0067: Looks Like The Mole Rat Really WILL Be CGI

Kudos to anyone who remembers the episode of "Kim Possible" that inspired this post's title (extra brownie points if you knew that Joe Montegna was a guest voice actor in that episode).

About a month ago I saw a trailer for a live action Kim Possible movie debuting February 15, 2019 and I knew what the next post would be:

The reason you're seeing the back of the inlay card for this soundtrack album is because it's a promotional copy that I picked up at a used CD store for $1 (hence the neatly die-cut hole in the barcode-- if this had been a deleted or clearance copy there would have been a drilled hole or sawed notch somewhere, but the jewel case was intact except for the inevitable superficial scratches). The downside was that there was no booklet in the promo copy (they mean nothing at radio stations), but, hey, for a buck? I really didn't need pictures of Rufus and Drakken or whatever was in there and I certainly wasn't looking for lyrics to sing along with whatever random boy bands Disney partially owned at the time, plus Smashmouth. In fact, a few years after this came out there was a "new and Kim-proved" version that added a couple of musical numbers that actually appeared in the show and dropped some other songs such as the one by 'Brassy' (?) which was actually already a three year old A-side when this version came out. Although there was no booklet, the CD surface had graphics instead of generic typeface (as promos sometimes have), so I'm guessing that this is what the regular stock copies looked like:

For the record, the CD-ROM feature still produces a menu whose links include registering for a newsletter and accessing internet features (both of which are defunct), plus "help" (didn't bother) and "exit" (works like a dream).

I'm not sure if the target audience for the new movie knows Kim at all. It's possible if Disney has offered the old series on a streaming service. Just to be safe Disney has been showing a small block of episodes in an early morning slot, presumably for kids who watch TV while eating breakfast before leaving for school? We'll know how well it does this Halloween if there are more little Mabels from "Gravity Falls" or Webbys from "Duck Tales" running around with grappling guns because they couldn't find small sized black turtlenecks and cargo pants in 2019. I don't have lofty expectations. For one thing, because Disney owns ABC and actors under contract, especially kids, go back and forth between the channels, they've cast the youngest kid from "The Goldbergs" as Ron Stoppable. As much as I love Jeff Garland (look for his appearances with Craig Ferguson on YouTube), that show is excruciating. Playing Ron requires a huge range for a cartoon character. You'd have to go from breezy unearned confidence to screaming ninny in the blink of an eye and then back again. It's the "back again" part I'm worried about. Kim can be pretty subtle, too. I don't recognize the actress cast as Kim but that might be because I don't normally watch Disney's live cast shows. I just hope they don't screw up the extensive supporting cast too badly.

0059: ...Or, as they say, "It nearly killed him!"

NOTE: Despite having a large collection of comics and related material, comparatively little of it contains lots of gore. Because of that, I never developed a protocol for when a trigger warning would be appropriate. The current post doesn't have any bloody images, but it does have a song title that's not for the easily queasy or the professionally outraged. And if you don't recognize the punchline referenced in the post title, then maybe you should just enjoy the pictures. Or maybe you should read on, you might learn something.


Most science fiction fans probably know Swiss surrealist painter/sculptor H.R. Giger as the designer of the Aliens made famous in Ridley Scott's films. They are one of three works that, perhaps unfairly, overwhelm the visibility of his enormous body of original art, books and lithographs. The others are the record jacket art for Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Brain Salad Surgery" and a poster of a painting entitled "Penis Landscape" that was included in the Dead Kennedys' LP "Frankenchrist". That poster resulted in an infamous trial in which a district attorney running for office tried to prosecute lead singer and label head Jello Biafra for distributing "harmful matter" to minors. The charges and the incoherent arguments to support them were ridiculous, but the expectation was that all parties would plead guilty to avoid the cost of the trial and to bargain for lesser penalties, while the prosecution enjoyed a taxpayer funded election ad. They had not reckoned on Baifra's capacity for spite and righteous indignation. At the cost of his marriage, the acrimonious dissolution of his band and over $50,000 in legal fees, he fought the charges. A deadlocked jury sent the decision back to the judge, who threw the case out as frivolous.

The use of Giger's art was unusual at the label, Alternative Tentacles, whose bands usually found artists for record packaging closer to home, occasionally from their own members. Montage artist Winston Smith provided art for many of the Dead Kennedys' projects and continued working with Biafra on his solo projects, beginning with the spoken word albums "No More Coccoons" and "High Priest Of Harmful Matter".

Eventually, other bands recording on Alternative Tentacles took advantage of the fact that one of its most famous vocalists/lyricists was without a band. Musicians recording elsewhere formed splinter groups as an excuse to record with him. In the span of a few years he had released albums with NoMeansNo, D.O.A., Mojo Nixon, Lard and others. In 1991 he released an album called "Tumor Circus" that became the name of the group assembled to record it. That was primarily Biafra, Charlie Tolnay (of the band Lubricated Goat) and three members of Steel Pole Bathtub.

The album was accompanied by a 7" single of two non-album songs, "Take Me Back Or I'll Drown Our Dog" and "Swine Flu" backed with the album track "Fireball". By the end of the year, one more previously unreleased recording came out with an unusual bit of a bonus.

