Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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35-for-35: 2005 – “King of the Rodeo” by Kings of Leon

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aha-shake-heartbreak-white-kings-of-leon[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I talk a lot about how I’m not influenced by radio or best-sellers charts, which is how I wind up with such a niche collection of somewhat-obscure favorites.

Sometimes that insular trend cuts in the opposite direction, where I am deeply and madly in love with something massively popular while convinced that I am the only one who knows about it. Note that this is distinct from “I liked them before they were cool,” and is more like, “Wait, they’re popular? I love them! Was there a memo?”

Case and point: Kings of Leon.

I can’t even tell you how I found them, other than that I added their Sophomore release Aha Shake Heartbreak to iTunes on December 23rd, 2005, nearly a year after its release. That makes me think I saw the LP on a handful of year-end critics charts – maybe from the UK, where they were a bigger hit – and picked it up out of curiosity.

Actually, I still don’t know too much about them. Just in writing this post I learned that the whole band is related! Yet, I stuck with them, buying every subsequent album until I was shocked – shocked, I tell you – to learn that “Sex on Fire” was one of the biggest songs in the country and that anyone else had any idea of who they were (let alone that there was already an “ugh, I hate that cool band” backlash against them).

Kings of Leon is pretty far outside of my typical sphere of women who rock, pop-crossover artists, and acoustic-based songwriters, especially early on before they added a U2 sheen to their Southern Rock inspired sound. I remember being really fascinated with the upbeat, dance-rock drumming on the first song on Aha Shake Heartbreak, “Slow Night, So Long,” and with Caleb Followill’s mealy-mouthed delivery. What in the world was he singing?!

The song that really cemented my love for the band was track two, “King of the Rodeo.” It had a sort of Strokes-ish indie rock sensibility to its layered clean electric guitars and the constant falling sensation thanks to emphasis on the 2 and the 3-and.

There was more of Caleb Followill’s absolutely undecipherable vocal. All I knew was that after the rapid patter part he said “let the good times roll, let the good times roll.” I thought that was the name of the song for a while. He has the same sort of “shaken up soda trying to escape the bottle” vocals that I sometimes effect (see also: Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney).

aha-shake-heartbreak-black-kings-of-leonThus, you get to join me on a special journey, dear reader – I am going to read these lyrics for the first time.

He’s so purity, a shaven and a mourning,
And standing on a Pigeon toe, in his dissarray

Straight in the picture pose,
He’s coming around to meet you

And screaming like a battle cry, its more if I stay

Me and your cold, Driving in the snow,
Let the good times roll, let the good times roll
Cowgirl king of the rodeo, let the good times roll,
Let the good times roll

How dare you come to me like withnail for a favor,
Hold on not my fairy tale you’re trying to start

Take off your overcoat, you’re staying for the weekend,
And swaying like a smokey grey, a drink in the park

Good time to roll on.

Oh, good – they don’t actually make a lick of sense. I feel much better now.

I think the allure of this track for me was that there was something pure and unvarnished about it. This was still a year before Gina and I really ramped up Arcati Crisis, and to me it sounded like what I pictured an indie rock back would sound like when they were rehearsing without all the effects and production. There’s no doubt in my mind that I pulled some inspiration from early Kings of Leon songs like this for my lead lines on Gina’s Arcati Crisis tracks like “Holy Grail.”

35-for-35: 2004 – “I Control The Sun” by Lisa Loeb

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I sometimes wonder if “one hit wonder” has any meaning in a world of limitless streaming and every album of all time available for purchase.

lisa-loeb-2004-promo-squareToday, if someone likes your song, odds are they’re going to listen to another one – either intentionally or through some engine of recommendation.

Things were different in 1994, when Lisa Loeb broke through with her classic “Stay (I Missed You)” (which, incidentally, Ashley and I have discover can create a tender singalong in any barroom).

