pleasure, Little Treasure" had a beat you wanted to put your shoulders into. Its odd mix of Gahan's low growl and Gore's exaggerated falsetto, and the lyrics about living now because this exact moment was the only true thing, made it seem like we were free and capable of anything.

It was noted that we only had a couple of balloons left. Basically, enough for one shot each. This would be our last chance. We had to make it count. I was in the shotgun position at that point, and I spotted an intersection full of people up ahead. "Crosswalk!" I shouted. "Crosswalk!"

Everyone was at the ready. As Jeff went through the light, we began to throw. I was one of the first two, hitting one person while whoever else had lobbed their balloon had hit another. We were scoring! Only, our big target had not yet been reached.

"Bike!"

Beyond the two pedestrians we had beaned, there was a kid with a big afro lazily biking in the direction coming towards us. I don't quite understand now how this all worked out, because really, we hadn't that much time to get across the street. Maybe the first two hits were on the sidewalk before the intersection, I don't know. It was just one of those moments where time slowed down. They say fighter pilots and exceptional athletes have this ability to function in an altered speed. It looks fast to the observer, but within their mind, they are performing complex actions in what feels to them like a very normal, unrushed space.

We had entered that space. "Sitting target/ Sitting waiting/ Anticipating/ Nothing."

Having realized that I was out of the final attack unless I got my hands on something, I turned around to the back seat and grabbed the bucket. It had no balloons, of course, but there was a layer of water at the bottom of it, the residue of busted bombs. It was mine now.

In the intersection, we met the bicyclist in the middle. He was illuminated in the headlights of the traffic waiting at the stop signal. Time was still at a crawl as I heaved the water from the bucket. It cascaded over him, exploding into tiny droplets that lit up like fireworks in the headlights. As my tsunami drenched him, I saw the final balloons enter his airspace. First one hit him in the torso, then the second was a direct shot to his head. A trifecta!

Needless to say, we all about died laughing. Victory had been ours. Jeff drove us back to Rico's place, and we all went upstairs to bask in our glory. We called another friend, Frank--whose house was the one we would end up getting drunk at--and told him what we had done. His response was lame. "How could you do that?" he asked. "What's that guy going to tell his father when he gets home?" Frank's reward for being a buzzkill was us waiting outside his house and nailing him with a couple of balloons to his body. We'd let him explain it to his dad and inform us how it went.

That night, I walked away with a new set of cruel little-boy memories. I also walked away with a new obsession. I would have to have my own copy of Music for the Masses so I could listen to it back up in Quartz Hill and remember what life was like down in civilization. Soon, other Depeche Mode albums would follow. Some Great Reward was probably second, and then somewhere along the way, the greatest of them all, Black Celebration. I would ditch class in my senior year of high school to buy Violator when the store opened on its day of release, getting back in time for lunch and being the only kid on campus to have it. It would later become the bonding album for Mason and Laine in Cut My Hair, that's how important Depeche Mode would become. They even show up again to bring another loving couple together in Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?

It was Music for the Masses that did it, though. And not via some sad boys sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves, but some rowdy teens out having an indecently good time. As the song suggested, we wanted the feeling to go on forever.

"We're flying high
We're watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back down
On the ground."

NOTABLE B-SIDES: There were lots of good tracks hidden on the backs of the four Music for the Masses singles, but the most unconventional were the two songs released on the most obscure of them, "Little 15." They were solo piano pieces, one written by Martin Gore and one by Ludwig Beethoven. The former was called "Stjarna" on the original vinyl, and later printed as "St Jarna" on the CD. The original is likely what was intended, it's the Swedish word for "star." It's a soft piece with gently climbing scales, with subtle effects in the background (a triangle? xylophone?). It's construction is similar to the Beethoven selection, "Sonata No.14 in C#m (Moonlight Sonata," played here with no added adornment (probably by Alan Wilder). Both are exercises in repetition, layering on simple melodies that build as they progress. At that age, I knew nothing of classical music, and in a way, these B-sides opened a door, teaching me something about the beauty that was possible in more traditional forms.

* Yes, I did just mix my Pet Shop Boys with my Depeche Mode, trainspotter.