Horror writer Clive Barker allowed the art seen in the first scan above to be used for the sleeve. Instead of a standard square paper envelope into which a single would ordinarily be dropped, the sleeve was printed as a single 7.25" X 14.50" piece of paper folded in half and held in a clear plastic sleeve. That was what enabled me to flatten the sleeve out and make the scan used here. The art originally appeared in the book "Clive Barker: Illustrator", published earlier that year (1991) by Eclipse Books in both hardcover and paperback. The second scan shows the A-side label with the song title, "Meathook Up My Rectum" and explains why the B-side is so difficult to play. As it turns out, Barker provided an original sketch recreated as an etching where the B-side would be. I apologize in advance if there are devices on which this doesn't appear.

This came out while Barker's stories were being adapted for the Eclipse Comics anthology "Tapping The Vein" and Marvel's Epic line was publishing both a "Hellraiser" and "Nightbreed" series. He had also written the introduction to the trade paperback of Sandman's "A Doll's House". In another two years the Marvel Razorline imprint would briefly publish stories written by James Robinson, Elaine Lee and Fred Burke from concepts provided by Barker. So, as unlikely as it sounds, "Meathook Up My Rectum" became one of the most mainstream releases on the label in the early 90's.

0054: You Got The Way To Move Me

Thanks and apologies to Neil Diamond, I guess.

I haven't done a record art post in a while, nor have I done a shorter post in a very long time. I thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone. Below is the sleeve art from the band Skullflower's 7" single "Ponyland" (7:20) b/w "Fake Revolt" (5:12) on the label Sympathy For The Record Industry SFTRI 275 (US) April 1994.

The cover art is by Larry Welz (signed in the lower right corner) with color by Evan Mack. Comics fans may recognize the young woman in the foreground as Cherry Poptart, Welz' long-running character who appears primarily in adults-only comics stories. The art has been dated " '94 ", but a test pressing of the record has surfaced with the date October 15th, 1993. As per usual, the test pressing had no art because those are never intended for public circulation.

Both the band and the label got their start in 1988, but SFTRI is only one of dozens of labels the band has appeared on. There's also the matter of having a rate of personnel turnover rivaled only by Uriah Heap, Spinal Tap and McDonald's. The back of the sleeve is a photo of the band members for this record, named Matthew Bower, Stuart Dennison and Russel Smith. Nothing explains who played what instrument, or even who wrote which songs. Their publishing company, Sacred Conspiracy, is listed as the copyright holder on the label. Aside from the label's then-current slogan ("A name you can pronounce since 1988"), there are no further liner notes. There's no indication of where or when it was recorded or who produced it. However, in 1995 the band released a full length album on the same label named "Transformer". According to its liner notes, all the songs on it were recorded in 1995 except for the last two, these songs, which seemed to be tagged on to the end of the CD as if they were bonus tracks. I'm assuming that the recordings on the album are the same as the recordings on the single, and not different takes. It says that the basic tracks for "Fake Revolt" were recorded at DNA in London in Sept. 1992 with "A. DiFranco" on guitar and "Ian McKay" engineering. That's Anthony DiFranco, not Ani (short for Angela) and similarly "McKay" is not a misspelling of "MacKaye". Then, in Feb. 1993 both tracks were completed at AO studios in Millom with Barry Vernon engineering. The personnel were Bower and Smith on guitars and Dennison on drums and vocals. Actually, it would be more accurate to say 'vocalizations' than 'vocals'. There aren't many lyrics. I haven't heard this in 20 years, so I found a clip on YouTube of both songs played back to back. It sounds as though a death metal band had been listening to nothing but Galaxie 500 and Erik Satie for a year. It's still kind of gloomy but seriously mellowed out.

I have no clue as to how Welz got the job for the sleeve art. He's a Californian underground cartoonist (although he has since moved to New Mexico and sells his original art online; the best selling work of the underground is mostly available in bookstores and is no longer "underground" in any real sense). The band is British. The music doesn't evoke the character Cherry (or vice versa). It could be that someone at the label knew him, but as I said above, there's no further info on the sleeve.

0047: I'll Take Manhattan Minuet

For people of a certain age, often their first exposure to either jazz or classical music was the incidental background music in Warner Brothers cartoons. These seven or eight minute shorts were created to be shown in theaters as part of a program of short films that preceded the main feature film. In no particular order, movie-goers arriving for the full program would see a newsreel, a cartoon, a serial chapter, a musical short (often a sing-along), trailers and/or other bits as well. Depending on the year (or desperation of the theater) there might be a raffle held live in the theater or a charity appeal. After all that, the feature film (often 70 minutes long) would begin. By the mid-1950's television had seriously cut into the movie industry's cash flow and it responded by competing with spectacles it knew television couldn't provide. Wider screens, brighter colors, longer features and so forth was what studios invested money in and theaters who wanted to show the best of what was available needed cash for up to date equipment. They couldn't to that by scheduling fewer screenings of longer movies, soooo... bye-bye shorts. While newsreels and trailers mouldered until they could be repurposed as kitsch, cartoons and serials were more easily packaged for television. By the time one generation of children had seen twenty years worth of a studio's back catalog several times, a whole new batch of children would become old enough to discover them. Everyday after school throughout the 1970's there was always one channel or another that aired an hour or two of theatrical shorts with what I didn't know were seriously outdated pop culture references. I can quote many of them to this day.

Booklet cover.

