Mad Professor Torrent Discography Garth
The Authority Writers: Warren Ellis, Mark Millar (I refuse to recognise others) Artists: Bryan Hitch, Frank Quietly What the Justice League and Avengers wish they were, a team of super powered beings that may as well be gods. The team consists of a gay couple who are basically Superman and Batman. Two century-children, one has absolute control of electricity, the other is connected to and controls cities.
A half-human-half-bird Chinese monk and a magician who can basically do anything he imagines. These guys have fought against an army of asian supermen, gods and whatever Armageddon level threats. Every single story had me and my jaws dropped and goosebumps flaring. Definite read! The Punisher MAX Writers: Garth Ennis, Gregg Hurwitz Artists: Laurence Campbell A little note, MAX is a imprint of Marvel that solely runs series of comics deemed mature and is, most of the time, set in a different universe from standard Marvel. Frank Castle, the one and only true anti-hero, finally gets a universe that he truly deserves. An ex-veteran with a glorious talent to kill, torture and destroy.
Armed with masterful strategy and the most powerful and darkest reason for being a vigilante: he likes killing. In this world there are no super-heroes, just vile criminals that are crafted with inspiration from real-world crimes and tragedies with a hint of the mad. And the Punisher kills them all. Stories focus on cold-war cases, gang wars, domestic disturbances-turned-killing-spree and the rise and fall of a more realistic take on the Kingpin. The Dark Knight Returns Writer and penciller: Frank Miller Inker: Klaus Janson Colorist: Lynn Varley In 1986, Bruce Wayne is 55 and crime is sinking the city of Gotham. Batman must return and he does.
To me this book was a big fat middle finger to reality and a loving embrace of super-heroes. Set in a world where Superman solely works for the US government, Joker is recovering his sanity in a clean asylum and the majority of society rejects super-heroes. Batman returns to purge crime, in his badass style.
But he isn't young any more and is weakening, finding himself in dire situations. To solve these things though, he basically does what he always has. The Ultimates (Universe) What all the marvel films should have been like. Every series within this universe have stripped their heroes down to basics and multiplied the bad-assness and cool by a 1000 with an added modern edge. The Ultimates (The Avengers) for example, take on the Chitauri race that has already assimilated themselves within society. The Chitauri in the film were absolutely nothing compared to these guys, the final fight wasn't even in New York and they relied on SHIELD as well. The Ultiamtes' universe is also slightly more mature, the Hulk has a mild taste for human flesh, at one point Wolverine is torn in half and there's an uncomfortable relationship between Professor X and Jean.
But yes, the Ultimates are in fact Ultimate. Wanted Writer: Mark Millar Artist: J.G Jones What I would call 'The Wolf of wall street' of comics. Wesley Gibson an absolute nobody and low-life, one day discovers that his dad was an assassin.
No just kidding. His discovered his dad died and was actually a super-villain named 'Killer'. He is then welcomed into the Fraternity.
Seems like Millar has a penchant for glorifying bad guys and in the most stylish way possible. Wanted is basically about Wesley taking over the mantle and being one of the most horrendous human beings in existence. Scenes within this comic seem to ooze ballistic fury in a way only comic books can. And such wonderfully 'piss off and f. you!' Attitude within the dialogue. Please place any suggestions below.
Part 1: Part 2.
Okay, ladies and germs, please enjoy one of the rarest - and certainly one of the most exciting - Rolling Stones rarities of them all. From 1978, it's the Bob Clearmountain remix of the great Some Girls track 'Before They Make Me Run.' Which kicks the album version's ass bigtime. How rare is this? Pretty damned rare; it was released as a limited edition 45 for critics and press only (with that fabulous Annie Leibovitz photo of Keith as the picture sleeve) and over the years it's pretty much disappeared down the memory hole. I'd been trying to find a copy since the old Napster days, with no success, until I stumbled across it at a torrent site in 2009. In any case, I think it's absolutely unconscionable that nobody in the Stones camp figured that this should have been the very first thing on that otherwise fabulous disc of bonus stuff on the Some Girls deluxe edition.