#52 #51 #50 #49 #48 #47 #46 #45 #44 #43 #42 #41 #40 #39 #38 #37 #36 #35 #34 #33 #32 #31

Reminder: As always, this post is full of links to Amazon. Click on any one of them when shopping, and Amazon will shave a few pennies off their take to give to me. So, if my reviews make you all hot and bothered and you just have to own one of the things I'm talking about, use my link and contribute to buying me more stuff to review. (Those reading a Live Journal feed will likely have to click to the actual blog page first before heading over to Amazon, though.) Either way, thanks for reading.

Current Soundtrack: Depeche Mode, "Suffer Well/The Darkest Star/Better Days" remixes

Current Mood: disappointed

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

I'm cleaning up around here, and I have way too many comic books. This has led me to an eBay auction where you can bid on a box of 200 Oni Press comic books from my stint as editor there (1998-2004, essentially). No doubles, lots of full runs, everything in good condition. My seller's page is HERE. Right now, it's at less than 10 cents a comic. I am also selling a bunch of DVDs, mainly stuff I've reviewed recently.

Not only will you help me clear out my house, but you can help defray costs for my promo stuff for San Diego. I am planning on making a set of buttons for my forthcoming books--The Everlasting, Love the Way You Love, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her--as well as a small 12 Reasons ash can that Keith Wood is designing right now. It's a good cause!

Current Soundtrack: a mix for someone that I have been working on for almost a week now, so it better be the best mix ever

Current Mood: Chinese & long (or so I'm told)

IT HURTS TO SEE YOU DANCE SO WELL

This week's new DVDTalk reviews:
* Saviour of the Soul, a campy Hong Kong action film from 1991, starring Andy Lau and co-written by Wong Kar-Wai
* The Scarlet Letter (1934 version)
* The Uninvited, a nonsensical Korean horror film

In other news, Greg McElhatton has given The Everlasting a nice plug in his final "Things to Come" column for Ninth Art (let the mourning begin). Though, for the record, hair gel? Is this 1996? Is Dippity-Do still in business?

Current Soundtrack: The Pipettes, We Are the Pipettes

Current Mood: restless

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

ANGELS ON SILVER STRINGS HANG FROM ABOVE

The above is the first time you are seeing the interior illustration of Lance that Chynna did for The Everlasting. That is, unless you've already been to the Pulse today, where they have run it with the second of the deleted scenes, "Moon On Your Pyjamas." Click over and give it a read.

Still mulling over how you're going to buy The Everlasting? How would you feel about getting 50% off? Discount Comic Book Service, which comes to me highly recommended, is offerring the book for $9.97. Go to their site and search "Everlasting."

I've started receiving the actual laid-out text for the book this morning. There's no turning back now!

Current Soundtrack: Morrissey, "Youngest Was the Most Loved" B-sides; ACO, Absolute Ego

Current Mood: anxious

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

I HEARD IT FROM MY FRIENDS ABOUT THE THINGS YOU SAID

Big sweetheart Sarah Grace McCandless gave me a gorgeous quote for the back of The Everlasting:

Jamie S. Rich's The Everlasting is a wonderfully engaging, clever, and heartbreaking tale. His honest and tender prose about the complex world of relationships resonates like a bittersweet soundtrack of love and loss.

Isn't that swell? I'm a quarter into Sarah's own excellent second novel, The Girl I Wanted To Be, and her prose has gotten wonderfully evocative while also being lyrically economical. As I told her, she gets done in five words what takes me ten. You should all go out and get it. Christine Norrie did the cover:

Sarah is on tour. Visit her if she's coming to your town.

Current Soundtrack: King of Queens, because sometimes a sitcom rerun is the perfect thing after work

Current Mood: loved

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

DO YOU REMEMBER MINNIE?

For those of you out there who have been waiting, the Stolen Sweets have their debut album available for ordering from CDBaby: Shuffle Off To Buffalo.

I went to their show celebrating the release at the Aladdin last night, and it was one of their best I've ever seen. The sound was amazing, and they had guest musicians on drums, cello, and violin. Erin kindly invited Joëlle and I to the after party, as well, and drinks were shared.

The link gives you a chance to listen to the record, as well, so please, sample the wares.

Current Soundtrack: Simon & Garfunkel, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme

Current Mood: fey

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

PERMANENT RECORDS: I KISSED YOUR LIPS AND BROKE YOUR HEART

Permanent Records is a year-long project. Each Friday (or thereabouts), I will post a new entry about one specific album, chosen due to its significance to myself as a fan. Though the list is numbered, a particular record's placement should not be considered a ranking. There will be 52 albums in all.