On a good day you could be lucky enough to watch Fleischer Studios stuff, although you never saw Superman or Betty Boop except on PBS. Popeye was often what made it into syndication packages. If you were unlucky it was the Popeye cartoons from the early 1960's and you got a little more fresh air that day. MGM's "Tom and Jerry" and anything by Tex Avery made life worth living, but the Warner's stuff for some reason always had the best music. They even came out under imprints called "Merrie Melodies" and "Looney Tunes". The secret was Carl Stalling. After Walt Disney completed "Steamboat Willie", the first synchronized sound cartoon, he hired Stalling (who played music live in theaters over silent movies) to retrofit music onto two earlier silent cartoons. The two went on to launch a line of "Silly Symphonies" cartoons. Shortly after that he joined Ub Iwerks when Iwerks formed his own studio (although Disney was a major client of theirs). But when Iwerks' studio was absorbed by Leon Schlesinger (in 1936), Stalling began a run of an estimated 1000 cartoon scores over the next two decades.

Inner side of jewel case inlay card.

Stalling had an amazing talent for writing scores that he could mentally synchronize to an animation script. That's not completely impossible; unlike live action films, animation scripts are plotted out to the second in order to estimate the total number of frames and therefore man-hours to draw and shoot them. Since Stalling would conduct the recording sessions he could certain that the music would be played at the tempo he intended. So, not impossible, just inhumanly difficult. To produce score at this pace, Stalling drew on his experience playing live and spontaneously over silent movies. His 'compositions' were often patchworks of quotes from classical works both well-known and rarely heard elsewhere, mixed with hooks from popular songs of the day. His own original writing linked one to the next creating the illusion of these unrelated parts being conceived as a whole work. A real godsend for Stalling was the emergence of Raymond Scott in 1937. Scott had been the pianist in his brother's band but the lively evocative pieces he wrote, while popular with audiences, were murder on musicians accustomed to improvisation and looser arrangements. They required precision. So, Scott formed a "quintette" (not counting himself) and rehearsed them relentlessly. The results were regular radio appearances and numerous records. He spent most of World War II as the music director for the CBS Radio Network and by the time he left for Broadway he had gotten enough of his compositions on the air to provide Stalling with the quotes and cues for over 100 Warner Bros. cartoons.

Outer side of jewel case inlay card.

The music on this CD is played by The Beau Hunks Sextette, a Dutch ensemble originally formed to reconstruct and perform the lost scores to Hal Roach films (their name comes from a Laurel & Hardy film). They went on to record them and when they decided to remain a performing entity in their own right, the first composer they tackled outside the original project was Raymond Scott. Their first album of Scott music was "Celebration On The Planet Mars", released after Scott's death in 1994. For some reason, on the original Dutch release the band is identified as The Wooden Indians, but when this album, "Manhattan Minuet", came out in 1996 on the Basta label, it also reissued the 1994 with the Beau Hunks name. According to the liner notes, the recording was done with the cooperation of the Preservation Committee of the Raymond Scott Archives, whose advisory board includes several musical luminaries: Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), David Harrington (Kronos Quartet), Dick Hyman, Robert Moog, Andy Partridge (XTC), Henry Rollins and Hal Willner.

Sharp eyed comics fans have already recognized the artist responsible for the distinctive art on these scans, the primary reason for including this CD on the post. I'll quote the last two paragraphs of the booklet.

The Acme Novelty Library was a phenomenon of craft intersecting art in the 1990's that is unlikely to ever be equaled, certainly not in my lifetime. The first ten issues alternated size and shape so radically from one issue to the next that I pity any collector trying to track them down in their original forms. It then briefly became a series of thin paperbacks of uniform size, then hardcovers. Ware's projects have been few and far between in the past decade, peppered by occasional New Yorker covers. I don't know if that's just to keep a toe in, or to maintain name recognition or if Françoise Mouly has nude pictures of him. But when a project does surface, like 2012's "Building Stories", it turns heads and occasionally even induces hernias. I love Ware's stuff and would pick up oddball items simply because they had unique art of his. I can't know when I'll next come across some, but when I do I'll make a point of sharing some images with you.

0044: Plectrum Is Green?

The end of September will be the 50th Anniversary of Captain Scarlet, one of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation television series. Anderson, in post-war England, had intended to start a movie production company but needed to film television commercials to pay the bills and one with a marionette caught on and created a demand for more. Anderson himself was not a puppeteer and, frankly, never had an interest in them but he wasn't stupid. Anderson and DP Arthur Provis formed AP Films and created three series of fantasy short films (10-15 minutes each) for small children that were broadcast within larger blocks of programming from 1957 to 1960. They hired puppeteers willing to work on a budget consisting of whatever lint they had in their pockets, and that meant people who experimented with their materials, willing to rework and repurpose puppets, sets and everything else. To meet deadlines, a willingness to innovate wasn't enough, they needed a taste for it. By 1960 they were ready for something more ambitious and closer to Anderson's taste in stories: a  half-hour science fiction series about the crew of an advanced vehicle, the first of three successful series, all running 39 episodes. They were SUPERCAR (a high-speed car in the present day), FIREBALL XL-5 (a spaceship 1000 years in the future) and STINGRAY (a submarine 100 years in the future). The next series, the hour-long THUNDERBIRDS, guaranteed their place in pop culture history. With every series, the puppeteers, engineers and cameramen all worked towards the same goal: to make the marionettes look like they were moving as closely to human behavior as practically possible, to create the illusion that the viewer was watching living things act out the story.

