consume

35-for-35: 1985 – “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears

November 5, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]First of all, let me point out that the most memorable song of 1985 for me is clearly “These Dreams,” but I’ve already blogged about that, followed by “How Will I Know,” which I’ve already covered, and also “Crazy For You,” which I’ve covered, too.

What a year! That meant for this post I had to go fishing for favorites not by that triumvirate of excellent women. The pickings are a little slimmer on the XY side of the fence, unless I want to go with laughing at Bowie and Jagger on “Dancing In The Streets.”

As I sifted through my music collection, I kept returning to this song, the sound of which evokes “80s” for me more than nearly any other song.

There’s something about the galloping bass and the plaintive melody of the chorus of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” that still brings a positive swirl of butterflies to my stomach every time it begins. (Unlike their ponderous “Head Over Heels,” which still makes me sweat like a fever dream (seriously, I’m getting queasy just thinking about it).)

Maybe that’s because of the swirl of a two-note arpeggiated electric guitar riff that starts the song off fluttering in a major key before it settles into its two chord verse. everybody-wants-to-rule-the-world Whatever the reason, I’m always giddy and than the steady gallop of the bass brings me back to earth as Chris Hughes tells me, “Welcome to your life…”

There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you

Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

There’s a dissonance between the cheerful D-major key of the verses and the ominous lyrics that suggest an ever-watchful big-brother. Only two phrases in the song begin minor – the start of each refrain, and the title of the song. Each time the line begins with Em, the minor second chord, rather than G, the major fourth (which is Em’s relative major).

(In fact, the bridge is approximately what an all-major chorus would sound like, replacing Ems and F#ms with Gs and As. That’s part of what gives it such an explosive, anthemic quality as it bursts from a chorus.)

I love that it’s a memorable song for a baritone-voiced man (and 1985 was a good year for them – it also gave us “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”) I also love its unmemorable guitar solo. There’s really nothing distinct or melodic about it that you might sing along to, but it’s a perfect amount of frantic rising action to create tension leading to the final refrain.

tears-for-fears-songs-from-the-big-chair Then there is the simplistic melody of the chorus, sketching little wedges across the stave on the minor lines as it leaps over and steps down across the tonic, b/ e \b \a, only treating us to a walk across the D on the single major line.

Taken altogether these elements give the song a haunting, almost melancholic quality. The chorus feels like a sudden, paranoid rant cast against the big break to minor. The title has always suggested to me something more sinister about everyone wanting to the rule the world. (The original title was “Everybody Wants to Go To War,” which definitely merited the minor chord!)

“Everybody Wants to Rule The World” was Tears for Fears biggest hit. While it has the same looming dread quality of their other tunes like “Shout” and “Mad World,” all of those songs were methodical and rigid where “Rule The World” shuffles and gallops.

It’s all the dissonance that makes the song memorable – major vs. minor, looseness paired with dread. Rather than plod or hammer, the song is filled with dozens of tiny moments of resolution – something none of the bands other hits can promise.

I think that’s why I still get butterflies.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – WildCATs Special & WildCATs Trilogy #1-3

November 4, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]After WildC.A.T.s managed to wrap up its intended three-issue mini-series in four issues and 10 months it was unclear what the more permanent version of the title would be.

wildcats-v01-special-01 In the gap, WildStorm quickly thrust WildCATs Trilogy, a three-issue mini-series from newly-poached Marvel young gun Jae Lee. It took just six months to complete (that’s sarcasm, by the way), and was accompanied by a single-issue Special #1 from Lee’s remarkable feel-alike protegé Travis Charest (which explicitly states that it fits prior to Trilogy).

Both arrived in time to promote the continuation of the WildCATs mini-series to a full-time ongoing with #5 in fall of 1993. Both also wisely put a heavy focus on Grifter, Voodoo, and Zealot, quickly realizing that the rest of the team is a snoozefest.

The Special issue is an outstanding adventure that proves that the book, its concept, and its cast will have many stories to tell thanks to Voodoo’s status as the only proven Daemonite detector on Earth. Marvel vet Steve Gerber – the co-creator of Howard the Duck! – shows a deftness with set-up scenes that makes the long, slow build-up of this issue as interesting as the brief burst of action that ends it.

On art, Charest does Jim Lee as well (maybe sometimes better?) than Lee, especially with an assist from Lee’s habitual inker Scott Williams.

Trilogy has its gawky moments of art from Jae Lee, who was still a teenager without much experience. Its strength is as an early shot of origin for the magnetic Zealot. Serving that here was a wise choice, as her popularity and narrative power would go on to threaten the team balance of the main book. Spending so much time explaining the Coda in the ongoing title would tip the scales a bit too far away from the rest of the team, but it feels just right in a mini-series.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of this introductory story. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow I tackle Stormwatch #4-5 & Special #1.

