SOUNDTRACK: MARTIN TIELLI-“We didn’t even suspect that he was the poppy salesman.” (2001).
I wrote about this album once before, and while I made notes about it after listening to it again, I found out that they were pretty much exactly what I thought of the record four years ago. So I’m going to simply repost the review here, but I’m going to add some new notes seamlessly intermingled.
Martin Tielli’s first solo disc is a proper solo release: it’s almost all him on acoustic guitar and his gorgeous alto voice. I hadn’t listened to this disc in a while and I was delighted by how much of the disc I knew so well.
The opening track, “I’ll Never Tear Your Apart” is deceptively simple: beautiful harmonic’d guitars and his gentle voice. There’s a great video to go with it here. That is followed by the wonderful “My Sweet Relief” which sounds like a great Neil Young folk song: great verses an a strong chorus. Lyrically, though, it is all Tielli. “Double X” highlights Tielli’s beautiful acoustic guitar work. It’s another great story song, this one about a destitute person hanging under a superstore with a K and an M.
“Voices in the Wilderness” is a simply beautiful song, a lovely guitar melody and Tielli’s high voice singing along.. I also love that the lyric (mis)quotes Rush very nicely: “‘If you choose not to be free you still have made a choice,’ said a high and squeaky voice.”
“Farmer in the City” is the only track that Tielli didn’t write. It’s a nearly 8-minute song by Scott Walker. I had never listened to the original, but having now done so, I find the Walker version to be far superior. Walker’s voice is so eccentric and wonderful. So even though I love Martin’s voice, he just can’t compare to the original. Also find Martin’s version to be just a little spare (the Walker version has lovely strings. Kevin Hearn plays celeste and Selina Martin plays wine glasses on the track.
It’s followed by the delightful “World in a Wall” which uses mice in the wall as a metaphor for a broken relationship (with wonderful detailed lines like: She’s like a mouse, I know she’s around It’s a gnawing sound. Leaves little brown poohs from a little pink bum.”
This is followed by “That’s How They Do It in Warsaw” which is the first really rocking song (it has bass and drums) and a voiceover in Polish by Kasia Zaton.
It’s coupled with a slightly less rocky but still loud track “How Can You Sleep?” (which makes another fun musical allusion, this time about Guided by Voices). It has a co-songwriting credit from Dave Bidini and has a kind of vocal allusion to Bob Dylan, although I doubt it is about him.
“She Said ‘We’re On Our Way Down’” is a song that I really want to enjoy more. But It is so spare and Martin’s vocal line is so abstract, that I can never really get int it. But the guitar riff is really powerful and cool. And yet, the song seems to eschew melody but then a gorgeous guitar or vocal line shines through and really sounds brilliant. “From the Reel” is a beautiful, aching acoustic ballad.
The disc ends with the odd, seven minute “Wetbrain/Your War.” The first part (wet brain) is kind of slow but it builds into a beautiful dark song about addiction.
This is a really beautiful album, although there are moments when I fell like Martin gets too delicate, it’s amazing to hear just what he can do when he’s on his own.
[READ: October 19, 2015] Academia Waltz
Way back a long time ago I was pretty excited to read all of the Bloom County reissue books. Somehow I only got through Books 1 and 2, although I see now that five volumes were released in total.
Presumably at the end of that run, (which technically ended in 2011) comes this volume. Academia Waltz is the strip that Breathed wrote back in college. This book collects some (but apparently not all) of the strips. It’s odd to not collect them all since there is also an art gallery with all kinds of original pieces (complete with edits and scribbled notes) that duplicate many of the earlier strips.
The first part collects pieces from Academia Waltz the 1979 collection. The second part comes from Bowing Out, the 1980 Collection.
The first part is primarily about college guys dating, thoughts on feminism, racism, homosexuality, football (and homosexuality and football) art and of course academia. My favorite punch line in this section is “My God, life is offensive!”
Breathed was in school at U Texas. There are many UT-related strips that are hard to place for a non UT student. But they generally mock college life. There are two regularly occurring characters: Kitzie a typical college debutante and… Steve Dallas! Yes, Steve Dallas first appeared in this comic strip. He looks mostly the same, just a bit more angular (Breathed’s drawing style was certainly similar, but Bloom County (which came out only a couple of years later) was a lot more polished.
Steve is a macho frat boy. Interestingly, even though he talks a good game, he seems to be afraid of sex, even with his steady girlfriend, Kitzi. Steve also has a younger sister, Susan, who appears for a few strips. She is quite sexual herself, which is upsetting to her parents.
The football cartoons push discuss cross dressing (a half back who wears panty-hose) and another who wears a dress. And of course, the latent homosexuality of men tackling each other. This must have made him very popular.
There’s even an alien who has fun with various cultural stereotypes.
Another major character is a dog (who looks rather a lot like Opus, actually). As far as I can tell, he is unnamed. But he provides a lot of comic relief (thought bubbles rather than spoken), and sarcastic commentary (again, rather like Opus).
And then…we see a guy in a wheelchair who goes by Saigon John (It’s Bloom County’s Cutter John!). The jokes are largely the same–Star Trek jokes, scooping up women as he flies along, setting phasers to kill, etc.
There’s a lot of very specific to Texas jokes. There’ s a ton of jokes about running back Earl Campbell. I don’t know anything about Campbell’s college career, so I don’t know if there was a scandal or if he was just so famous it was hard not to poke fun at the bear.
“Bowing Out” pushes things a bit further. There’s some naked women in the drawings (mostly fantasies, but naked nonetheless). There’s some racial cartons that were certainly going to upset some people. And then there’s a whole series of jokes about Three Mile Island.
Saigon John has a flashback to Vietnam (and there’s a the same punchline about him wanting to walk that we’ll see in Bloom County), There’s also a very funny appearance by Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke.
We get a bit more involved with Steve Dallas. He takes a life drawing class only to have to draw an old man (“gross, this is gross”). And he seems to attack the debutantes a bit more (“I only sleep with rich well hung frat boys…and money I like gobs of money”). There’s some mocking of Hollywood when a film director comes to school and rats out everyone in Hollywood.
There’s a whole series of jokes about “Jester” which I assume is some UT dorm or something,
And the big shock comes when Kitzi decides not to be a deb anymore. She spits at her closet full of IZOD shirts and goes totally boho (see her sorority sisters react with horror).
In political news, there’s a lot of strips about the Arabs (as the masses start chanting Death to Iranian, Kill the Arabs, Death to Mexicans and ultimately Kill the Negroes–just how much was Breathed trying to get in trouble anyhow?).
And the strip end with Steve Dallas getting married!
The last section of the book is the Art Gallery, which is basically scans from Breathed’s personal collection.
As I said there are a lot of strips that are reproduced from earlier in the book but with marginalia and scratch-outs preserved. But there are also a lot of single panel political cartoons. Breathed started his career at the Austin American Statesman, (its in these cartoons that Breathed shows off just how well he can draw–because even though we love Bloom County we acknowledge that his style isn’t exactly pristine). Until a few cartoons offended enough people and got him kicked out of that paper (many cartoons are reproduced in this section).
Then he moved to UT’s The Daily Texan, and there’s a lot of jokes from that paper here (Academia Waltz was published there as well, but he seems to have had some single political cartoons as well).
If you thought that Bloom County pushed boundaries, he clearly reigned himself in for national newspapers. because he is fearless in these early strips–and he goes after just about everyone. It’s pretty damned funny.
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