The series that followed THUNDERBIRDS was CAPTAIN SCARLET, which took several unusual departures from the formula. Going back to half-hours and, like STINGRAY and THUNDERBIRDS, set 100 years in the future in the 2060's, CAPTAIN SCARLET was their first feature-length science fiction show in which the fantastic vehicles were an afterthought instead of the focus of the plot. The premise is that an organisation called Spectrum (with color-coded top agents) is a peace-keeping authority recognized and supported by countries participating in a World Government. Unbeknownst to them, an alien species had colonized Mars thousands of years earlier, built self-repairing automated cities and at some point disappeared without having contacted Earth. When humans create technology capable of receiving signals from the city on Mars, Spectrum is tasked with investigating to determine if the activity is evidence of a security risk. When the expedition, led by Captain Black, accidentally reacts the the city's automation as an attack and inflicts damage, the city responds with a 'retrometabolism' ray. The ray reconstructs matter to its most immediately previous shape. Thus, if a centuries old building collapses, as long as no one moves the pieces the ray will restore the building. However, when used on living things recently killed it reanimates their corpse, placing it under the control of the city's computers, who identify themselves as the Mysterons (commonly assumed to be the name of the species who built them). Returning to Earth, the now Mysteron-controlled Captain Black arranges a car crash to kill Captains Brown and Scarlet, the Spectrum agents assigned to protect the World Government President, so that they can be reconstructed under Mysteron control and assassinate the President instead. Brown is later blown up in a failed assassination attempt but Scarlet falls hundreds of feet and apparently dies intact. Instead, his synthetic body restores itself to the point before the car crash, with no memory since then and free of the Mysterons' control.

A-side

(The "S.I.G." under the band's name is the phrase often heard during the TV show, an abbreviation for "Spectrum Is Green". It was a phrase Spectrum agents would use to signify to each other that their assignment was understood and that everything was going forward. On the THUNDERBIRDS, characters would similarly use the phrase "F.A.B.", presumably because the slang word "fab"-- short for "fabulous"-- was popular at the time. Anderson admitted years later that, unlike "S.I.G.", "F.A.B." didn't stand for anything. They just needed something that sounded like jargon unique to the show.)

B-side

The first, most obvious difference between the show and its predecessors was the complete design of the puppet heads. Since 1961, the Anderson shows had been using marionettes with radio controlled devices built into the heads that enabled the puppeteers to move move the mouths, eyes and brows by remote control, which minimized the number of strings used and therefore minimized the chances of strings being visible on camera. However, the heads were proportionately too large for the bodies to be convincing as adult humans. Beginning with CAPTAIN SCARLET, the entire bodies, heads included, could be scaled closer to average adult human proportions thanks to transistors and other tools of miniaturization. Of course, this welcome innovation came with the need (and expense) of making all new sets, vehicles, clothes and other accessories.

The other obvious difference was the switch from nearly camp melodrama to a more sober, dark tone and a title character isn't a vehicle and dies during each episode more often than not. The fear of children putting themselves into lethal danger while "playing Captain Scarlet" was not an unreasonable one, leading to the stern message added to opening sequences, "Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Do NOT try to imitate him." That explains the parody of the phrase that appears on the back of the sleeve for the single in today's post.

I think is the only Hellbillys recording I have. The photo of Captain Black on the sleeve front caught my eye but finding out that they sing the closing theme song sealed the deal for me. That's another departure the series took. Instead of a catchy theme song or the THUNDERBIRDS' adrenaline-pumping march over the opening credits, almost every episode opened with some scene of carnage that enables the Mysterons to create new agents on Earth, represented by two green circles of light gliding over the surface of the affected objects or people. (Note the circles on the sleeve back above.)  The credits consisted of someone unsuccessfully trying to shoot Captain Scarlet followed by the super creepy voice of the Mysterons issuing a new threat over the same footage of the light circles gliding menacingly over various members of Spectrum. It was during the closing credits that the theme song played, a rock pop number played by an anonymous ensemble identified only as "The Spectrum", the same name as a British band releasing singles on RCA Victor in England. According to Discogs, they were the same band and there is a version of the song included on a 2CD compilation of their complete recordings released earlier this year. The Hellbillys would be a little more difficult to compile, having used about a dozen different labels over 25 years and more members than Spinal Tap or Uriah Heep. Bright note? They still have a MySpace page.

0040: Clef Quest

In 1984 I was attending college in the midwest. A friend who knew I was into comics invited me to go with him on the weekend to an all-Elfquest convention a couple of hours away. I had attended huge science fiction/fantasy multi-media conventions in the northeast, but had never been to one devoted to a single comic. The main reason for holding it was that the creators, Wendy and Richard Pini, were nearing the end of the original series and a group of fans were sponsoring a pair of wolves in their name at a nearby reserve (I think; this was 30+ years ago and the specifics are kind of fuzzy). Since they were heading out (probably from Poughkeepsie, NY) to visit the wolves, they agreed to appear at an all EQ mini-con.

It was a relatively simple set-up. It took place in a portion of a hotel with a room for a Q&A session and costume contest and a separate room for dealers. It was the first time I had seen entire families cosplaying. There was more of a community vibe than at larger cons. I picked up current printings of some issues I hadn't read and probably some general interest fanzine stuff, but most of the tables in the dealer's room were stocked with more merchandise than comics (after all, it was a whole convention devoted to a series that lasted 20 issues at that point). There were metal figurines, stuffed wolves, buttons, etc. Something I wish I had known about to look for was a cassette of Elfquest related songs that was released sometime that year. I don't know for certain if it had come out before or after the convention, but if it had been released, I'm betting it would have been there.

The cassette was on the label Off-Centaur Publications, which was formed in 1980 to publish the lyrics (and presumably sheet music) of original songs written by sf/fantasy fans about their favorite mêmes, characters and tropes. They released fewer than twenty books but about a hundred cassettes. "A Wolfrider's Reflections" was a multi-artist collection released in August 1984 as OCP-32. A book of the lyrics was released in 1987 with the same catalog number.

