Comic Review: Old City Blues 2

    Giannis Milonogiannis takes us back to New Athens, 2049. More cases of cyber-crime hit the city, and the Special Police have to figure it out and take it down. The second volume of this old-school style cyberpunk comic series is more of the same. But that same is some very enjoyable stuff.

    The writing is quick and confident. The art leans far more into the realm of manga/anime than I like, but not so far that I couldn’t make my way through. A lot of Cyberpunk anime draws pretty blatantly from William Gibson specifically among genre titans, and this does the same. I was frequently reminded of Count Zero and some stories from Burning Chrome.  Evil megacorporation; scientist pushing things too far, cyber-psychosis, the slums, cyborgs, and some explosions. But it’s all handled well, and worth reading for genre fans.

-Matthew J. Constantine

What I’m Listening To (1/21/14)

    I thought I’d try a new feature here on In the Mouth of Dorkness, focusing on one of the parts of my nerdiness that I don’t talk about all that much, my love of music.  I am not an audiophile.  I don’t have an opinion on vinyl.  I don’t have any kind of education in music theory, and I didn’t spend my high school years living in an indi music store, talking to all the people in local bands.  Heck, I’m not a fan of the Beetles, Bob Dylan, or Michael Jackson.  I’m just a dork who listens to music and is always glad to find something new.

    For a long time, I would joke that everyone I listen to was dead.  That isn’t the case anymore, thankfully.  Over the last ten years or so, I’ve found several active, productive bands and artists that I can now look forward to hearing new music from.  You’ll notice I don’t stick to one genre, nor do I tend to explore any genre too deeply.  I may love Ministry, for example, but not go for a lot of other respected Industrial bands.  I may find myself listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins, but not go in for Albert King.  And I go through moods, phases where I’ll be very into a certain type of music, to the exclusion of all others.  And then out of nowhere, I’ll be on to something different.

    I don’t know how often I’ll post one of these.  My moods often last for a few weeks at least, so I might go quite a while without new music to talk about.  Hopefully no less than once a month, I’ll write up some of the albums and songs I’m most in tune with …Oh, puns…at a given time.  Of course, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.  Most of the music I discover comes from two sources, movie soundtracks and friends.  On the rare occasion I listen to the radio, it’s NPR, so I don’t hear new music there, and am generally unaware of whatever thing is ‘hot’ right now.

Without further blather…Oh, wait, with further blather…here’s what I’m currently listening to:

Artist: M.I.A.
Album: Kala
    I’ve been dimly aware of M.I.A. for quite some time, but never given her much attention.  I knew she had that song with the guns going off that was featured in Pineapple Express (Paper Planes) and I knew she was from Sri Lanka (well, born in England) because of some dialog in the movie Hanna.  But other than that, nothing.  After catching a couple of her tunes on YouTube for some reason or another, I got hooked and picked up Kala.  Right off, I was into it.  As a young teen, I was listening to a lot of early rap, N.W.A. and Public Enemy mostly.  And that’s what M.I.A. reminded me of straight away.  There was a raw, garage sound to the music, but also a vitality you tend to miss in big studio albums.  Add to that samples of music and instruments from around the world and it’s a crazy mix of sounds that’s infinitely danceable, but also layered enough to concentrate on.  As a long time Cyberpunk junky, I couldn’t help but think of this as being the sound of the Sprawl.  I wanted to take out my copy of Count Zero and jack in.  The weakest two tracks on the album, XR2 and Come Around are still perfectly listenable.  Ten of the twelve tracks were instant classics in my mind.  If I were pressed to name my favorite tracks, I guess I’d have to go with Bird Flu and $20.

Artist: Kate Nash
Album:  Girl Talk
    I find something very charming about Kate Nash’s lowbrow London accent and awkward relationship stresses.  When her new album came out, I picked it up, but I wasn’t quite in that mood, so it sat by my desk for a while.  When I finally popped it up on my playlist, I was kind of surprised by it, but pleasantly so.  While she’s still singing a lot about the struggles with love, betrayal, and confusion, and she still has that Rose from Doctor Who accent, the music has a much more polished and produced sound to it.  But where some performers loose their heart when the glitz is added, Nash seems to have kept her harsh edge.  There’s a retro vibe to it, tapping into 80s punky flare and even a bit of rockabilly.  I really like Part Heart and Sister, and You’re So Cool I’m so Freaky is cute.  Plus, the song Labyrinth is based on…the movie Labyrinth.  So, that’s cool.  Rap for Rejection is probably the weakest track.  It just doesn’t quite work.  Overall, the album is pretty good if you’re in the mood for her sort of music.  This is good post break-up music.  Or maybe, it’s really bad post break-up music.