Need the issues? WildCATs Trilogy #1-3 was collected in a 1999 TPB as The Way of the Coda, but Special #1 has never been collected. For single issues try eBay or Amazon (Trilogy, Trilogy Alternative Search, & Special) [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – WildCATs Special & WildCATs Trilogy #1-3

35-for-35: 1984 – “When Doves Cry” by Prince

November 4, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]1984 was a year that included a Madonna record – one of my favorite records of all time, actually – Like a Virgin. I could go on and on about that album. Yet, as with yesterday, I have to pluck out a different song to highlight. Unlike yesterday, this song as quite a pedigree.

Why do we scream at each other
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry

“When Doves Cry” may have been the first time I noticed that songs imitated life. I was on the verge of my Madonna obsession that came the following year with endless spins of “Dress You Up” b/w “Shoo-BeeDoo” but it was also the period where my parents were moving towards their separation.

I don’t have a lot of memories from when they were together and together in the same place. There are only two that I can recall clearly, and one was standing on the landing of our staircase listening to them scream at each other.

I always wonder, is that memory so singular because it was the only time they fought in front of me, or because it was frequent?

(Please, mom and dad, don’t comment and ruin the mystery.)

(Due to Prince’s curious vendetta against any of his music appearing online, there are no embeds of the video of “When Doves Cry” to share! Instead, have this early rehearsal footage of him learning the song with his band.)

Despite the dirty electric guitar riffing in the intro and the jaunty piano chords of the refrain, “When Doves Cry” is a sparse song. Prince is singing to an unnamed partner, but to me the song plays out in a locked white room (“a world that’s so cold”) with several Princes, drums, a piano, and some phase effects. There is no bass. Nothing else will enter or depart.

Maybe it is the inside of Prince’s mind, him arguing maybes back and forth, the drum an echo of his heart beating from just below.

How can you just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that’s so cold? (So cold)
Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father too bold
Maybe you’re just like my mother
She’s never satisfied (She’s never satisfied)

I think it says something about me that for over 30 years “When Doves Cry” has always been a song about parents when that amounts to only four lines alone in the context of the bottled lust of the rest of the song.

I have to consciously check in to hear anything else in the song as words other than noises. Like “animals strike curious poses” – I could recite the phrase to you phonetically, but every time I remind myself of the lyrics I quickly forget.

E said a thing to me last night to the effect of, “we’re all just machines executing code we wrote when we were eight years old.” We weren’t talking about “When Doves Cry,” but that’s absolutely what the song is about. At a point, all of the lust and heat in world can’t change your programming. You either add new functions to help correct the old code at the core, or you just keep executing the same mistakes again and again – either the mistakes of your parents or the mistakes you make in reaction to their actions.

All of that meaning is packaged in this hermetically sealed white room of a song with its sparse arrangement, three stanzas, and a chorus. Prince was a genius of both music and the human condition, and also of efficiency. Lines of musical code.

If he could have said it in any fewer words or notes he would have.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #0-4

November 3, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Deathblow was the third book in Jim Lee’s trio of WildStorm launch titles, introducing his own analog to The Punisher – one of his famous runs as a penciller at Marvel in the late 80s.

(The character was first introduced in a brief tale in the anthology Darker Image, although that story doesn’t track directly to the beginning of the series and would be completed in a #0 issue.)

Deathblow would later coalesce into a remarkably gripping story, but at its introduction the book was a mere footnote to WildStorm’s pair of flagship teams. That’s due to a staggered publishing schedule and four short, disconnected issues that don’t feel like they had Lee and scripter Brandon Choi’s full focus.

That’s puzzling, as Deathblow begins with the most traditional opening arc of all three of the initial WildStorm titles. We get time to linger on our anti-hero and his relationships before being plunged into action. Why isn’t it satisfying?

At this early stage of their independence, Lee and Choi didn’t know how to deliver information while keeping a story in motion. As a result, the first three chapters of the story feel like prologue, while the brief action sequence and bizarre twist in the fourth hardly pays off all the set-up.

While the story was a muddle, Deathblow remains notable as a rare example of Jim Lee inking himself. The style is striking. It retains all of the dynamics of Lee’s typical work, but drapes them in shadows and negative space. It’s a much more dark, rough-hewn look than his typically sharp pencils. It almost suggests Frank Miller or Jae Lee’s inky style. Jim Lee also plays with silhouettes and reversing out foreground details in a single color from the backdrop.

The unusual style is emphasized by a desaturated color palette of grays and greens. Most characters are colored as pale white ghosts or sickly yellow specters. Any hints of red are reserved for the lines under Deathblow’s eyes, religious imagery, and bursts of occasional violence. It’s a bold, memorable choice, but the early days of digital color don’t do it full justice. The high contrast looks smudged where colors meet, and inexact gradients swallow up Lee’s penwork.