The compact disc (the subject of today's post) was released on 1992. It follows the original program exactly. The first eleven tracks were side 1 of the cassette and the second eleven were side 2. Musically, it's pretty much solid. Lyrically, it's pretty much what you'd expect. As much as I collect both music and comics, there is a whole subculture of fandom revolving around music about comics that I never really followed closely. It was probably at its peak from 1975-1995. What I can remember about those times is that Sword & Sorcery was as ubiquitous in the mid-70's as oversized guns were in the mid-90's. Barbarian heroes were everywhere. That's the only possible explanation I can imagine for why so many of the fan recordings emerging over the next decade sounded as though they were written for a Renaissance Faire, regardless of what kind of comics/books/movies, etc. the songs were about. Fortunately, that makes a great match for "Elfquest".

When the owners of Off Centaur split in 1988 there were legal disputes that left many of their recordings in limbo. The disputes were settled in 1992, and this album made its CD debut as soon as possible thereafter. It was fortuitous timing. At that time, Elquest had been around for 14 years, with Wendy Pini drawing the entire series and co-scripting with husband Richard. The original 20 self-published B&W magazine-size issues had been reprinted in color as paperbacks by Donning and in comic size by Epic. Then the series continued as B&W comics, first in "Siege at Blue Mountain" for Apple Press and later "Kings of the Broken Wheel" for the Pinis' own WaRP Graphics. All three series were then reprinted in color by WaRP as trades following the Donning format. All that preceded an expansion program by WaRP to publish several concurrent Elfquest comic book series-- in color-- to be written and drawn by a small army of contributors, some of whom (like Barry Blair) had been long-time fans of the series. It started with two titles, "The Hidden Years" and "New Blood" in spring 1992 but by the time the plug was pulled in spring 1996 the little publisher that produced fewer than 40 Elfquest comics in 14 years had produced over 140 Elfquest comics in four years. The entire line was cancelled and replaced with a monthly anthology.

Between 1992 and 1996, the color trades reprinting the pre-1992 material were reissued in hardcover. For even a more casual fan like myself, who read the series as a combination of comics and paperbacks, the CD offered a much better way to enhance the experience of rereading the old series than the added heft of a hardcover. After all, it was recorded in 1984 and each of the songs is about, or in the voice of, the original characters, often referencing specific scenes or dialogue from the first series. For me, the highlights were tracks 1 and 12, the lead tracks of each side of the cassette format, "Children Of The Fall" and "A Wolfrider's Reflections". Also worth a listen were "Nightcrawler" and "Strange Blood". For what is essentially an upscale 30-year old fan recording, the production values are remarkably good. It should also be noted that Mercedes Lackey is a prolific fantasy writer in her own right but these recordings were made before her first full-length book was published. Julia Ecklar went on to write a jillion Star Trek novels as half of L.A. Graf. Leslie Fish, as far as I know, is still alive and performing songs as of this writing. The album can be heard on YouTube here with montages of still art and photos of cosplayers. If you want to own it in a more portable audio form, it's downloadable from several services.

0033: Cast in Aluminum, Then in Lacquer

Reading "Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron" today, a person who began reading alternative comics in the past ten years might think it was a proposal for a cable TV series. Think "Preacher", "Fargo", "Walking Dead", "American Horror Story" and especially the return of "Twin Peaks". But when the story was originally published, it was not only inconceivable that it could be adapted for television, some people had a hard time believing it was being published as a comic.

The story actually predates not only those TV series but their source materials as well. If it had an influence in anything, it would be in the "Twin Peaks" predecessor "Blue Velvet" (1986), also the creation of David Lynch. The title, however, comes from the dialogue in Russ Meyer's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

Dan Clowes wrote and drew "Like A Velvet Glove..." as a serialized lead feature in his Fantagraphics series "Eightball". This is the same series that became the source for "Ghost World", "Art School Confidential" and "Ice Haven", which became two movies and a short. So, finding this "Original Soundtrack" would only serve to reinforce the suspicion that there was a movie in the making here, no? No. That is, there was speculation about it being adapted into a film in the 90's when everything from "The Mask" to "Tank Girl" was getting into national chain theaters, but this isn't intended to be a soundtrack to a movie. It was written to be a soundtrack to the comic.

