But comic book fans need to feel perpetually beleaguered and disenfranchised, marginalized by phantom elites who want to confiscate their hard-won pleasures. And this resentment — which I have a feeling I’m provoking more of here — finds its way into the stories themselves, expressed either as glowering self-pity or bullying machismo. There are exceptions: Mark Ruffalo’s soulful Hulk (though not Eric Bana’s or Edward Norton’s); most of the X-Men. But even that crew of mutant misfits turned protectors of humanity exists in a circumscribed imaginative space.
The fates laugh at my promise to have “stuff tomorrow, really,” from yesterday. Today was crazy busy, and I managed to be 30 minutes late for both meet-ups with friends I had. Normal service will apparently be resumed soonish, I can only hope.
You’re thinking “Is this the first day Graeme has missed a 366 Songs entry in awhile? He was doing so well!” To which I, sadly, have to reply “Yes, it is, and yes, I was.” What can I say? Time was not on my side today, despite what Mick Jagger might have you believe; it’s the kind of day when I just want to sit down and let my brain unfurl for a few hours. Stuff tomorrow, really.
(* If you’re Dylan Meconis, you’re possibly also thinking “If you don’t come into Periscope tomorrow, I will hunt you down and kill you with my eyes.” I will! Honest!)
In the end, it didn’t really fit into the piece, and I suspected that certain Marvel bodies would’ve taken offense at it, giving me hassle that I didn’t really need or want. But, you know, I’d written it so here it is.
“Marvel didn’t pay Kirby for The Avengers idea?” I find myself saying. “The idea that a bunch of pre-existing work-for-hire characters could continue existing together? What jerks, not predicting in 1963 that kids’ disposable pulp heroes would be worth billions of dollars half a century later and cutting their employee in for money they could have kept for themselves. The bums.”
This is one of those “What? I can’t even, I mean, whuh? Really” things. I can get not necessarily joining protests against publishers for their shabby treatment of the people who created the intellectual property that made the company literally hundreds of billions of dollars, but I really don’t get this new “You’re surprised by that? You clearly don’t know how the world works. I have disdain for you” mindset that seems to be emerging in response.
For all that “Only A Northern Song” devolves into aimless free jazz noodling and one of George Harrison’s most dirgy melodies (I think it’s really his particularly flat vocal that makes it feel that way; it almost sounds as if it was recorded and then slowed down, oddly enough), there are two things that make his song worth keeping on your digital music device of choice. The lyrics, obviously, are one; somewhere between sarcastic good natured ribbing and bitter meanness about the Lennon/McCartney dominance of the band’s songwriting chores (“Northern Songs” being the publishing company that took care of songs by the two during their Beatles output, for those who didn’t make the connection through the lyrics alone). Suddenly, lines like “If you’re listening to this song/You may think the chords are going wrong/But they’re not/He just wrote them like that” and the much more bitter “It doesn’t really matter what chords I play/What words I say or time of day it is/When it’s only a Northern Song” make a little more sense, right…?
Less meta and more groovy is the second reason: Listen to that spectacular opening.
Man, work that organ. Both of Harrison’s original contributions to the Yellow Submarine soundtrack have this same thing going on: Unworked, somewhat ramshackle songs with absolutely blinding openings. And as great as “Only A Northern Song” is, I’m seriously not sure if many other Beatles song had an opening quite as wonderful as “It’s All Too Much”:
“Ebeneezer Goode” was a ridiculously big hit in the UK in 1992, staying number one for four weeks despite the tabloid press managing to work themselves into an outraged lather over the drug references in the song; it’s quite clearly a song about ecstasy – The chorus, after all, goes “‘Eezer Goode/’Eezer Goode/He’s Ebeneezer Goode” the first part of which translates/is heard as “Es are good/Es are good” – but it’s not just a “Neck ’em and have a good time!” one, considering the “A gentleman of leisure, he’s there for your pleasure/But go easy on old ‘Eezer, he’s the love you could lose/Extraordinary fella, like Mister Punchinella/He’s the kind of geezer who must never be abused” verse. That turnaround may get lost in the horrific dayglo singalong of the rest of the song, though; this is very proudly from the period where “rave crossover” meant “8-bit meets Casio meets childish” (Anyone else remember “Charley”? Aieee).
Listening to this for the first time in decades – It’s twenty years old, and I don’t think I’ve heard it in at least fifteen years – what jumps out is how close this is to Britpop, and especially Blur’s earlier stuff. It’s the storytelling aspect, the creation of a character through which to address a different topic. Once you get past the way this song sounds, there’s really not that much difference between “Ebeneezer Goode” and “Colin Zeal” or “Ernold Same.” I wonder if either the Shamen or Blur ever really made that connection themselves, and if they did, whether either party felt guilty about it.
For those playing along at home, there’re a couple of pop cultural steals in here worth noting. The opening “A great philosopher once said…” is Malcolm McDowell, from If…, and if the dirty laugh isn’t Sid James from the Carry On movies, then it’s someone doing a Sid James impression.
Another song that got into my head at some point this past weekend, and one that’s far harder to explain away; I hadn’t really thought about this song for years, and when I did find myself remembering it, I softened the hilariously thick Scottish accents of Craig and Charlie Reid (That’d be the Proclaimers, known in America for “500 Miles” and little else, it seems) more than a little bit. But listening to it again, I kind of love it: There’s a very old-fashioned quality to it, especially when you get past the “I’m on my way/From misery to happiness today/Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh” part and into… what, the bridge? The verse? I’m not sure how you’d define the construction of this song, really. But there’s an old rockabilly sense to this one that I love. It sounds completely at odds with everything that was happening in pop culture in 1988 when it was released, with the exception of Billy Bragg’s stuff at the time… which, now that I think about it, may be why I have such fond memories of it, really. Here’s to bands who wish it was thirty years earlier and somehow convince other people to wish the same.
After the rain-themed songs over the weekend, I couldn’t resist choosing this one for today. The fact that I found myself with this song playing on repeat at some point in the last couple of days didn’t hurt, of course. There’s a comfortable feeling to this song, the slow march of it (with slide guitar, piano and constantly-present buzz in the background; it’s got a wonderfully strange arrangement, if you think about it) filled with the warmth of the vocals and gentle comedy of the lyrics (“If you fled a million miles/I’d chase you for a day/If I could be bothered”) to create something soft, unassuming and casually charming. It’s a lovely wee song, really.
Put out here as much as a reminder to myself (Unlike David Brothers’ similar, more-thought-out post here), and short because I’ve not thought this out at all; it’s literally something that popped into my head as I was thinking about the work I still had to do as I wandered back from the gym on Friday. But!
I think I want to do a series of interviews with writers. It started with me thinking about my experience at io9, and the things I did and didn’t like there, and the way it changed me as a writer for better and worse, and then it turned into my wanting to talk to Laura Hudson about what she’d learned as editor-in-chief of Comics Alliance. I mean, that took over her life for years; I was on the periphery of that, insofar as she was my friend and I could see her never stop working, but also that the work wasn’t writing. I imagined talking to her about what she’d learned about writing through editing other people’s work for years, and how it affected her writing, and what she wants to do post-CA, and what she thinks about blogging as a format and an outlet and and and, and then I found myself thinking, wait, I could talk to other bloggers/journalists I know about that kind of thing as well.
I don’t know if there’s an audience for it, other than myself. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, or whether anyone would say yes to even being interviewed/talking about this kind of thing (I haven’t asked Laura or anyone, I should point out; I just thought about it, then settled in to do more work because that’s what had to be done at that moment, and then life moved on until this came back to me, just now), but still. But still.