This endeavor is based on a concept started by Chris Tamarri at Crisis/Boring Change. It has since been expanded as a concept, as Neal Shaffer takes on a study of album covers over at Leftwich.

31. ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK - UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991)
Executive Producers: Wim Wenders & Jonathan Taplin
Executive Music Producers: Gary Goetzman & Sharon Boyle
Label: Warner Bros.

Music nerds know the value of a good compilation. In fact, I'm surprised more of us don't give up the dream of being in a band and instead start dreaming about putting together the greatest comps of all the time. What else have all those mixed tapes and CDs been for if not a dry run for our stab at glory? A slot in the "Various Artists" section!

There is a tricky art to putting these things together, be it a loose gathering of current hits or a themed release or a soundtrack. Sure, it seems easy to create a good collection. Throw a bunch of songs together, and if the material is good enough, people will listen to it. Yet, arrange the songs in the right way, and you've got yourself a bonafide record. Even the producers of the Now! series understand that. Do a little reading up on them. They have a very specific formula for how they sequence the songs on each disc. Despite how slapdash they might appear, they are thinking about how the Now! CDs will sound at a party, how they will roll through the night.

The most impressive compilations, however, are the ones where the producer manages to pull together a host of disparate groups and create an album that sounds like a real album. This is what German film director Wim Wenders did when he created the soundtrack to his film Until the End of the World.

Released in 1991, Until the End of the World predates the concept of an "executive album producer," where one hotshot record guy is hired to create new material for the sole purpose of shifting units, like Trent Reznor doing Lost Highway or Missy Elliot and Timbaland on Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Until the End of the World isn't a gimmick album, either, where there is a common approach adopted for all the songs, like pairing up hard rock bands with rappers and techno artists the way they did for Spawn or Blade II. No, this disc is an old fashioned soundtrack album. Until the End of the World is a collection of songs given to Wenders for use as musical cues in the actual film.

It's hard to say what set the tone for the album. There are four interlude pieces taken from Graeme Revell's musical score, but the rest of the songs are from all over the place. Revell's short pieces do end up tying the elements together, but were they given to the bands as an indication of what to go for, or was it just smart choosing on Wenders' part when he asked the bands to participate? Of the fifteen songs, only one--U2's title track--ended up appearing on an album that predated the soundtrack. Later, Elvis Costello, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds would end up using their songs on albums or, more commonly, as B-sides, but this disc was the first place to get them. I doubt that Revell switched his gears to match what Wenders collected. All that has been publicly acknowledged is that Wenders asked each artist to consider what they thought their music might sound like in the far-flung future of 1999. Surely, that would lead to widely varied opinions. So, what then?

Well, I kind of set myself up with a question there that I don't know how to answer. And even if I did, it would likely distract us from the true idea here. The success of the Until the End of the World soundtrack album is the arrangement of the material, regardless of how it was created. It's good that I mentioned the Revell pieces, as they divide the record up into three sides, their titles providing a cue for the theme of each section.

The album begins with Revell's "Opening Titles," designed to lead us into the experience. A two-minute snippet with melancholy strings, chanting, and whale cries, it folds into our first entry from an outside band: "Sax & Violins" by Talking Heads. Fittingly, the opening lines of "Sax & Violins" are, "Falling falling/ Gonna drop like a stone/ I'm falling through the atmosphere." Wenders' film is a futuristic experience, and lyrically we are being told that the music for the film is going to be something otherworldly, as well. Talking Heads have provided Wenders with a song that is equal in merit to the U2 contribution as a theme song. "Sax & Violins" speaks of being on the run, of traveling and looking for home, and provides the credo "Love keeps us together/ Love will keep us alive." Love will also, we're told, "drive us insane."

Until the End of the World is a road trip, and the soundtrack becomes a journey, as well. A lot of the early songs are about getting things going. Neneh Cherry's song is actually called "Move With Me (Dub)," and "The Adversary" by Crime & the City Solution compels the listener to "run to me." Along with this feeling of movement, there is a sense of seasons--and hence, time--passing, like on Julee Cruise's cover of "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" or Elvis Costello doing a spin on "Days" from the Kinks. Each comes with a sense of loss, of romance fading and disconnection. This becomes most apparent on R.E.M.'s "Fretless," with its refrain of "Don't talk to me about being alone," which eventually breaks down into just "Don't talk to me."