Dan Clowes (left) and Tim Hensley (right), as drawn by Clowes

Tim Hensley is the son of Tom Hensley, decades-long keyboardist for Neil Diamond and others. He was also one of several veteran session musicians who recorded a synthetic-instrument Christmas album as Joy Circuit. The album, "Crystal Clear Christmas", was released on the Modern Art label in 1987, but Modern Art was a small independent with little in the way of infrastructure so the manufacturing and distribution was done by Word, Inc., an Irving, Texas-based gospel label (it has since changed hands and has offices in Nashville). Word would eventually be known for releasing early recordings of artists like Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant, but in the mid-80's if it was known at all it was as the home of both revival tent acts (the Bill Gaither Trio) and "contemporary Christian" acts (such as the tone-deaf Sandi Patty). Given the irreverent liner notes on "Crystal Clear Christmas" [for the song "We Three Kings (of ornament R)" they add, "they journeyed onward in search of a full house"], it seems incredible that the ordinarily humorless Word would green light this. Maybe they don't play poker. The fact that it's a jazz album of holiday standards released on a fairly right-wing label at the height of the Reagan administration with sub-Ken Nordine liner notes makes the whole thing feel like an ironic satire dreamed up by Clowes. So, apparently son Tim shares his father's sense of humor. In 1987, Tim Hensley was a college student and comics fan with a band. He contacted Daniel Clowes to see if it would be possible for him to draw the jacket art, based on the aesthetics of Clowes' late 80's series "Lloyd Llewellyn". Apparently, Clowes agreed that they's be a perfect match, since he drew the front and back cover art for the vinyl LP "Split", released under the name Victor Banana [Splat-Co Records 100, 1989]. It was Clowes who then suggested to Hensley that he reciprocate by writing a soundtrack to a comic book series that Clowes was in the process of starting. The series became "Eightball", published about three times a year (initially) by Fantagraphics. Although they had no cover dates, the indicia date for issue #1 was October 1989. It was 32 pages without ads and included the new character Young Dan Pussey, old favorite Lloyd Llewellyn and the now-classic "Devil Doll" short. The lead feature was "Like A Velvet Glove...", in which a man named Clay discovers that his ex-wife appeared in a fetishistic porn film and goes on a road trip to find her. Instead he gets sidetracked and effectively trapped in a bizarre small town that seems to be a microcosm of conspiracy theories come to life.

(exterior of CD booklet)

According to Hensley, the song "O'Herlihy" existed in 1989, but for whatever reason had not been included on the LP "Split". Clowes incorporated the character into the story in order to ensure it would be included on the soundtrack. Then, Clowes continued to keep Hensley updated on the progress of the story and Hensley continued to write songs inspired by specific elements in it. In the middle of that, they both contributed to the faux lounge act Rube Ruben's 7" single "Shmendrick" (Sympathy For The Record Industry SFTRI 117) and the second volume of Ernest Noyes Brookings poems set to music, both in 1991. As 1993 began, the story finally reached its enigmatic end in Eigthball #10 (02/93), at 130 pages not including covers and promotional pieces. It was the only feature in all ten issues; Lloyd had given way to multiple short pieces after 1990. The first full-color Eightball T-shirt featured "Velvet Glove" characters and it was the basis of a silkscreen, mug and even a rubber stamp of Tina (the potato shaped mutant girl who appears on the CD booklet cover, above). Paul and Tina even appear in the two-page meta-story "Eightball" in issue #9.

(interior of CD booklet)

Eightball #11 (06/93) included the four-page satire "Velvet Glove: The Movie", detailing what a nightmarish disaster Hollywood would make out of any attempt to adapt the story to film, followed by a half-page ad for the 10" LP of the soundtrack. For the record, the front and back of the vinyl version were both completely different original Clowes art. The 500 copies disappeared pretty quickly and a year later Eightball #14 (no date; late 1994) offered the soundtrack on CD in the letters' page. The disc is easier to find (I think the print run was a few thousand) and definitely fits the story, although curious fans should be aware that it's about 16 minutes long (the "Split" album offered 20 songs in 35 minutes, so it's consistent with Hensley's style).

Hensley continued playing music, appearing as "Vic Hazelnut" (a nod to Vic Chesnutt) on a single by April March (the sleeve had liner notes by "Ren and Stimpy" creator John Kricfalusi) shortly after the soundtrack was completed. Also in 1993, the Joy Circuit Christmas album was reissued on the Jenkins Peabody label.
The label's next release appears to be the last Hensley/Clowes collaboration I can find. In 1995, Peabody-Jenkins released the CD "Refrains" under the pseudonym Neil Smythe. Reportedly it didn't sell as well, but CDBaby probably still has copies if you're interested. After 2000, Hensley made a belated debut as a cartoonist in his own right after working as a film editor. To date, his most successful effort is probably "Wally Gropius" (Fantagraphics, 2010). Clowes, of course, gradually turned Eightball from a one-man anthology into a series of one-shots in different formats and eventually stopped using the umbrella title sometime after it had already lost its definition. And Terry Zwigoff helped him evade the worst aspects of translating his works to film. In fact, odds are I'll probably stumble across another "other media" post topic involving Clowes before the end of the year.

0029: Surprisingly, It's Not About Cuba

The comic book was called "Xenozoic Tales", but it isn't too often that a small press, creator-owned comic gets optioned for a Saturday morning cartoon. On several occasions, creator Mark Schultz marketed the feature under the name "Cadillacs And Dinosaurs" because that pretty much sums up the visceral appeal of it if not the full premise. In a post-apocalyptic future, the Earth is overrun by vegetation while humans go underground to survive. When their descendents emerge centuries later, they find dinosaurs roaming around and have to rediscover forgotten technologies to survive.

The entire series was done in black-and-white, starting with a 12-page story in the Kitchen Sink anthology DEATH RATTLE #8 (12/86) which lead right into XENOZOIC TALES. After finishing 8 issues in two years, XT took the first of what would be several extended gaps in its publishing history. During that time Kitchen Sink published the first trade paperback collection, entitled "CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS", in the summer of 1989. It compiled that first story and ones from the first four issues, but in order of occurance. Remember, despite their difference in size, Marvel and DC were still relatively new at publishing their own paperbacks and hardcovers, but Kitchen Sink had been getting books into mainstream bookstores since the 1970's. Thus, the trade collection reached a larger potential audience than the comic, getting on shelves in counties that didn't even have comics specialty stores, let alone one that prominently displayed smaller publishers. And the comic wasn't sold at newsstands or convenience stores. Hence, more people came to know the feature by the name of its trade collection. Issue #9 followed the trade but #10 didn't come out until 1990, followed by the second trade, "DINOSAUR SHAMAN", collecting XT #5-8, in the fall.