I mean, we're talking a much better edit and an overall level of sonic sheen that's quite revelatory. True story: A few months before I found the thing online, I e-mailed Bob Clearmountain himself (he has a website, obviously) and asked if there was any chance he could spare an mp3 of this magnum opus.
I assured him that I wasn't going to bootleg it or anything, but that I simply wanted to have a copy for my personal listening pleasure. He got back to me right away - nice guy - but his answer was 'Sorry, Steve - to be honest, I have absolutely no recollection of ever having done the record.' Yes, this is the beginning of five days of Rolling Stones-related stuff, inspired by the fact that I shnorred a promo copy of the quite excellent - with cavils, which I will note as the week progresses - new deluxe edition of the band's last classic of the 70s. You're welcome. Ed.
Beatles or Stones - that was the existential dilemma my generation faced. (Bill Clinton chose Elvis Presley, BTW, which is why I never trusted that rat bastard from day one. But I digress.) So - let's have it out on a level playing field. From 1964, and a session with the BBC, here's the Fab Four - John singing lead - with a smokin' version of Chuck Berry's venerable 'Carol. And from just about the same time, here are the other guys on The Mike Douglas Show with a got-live-if-you-want-it version of the very same song. As the weather cools and I realize that holy-crap-fall-is-over-and-I-haven't-accomplished-a-thing, I'm looking back on what I've been listening to over the fall and see that, overwhelmingly, it's centered on 2 CDs: the breathtaking, and Vegas with Randloph's Above the Blue. I've obsessed about VWR, and all the songs mentioned here are indeed on the CD, which was released at the end of the summer.
But is a lot more than that: the title itself references a conscious decision to turn away from the traditional melancholy of power pop (see: Shoes, no The), and the title track is a soaring anthem, or as much of an anthem as power pop can have: The CD is, somewhat ironically, set up like an old-school vinyl album, with a clear side 1 and side 2. Hey - it's the Thanksgiving weekend, and I pretty much had my hands full the last day or two getting a holiday dinner together for my Maternal Unit. So no Listomania today, but have no fear - the List will return next week, all tanned, rested and ready. But it in its stead, and given some of the current events of the last couple of weeks, please enjoy - along with your leftover turkey and stuff - The Call and 'When the Walls Came Down.'
Still the best political/protest rock record ever made, IMHO. Certainly the catchiest and the most sadly prescient, in the sense that's it's as depressingly relevant in 2011 as it was when it was recorded in 1983. And certainly the one that occasioned the most exciting video. We at Power Pop would like to wish a very happy birthday to John Murphy of Shoes! Murphy was a scrawny, quiet kid with killer art skills and a massive record collection (which he shared with his younger brother) when the guy sitting next to him in sophomore English, a tall jock he didn't know named Gary Klebe, looked over his shoulder and saw the caricature he was absent-mindedly drawing of the teacher. Gary asked him if he wanted to draw pictures for a satirical high-school magazine he and some of his friends were putting together, and John agreed.
Nothing came of it immediately, but when junior year began, Gary walked up to John and handed him a copy of the magazine, Lime. The friendship between the two blossomed, and by the time they were headed to college, they'd decided to have an imaginary band. They had a name, Shoes, and they drew comics to each other fantasizing about how famous they'd be, though they didn't have instruments, let alone any idea how to play them. An idea it stayed, until Jeff, John's younger brother, bought himself a TEAC-3340S four-track recorder. He needed a band to learn how to use it, and so John and Gary buckled down and actually tried to figure out how to play for Jeff, and with him, and the three moved forward together. Now, John and his bandmates are finishing up an as-yet-untitled record (link goes to their new website), due sometime next year, probably about the same time I finally get my book, out into the world. It's the first new Shoes music in 17 years, and they're giddy as hell about it, I can tell you that much.
(No, I haven't heard anything, in case you're wondering, but I heard plenty about it.) Over the last two years, I've logged a lot of time with John Murphy, and he's a warm, funny guy I like a lot. Warmest greetings from all of us here to him. Saw Ray Davies in concert over the weekend - a lovely show, including the stuff with the Dessoff Choir, which worked far better than I had frankly expected it to.