This is very much the predicament of the film's heroine, Claire, who must get out of her lonely, claustrophobic life to find something new, to reconnect to the world, to reconnect to her heart. Thus, these first eight songs lead us to "Claire's Theme." Only, this very personal snippet breaks into something larger. The second movement of Until the End of the World takes on a mortal urgency. The three songs here in this category are concerned with the violence inherent in the film's title: the end of life as we know it and everything else along with it.

Nick Cave leads with "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World," a saloon sing-along about a man in love caught up in a violent city, trying to escape to get back to his soulmate, with her "eyes black as coal and [her] long, dark curls." The song has one of my favorite descriptive lines of all time: "this town full of men with big mouths and no guts." (I like to use that these days to cheekily explain why I won't date smart girls anymore. They have big mouths and no guts. Har!) The tune creates a sense of urgency, it speeds up the trip. The car is powered by love, but it has to be strong enough, or only death remains. Patti and Fred Smith continue this on "It Takes Time."

"...we are swept to encircle dawn
Strapped in a low car
Racing thru silence
Trumpeting bliss
You could kiss the world
goodbye

...

Destiny's hand
Moved, by love
Drawn by the whispering shadows
Into the mathematics
of our desire ."

It's up to Depeche Mode to take it all the way and fulfill the promise the Talking Heads made back on track 1. Byrne and co. suggested this could all happen, the escape could be made and one could return home (both concepts are tied together throughout the album), "If lovers discover/ That ev'ryone dies." Depeche Mode crystallizes all of that on "Death's Door," a jazzy, organ-grinding number sung by the band's songwriter Martin Gore. There is no more skirting around the idea that breaking free from the constraints of life and returning to one's roots are the same thing. "Death's Door" is a gospel about returning home, whereupon the singer will be no more. Yet, the song is more of an elegiac. "Father, I am staying," he says in the final lines, "I'm coming home." There is acceptance, there is resolve.

Meaning there can also be love. The final act of the CD is begun by Revell's "Love Theme," and the next three songs that follow are all concerned with romance that transcends the bounds of our mortality and the earthly plane. The titles speak for themselves: "Calling All Angels" (Jane Siberry & k.d. lang), "Humans From Earth" (T-Bone Burnett), and "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" (Daniel Lanois). The Siberry and lang track even ties right into "Death's Door," starting with the invocation of saints and the lyric, "a man is placed upon the steps/ a baby cries/ and high above you can hear the church bells start to ring." The journey Gore's figure was on, the rest he sought, has been found, and now some peace can be achieved--preferably in a lover's arms.

U2's song, linked here with Revell's "Finale," is the summing up. "Until the End of the World" is a rocker that plays with the duality of the overall experience. Set at a party, it details lovers who indulge in the debauchery while trying to pull away, who hurt while they also love, and who ultimately swear to see each other through to the big finish. It places a lid tightly on what Wenders was going for, sending the listener spinning off into the cosmos on a swirling guitar riff and propulsive drums.

Musically, most of what Wenders has here is of a quieter feel. Cave likes to pound his piano, and Cruise is jazzy where Cherry is more dancey and rhythmic, but Wenders knows how to let the moods roll together. Listen to how well Crime & the City Solution's lower level drones go into Lou Reed's fuzzy funeral dirge opening for "What's Good," and then Can's "Last Night Sleep," with the almost Gregorian humming, speaking in tongues, and tribal drums. It's seamless. A lot of that definitely comes from his own tastes, and some of these bands are linked beyond this collection, but I think the greater strength, as I've tried to show, comes from Wenders arranging Until the End of the World the album as if it were Until the End of the World the movie. He's found a narrative in the songs, and he's organized them to tell that story: lovers finding a connection on the run, facing death, and then accepting solace in each other. These are songs about bonds formed through tragedy.

And yet, for all that explaining, it still feels like I've tried to grab something ephemeral. I feel like the true description has slipped between my fingers, leaked down in between my computer keys. Trying to understand what makes a great compilation great is like trying to figure out exactly why a more conventional record or a film or a novel works. If I knew exactly how Wim Wenders does what he does, I'd be Wim Wenders. So, I can only chase his lovers, try to trace their steps, and maybe end up in the same spot as they did--I listen to the music and glimpse something of the great beyond.

