Some comix, some not. We’re mixin’ things up, baby!
SPX recaps may be found courtesy of Eve Tushnet, Jim Henley (I was gonna ask you how many people thought you ran a store, Jim), the Comics Journal messboard (featuring an intriguing argument that the NYC-based MoCCA festival has stolen SPX’s thunder) and The Missus.
Forager muses on the distinctions between high, low, bourgeois and modernist art. I think he’s harder on comics and rock and roll than becomes his art-for-the-people position, but diff’rent strokes and all that.
I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the death of Warren Zevon, other than that I used to dance around my family room when I was a little kid as my dad played “Werewolves of London” over and over again for my listening pleasure. I thought the line about wanting to meet the werewolf’s tailor was particularly clever, since, you see, werewolves have tails.
I’ve been informed by reader Elliot K. that, contrary to my earlier conjecture, Akira Kurosawa did in fact take legal action against Sergio Leone’s swipe of Yojimbo. Look out, Mark!
Bill Sherman counters my defense of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club by arguing that the band’s own sullennes, recalcitrance about its influences, and relative lack of movie-star looks is what makes it a record-critic pinata relative to much more enthusiastic Jesus & Mary Chain enthusiasts the Raveonettes. That all makes sense–indeed, my quip about American critics “eating Danish” wasn’t so much an attempt to decry creeping Europhilia as it was a slightly drunken indulgence in a pun I’ve honed through eight years of going out with a woman of Danish descent. Ha ha.
Actually, I think the real argument is that American critics now adhere to what I call the Cult of the Exuberantly Stupid–that is, the dopier the song, the better it is as rock music. This reverse snobbery is anti-intellectualism for intellectuals–call it Earlier, Funnier Stuffitis if you prefer. It’s the same syndrome that leads people to say they prefer The Bends to OK Computer, Britney Spears’s “Satisfaction” to the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” Meet the Beatles to Abbey Road, Piper at the Gates of Dawn to The Dark Side of the Moon, the Beach Boys to the Beatles–Christ, Paul McCartney to the Beatles. BRMC’s sonic palette is inarguably more ambitious and expansive than the Raveonettes, hence they’ve just got to be the sort of pretentious drivel that rock’n’roll is around to deflate, right? There’s a certain element to tautology in first asserting that rock music can only do one very simple thing well and then basing your qualitative assessments of rock music on how much it manages to live up to your own low standards.
Bill also linked to a pretty good Village Voice piece on the two bands, sullied only by its de rigeur dig against electroclash. Just because it’s trendy don’t mean there ain’t something to it, folks! I’ve certainly enjoyed electroclash songs as much as any rock/pop music of the last couple years. Also, I happen to sport a fauxhawk and like it just fine, thank you very much.
Johnny Bacardi offers a few thoughts on Nick Drake. Much as my few remaining “I’m not a poseur!” protest-too-much braincells are loath to admit it, I was one of those Volkswagen Nick-Drake newbies. All I can say is, thank God for the new Beetle.
Team Comics, meet Team ComicsBloggers.