And of course, the 'and then I wrote.' Format isn't really hard to take when the person who's singing the songs has the sort of back catalog that Ray has. But here's a song of his - from the early 80s - that he didn't do on Sunday, and I'm kind of glad. Which is not to say that it isn't a great song - it is. But it's either about a pedophile or a divorced dad who's being prevented from seeing the young daughter he adores by a horrid ex-wife, which is to say that it's kind of heartbreaking and kind of creepy at the same time. In fact, its deliberately calibrated ambiguity is probably even more fine-tuned than Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and Ray's own 'Lola' combined. It's also infernally catchy, with - given the aforementioned thematic ambiguity - an emphasis on the infernally.
From 1968 and German television, please enjoy Procol Harum's original classic lineup with the quite astonishing 'Quite Rightly So.' This is by far the best video clip I've ever seen of the original 5-piece PH, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say they're actually playing live, given the differences between Gary Brooker's vocals and Robin Trower's guitar from the album track (although if memory serves, the single version was a little different, and perhaps they're lip-synching to that). In any case, this is exactly what PH sounded like in concert. I've taken a fair amount of ribbing over the years in these precincts due to my enthusiasm for these guys, but I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have never heard a more magnificent sound emanating from human beings on a stage than the one I encountered at various shows performed by Procol Harum (Mark 1) during their approximately three year run. I will further add that the group's seamless fusion of J.S. Bach and Ray Charles made them the only progressive rock band that ever mattered.
Incidentally this was the first single from the group's sophomore LP ( Shine on Brightly), as well as - in its 45 incarnation - the first music in stereo anybody heard by PH. h/t Laura G. Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental biohazard and I are off to lovely Zuccoti Park in downtown New York City, where we are hoping to pick up a case of scabies. Hey - Mayor Bloomberg promised us we could get one, and he NEVER lies. That being the case, and because as you might expect things are going to be fairly quiet around here until Monday, here's a fun and morally uncompromised little project to help us wile away the empty hours until our return: Best or Worst Post-Beatles White-Boy Blues Performance!!!
And my totally top of my head Top Seven is: 7. Pussy Galore - Stop Breaking Down Jon Spencer's low budget, low-fi cover of the Stones' Robert Johnson cover, recorded in a hallway somewhere before there was a Blues Explosion in his pants. I've heard worse, but then again I've been around an awfully long time. John Mayall - Room to Move I'm sorry, I know it's not supposed to be funny, but I can't listen to this without cracking up. Wilderness Road - The Authentic British Blues 'I've got just the thing To liberate your mind Some asshole on a sitar Playing 'My Darling Clementine'Now wait a minute!!!' Geils Band - Serves You Right to Suffer From their great debut album, and this track has been giving me chills for over forty years now.
Well, not continuously, of course; that would be rather debilitating, now that I think of it. But a great performance any way you slice it. The Rolling Stones - Good Times, Bad Times Astoundingly authoritative - Keith's acoustic 12-string work almost beggars belief - and even more remarkable when you consider they were, not to put too fine a point on it, a bunch of pimply post-adolescents when they recorded it. Steppenwolf - Disappointment Number (Unknown) From their 1968 sophomore LP, which is one of the most underrated hard rock records of the decade, here's a sort of history of the blues in a concise four minutes. And the Numero Uno 'They've Suffered for Their Art - Now It's Your Turn' bluesola of them all simply has to be.
West Bruce and Laing - Slow Blues A performance as emotionally compelling as its title is imaginative. Alrighty then - what would your choices be?
Keith Richards and Johnny Depp jamming on 'Key to the Highway' last month at the premiere party for The Rum Diary. Which, by the way, is a pretty great little flick. And I can't believe that it's the first thing that writer/director Bruce Robinson - who did Withnail & I, hands down the best film ever about the '60s counter-culture - has been hired to helm in close to two decades. In any case, as always, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the clip's relevance to the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania. So I was casually browsing that making of A Hard Day's Night book I wrote about and something I had somehow overlooked absolutely jumped out at me. One of the first film offers the Beatles received was to do a cameo in a movie called The Yellow Teddy Bears, a lurid drama about teen sex and pregnancy set in an all-girls school in the English suburbs. The boys were asked to play a band that backs up one of the film's male characters, who dreams of being a pop star.