This tune needs more propellers!

Artist:  George Antheil
Album:  Antheil: Ballet Mécanique, Serenade For String Orchestra
    While recently reading the book Heddy’s Folly, I was introduced to the rather odd character of George Antheil, who seems to have been trying to make Industrial music within the cultural and technological constraints of early 20th Century orchestral work.  Well I just had to listen to this guy’s stuff.  Interestingly, like the author Robert W. Chambers, he was quite popular at one time, but has now fallen off of most people’s radar.  I was able to find a CD and give it a listen.  It’s pretty intense.  Ballet Mécanique is darned intense.  His desire to make mechanical music, music as written and performed by machines was pretty out there.  I feel like there’s some similarity to Gershwin, though you’d never mistake one for the other.  Perhaps just elements of the times in which they were working.  If you haven’t listened to Antheil’s music, it’s something to check out for sure.

Artist:  Magnet
Album:  The Wicker Man (soundtrack)
    I recently started work on a script for a horror movie.  The idea started as a kind of modern day pagan tale, but has evolved away from that.  However, part of the vibe I imagined when I started has remained, that of the 70s pagan/psychic/Satanist type horror films, like The Wicker Man, The Exorcist, or The Fury.  In keeping with that, I’ve been kicking around the soundtrack of The Wicker Man, which is so much of its time.  I love it.  I can imagine the slightly oranged film footage, the tweed jackets, and the subtle hint of sinister post-hippie madness.  The whole album, from the saucy, beer soaked tune The Landlord’s Daughter, to the dreamy Willow’s Song is quite good and evocative.

    That’s all for now.  I’m sure I’ll be having some kind of tectonic shift in listening soon as it often changes in a big way with the seasons.

It might as well be spring...

-Matt

Book Review: Yes is the Answer

“This wasn’t rock music.  Was it?  It couldn’t be rock music.  It sounded like science.” -Joe Meno page 266

    I was probably 12 or so when I first heard Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.  I didn’t know what it was.  But I knew it was for me.  Considering how well adjusted I am today, it may come as a bit of a shock to readers that I was a pretty weird kid.  Thanks to parents with distinct and different musical tastes, and two much older brothers with different and distinct musical tastes, I grew up in a household filled with a multi-generational cornucopia of sound.  My mom’s taste was rooted fairly strongly in the 50s, with a dash of light classical.  My dad’s in the 60s, with dashes of I don’t even know what.  My brother Tom was into hard rock and punk.  My brother Bill was into psychedelic rock and blues.  And in what turns out to be a blueprint for my life, I sampled a bit of everything and came out with a jumbled mess of a bit from column A and a bit from row 8.  Give me the broken glass rage of Ministry’s Stigmata, the thunderous pomp of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung, the smooth sounds of Dean Martin, the tinny pluck of Josephine Baker, or the poppy awkwardness of Kate Nash.  I like a little of this, and a little of that.  And one of the things I like, I found out is called Prog Rock (Progressive Rock).  It was an attempt to take music in a new direction; it was the music that was going to carry us into the future.  And I never realized that like so much else in my life, it isn’t cool to like Prog Rock.

These guys seem pretty cool to me.

