I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RICHARD THOMPSON-Small Town Romance (1984), Guitar Vocal (1976), Starring as Henry the Human Fly (1972).

This is the last batch of RT CDs before I get to Sweet Warrior. I saved these for last because of their esoteric nature.

Small Town Romance: This is a collection of live solo recordings in NYC from 1967-1982. The sound quality isn’t always the best, and RT’s voice isn’t always up to snuff. I’m thinking that all the songs are Richard & Linda or Fairport Convention works. I don’t like the early material as much as his later work so, aside from appreciating the venues and the cozy atmosphere, this isn’t a favorite disc of mine.

[Guitar, vocal] is a collection of rarities and live tracks dating back to Fairport Convention. There’s two wailing live tracks that each run over ten minutes that are really fabulous. The rest of the record falls into a surprisingly dated sounding collection. It contains some covers and some originals, as well as tracks on which RT doesn’t sing. I wouldn’t listen to this too often, but “Calvary Cross” is the reward waiting at the end.

Starring as Henry the Human Fly. This was RTs first solo album, done way back in 1972. The first three songs are really classic RT. He still plays them from time to time. “Nobody’s Wedding” is really just a great track from the get-go, and “Roll Over Vaughn Williams” is a fantastic track to start a record with. Even “Angel’s Took My Racehorse Away” has the feeling of a traditional song at this point. My gripe with the record is twofold: it sounds like it was recorded in the 70s. In an of itself, this is not a problem, but since all of RTs later solo works sound so timeless, it’s weird how dated this sounds. And two, I feel that RTs voice hasn’t worked up to its masterful self yet. He still sounds, dare I say it, young. (Which, I know he was). But it’s strange to go from the solid strong voice of the 80s and 90s to the still developing voice of the 70s. Still, a great place to start even if it is considered the worst-selling record in Warner Brothers history.

[READ: July 6, 2007] The Plain Janes.

Previously, in Sarah’s Book Journal, there was a review of The Plain Janes. Knowing my love of a good graphic novel, she passed it along to me before I even had a chance to read her review. So, I get to do my review uncompromised by her thoughts. I have not read any of Castellucci’s YA books, so she’s a new author to me. She has captured the graphic novel style very well. I like that she includes two different styles of voice-over to advance the story: the narrator’s VO, as well as a letter writing technique.

The story concerns a young girl, Jane, whose family flees Metro City after a bomb explodes in downtown. Jane was near the bomb when it went off, and she became attached to John Doe, a man in a coma. From her new suburban town, she keeps in touch with John Doe through a series of letters and sketches from his notebook. The notebook stated “Art Saves,” and Jane takes this as a cue for her rebellion to transform her new suburban town into a more free place for expression. The characters are a bit simplistic: the brain, the actor, the jock, but they are each fleshed out enough and have distinct enough voices that, for a reasonably short story, they work just fine. The story moves briskly, and the “art pranks” the girls do are certainly fun. In light of recent events in Boston, from the crew at Aqua Teen Hunger Force, its easy to see how pranks can set a town into hyper vigilant mindset (or, as is often the case: overreaction). One can only hope this will inspire some kids to do more art, for whatever reason. A really good high-school story.

The only think I didn’t like too much was a certain weakness in the artist’s style. Overall, this is a light style of drawing that I like very much, in fact, there were many scenes where he captures the emotions just right. However, there were several panels where the perspectives were pretty off. Normally I don’t think is a problem if it is a “style choice” but overall, he didn’t seem to have a problem with perspective. It just seemed that he missed on a couple. Distracting for a minute, but overall, no biggie.