Because director Robert Hartford-Davis wanted to write all the music the Beatles were meant to play in the film himself, they declined (another Beat group called the Embers took their place). To which I can only add - wow. Which is to say that, obviously, history might have been changed in unfathomable ways had the Fabs actually gotten involved with this project. The film itself appears to be pretty much of a sexploitation period piece - director Hartford-Davis seems to have had a rather undistinguished career, save for the 1965 sci-fi musical classic Gonks Go Beat - but if you're curious you can order it from Amazon over.
As for the Embers, the pop combo that took the place of the Beatles in the film, I can find no information whatsoever. Interesting Rolling Stones news - apparently the expanded Exile on Main Street reissue did well enough to occasion a similar deluxe edition of Some Girls, with live bonus tracks. Here's Britain's The Guardian with the. And on a related note, here's something that just blew me away - one of my favorite tracks from Between the Buttons - 'Yesterday's Papers' - without the vocals. Recorded sometime between the 3rd and the 11th of August, 1966 at RCA Studios in Los Angeles, with the late great Jack Nitzsche on harpsichord Words, as they often do, fail me. Terrific news from the good folks at the MGM Limited Edition Collection - a first-rate version of The Quatermass Xperiment (aka The Creeping Unknown in its American incarnation, but either way one of the creepiest and most original sci-fi thrillers of the 50s) is just out and at a quasi-bargain price.
Tautly directed by Hammer Films stalwart Val Guest (who also did The Abominable Snowman and The Day Earth Caught Fire, two equally memorable B-movie genre classics) the 1958 Quatermass stars Brian Donlevy as the titular driven scientist who shoots the first manned rocket into orbit, only to find the crew inexplicably disappeared - save for one, who's suffering from some degenerative disease nobody can explain - after the spaceship crashes in the British countryside. And after that.well, I don't want to spoil any of the film's still effective low-budget shudders, although I will say that the original story for the film is by the great Nigel Kneale, who might be described as the Rod Serling of Britain. Here's the trailer for the American version. As you may know, the Limited Edition Collection discs - burned as DVD-R's on a by request basis - don't feature film restorations per se; instead they're re-mastered from whatever was the most recent video transfer lying around the studio vaults, and are thus rather hit or miss. In the case of The Quatermass Xperiment, the print/transfer is the same one currently being aired on Turner Classic Movies, which is to say by far the best version of the film I've ever seen. In fact, it looks well nigh pristine, with negligible scratches and dirt and absolutely razor sharp black-and-white images.
You can - and if you're any kind of a sci-fi buff really should - order the DVD over at Amazon. You'll thank me, honest. Incidentally, The Quatermass Xperiment - like the two film sequels Hammer later unleashed - was based on a wildly successful Kneale-penned BBC-TV live mini-series. Alas, the kinescope for the first of them has not survived, but the other two have. Even better, you can watch (or download) both, in very high quality print/transfers, totally for free over at the invaluable Internet Archive. Quatermass II, aka Enemy from Space, can be found right.
Check out the remarkably Lovecraftian Quatermass and the Pit, aka 20 Million Miles to Earth,. I should also add that these TV versions, for a variety of reasons, are actually even more atmospheric and creepy than the films. Which is really saying something. Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental palm pilot and I are off to.and at this point I was going to write Insert Penn State/Joe Paterno joke here except that.well, except that the whole business really isn't funny.
So - because things will nonetheless be quiet around here, as is customarily the case, until Monday, here's a fun and hopefully otherwise relevant little project to help us all wile away the idle hours till my return: Most or Least Fatuous Post-Beatles Politically Themed Pop or Rock Song(s) Ever!!! And my totally top of my head Top Six is/are: 6. The Butthole Surfers - The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey Oswald's Grave These guys were such kidders.