Between the second trade and the resumption of the series, Marvel's Epic Comics imprint reprinted the first six issues of XENOZOIC TALES in color as a monthly series, but under the title CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS, since the Kitchen Sink series was still going on. #11 came out in 1991, #12 in 1992 and months later CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS 3-D #1 (07/92), with an ad for C&D Candy Bars! Since the 3-D comic processed one story apiece from XT#6 and 7, this meant that new issues were now coming out annually and that the next year, the biggest year of all for the feature, would be the first without a new issue. In the summer of 1993, the third trade was released, "TIME IN OVERDRIVE" at about the same time as a second edition of the first trade (with new cover art) was printed. In September the animated television series "CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS" began being broadcast on CBS Saturday mornings, lasting 13 episodes until it was replaced in the spring by "CONAN AND THE YOUNG WARRIORS", which also lasted 13 episodes. It spawned a line of Tyco Toys, including characters, dinosaurs, vehicles and playsets. Kitchen Sink even published a color comic: CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS SPECIAL TYCO TOYS EDITION in December reprinting a story apiece from XT #1 and 9. And while all of that activity was buzzing about in the fall of 1993, the album was finally completed.

In publisher TwoMorrows' "Modern Masters Vol. 15: Mark Schultz" (2008, pages 58-59), Mark Schultz tells an interviewer that he met musician Chris Christensen at a San Diego Comic Con sometime after Christensen had written the music for a vinyl picture disc of songs tied to Will Eisner's Spirit. He was also a fan of XT and the two agreed to work on a concept album as a companion to the comic. Taking their cue from the vehicle designs in the comics, they initially recorded covers of early rock standards and gradually wrote enough originals in compatible styles that the covers were eventually unnecessary. They started recording these in September, 1990 and finished in October, 1993. All the songs on the finished disc were co-written by Christensen and Schultz and in some cases with Robert Haimer ("Liturgy"), Don Wittsten ("This Land", "When You Come Back Home"), Scott Rosner ("Fracture") and one with Haimer and Bill Mumy ("Into The Vaults"). Mumy is probably best known as an actor (as Will on "Lost In Space" and Lennier on "Babylon 5") but has worked in music (with Haimer as Barnes & Barnes) and comics for years. He plays guitar on tracks 5, 10 and 12 (with Max Allan Collins on organ). Miguel Ferrer narrates the opening track, "Liturgy".

The overall effect is that of a very capable bar band; fine listening but only a few songs are all that memorable. It was made in the US by Graphitti Designs, better known for their T-shirts and high-end limited edition versions of books from other publishers. The good news for the curious is that it's now available for streaming from from nearly every outfit that streams music. It's about an hour long, with the highlights being "Liturgy", "Step On The Gas And Go", "Into The Vaults" and "Cadillacs And Dinosaurs". The CD was released in 1994 while Topps Comics was publishing a 9 issue series called CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS, presumably to ride on the success of the cartoon that had already been cancelled. The Topps series was written by Roy Thomas and featured a variety of artists but Schultz wrote only a bit of text and his art appeared only as bits and pieces reprinted within short articles. For their part, Kitchen Sink selected DEATH RATTLE #8 as one of three comics reproduced for their 25th Anniversary (the others were BIZARRE SEX #9 with the first Omaha story and Robert Crumb's 1972 THE PEOPLE'S COMICS). The year ended with a new issue #13, but #14 took another two years to come out (indicia dated October 1996, but reaching direct market stores in December). And that was it. Schultz stayed busy with other things but he hasn't been too quick to say the dinosaurs have gone extinct again. There's been a two volume compendium from Dark Horse and one volume from Flesk. Aside from collecting the Topps series, there's not much left to do with the existing material. Except listen.

0026: 'Twas Video Killed The Beast?

On the last day of March of this year a boxed set of CD's containing the collected works of the band Radio Stars was released. Entitled "Thinking Inside The Box", it was their first multi-disc collection and likely their last ever release. They simply didn't produce much in the studio, owing to the fact that they were made up of people coming from and on their way to other projects. The bulk of their recordings come from early 1977 to mid 1979, a volatile and extremely fertile period in British rock and pop music. They reunited briefly in 1982 for live shows.

After releasing three singles during 1977, Radio Stars ended the year with their first album, "Songs For Swinging Lovers"(Chiswick Records WIK 5), a limited number of which included as a bonus a "Greatest Hits Album" (Chiswick Records PROMO 2) that turned out to be a 7" single combining their first two A-sides, "Dirty Pictures" (on the left) and "No Russians In Russia" (below). Each side is illustrated with a cartoon by designer Phil Smee.

Clearly, Smee would have been right at home in Viz Magazine (no relation to the U.S. manga publisher). Callously offensive images or sleazy subject matter are ripe for the comedic approach, and it's likely that Smee would have made a name for himself for years in a venue like Viz if he hadn't already found a more lucrative career designing sleeve art for numerous bands. Cartooning seems to have been more of a hobby that came in useful at times like this, such as Nick Mason's cover for Pink Floyd's "Relics" or Chris Dreja's cover for the Yardbird's "Roger The Engineer".

I bought this used in a generic sleeve apart from the album, so there really aren't any available credits apart from what anyone could look up regarding the original singles.