#52 #51 #50 #49 #48 #47 #46 #45 #44 #43 #42 #41 #40 #39 #38 #37 #36 #35 #34 #33 #32

Reminder: As always, this post is full of links to Amazon. Click on any one of them when shopping, and Amazon will shave a few pennies off their take to give to me. So, if my reviews make you all hot and bothered and you just have to own one of the things I'm talking about, use my link and contribute to buying me more stuff to review. (Those reading a Live Journal feed will likely have to click to the actual blog page first before heading over to Amazon, though.) Either way, thanks for reading.

Current Soundtrack: Roddy Frame, Western Skies

Current Mood: calm

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

NEW AMUSEMENTS

A morning of peeking in on the scattered thoughts in my brain...

* Comic Foundry features me in the "Amusements" column in their newest issue, which went live today. GO HERE to see lists of some of my most recent distractions. So far, I only watched Dial M For Murder off my "to be watched" selections. I jumped ship to view The Pornographers in honor of its director, Shohei Imamura, who died on Tuesday.

* I just got off the phone with the White House. Call 1-202-456-1111 and let them know that you don't really think it's kosher to make prejudicial opinions about marriage part of our Constitution. Then try to work the same sentiment into all of your conversations on the phone today, so that when they are going over the transcripts, it will keep popping up. Suport the Human Rights Campaign.

* Was anybody else disappointed by Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100? I love Paul, and the book was a gorgeous meal for my eyes, but I felt like I got this kind of action out of his last run on THB. Plus, it was much better written the last time around. The dialogue kept bugging me for some reason. Like he had cut up a pulp novel and then ripped the clippings in half and pasted them into balloons. I'd still give it a solid B as a Popey lark, but I can't wait for his next project of depth. It's been too long since 100%.

* Music-wise, Thom Yorke's The Eraser is sort of what you expect when a guy like that breaks off and does a solo record: a slightly twee, tinkly sidebar. I assume he's pretty much played the whole thing himself, and as a result, it comes off like Radiohead demos before the real wizards come in and make them mega. Not as bad as Damon Albarn's slapdash Democrazy but not the sticky fun of Gruff Rhys' Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, somewhere more like those Nicky Wire outings that showed up on B-sides off of the Manics' Lifeblood. An okay appetizer, Thom, but we like you best with those other guys.

* On the other hand, the new Christina Aguilera single(?), "Ain't No Other Man," is crazy good. It's less the trad' jazz we've been promised, and more funk and soul. My favorite thing, though, is how she opens it up with a completely pointless vocal run. In one way, it sounds like a eff-ewe to the critics who give her crap for always showing off that way, and in another, like when a rapper has a comeback single and insists on announcing his or herself (a la "Shady's back, back again," "This is a Missy Elliott exclusive," etc.). Bottom line: I still love Christina Aguilera.

Current Soundtrack: The Postal Service, Give Up (shove it; I live in the pacific NW and sometimes need to put on a cardigan and join the herd. plus, it still satisfies despite its ubiquitousness)

Current Mood: lethargic

mailto:golightly@confessions123.com* The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich

THE WORKS OF LAST YEAR'S MAN

"Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee"

Jamie: Year 2

Today is my real birthday. I am two years old.

My second year was better than my first. I am fitter, happier, healthier than I have ever been in my life. I may not have produced as much as I did in my first year as a full-time writer, but I am seeing more things come to fruition, pushing my career forward in ways I had only imagined possible.

In the last 365 days:

* I put The Everlasting into production; it will be at the printer in two weeks and published in two months via Oni Press.
* Wrote the second and third scripts for Love the Way You Love, and have sent the first to the printer; it will be released in four weeks. The script for #4 is already started. Marc Ellerby is drawing.
* co-wrote the Love the Way You Love theme song, to be recorded in early July
* wrote first 46,000 words of Have You Seen The Horizon Lately? (goal for completion: 80-100K; end of summer)
* wrote two short comic book stories for anthologies, one already published in the Belle & Sebastian anthology
* 2 completed prose short stories ("Send Me My Best Regrets" and "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat"); started a third, as yet untitled
* one short story, "Chevelu," accepted by Bottle Rocket magazine, to be published in July in their inaugural issue
* an online prose serial ("Yoga Girls" - 17,000 words) published last summer; and the first draft of a second ("Romeo May Be Bleeding, But Mercutio is Dead" - 13,600 words) to be serialized in August
* pitched Dog Man Star to 33 1/3; rejected (you can't win them all)
* basic pitch for a licensed comic book series; currently no progress
* article for Strangetown #1
* continued "Can You Picture That?"
* started scripting a crime graphic novel, You Have Killed Me, to be drawn by Joëlle Jones; 1/4 complete
* 21 manga/manwha scripts
* Maintained the weekly deadlines of the "Permanent Records" series
* Started reviewing for DVD Talk; 13 reviews so far