It truly was a singular hit – it appeared on the Reality Bites soundtrack when Loeb was unsigned without any other songs available on commercial releases. If fans loved that track when Loeb hit the scene they were out of luck. Her only other recorded work was on a cassette tape you could only buy from her at shows. Today, those tunes would be plastered all over BandCamp or SoundCloud, waiting to be devoured, supplemented by YouTube videos.

(For the record, I wouldn’t call Lisa Loeb a one-hit wonder; “Do You Sleep” was huge and she’s had several other charting singles.)

Hardly any artist broke through with their singular hit quite like Lisa Loeb did, but many artists – especially women in the 90s – fell to the same fate. They maybe garnered another LP before being dropped from their labels and dropping out of sight for all but the most ardent fans.

As it happens, E and I are quite ardent in our Lisa Loeb fandom. In fact, you could go so far as to say it’s part of the foundation of our relationship. We’ve never missed a Lisa Loeb release, and this house is a parallel universe where she has dozens of notable singalong hits.

One of those house hits is “I Control The Sun,” off of Loeb’s fourth (and, I’d say, indisputably best) record, The Way It Really Is. The record came out just a few months shy of E and I moving in together when I graduated college. As an overachieving Type A control freak with a raucous OCD Godzilla who rules over my innards, I deeply connected with the song in a way that’s similar to my feelings about “Center of Attention.” It might be the best song about the anxiety of being perfect since Alanis’s crushing “Perfect” on Jagged Little Pill.

There’s no doubt in my mind Lisa Loeb has her own internal raging OCD monster. I’ve seen the way she’s methodically spread her brand across multiple platforms – voice acting and starring in reality shows between albums, and now pivoting to children’s music and a line of glasses as her core fandom ages. And, well, I’m a musician and I’ve seen her live – I know all of those little tells a musician makes on stage when things aren’t going perfectly well, and she’s does them as much as I do.

the-way-it-really-is-lisa-loebBut what use is all of our perfection when it comes to our relationships? Lisa and I can control every factor in the world, but we can’t change how someone else feels. That’s why, for all its whimsy, I hear a certain desperation in this song:

I control the sun
I turn on the stars
I make all the colors that you see as you circle me
I open up the sky
I control the speed
I can make the green lights flash
I can make you crash

Those are the words of someone trying to be the wizard behind the curtain – keeping every light flashing and plate spinning all with a smile plastered across their face. What better to represent the epitome of that control than subverting the sun itself?! It’s the perfect endgame for someone with a galactic-sized need to be in charge.

I can’t make you see things the way I see them
I can’t make you feel things the way I feel them
I can’t wait around for you
I’ve got better things to do

When the sun metaphorically does your bidding, it’s really easy to want to throw up your hands the first time another human being is completely inscrutable. I’ve been that controlling person – not just in romance with E, but with friends and at work. I’ve thought that I’ve had such a good grip on all the measurables that nothing intangible could ever get in my way.

I control the world
I can make it flat
I can make the water deep so I can save you from the sea

(That’s actually a good explanation of how I fell backwards into being a good Account Manager. Early in my career I went to my boss, distraught that controlling the sun and the sea level wasn’t making my clients like me. She, much more of a people person that I, replied, “Have you ever tried asking them if they like baseball?” Being a good AM had very little to do with control and more to do with social penetration and certainty – but, that’s another post entirely.)

The song presses on, with Loeb lamenting, “I’ve tried everything” until she finally admits the truth in a vortex of rising single string bends that signal just how out of control not being in control makes her feel.

‘Cause I control the sun
I control the sun
If I can control the sun
Then why can’t I have you?
I’ve got better things to do

You could read that last line as finally giving up and walking away, but that’s not what her performance conveys. I hear resignation in that last bit of vocal and also a shade of self-reflection. Is there really something better to do, or has Lisa just been busying herself with the anxious work of control?

Maybe it would be better to let the sun rise and set on its own and enjoy the fact that not everyone sees things your way every time.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Team 7 (1994) #1-4

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]In 1994 there were just a handful of comics writers you would pursue if you wanted to read a terrific war comic. Chuck Dixon was likely at the top of that list (along with Larry Hama).

Thus, after two years of WildStorm when it was finally time to expose the Team 7 connective tissue shared by almost all of WildStorm’s books, it was Chuck Dixon who Jim Lee and Brandon Choi tapped to pen it.

team-7-v1-01-pinupThe original Team 7 operated in the 70s consisted of this list of eleven largely familiar names:

  • Team Leader John “Topkick” Lynch
  • Berckmann
  • Stephen “Wraparound” Callahan (whose death we saw on the first pages of Gen13)
  • Cole “Dead Eye” Cash (AKA Grifter)
  • Phillip “Bulleteer” Chang (father of Gen13’s Grunge)
  • Michael “Deathblow” Cray
  • Jackson “Arclight” Dane (of Wetworks)
  • Alexander “Slaphammer” Fairchild (father of Gen13’s Caitlin Fairchild)
  • Andrew Johnson
  • Richard “Boloround” MacNamara
  • Marc “Backlash” Slayton

Team 7 was a vastly different comic book from WildStorm’s norm up to this point. No heroes, no brightly-colored spandex, no supernatural threats.The mini-series is part war story, part psychological thriller as the elite team is subject to experiments against their will, pushed to the very limits of survival, and pitted against each other in a series of psychological tortures. In fact, though it includes super-powers, they ease their way into the story and are treated as an extension of interpersonal conflicts rather than weapons to be casually wielded.

Penciler Aaron Wiesenfeld starts off with the gritty realism that marked Dixon’s run on Marvel’s ‘Nam, but by the final issue he is channeling Barry Windsor-Smith in a series of dynamic full-pages and broad faces. Seriously, issue #4 is so darn pretty that my review could just be posting its pages in their entirety. Check out this marvelous opening sequence of Deathblow’s mutiny told in four full-page splashes:

team-7-v1-04-02team-7-v1-04-03team-7-v1-04-04team-7-v1-04-05


Aside from Deathblow’s familiar wide face, it’s nearly impossible to tell apart the team of white men (even the one Chinese man is drawn Caucasian) until you’ve committed their various facial hair and face paint symbols to memory. That’s not a weakness, but a subtlety – just as is Craven being drawn to resemble our modern day John Lynch while Lynch’s own face gradually morphs into that shape.

As a standalone story, Team 7 would be marginal – a bunch of stooge soldiers get set up again and again as their team shrinks from attrition. In the scope of what we already know about so much of the cast, it’s fascinating – explaining relationships and filling in detail that had only been implied. For me, this is the reason to read this (and other) Team 7 miniseries in order of its release rather than in order of continuity.

Without knowing the future story of these characters, all you’d get is that Cash is the golden boy and Lynch is under Craven’s thumb, while missing Dane’s early killthrill that must eventually transform into the cool-headed company man, Slayton’s deadly quiet under pressure (his best characterization yet), and Chang’s easy-going nature (presaging his way chill son).

Dixon and Wiesenfeld perfectly shoulder that burden, aside from the team stumbling headfirst into four traps will stretch your disbelief to the max, burden. They keep the book readable while only deepening the mysteries of Craven’s intent and how the team eventually splinters into the heroes we know and the dead men we don’t.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of how these soldiers became super. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow I’ll get my first taste of WildCATs without Jim Lee, and it’ll be a big bite – issues #15-19. After that, the second arc of Wetworks, Warblade’s miniseries and a Grifter one-shot!), and then finally back to Stormwatch!

Need the issues? This series was collected in a 1994 TPB (eBay), or you can grab the singles – try eBay or Amazon. Since further series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the images in this post.

And now, onto the story! [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Team 7 (1994) #1-4

35-for-35: 2003 – “Locked Box” by Frankie Big Face

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artist_frankie_big_face_image[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I can almost guarantee you’ve never heard this song before.

In 2003 Gina moved into our 44th street apartment and I was armed with my first set of serious recording gear. We were both writing a lot of new songs, many of which remain in our Arcati Crisis repertoire until this day.

I had stumbled upon a website called SongFight, which called out a random name for a tune into the void each week and then presented all of the songs written for it the next. (This is still happening today, by the way.) A few weeks after Gina came by to sing my first attempt at fighting, “Goodbye Monster,” she walked into my room, sat down, and played me “Moscow, Idaho” for the first time.

We didn’t win that SongFight, but I still think it’s one of the best songs ever written.

But, this isn’t about Gina. You see, through discovering SongFight, I discovered a massive online community of indie songwriters just like me – people who weren’t necessarily gigging out in bars and clubs, but who were holed up in their rooms recording each song they wrote – sometimes entire albums at a time.

I had found my people. And one of them, Frankie Big Face, was one of the best songwriters I’d every heard in my life.

This man could take any inane song title and tell you a story with it, breaking your heart a little along the way. With a voice like a hoarse David Bowie and songs that ranked from plaintive folk to Van Morrison 60s songwriter to synth pop, I was in awe of him. And he was just a regular guy – a high school music teacher and band director who lived within a hundred miles of me!

I loved (and still love) many Frankie Big Face songs, but none so much as “Locked Box,” which is like the secret best song Squeeze ever wrote but never recorded. It’s a song about a girl who is going through the motions while trapped in her own anxieties and it is catchy as hell. You’ve been warned.

The song comes with an awesome story. A handful of the most prominent and prolific SongFighters decided to have an album fight – an entire full length comprised of pre-determined song names, of which “Locked Box” was one. Frankie’s version of Smile If You Absolutely Have To is available to stream on Amazon or directly from his website (where he also provides the lyrics and lead sheets for all of his tunes). In fact, you can download “Locked Box” for free right now. Here’s another of my favorites, “Funny Enough For You.”

There is so much Frankie Big Face music out there for you to hear – he’s been writing at a pace much faster than mine for the dozen years since I discovered him, and recording exponentially more than I do. Honestly, I have about 10 years of his stuff to catch up on and am presently in a downloading frenzy to get it all into my iTunes.

Here’s his website’s discography. You can also check out his SoundCloud for more, including his interpretation of Beck’s Song Reader.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #10-12

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deathblow_010_17[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today’s scheduled reading was Deathblow #10-12, the end of the initial mega-arc of the title.

The first twelve issues of Deathblow are about how anyone can decide to be a hero but no one gets to choose the kind of hero they get to be.

Michael Cray is a mercenary – maybe the most-efficient and cold-blooded mercenary of all of Team 7. He just wants to be dropped into places where he can remove bad men from the world until he, too, shuffles off of this mortal coil.

Fate has something different in store for Cray and for his ex-wife Gaby, Sister Mary, Faisal, Grifter, Backlash, and Dane. They all get to be heroes in this story, but none get to walk the straight path they intended.

I should mention that this story “doesn’t count,” in that all but one or two of its bloody outcomes are reversed by the final page of Deathblow #12. I really hate stories that don’t count, no matter how cool they are (which is why I have so much trouble with DC Comics … but that’s another post entirely).

I didn’t really hate Deathblow. It’s disappointing that Jim Lee and Brandon Choi couldn’t conceive of a story with stakes this high that could stick, but Deathblow himself is changed by it and maybe that’s all that matters.

At times I thought I was bored with the tale, but each time I was almost lost Choi and Sale brought me back with an awesome moment. Travis strips Sister Mary of her plethora of weapons. Gaby melting from angelic host to human right before Michael Cray’s eyes. Famine and War casually striding across New York City landmarks.

deathblow_012_17Despite Deathblow being rooted in Team 7 machismo and Jim Lee’s awesome specimens of human biology, at points Sale and colorist Linda Medley are pushing its visual identity into territory like Sin City, Hellboy, or even Sandman purely through the power of their bold, minimal artwork – which allows them to shock us with panels like the colorful entry of the Team 7 calvary at the end of issue #10.

Then, Sale performs his best magic trick, turning Grifter, Backlash, and Cray into beautiful modern art on the page in issue #11 as they square off against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and then with the Black Angel himself, until Michael Cray is the only thing left between this world and the apocalypse.

deathblow_010Before we can get there, Cray needs to have his reckoning with Travis in Deathblow #10, his former operator who was secretly a serial killer.

This is the one facet of the plot that I couldn’t get behind. The idea of Herod, a methodical killer only after the special children who might make a difference in this world, is the sort of hook you could hang an entire title on.

To see him get tossed away as a mini-boss in this saga while the issue reached a crescendo with the introduction of the Horsement felt like it wasted all of the subtle build-up to his reveal as a villain, even if he proved to be the climax of Gaby’s plot. Choi had the perfect chance to reset his capture with the big rewind at the end of the story but left his plot neatly resolved for the moment. We’ll see if there’s anything as good in store with the next arc.

Tdeathblow_011hen, in Deathblow #11, the core surviving foursome of Team 7 spread out across the city to try to intercept the Horsemen.

This is not your typical good vs. evil, love vs. hate sort of fight (not that anything in Deathblow has been that). Grifter, Backlash, and Dane aren’t good men who fight for right. They’re also not exactly the four most-powerful characters we’ve met so far in WildStorm. Yet, they share Cray’s theme of trying to
find a way to remain heroes no matter how twisted their lives become. They each get their trademark moment of cool, but seem to be no match for their supernatural foes.

However, Deathblow manages to overcome Death himself by simply shattering his Seal of the Apocalypse. Of course, he uses his special Sword of Heaven to do it, but maybe the other members might have a shot using their Genesis powers?

deathblow_012Everything goes to hell in Deathblow #12. The Team 7 men each eliminate their Horsemen but each pay an awful price for it. Deathblow and his rag tag team of cops and holy men storm the top of the World Trade Center only to be methodically cut down by the horse of demons there (even after Faisal turns out to be the Archangel Raphael, who does a doozy on the Black Angel).

Then, just as Deathblow is about to succumb, the ragged remains of Team 7 storm the roof only to be disintegrated by the Antichrist … but, it’s just the opportunity and inspiration that Deathblow needs to make his, erm, well, his deathblow, if we’re being honest.

 Cue the massive rewind using the energies the Black Angel siphoned off of Christopher. The boy funnels them back into the very fabric of reality, ironing out the tens of thousands of ripples caused by the Black Angel’s machinations going all the way back to the Baghdad plot in the initial four issues.

One thing he cannot correct is Gaby’s death, as really she had been dead for two years now while acting as the host of an angel. Christopher just doesn’t have the juice to iron out the kinks that far back. It sucks to see the one real female character in the series triple-fridged (her original death, he death in #11, and then her death sticking in #12) to literally absolve Michael Cray and give him some closure. As with Herod, it seems like we could have a more interesting series with her alive.

Despite my frustration about taking my favorite two supporting characters out of the story, therein lies the answer to why this isn’t a typical “it doesn’t count” story. Sure, all the world-shattering consequences were reversed, but all that things that broke Michael Cray remain in place. All of the personal consequences of his journey from dying mercenary to an absolved man remained consequential – maybe even moreso considering how the rest of the world around him and Sister Mary stayed relatively the same.

I just hope that an amazing story comes from it, because in giving away their rewind button Jim Lee, Brandon Choi, and the departing Tim Sale made sure that Deathblow can’t ever go back to being another book about a merc. Now Deathblow’s mission comes with a capital “M,” and it has to move on after this spectacular mic drop of evocative, challenging, actual art from Sale and Linda Medley.

Need the issues? Deathblow #0-12 were collected in a 1999 TPB titled “Sinners and Saints.” DC issued a revised, expanded, and re-ordered HC and TPB of #0-12 that both are still readily available. For single issues try eBay (#10-12) or Amazon (#10, 11, 12) – and note that Amazon offers these issues digitally(!) through Comixology.

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we’ll finally learn the mysteries of Team 7 with their first eponymous miniseries (and then on to post-Lee WildCATs, the 2nd arc of Wetworks, and Warblade miniseries plus a Grifter one-shot!)