0019: Suitable Ending

In 2006 the Action suits reconvened and recorded enough tracks to fill an album. The seven songs recorded in March 1996 (and released on the first four singles) were shuffled into the play order with the new songs. The cardboard sleeve (with new Peter Bagge art) lists all the songs in the CD's program order:

The fifth single, which didn't have Bagge and was illustrated by Al Columbia, isn't included on the compilation. At about forty minutes, it wasn't a matter of time constraints. The liner notes mention a fire in 1998, but not what, if anything besides the house, was lost. I don't know who would have the master tapes if they haven't been burned or melted. Of course, when everything you release comes out on different labels there are always licensing issues, too. I do know that Steve Fisk produced both the 1996 and 2006 sessions, but not the fifth single, so it could just be a matter of using what he could immediately access.

I should mention that the logo on the CD surface is not gold-colored. It's really reflective silver, but appears gold in the scan as a side effect of the equipment I used. Oh, and please pardon the shrink-wrap glare on the front and back cover scans. I found that by opening only the seam on the shrink-wrap that I could easily slide the CD in and out of the jacket while keeping the easier-to-clean plastic sheath. The white background on the front could otherwise get really dingy really quickly.

Unlike the singles, the CD booklet contains full, typeset credits. Rather than the trail-off grooves found on vinyl, the CD has an inner groove around the non-encoded plastic center ring that reads, "THE ACTION SUITS CD W181 IFPI LL61". The plastic center ring itself is embossed with "IFPI J763". The catalog number was PressPop Music PPM-004. There's no indication of where either the disc or booklet were manufactured, but PressPop is a Japanese company and this CD is still available on their website for ¥2,000. They also have a Buddy Bradley doll for ¥3,200. The vitals are here:

Also in the booklet are three pages of photos and this comic format advertisement by Jaime Hernandez that ran int Bagge's comic book Hate #24 (08/96). It not only has far-fetched future versions of the band and Fisk but also representatives of the four labels that released the first four singles.

And that's it for the band, as far as I know. I think my next 'other media' post might be a DVD. I have several examples of 12" records that tie into comics, but no way to scan them. I'm going to have to somehow invest in a digital camera. In the meantime, there's still plenty of comics to organize and tons of related paraphernalia I keep tripping over. I hope you find them pause-worthy.

0017: Change of Suits

With all seven of the songs which were recorded in March 1996 finally released on vinyl singles (on four different labels), The Action Suits needed to record new material, but they would have to do it without Peter Bagge. While their original drummer, Al Columbia, didn't perform on the new single, he was available to do the sleeve art:

This time the record label was Spot On! but there's no indication on the packaging or the record itself what the catalogue number would be. The trail-off grooves each have "ASV-001-" followed by either "A" or "B" as appropriate. One would have to guess that denotes "Action Suits Vinyl", but that's only a guess. There is a London record label called Spot On, without the exclamation mark and with a different logo, but it releases only house and trance. Here's the interior:

The note straddling the crease says, "Thanks to Steel Wool for equipment, John Troutman for the Mustang, Joe Sacco and Chelsea Cain for cheerleading, Steve Fisk for being the coolest guy in the world, Al Columbia, John Ramberg, Jeremy Eaton & Pete Bagge for inspiration, and Rhea Patton for everything else. All proceeds donated to the Humphrey Muskie Preservation Society." Either there used to be a town in Washington called Humphrey with an endangered fishing area that's no longer on the map or they're simply referring to the unsuccessful 1968 Democratic Presidential ticket of Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie.

 Both songs were recorded on June 28th, 1997 at the Rathutch in Ballard, WA by Zach Aubrey on 4-track.
Mixed by Mr. Steve Fisk. There is no producer or running times given. These songs are also not included on the compact disc compilation released in 2006.

Both songs written by Eric Reynolds

Eric Reynolds: Guitar & Vocals
Andy Schmidt: Bass
Chris Jacobs: Drums
Demian Johnston: Lead Guitar


About ten years after this, Chris Jacobs was the General Manager of SubPop Records. Demian Johnston is a prolific mainstay on the the Seattle music scene playing with (and as) a variety of group names. He also works in design and print-making.







All that remains for the discography (to my knowledge) is the CD compilation.

0015: Four Suits Make A Deck

Four bananas make a bunch, and so do many more, but there aren't many more after this. This Fourth Action Suits single was released on yet another label, this time in a sleeve that opened to reveal liner notes.

Unfortunately, this wraparound sleeve won't display its two halves side by side in anything but the smallest size, so I'm going to display them twice.

And below we have the liner notes. Again, my scanner doesn't the full breadth of the image.

This particular single was made available on clear vinyl with illustrated labels:

Side A: "Cancer Father" (written by Eric Reynolds)
Lead Vocals: Eric
Trail-off groove: "L-47111 MR-037-A KM"
Produced by Steve Fisk
Running time: 3:40

Eric Reynolds: Guitars
Andy Schmidt: Bass
Peter Bagge: Drums. Percussion
Steve Fisk: Piano

Side B: "Visualize Ballard" (written by Andy Schmidt)
Lead Vocals: Andy
Trail-off groove: "L-47111-X MR-037-B KM"
Produced by Steve Fisk
Running time: 3:19

Eric Reynolds: Guitars
Andy Schmidt: Bass
Peter Bagge: Drums, Percussion
Mayhem: Andy and Steve








And if I want to get this done before midnight I'm going to delay researching a brief history of Man's Ruin Records and just follow up with the third part of the comic strip from the 2006 CD booklet.

Two more installments.