I collected 57 rejection letters from agents, publishers, and magazines last year. That's more than one a week, and it's up from the 7 I had garnered the previous year. So, while the writing may not have been as prolific, I was working it harder. Amidst all this, I wasn't dragged down, but rather, learned a stronger lesson about myself and what I wanted to do. I fortified my resolve to be an independent creator, to pursue my own goals on my own terms.

It's funny, because I've been thinking a lot about the issue of how things get done. On the Mr. Arkadin DVD, the Orson Welles biographers doing the commentary track argue that Welles is miscast as a failed Hollywood player when in reality he was a successful independent filmmaker. He began with Citizen Kane, where he had absolute control from within the system, and the rest of his career was a fight to try to maintain that control, to go against restraint. This made him a prototype for a more recently acquired hero, John Cassavetes. As an actor, Cassavetes had been in the system, as well, and he learned that there was a better way.

It's fascinating to me that in movies and music, we celebrate mavericks who do their own thing. There is no shame in being independent, it's admirable. It's the road less traveled. In book publishing, however, there seems to be disdain for it. If you self-publish, you are met with skepticism. If you choose a smaller or alternative route, it's merely a stepping stone. Everyone wants the big contract, they want the big money. Of course, when big money is involved, the people shelling out the dough are going to want to have their say, and the author has to surrender control. Essentially, you're asking to be paid up front so people can interfere with your work. What end does that serve you artistically? Isn't it better to maintain your grip and gamble on yourself in the long run?

Comics is almost like a middle ground. We've had a healthy independent scene for decades now. I've spoken often about how it was when I was a teenager reading Comico and First and Eclipse comics. It seemed to me then that creator-owned work was a step up. Artists and writers paid their dues in the mainstream to be rewarded with their own series. Frank Miller did Daredevil to get the weight to do Ronin and then Dark Knight lead to Sin City. I remember Matt Wagner as a rebel who bucked that system, doing his own stuff and then turning to the mainstream on his terms. That to me was the way it should be done. Make them come to you.

That opinion has shifted over the years. Right now, the larger readership often seems to think that indie comics are the trenches. You live in indentured servitude until they give you the keys to the kingdom and let you write The Defenders. Well, I say nuts to that. I'm growing my own beef, why do I want to go make hamburgers at McDonald's?

Which, yes, sounds very harsh. I don't mean to besmirch people who want to pursue their dreams of working in mainstream comics, or even writers who would rather be part of the larger publishing system. If that works for them, that works for them. In fact, I think a greater respect should be given to those who somehow pull off both (beyond Messrs. Miller and Wagner, I have many friends who do: Rucka, Bendis, Fraction, Ellis--to name a talented few). I'm not even adverse to trying it myself someday. After all, Godard conceded to make a film for big money producers, and the result was Contempt (oh, titular irony). It's just that people ask me all the time when I will write for the "Big Two," and I wonder, does the guy drawing Legion of Superheroes ever get asked when he's going to do creator-owned work? Should it matter? I'm my own Big One*. I'm pursuing the way that works for me, and I'm simply shocked that more people don't do it. "And a pretty woman in her darkened door,/ She cried to me, 'Hey, why not ask for more?'"

This is where I stand. I am fierce in my convictions. I am proud of what I am doing, and I can't imagine there is a better way for me to do it.

I am two years old, and I've only just begun. I thank you all for standing behind this crazy old fool in his rantings and ravings. If I truly am mad, thanks for indulging me; when I fail and sell out, please forgive me; and when it's good, just enjoy it.

* The "Bite the Big One" jokes are a freebie. Have at it!

Current Soundtrack: Leonard Cohen, The Best Of...

Current Mood: accomplished

mailto:golightly@confessions123.com* The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich