I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NO FORCEFIELD-God is an Excuse (2001).

I was looking up what Larry LaLonde, guitarist for Primus, had been up to while Primus seems to be on hiatus.  I hadn’t heard a word from him, so I was surprised to see that he had released two albums with a band called No Forcefield.

I looked for the discs, and found both of them used for $1.00 each.  So I ordered them without really knowing what they were about, except that they were described as “experimental.”

This is the second disc by the band which consists of Brain and Ler from Primus as well as assorted other fellows (Bob Cock) and guests.  And experimental is an okay word to describe the record.  But a better one is disappointing.

With the lineage that these guys bring to the band, it’s surprising how mundane the disc is. It opens with a phone message about Bin Laden and God which morphs into the hilarious Denis Leary bit about CDs and the silver dog bone thing.  It then becomes a fairly straightforward electronic track.  And this electronic stuff is kind of the purpose of the group, I think.  There are at least 3 long, simple instrumentals that are little more than a few notes repeated over a drum beat.

The other tracks are complete nonsense: a faux TV show with “products” for sale which is a teensey bit funny, but not really.  There’s also Billy Roz, whoever that may be, crooning “You Are My Sunshine” as well as some polkas over a drum machine (he sings like an old doddering man).  And finally a short drum solo.

It’s not even clear to me why Ler is in the band as it seems to be mostly drums and a simple keyboard chord.  The only interesting track on the disc is “How to Purify Street Heroin” which is an awesome scratchy workout which I assume is by DJ Disk from the Invisbl Skratch Piklz.  And that’s pretty much it.

I was really disappointed my first go around, as I was expecting something, anything, more than this.  On subsequent listens, I can appreciate the disc as background/comedy although really neither one is a reason to hunt this down.

[READ: January 21, 2010] Too Much Hopeless Savages

This third collection of the Hopeless Savages saga sees many new revelations.  Turns out that Nikki Savage’s mom has come under the influence of a preacher who is intent on praying at the Hopeless-Savage house trying to get them to react in some way.  (I’m a little unclear exactly what his goal is here).

At the same time, Arsenal and her boyfriend and Twitch and his boyfriend (the  boyfriends are brothers) are off to the boyfriends’ homeland of Hong Kong.  Arsenal is there for a martial arts competition and Twitch heads along so that the H-S siblings can meet their boyfriends’ great grandmother.

Hijinx naturally ensue.  In this case, Arsenal is slipped a very valuable package and she soon has numerous groups of men after her (it’s unclear if any of them are up to any good).  The rest of the family decamps for Hong Kong to escape from all the praying (and they bring grandma along to de-brainwash her).

What is surprising about the story is the emotional depth that comes out of an incident from Arsenal’s past. The flashback is played for laughs when the Catholic school that Arsenal attends allows the girls to put on a fund raiser (all manner of inappropriate games are proprosed).  But a later flashback shows what happened when Arsenal let her guard down.  And the impact it will have later in her life.

I also really enjoyed the two grandmothers discussion when they finally meet.  It’s a fun twist on conventional roles.

This book is a great conclusion (I assume it’s the end) to the series.  While not as emotionally wrenching as Ground Zero, it traffics very nicely in emotion, humor and action.

Christine Norrie is back for the artwork.  I like her work better in this volume than the first, but I’m still not a huge fan of her work.  There’s something about it that I just don’t like.  In this case I found the scenes where Twitch and the two boyfriends are together to be very confusing as to who was who.  They all wore black and had black hair.  And the boyfriends are Chinese, but they didn’t look very different from Twitch in many of the scenes.  While I don’t want a caricatured Chinese character, some kind of distinguishing features would be very helpful.

But really that’s splitting hairs.  The story overall is really strong, and the art, especially the flashbacks, is quite effective. Oh, and for those curious about the Zero/Ginger relationship, it figures prominently in the background (if such a thing is possible).  Zero spends the entire story writing postcards to Ginger (who we assume is studying hard) telling him about the events in Hong Kong.

I don’t know if Van Meter’s going to be doing another story line (there are several H-S members left to devote an arc to) but if she does, I’ll be waiting for it.