Freda Payne - Bring the Boys Home A terrific piece of pop/soul with a message that resonated quite powerfully at the height of the Vietnam War, and still does alas. Of course, given that 'Band of Gold,' Freda's previous hit, had been about her husband's inability to cut the proverbial mustard when it counted, one did have the feeling listening to this one that her pining for the boys' return might be an example of the personal as political. If you know what I mean. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Almost Cut My Hair Yeah, Dave - that'll show 'em. John Lennon - Woman is the Ni-clang of the World Honorable mention: Patti Smith's 'Rock 'n' Roll Ni-clang.' Hey - I'm sure everybody involved with those songs meant well, at least.
Graham Nash - Chicago Sorry, I can't take a political song that rhymes 'change' and 'rearrange' seriously. And the Numero Uno Total-Victory-is-Ours-Comrades! Ditty of them all simply has to be.
Sha Na Na - The Vote Song The Nixon reference dates it, obviously, but it's still pretty relevant and pretty funny. Incidentally, while it's true that one of the Sha Na Na gold suit guys has turned into a Teabagger, it was nice to see lead singer Jon 'Bowser' Bauman on Tuesday night celebrating the unions win in Ohio. Alrighty then - what would your choices be?
So grizzled old DFH's Graham Nash and David Crosby showed up at Zuccotti Park last Tuesday to show solidarity with the OWS protesters, and our pal Watertiger, of renown, caught this image via her cell-phone camera. Actually, if you were watching Keith Olbermann on Current TV Tuesday night, he had video footage of this where you could clearly glimpse El Tigre in front of the stage taking the photo; unfortunately, that part of the segment isn't included in the clip on the Current website, so I couldn't grab a screen cap of her getting the shot, meta as that would have been. In any case, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the first reader who gleans the theme of tomorrow's Weekend Listomania from the above.
Well, I'm afraid there's some breaking bad news in the saga of. If you were with us a year ago, you may recall that we told you that the little fella had come through his thyroid therapy with flying colors. That was true enough at the time; however, as you can see from this just taken photograph, there seem to have been late-developing side effects of a devolutionary nature. Surgery to remove that weird growth on his head is scheduled for next week; we'll keep you posted, and please keep your fingers crossed. From (well, I won't tell you when, just to be difficult) please enjoy (I won't tell you who, either) and their apparent homage to all things The Band and Music From Big Pink entitled 'And Don't Be Late.' The short version: The group in question made exactly one album (which sank like a stone, unheralded) although they also backed John Cale on his first post-Velvets LP. And the band's lead singer/frontman went on to be a well-respected New Wave phenom and scenester.
Mad Professor Torrent Discography Garth Walker
He's still active, too; in fact, he was on Letterman just last month. In any case, the Woodstock-ian country rock on the commercial flop album in question doesn't seem to have a lot to do, style-wise, with what the lead singer/frontman has done subsequently.
As always, a coveted PowerPop No-Prize will be awarded to the reader who first guesses the band and the lead singer/frontman's identity. And no Googling!!!! I should also add that I was able to score the album courtesy of our chum Leonard over at the estimable Red Telephone 66; once you've figured out who's responsible for the track, please head over there and give him and some love. Or money, via the fundraiser now in progress. Still decompressing from jetlag occasioned by my recent return from the land of the Ignoble Frog, but until regular posting resumes I thought I'd share something I stumbled upon at the fabulous Pompidou Center in Paris while waiting to get into the Edvard Munch show. From 1963, please enjoy Roger and his Son by remarkable Polish-French modernist.
Garth Brooks Discography Download
And then tell me the son in the painting doesn't look disturbingly like this MTV icon. Seriously, I have no idea if Mike Judge had this painting in mind when he created Beavis and Butthead, but the resemblance strikes me as too close to be an accident. I should also add that there actually is another rock-and-roll connection with this painting - Bono (yes him) sang at Balthus' funeral. Well, we're back from the land of the Ignoble Frog, safe and sound, but still decompressing. Regular, relatively serious, power pop blogging will resume later in the week. But in the meantime, here's a 1968 painting - entitled Poverty - by American surrealist that we glimpsed while wandering around the fabulous Pompidou Center in Paris last week; clearly, it displays a certain prescience where the current activities of Occupy Wall Street are concerned. If you don't get the joke immediately, click on the image till it increases in size and look carefully at the name of the financial institution the tree figure is holding.