Tim Sale takes over finishes duty over Lee’s layouts in the third issue. Sale isn’t as detail-obsessed as Lee, and as he settles into his simpler style the art begins to gel more with the early digital colors. This would coalesce into a beautiful, minimalist look that would last through issue #12, though Lee would continue providing misleading hyper-detailed covers

There’s little to recommend this early run, which reads like the worst of everything Image was accused of in its early days. Even if the between-issue delays are invisible to us now, the stories are short, incoherent, and try to push as many “cool” and” x-treme!” buttons as they can in their brief page count.

Want the play-by-play? I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of Dark Image, Deathblow #1-4, and #0 below. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow I tackle WildC.A.T.s Special #1 and WildC.A.T.s Trilogy #1-3.

Need the issues? Deathblow #1-4 (and on through #12) was collected in a 1999 TPB titled “Sinners and Saints.” DC issued a revised, expanded, and re-ordered HC and TPB of #0-12 that are still readily available. For single issues try eBay (Darker Image & #0-4) or Amazon (Darker Image, #0, 1, 2, 3, 4)
[Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #0-4

35-for-35: 1983 – “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” by Culture Club

November 3, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug] culture-club-kissing-to-be-clever 1983 was an obscenely good year of the music I love. Seriously, check out this list of releases at the top of my personal iTunes charts:

David Bowie – Let’s Dance, Billy Joel – An Innocent Man, Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual, Madonna s/t, The Police – Synchronicity, U2 – War, plus singles like “1999,” “Sweet Dreams,” and “Flashdance What A Feeling” – plus, the music video of “Thriller”!

(Sadly, they were all shut out at the Grammys by Thriller, which arrived on November 30, 1982, after the end of the 1982 Grammys eligibility period.)

How to choose? As much as my heart lies with Madonna when it comes to 1983, I’ve already done a lot of writing about her best songs. Cyndi Lauper’s album is an all-time classic, but I didn’t have ears for it until after I met Lindsay. I love the singles from An Innocent Man, but in 1983 we were still spinning Glass Houses.

After agonizing over the decision, I realize I was making the mistake of looking for songs that I love now, when really I should be searching my earliest memories for songs I loved then. And, after “Thriller,” the great love of my three-year-old life was “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.”

Yes, by Culture Club. I was so addicted to that song as a kid. It was the earliest example of my childhood choreography, as I’d launch into a series of somersaults during the chorus.

But, what is this monstrosity? It begins with mariachi horns and castanets, it briefly turns into a sort of lounge song, before turning into queer calypso elevator music on the chorus. And, check out the lyrics to the verse:

Downtown we’ll drown
We’re in our never splendour
Flowers, showers
Who’s got the new boy gender?
I’ll be your baby, I’ll be your score
I’ll run the gun for you and so much more

Holy crap, tiny Peter, was your first favorite song really an ode to blurred gender roles and sexual innuendo? And, also, how was Culture Club so deeply weird yet also so incredibly successful?

I cannot answer any of those questions, so I turned to the next closest source of information: my mother. Yes, my beloved readers, you about to witness a Crushing Krisis first: A BLOG POST FROM MOTHER OF KRISIS.

Take it away, Mom:

I first heard and saw Culture Club on MTV, which was new at the time. We didn’t have a big income, but we did have cable TV. There was something about their sound that grabbed me.

You were a music lover from a very early age. You definitely had your favorites and I can safely say “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” was one of them. You would become a little animated dancer when it came on. You were a little young for a full fledged somersault, but you gave it your best try.

We lived in South Philly, and I used to take you to the playground off of 13th & Oregon and push you on the swings while I sang you my newest favorite song, like “Electric Avenue” and “I Can’t Go For That.” Through the process of elimination, perhaps I bought Kissing To Be Clever at a record store on East Passyunk Ave? Sometimes, when the weather was nice I would take you for a walk there. [Ed Note: See, my mom was a hipster before all of y’all were hipsters, okay?]

As far as the club music I was exposed to, the most important aspects of a song were:

Does it have a good beat? and
Can you dance to it?

Calypso, Caribbean, reggae, soul, funk, etc … they generally have a beat and you can dance to them. “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” fit those parameters.

I suppose I noticed Boy George’s way of being different, but I didn’t care one way or another. I just liked the music. I guess different was ok with me. Bear in mind, I had spent a considerable part of my young life being a huge Bowie fan, so I wasn’t phased much by Boy George’s gender-bending feminine look (though, in no way did Boy George remind me of Bowie).

Not to blow my own horn, but I don’t think I was ever judgmental about how people looked or acted. Perhaps I developed a tolerant attitude as it relates to gender and sexual orientation. I mean, I was about 10 years old when my parents took me to visit my cousin D and her partner [a woman]. This was 1965. Also my cousin W was gay. The family just accepted it. Even my parents.

(I am the same person who bought you no less than two baby dolls, Care Bears, Jem, and both He-Man and She-Ra.)

That was… actually pretty awesome. Thanks, mom! Perhaps we can tempt her into another guest appearance as the month presses on. I love that last little aside, in case any of you ever doubt me saying I was all about inclusivity right down to the toys I played with as a toddler.