I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BOBBY BARE, JR.-Tiny Desk Concert #417 (January 27, 2015).

I don’t really know anything about Bobby Bare Jr.  I don’t know anything about Bobby Bare Sr.  I knew he was from Nashville and I assumed he was a country singer.

But in this Tiny Desk Concert it’s just him on his acoustic guitar and Matt Rowland on keyboards (often employing a Hammond organ/1970s sound).  This makes his songs fall more into the singer-songwriter category than the country superstar category. (I particularly enjoy the way the keyboards “build” for the instrumental section of the first song, “Don’t Wanna Know” when Rowland lays his arm on the keys.

Bare is very funny (and Rowland’s keyboard “comments” add to the humor).  He introduces the second song “The Big Time,” a rocking catchy number about moving to Nashville to become famous.  He seems to have a love/hate relationship with Nashville.  He introduces the song by talking about hanging out with his friends and telling them, “I can’t wait til I become famous because I’ll never hang out with any of you motherfuckers again.”

As an introduction to the final song “Visit Me in Music City” he describes Nashville as making the worst music ever recorded and the best music ever recorded.  He talks about a guy at a bluegrass festival who, upon realizing that Robert Plant was in the audience said he’d like to welcome Robert Plant from ZZ Top.  “And this sums up Nashville.”  This is a funny and actually sweet song that shows how charming Bare can be,

I enjoyed the whole set, and it totally changed what I thought I knew about Bobby Bare Jr.  Check it out.

[READ: January 15, 2015] Captain Marvel

I was pretty excited to see a female super hero cross my desk.  I don’t really know much about the history of Captain Marvel (who was a man at some point).  Nor do I know why she is a woman now (there is a previous book in this new series written by DeConnick but I couldn’t find it).

This book opens in the middle of the action with Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, walking with several aliens (a robot creature, a green figure in a hood, a woman with snakes for hair and a bull-looking guy) on the Maniaciano Outpost.  They are looking for something.  The plan, which is a simple one, goes awry and soon they are all trying to escape at top speed.  Captain Marvel has what they are looking for but they have lost the green woman.  (Whose name is Tic).

Flash back six weeks ago where Captain Marvel is speaking to Captain America and she has just encountered a pod with, of all things, an alien girl with green skin.  We see that Carol lives in the Statue of Liberty and is also friends with Iron Man.  And as the first book closes we learn that she is ready to go back out on another mission.  This one proves to be pretty dangerous and she is saved at the last minute with help from…The Guardians of the Galaxy (holy crossover Spiderman!–it looks like she will be getting her own movie in 2018, so just hold on to your tights for a few more years).

The Guardians help until Captain Marvel realizes that she is really the one to help in this situation.  It was a little hard to follow, I thought (as all land battles tend to be).  The back of the book summarizes it this way:

“As Carol takes on a mission to return an alien girl to her home world, she lands in the middle of an uprising against the Galactic Alliance and the Spartax!  Investigating the forced resettlement of Rocket Girl’s people, Carol discovers she has a history with the man behind the plot.”

I don’t know who the Galactic Alliance is or who Spartax is, so a lot of this was pretty confusing.

But the basic plot seems to be that these people (Tic and her friends) were from one planet and resettled to a new one.  And now that planet is dying so the people are pretty pissed. And they are pissed at Captain Marvel and the Avengers and pretty much everyone else.

It is going to take some technological savvy as well as some good diplomacy to deal with this mess.  Obviously more familiarity with the Marvel Universe will make this a much more enjoyable book, but even with my limited familiarity I enjoyed the story line .

I especially enjoyed Lopez’ drawing style which I found very clean and easy to follow. Usually battle scenes are drawn very dark and it makes them very confusion but these were mostly bright and easy to parse.  I hope to find the first book and to read future books as well.