I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-The Fearless Freaks 1986-2006 (2006).

This is an assemblage of ten recordings from twenty years of The Flaming Lips.  It’s something of a soundtrack to the movie of the same name, but it’s more of a collection of rare and unavailable tracks.  Most of the tracks are live, and, since I’m not a big collector of unreleased works, they were all new to me.

Except of course that track 2 is “Free Radicals” which is from the then-soon-to-be-released At War with the Mystics.  The opening track, “Wayne’s Intro…Smoking a J with the Fearless Freaks” is a pretty instrumental with an introduction to the album by Wayne himself.  I’ve since found the instrumental online and it’s a really good listen (with the intro, it’s not something you’d want to listen to all that often, frankly).

The next track is “Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear.”  According to Wayne’s intro it’s a very rare track and it fits quite nicely into the time period of its recording (2005).  It’s a bit more acoustic sounding than most of their work at this time, but it’s still really good.

The rest of the disc is live tracks from various shows throughout their career.  And the thing that is somewhat amazing is how noisy/sloppy/untechnical the band sounds compared to their post Zaireeka explorations of sonic landscapes. “With You…” dates back to 1986, when the Lips were a noisy bunch of punks.  “Whole Lotta Love/You Can’t Stop the Spring” comes from 1988 and is a ramshackle mess–well the Led Zep cover is a mess– intentionally so. In fact all of the songs from this era have a feeling of what Wayne desribeds as “Our playing is on the verge of overtaking itself.”  It’s sloppy, noisy, fast and pretty wonderful.

The disc also contains a cover of “Space Age Love Song” by A Flock of Seagulls.  It’s from that same time period and is hard to determine if it’s reverent or not.

“When You Smile” clocks in at 12 minutes, although really the song itself is about 5, with a 7 minute noise-fest afterward.  Meanwhile, “Sleeping on the Roof” comes from the Parking Lot Experiment in which about 50 people all play a tape from simultaneously.  This version is considerably longer than the version from The Soft Bulletin and it is far more profane.  The last several minutes consist of several people telling each other to Fuck Off.  It’s not really worth repeated listenings but it’s interesting for curiosity seekers.

The last track, from 2003, is “The Observer” also from Bulletin.  It’s quite a change from the rest of the disc, as the playing is crisp and the recording is quite clean.

The disc is meant for diehard fans of the band.  Casual listeners probably won’t enjoy this as much, and should just seek out the original albums.

[READ: April 8, 2009] Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane

Even though I’m a fan of comics, I’ve never really enjoyed the superhero vein of them.  But every once in a while a writer I like will jump into the fray and I will follow.

Kevin Smith did Green Arrow, a superhero I’d not even heard of, but I read his run of that one.  And now Terry Moore has done a limited run of the series Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.  I didn’t know anything about this series when I first heard he would be writing it.  I have since learned that there were 20 issues published in 2004-2005.  And this 5 issue mini-series may or may not have anything to do with the previous series (I’ll probably never investigate that).

But after that big super-hero welcome, this series has very little to do with suprheroes.  It’s more of a love story, or at least a frustrated love story.

This version of Spider-Man is, like the movie, set in high school.  Peter Parker is, of course, Spider-Man and Mary Jane is the love of his life.  But he can’t tell her he’s Spider-Man and…oh, you know all of this already.

This series focuses more on Mary Jane, and so this version of the story is fun with very minimal “action.”  Terry Moore wrote the dialogue (and did 4 of the 5 covers, I think), and he has a lot of fun writing high school sophomore speak.  He throws in a few teen phrases (about texting mostly), but it’s the rhythms that really hold true.

There’s a mini-arc in which someone makes a nasty website about MJ (very topical, Terry!) and that is nicely resolved.  And, there’s another mini arc in which Spider-Man is in a pretty bad accident.

While reading the 4th issue I said to myself, I wonder how long this series will be (I didn’t realize it was only 5 issues).  It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it, but because it’s a fairly limited storyline…they can only not reveal their love for each other for so long without it getting tiresome.  And, realistically, how many plots can you do in this relatively limited format.  So, 5 issues was perfect.  It allows for the reader to imagine what will happen in the future without leaving questions unanswered.

This series is an all ages series, meaning it’s neither too violent nor too sexual.  The artwork is also very friendly…it never gets too too dark, but Rousseau has a lot of fun with shadings and distorting faces when they get angry.

If you’re a huge Spidey fan, this may not quite be up your alley as, let’s face it, it’s pretty girly.  But if you’re not much of a superhero fan, or, if you like Strangers in Paradise, then this is a very worthwhile miniseries.

And, for your Buffy fans, MJ looks an awful lot like Willow, too!