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Archive for the ‘Craig Rousseau’ Category

David Petersen–Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard (2011)

Posted in Adventure, Alex Kain, Alex Sheikman, All Songs Considered, Children's Books, Christmas Album, Craig Rousseau, David Petersen, Death, Fantasy, Fears, Garfunkel and Oates, Guy David, Jason Shawn Alexander, Jeremy Bastian, João M.O. Lemos, Karl Kerschl, Katie Cook, Lowell Francis, Mark Smylie, Military, Nate Pride, Scott Keating, Sean Ruin, Short Books, Ted Naifeh, Terry Moore on December 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

legendsSOUNDTRACK: GARFUNKEL AND OATES-“Year End Letter” (2010).

gandoGarfunkel and Oates are a wonderful comedy team.  I’ve enjoyed so many of their songs, but this was the first time I ‘ve heard this Christmastime ditty.

We always enjoy reading people’s year end letters with an eye towards the attitude in this song–slightly mocking and yet also thinking:

“You’re right, your family’s better than mine
And it seems you make a lot more money.”

But now with the advent of Facebook, people post their year end letter info every day.  And I am very sad to see that we got virtually no year end letters this year.  So even though we tease, now we miss what we once mocked.  At least G&O can remind us what they all contained.

And since I cannot figure out how to embed a vimeo video, you’ll have to click this link to watch it.

[READ: December 20, 2013] Legends of the Guard

This book is a collection of short pieces written and illustrated by some of the greats in independent comic books (with a shocking number of them being from Michigan).  Evidently many writers contacted Petersen and wanted to work with him.  He didn’t want to mess up the arc of his story so he devised this idea.  Set in June’s Ale House, all of the mice are tasked with telling a story.  The one who tells the best will have his bar tab erased (for some that is quite a deal).

And so, these stories or legends are set at any time in the past and do not impact the chronology of our Mouse Guards.  And man, are they good. (more…)

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Terry Moore & Craig Rousseau–Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane 1-5 (2008)

Posted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Craig Rousseau, Graphic Novel, Kevin Smith, Spider-Man, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore, The Flaming Lips, YA Books on April 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

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

freakThis 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. (more…)

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