    But I didn’t know it wasn’t cool.  And I didn’t know it had a name.  I just knew that when I heard Brain Salad Surgery, my mind was totally blown.  I was just discovering the weird and wonderful world of fantasy and science fiction literature and art, with Michael Morcock, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rodney Matthews, and Frank Frazetta.  And suddenly, it all had a soundtrack.  Soundscapes that carried me to other worlds, flying through ruins of ancient civilizations, battling impossible creatures and machines.  It was as epic as Beethoven, but plugged in.  And I mean plugged in.  It wasn’t just electric, it was cybernetic; like William Gibson’s black ice, hunting me inside my own mind.  To this day, I have never taken any kind of psychoactive drug (or anything stronger than flu meds).  But I feel like I floated through purple haze and ran with Lucy through fields of gumdrops.  When I popped in the cassette (much later, the CD), slid the giant headphones on like a knight's helmet, closed my eyes, and cranked it up…my mind expanded and I felt like the universe opened up.  Matt’s 12 (through 21) year old brain...Blew.  The f*%k.  Up.

    Turns out, I listened to a lot of Prog Rock over the years without ever really knowing it.  I just listened to things I liked.  I could never get into Yes, in the same way I could never get into Mozart.  They were fine on a technical level, but didn’t engage me on an emotional level.  Yet, like Mozart, it was fine to have on in the background.  I lost my taste for Pink Floyd because of the radio.  Genesis because of Phil Collins.  It would take nearly 20 years for me to sit in the Court of the Crimson King for the first time.  But that crazy, classically influenced, science-fiction inspired madness kept bringing me back.  I think perhaps it was because I grew up (musically speaking) after Prog had its day, I listened without baggage, without expectation.  I could hear a band’s entire output in an afternoon or day, and pick what I liked and what I didn’t, without having to wait a year for a new album; without having to face disappointment.  I didn’t have to live through member changes or directional shifts.  It was just there, laid out before me in toto (and yes, sadly even in Toto).  Growing up with such diverse musical tastes surrounding me, and never feeling connected to people my own age, I was used to being outside my own generation’s taste norm.  To this day, I just hate the 90s.  Yes, absolutely, there are some exceptions.  But musically, I think the 90s is one of the worst times in the history of ever.  It was the music of my high school career, and yet, it was never my music.  And while I eventually experienced a certain nostalgic joy with 80s music, even the stuff I used to hate, the 90s still exists as a psychic vampire, draining my hope and will to live.  There isn't enough bleach in the world to get rid of the Grunge.  So, I never had any kind of shame, or any idea that I should have shame, for loving Prog Rock.

Nothing amiss here.

    I bring all that up, because when I picked up Yes is the Answer, I was hoping to get a good solid understanding of the subgenre, its history, and its legacy.  But, for a good part of the book, what I got was sheepish, foot staring monologs on how ‘it was a different time, and I was young;’ diatribes on why Prog Rock sucks.  Admittedly, some of the essays are quite amusing, self-effacing, and biting.  Some of them also feature interesting glimpses into different times and different places.  The youngest writer seems to be about my age, the oldest somewhere between my brothers and my parents.  They come from places like Spain, England, and California.  But wherever or whenever they’re from, they seem to know that liking Prog Rock isn’t cool, something you shouldn’t admit, and its an embarrassing part of their neurotic pasts.  Each chapter is written by a different author, and their backgrounds are very disparate.  Male and female (though, as almost every writer points out, heavily biased toward the male side), some were in bands, some journalists.  Many are novelists.  But most of them have one thing in common, they don’t like Prog Rock.  Most of them did at one time, or knew someone who was really into it.  Only a couple seem to enjoy it in any way now.  And that’s sad.

Chicks dig a flute player in makeup, right?

    If you’re interested in essays about how music effects our lives in countless ways, about the scene in the late 60s through the early 80s, about growing up and burning out, coming to terms with age, this is a good read with some sad bits, some angry bits, and a lot of very funny bits.  If you’re looking for a celebration of an over the top and grandiose subgenre of music we now call Prog, this ain’t it.   Most of the essays are well written and fast moving.  A couple turned out to be slogs.  And I did get some interesting history, as well as a few new bands to check out.  But it’s overall a mixed bag, and not just because it’s an anthology of essays.  While not nearly as rage inducing, the book smacks of hipsterism, which is the pop-culture equivalent of Communism in the 50s, so far as this cat is concerned.  I can't really recommend it, but I wouldn't advice against reading it either.

Yes is the Answer and other Prog Rock Tales
Editors: Marc Weingarten & Tyson Cornell
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
ISBN: 978-0-9854-020-1

-Matt